Not-E3 events summarised: Xbox Games Showcase
Everything everywhere all at once
Vibe: Breezy confidence and slightly intense evangelizing of platform neutrality
Format: Pre-recorded studio clips linking together trailers, no interviews, “motion design is my passion” interstitial graphics
Discernable trends: British-ish locations, regional accents, Western RPGs, multi-platform releases
Notable absences: Fable, Forza, Halo, Perfect Dark
Microsoft, like Sony, shows signs of having hit a sensible and sustainable groove with its summer showcases. These are platforms in middle age, professing to be comfortable with who they are (Sony: extremely successful hardware platform; Microsoft: vast, ubiquitous multiplatform game repository) and happy to skip the suits and the live shows in favour of dress-down chats and developer-free trailers. The chief difference is that Sony is plum out of first-party material and had to pillage Summer Game Fest’s prospects for its show, whereas Xbox has more studios than it knows what to do with.
Things opened with The Outer Worlds 2, a game that’s also comfortable with itself as a slightly goofy open-world RPG and thus confident enough to spend time on a story taking heavy-handed digs at big exploitative corporations. This would feel more enjoyable if it wasn’t taking place in a showcase by a huge corporation, and in a world less abundant in corporate malfeasance, but maybe this is as close to revolution as videogames can get.
First was High on Life 2, which looks like a fairly straightforward continuation of the last game: bright colours, highly detailed animation and talking guns, paired with an iron belief in its own hilariousness. This was expressed by a mercifully brief in-universe skit that was merely dull rather than excruciating and there wasn’t any in-game VO so there’s reason to hope that has improved.
Resonance, A Plague Tale Legacy was an all-cinematic debut for a new spin on the well-regarded Plague Tale universe, although it was not itself new on account of having leaked early. It’s got a giant minotaur and what looks like some fairly unsafe electrical wiring, and apparently it’s set fifteen years before the first game rather than doing anything with the finale of the last one.
The big hardware reveal wasn’t particularly new either, given that Phil Spencer has been hyping handhelds for ages and the device itself was revealed in photos last month. The confirmation - which was also seemingly CGI, you can’t trust anything these days - revealed that it’s being produced in partnership with ASUS, which is no great surprise given Xbox’s long-standing difficulties in selling hardware and the allegedly closer eye Microsoft has been keeping on things since it forked out $69B for Activision.
Otherwise it’s about what you’d expect: a bit like a Steam Deck only running a less demanding version of Windows and supporting a range of different game stores, under Microsoft’s new We’re All About Multiplatform, Us messaging. This was delivered with a slightly unsettling intensity by Sarah Bond, Phil having retreated higher up the chain of command these days, who opted for wearing just a single T-shirt from her position in a faintly sinister grey studio filled with screens.
Her pitch for bringing together the power of Xbox and the “freedom of Windows” will land depending on how recently you’ve fought with the latter, with an uncharitable read being this will be the first console to relentlessly hype news stories about Elon Musk and beg you to sign up for online file storage. The talk of connecting players felt a bit overdone, with the stirring orchestral music building to a crescendo over chat about things like the ability to access Achievements on any platform, but multiplatform support is undoubtedly a good thing.
After the grimdark slog of Summer Game Fest, the promise of a “story-rich RPG steeped in dark fantasy” from Bandai Namco held no appeal whatsoever, but The Blood of Dawnwalker won me over: a high-fantasy Blade in which you’re a “dawnwalker” bringing down a vampire empire, which promises goofy abilities like teleportation and gravity-defying wall walks. There was still a lot of stabbing, blood-sucking and decapitation, but the countryside appeared to actually be green and we got the whole way through the trailer without a boss fight against a body-horror nightmare so that was one point to the green team.
A welcome shift back to brightly-coloured toy insects turned out to be a bait and switch for Super Meat Boy 3D. This gives one of the OG indie games a lavishly detailed 3D glow-up while retaining the mass death from rotating spikes. Ninja Gaiden 4 continued on to third-person gore with big melee weapons but it’s a fine franchise and they can at least claim they were doing it before everybody else was.
Indiana Jones got Order of Giants DLC which was a name and not much else beyond the reminder of how perfectly Machinegames nailed the franchise trimmings. Best of Reincarnation was more fighting huge messed-up monsters, but you’re a lady with a big and probably magical wolf. There are also robots. If you asked me at the end of this week to match the game to the name, or even the showcase, I would probably fail, but there’s clearly huge demand for this stuff and I hope they all find success.
Then came Clockwork Revolution, InXile’s Bioshock-ish RPG, which followed what I’m starting to worry is a trend of British-ish locations populated by sweary regional accents and scheming toffs. This was fine when it was just Fable but it’s starting to get out of hand, and it’s not clear if that’s driven by the tax credits or any recent example of national brand damage. Perhaps both.
Anyway, the trailer once again brought to mind Bioshock both in combat and aesthetic, with the toffs vs the proles and the robots, but it was also very long and spent a lot of time on character VO explaining the narrative in a way that made me nostalgic for a ruthlessly drilled associate producer reciting a glib positioning statement. Much was made of the time-bending ability, which is strikingly reminiscent of what Singularity promised if not delivered, and while it was entirely too enamoured of a swearing doll the game is clearly aiming high and I look forward to seeing if it manages it.
Then it was back to the sinister liminal space with Matt Booty to commend the studios for shipping “their most-played games ever,” which would sound impressive if you don’t know about them being included in a value-priced subscription service and also, on an additional major console besides the one Microsoft owns itself. There was the promise of more TV and film adaptations although without volunteering any detail, and it was illustrated with an incidental clip of the chicken jockey rather than a cringeworthy gag about it which I appreciated.
Grounded 2 is Grounded Again, which is understandable given that the nature of game development and doubtless is why it’s hitting early access as soon as next month, but is nevertheless a missed opportunity to go Full Moranis. It was introduced with a period TV spot for a He-Man knockoff, which felt like it was pandering to my demographic in a slightly unsettling way, but maybe tired millennials are the market they’re laser-focused on.
Cronos was third-person horror with mutant abominations which meant more gore-splattered headshots, or shots on the limbs where a head might once have been. We’ve seen it before, and we’ve definitely seen the name before, but Bloober Team have some talent and it’s still novel to be doing this sort of thing in the blasted remains of Poland rather than Anytown, USA. There were more regional British accents here, too, which I’ll chalk up to tax efficiency.
The reveal of pets in Elder Scrolls Online was nicely done but that’s at least the third time that “create your own story” has showed up in an MMO trailer this week and the trailer itself ran long seemingly just to showcase all the pet animations.
Dontnod’s Aphelion looked like Tomb Raider with all platforming and no combat, which is actually a decent pitch, although the closing reveal of Generic Astronaut Guy and non-reveal of some chichitinous alien monstrosity suggested that it might revert to trope later. A collaboration with the European Space Agency was intriguing although not expanded upon. The new Age of Mythology DLC is called Heavenly Spear, which should be safely if confusingly stored next to Heavenly Sword.
There Are No Ghosts At The Grand started out as a talky attempt to give Homes Under The Hammer the Powerwash Simulator treatment but got steadily weirder and more interesting as things developed, with musical numbers, puzzle solving, portals into a fantasy platforming realm and a dancing policeman all overseen by a talking cat. Apparently it’s cosy paranormal investigation and the cat is called Mr Bones The Bastard. Honestly my favourite reveal of the week so far.
I am also cautiously enthusiastic about Mudang Two Hearts, a big Korean production that probably had Yves Guillemot throwing his Rayman statue at the screen, combining Splinter Cell with all the other Tom Clancy games plus a dash of Resident Evil for good measure. There are zombies and a lot of brutal melee takedowns, so it’s not an entirely fresh experience, but I’m a sucker for stealth action and this is the sort of 60%-novel thing that Ubisoft used to close its conference with so it feels soothingly nostalgic to boot.
Planet of Lana 2 is Inside with a Studio Ghibli colour palette and a catblob, again. I’ve known a number of very blob-like cats and I’m sure they’ll be grateful for the representation. Bethesda is still doing Vault-Tec style adverts but the one for fishing in Fallout 76 had the spokesman acknowledging the wasteland which feels like breaking kayfabe. It also, importantly, renames the Science perk to Science!.
Solo Levelling: ARISE OVERDRIVE was another anime fever dream that turned out to be an action RPG making the move from mobile to console, although this one’s extra silly because it’s adding four-player co-op while “solo” is right there in the title. The confirmation of Persona 4 Revival is a big deal. Aniimo sure looks a lot like Palworld and a very carefully calibrated amount like Pokemon, I’m sure their lawyer is on speed dial.
Invincible VS was another very good-looking comic character beat-em-up but based on an Image licence so it’s OK to both swear and murder people. Double Fine’s Keeper was baffling but beautiful, a lighthouse traversing a fantasy world on insectoid legs, but the huge monsters all seemed to have their organs inside them and there wasn’t a drop of blood to be seen. Out in October, too.
It’s always nice to see Tony Hawk, like meeting an elderly dog from your childhood, although I would have felt less elderly if they skipped the side-by-side comparison of the Pro Skater 3+4 remake and the original, and giving the Ninja Turtles human proportions just looks a bit weird, like it’s a costume in Saints Row. At Fate’s End looked interesting: a comic-styled metroidvania with a card-based battle system in which you fight your siblings through “swordplay, dialogue, psychological insight, and hard-won knowledge of shared history,” which is obviously table stakes for anybody who’s endured family Christmases in their 30s but the game makes it look much more exciting.
Phil Spencer showed up for the finale, showing how serious he is now by wearing neither T-shirt nor even leather jacket, to name-drop the more obvious omissions of Fable, Forza and Gears E-Day which are apparently returning for the console’s 25th anniversary next year. He also teased the return of “a classic that’s been with us since the beginning”, which based on both current trends and Xbox’s unending dedication to non-existent fanbases I’m going to say is Cel Damage. Let’s circle back next year and see.
The show ended on One More Thing which was a man with the bland looks and sensible jacket of a Resident Evil protagonist, or Alan Wake’s less idiotic brother, visiting a robot manufacturer before a gravity-flipping hallucination revealed him to be… the returning protagonist of Black Ops 7. It’s on me for failing to realise we’d gone the whole show without mentioning Phil’s largest and most expensive son, but it also speaks to the range of stuff they’d shown without ever feeling like they were approaching the bottom of the barrel.
I’m broadly ambivalent about playing CoD again, but that doesn’t matter because it was preceded by a decent crop of games I do want to play, and plenty more besides. A good show, all told, and while that shouldn’t be surprising given the number of studios Xbox owns it has taken it a while to get here. The omissions are telling - particularly Halo and Perfect Dark, both of which have been the subject of gloomy news reports - but for once you can’t say that Xbox has a gap in the lineup it needs to fill. And the show didn’t outstay its welcome, which three showcases in, I am increasingly grateful for.
Rating: A