E3 died in 2023 but the Entertainment Software Association is still around, and it's just unveiled its new idea: "a first-of-its-kind event designed to connect visionaries, thought leaders and innovators from across industries to harness the power of interactive entertainment" called iicon.

Two things right off the start: No, this is not a reborn E3, and no, I didn't spell it wrong. Iicon is a snappy abbreviation for the Interactive Innovation Conference, and its goal is to provide attendees "exclusive access to visionary keynotes, engaging discussions and workshops, and elite networking opportunities with executives shaping the future of entertainment, business and technology." Those executives will come from companies including Amazon Games, Disney, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Microsoft, Nintendo of America, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Square Enix, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft and Warner Bros.

"The Entertainment Software Association and its member companies are among the innovators and leaders shaping the future of culture, business and human connection," ESA chairman Doug Bowser said. "It’s a natural role for ESA to host and support an event that fosters an open exchange of new ideas with our peer industry leaders.

"Iicon is bringing together changemakers from across industries to envision how the strengths of the interactive entertainment industry can break entirely new ground."

It doesn't sound like much fun in the way that E3 was, even in the days before the public was allowed to attend. There was an excitement to those events, as game and hardware makers showcased their wares to throngs of journalists, and we all eagerly read about what they saw in our favorite magazines or websites. And even though E3 was a fading star by the time it opened its doors to the public in 2016, there was genuine enthusiasm for it among gamers who wanted to know more about the next big (or even small) thing.

Iicon, by comparison, sounds more like executives talking to executives about executive stuff: Industry trends, share prices, how to make more games with fewer developers, maybe a little M&A, that sort of stuff.

But that's really a better fit for what the ESA does. Its mission, according to the ESA website, is "to help expand and protect the innovative and creative marketplace for the videogame industry here in the United States," through actions like "educating policymakers and regulators about the power of play and videogames' positive impact on society."

It also works as a lobby group for the industry as a whole: Earlier this week, for instance, the ESA issued a statement criticizing US president Donald Trump's proposed tariffs on products coming from Canada, Mexico, and China, saying they "would negatively impact hundreds of millions of Americans and would harm the industry’s significant contributions to the US economy. Last year it also lobbied against libraries and educational institutions being able to provide remote access to games for research purposes, claiming that such easy access to classic games "would present a serious risk to an important market."

Iicon clearly has a very different mandate than that of consumer-focused events like The Game Awards or PAX, one aimed primarily at investors and regulators rather than, well, you. Think of it this way: Phil Spencer might wear jeans and a t-shirt when he's up on stage with Geoff Keighley, but you better believe he's going to be in a suit and tie if he shows up at iicon.

So, setting aside the tiresome tradespeak—iicon will provide "a key opportunity to drive innovation and foster collaboration across sectors"—the conference makes sense, at least as far as a justification for the ongoing existence of the ESA. What makes less sense is it being held in Las Vegas just two months after DICE, another businessy, industry-only event. But the ESA doesn't control DICE, which may be exactly why it's aiming to jam another conference into the arena.

One estimate says the global videogame industry is set to surpass $300 billion in revenues by 2027, and it's a very normal and unremarkable thing for big players in such a lucrative business to get together and plot out the future. But will it mean much for the rest of us? Are we likely to see Keanu Reeves walk out on stage and tell the crowd, "You're breathtaking?" Probably not, no.

If, despite all this, you're still eager to attend and see what's cooking, you've got until April 2026 to become one of the "visionaries, thought leaders and innovators across industries that intersect with interactive entertainment" the ESA will be letting through the doors.

Something very special happened in our hobby this weekend. The Digsite team, a group of Halo modders who've been working with Halo Studios (formerly 343 Industries) to restore lost artifacts of Halo history, delivered a mother lode: A playable version of the legendary Halo 2 "Earth City" demo.

The mission, originally played live on stage at E3 2003, was the world's first look at the sequel. With a runtime just under nine minutes, the demo was a vertical slice created to introduce the Covenant's invasion of Earth and showcase features that would go on to make Halo 2 one of the most beloved (and criticized) chapters in the series 20 years later. Just listen to that crowd roar as they watch Master Chief dual-wield SMGs, ghost-jack a Brute, and fire the battle rifle for the first time (which at that point was a single-shot rifle like Reach's DMR). The Earth City mission was cut from the final campaign and left unseen for two decades, until now.

The (H2) E3 2003 Demo, as it's officially called, was uploaded to The Master Chief Collection Steam workshop by the Digsite team on November 9, Halo 2's 20th birthday. In a blog post on Halo Waypoint, community writer Alex Wakeford said it took lots of work to reconstruct the demo from a version of the Halo 2 engine that doesn't exist anymore, and that the intrepid modders had to tweak the scripting of the demo so that it wouldn't constantly break.

"Massive improvements have been made to the visual quality and overall stability of this experience, as the original demo required the player to hit specific individual triggers in order to ensure it did not break," the post reads. "Players will see that nav markers help to guide them through each beat of this mission from the moment they step off the Pelican all the way up to boarding the Ghost and escaping into the highway tunnel at the end."

Being mostly unfamiliar with this demo (I wasn't cool enough to watch E3 trailers at the age of seven), but having a handful of Halo 2 playthroughs under my belt, Earth City is a really remarkable thing. As soon as Chief stepped off the pelican, I felt like I'd been drafted into a stage play with no rehearsals. Predictably the demo lacks Halo's flexible sandbox, playing out more like an early Call of Duty campaign that grinds to a halt if you don't follow a particular NPC the correct way. Despite Digsite's best efforts to stabilize the scripting, and my best try at sticking to the critical path, I managed to softlock the mission at the moment Chief is supposed to pick up a second SMG. This is a finicky beast—can you imagine how hard then-Bungie cinematics director Joe Staten must've been sweating playing on stage that day?

It's neat to try out Bungie's scrapped gameplay experiments. The demo features this three-hit melee combo where Chief follows his initial gun bash with two more swift strikes. The maneuver looks great, but I could hear the conversation that probably led to its removal as I was beating down a brute—make melee more spammy and you upset Halo's already perfect "shoot-shoot-punch" combat loop. The DMR battle rifle is also super weird. In my mind, Halo 2 is synonymous with the rhythmic hum of the battle rifle's three-round burst. This single-shot version sounds weaker and just doesn't ring true as Master Chief's weapon of choice. Still, it's cool to see the wheels turning on what'd eventually become Halo: Reach's punchy DMR.

From a preservation standpoint, Earth City is nothing less than a miracle. It's an unreserved win for everybody that this notable piece of gaming history no longer has to exist solely as a grainy YouTube video, but more than that, Earth City is a huge demonstration of PC gaming's power. It's fantastic that Halo Studios has a real interest in preserving Halo's legacy, but this project would've gone nowhere without the Halo modding scene—a scene with foundations in Halo: Combat Evolved's earliest PC port, which continued with Halo 2's eventual Windows Vista release, and has since blossomed with official mod support in The Master Chief Collection.

Three days ago, Halo 2's lost E3 mission was an obscure piece of trivia, and now it's a thing you can play with three clicks. I can't think of a better argument for companies embracing the fans who want to preserve, remix, and generally keep aging games alive instead of being actively hostile toward them.

The Halo 2 Earth City demo is free download, but there is a small catch: It's only currently available on the MCC Steam workshop, so no console or Game Pass compatibility, and you have to own Halo 2: Anniversary for it to work. If you finish the demo and want to keep the warm and fuzzy Halo feelings rolling, might I suggest jumping into some Halo 2 multiplayer with its still-active community, or joining the nostalgia party going on in Halo Infinite.

Battle Aces, just announced during Summer Game Fest, is a promising spin on the RTS that uses deckbuilding—we've played it, and writer Lincoln Carpenter says the cards serve as "a purposefully designed speed ramp angled to accelerate you towards what's most fun about RTS games." But I'm not here to talk about that, because something else about Battle Aces has wholly captured my attention: its two-minute cinematic trailer that showcases a mecha pilot performing an orbital drop, blasting into a firefight, and dodging the kinds of laser beams that seem to pause for a split-second after impact before the big boom. You almost certainly know the type. 

I'm an easy mark for almost any kind of mecha anime, so Battle Aces' cinematic was basically guaranteed to get me fired up. But it crucially ends on a high note, my favorite mech pilot trope—smashing a throttle all the way forward to signify action!! There's some fantastic animation in this minute-long cinematic, with some fun mech designs and a pilot wearing some vaguely Tracer-esque goggles that make me suspect fan art will be immediately forthcoming. I'm a little bummed that this is just a mood-setter for a real-time strategy game, because I could watch at least one and likely 13-26 episodes of an anime that looks just like this. 

E3 may be no more, but I can't think of a more tried and true tradition of the summer game announcement season than this: seeing a cinematic trailer, thinking "this looks absolutely sick," and then coming to terms with the game itself looking, y'know, alright!

Risk of Rain Returns is a recent one from last year. I enjoyed the remake of Risk of Rain when it came out in late 2023, but I have to admit to a glimmer of disappointment this minute-long animation wasn't for a short film or something other than a remake. 

Same with this year's Pepper Grinder. I've heard the game itself is a great 2D platformer, but all this trailer did for me was make me want to seek out the animation studio behind it. Look at that rough, vaguely MS Paint aesthetic coupled with incredibly fluid movement. It absolutely oozes style and reminds me a little of one of my favorite works of animation from the last decade, Ping Pong. And the list goes on: Windjammers 2, for example, probably should've just been a sports anime instead of a game.

Is it a bad idea to show off a new game this way? I think it can be—or at least a risky one. Animated trailers are "essentially the CG trailers of indie games," says experienced trailer editor Derek Lieu, who points out that they're extremely expensive at approximately $1,000 per second of animation. There's also the risk that animated trailers "don't actually help people understand what the gameplay is."

"People might not even realize they're watching a game trailer," he says in a recent video on why most indie devs shouldn't make animated game trailers. "I think it can even backfire if a trailer's visuals look so much better than the game's. If you make an animated or CG trailer that then cuts to gameplay halfway through, you never want the reaction to be 'Oh. Huh.'"

I think I have at least a couple "Oh. Huh" reactions a year at this point, but you know, I'm not too upset about that. Even if I'm bummed I'll never get to watch an animated series that teases out the full potential of a trailer that got me real jazzed, I still enjoy these snippets of gorgeous animation. And even when games don't do wholly distinct cinematics, their trailers can still kind of backfire.

While not quite the same divide between animation and game, I was immediately smitten with the presentation of indie adventure Death's Door in its 2021 debut… and then let down by the real thing. I'd happily watch many more voiceless cutscenes of this bird character set to noiry piano music, but the game itself is played almost entirely from a zoomed out isometric perspective. The art is still great, but was a disappointing mismatch for the perspective shown in the trailer. Gimme those bird close-ups!

Based on Lincoln's hands-on impressions of Battle Aces, I can definitely see myself getting into an RTS that doesn't demand the godlike micro skills of StarCraft. I'll probably check it out. But am I a little sad it's not launching alongside a short film about a hotshot mech pilot? Yeah.

Instead of forcing these small but incredibly talented animation studios to survive on one or two minute commissions, someone with good taste and deep pockets needs to be handing them $40 million checks and telling them to go hog wild. Texas-based Powerhouse Animation Studios is all the proof you need this is a brilliant idea. Once upon a time Powerhouse was doing animated trailers for the likes of The Banner Saga, and now they have five beautiful seasons of Netflix's Castlevania under their belt. More of that, please. 

Almost three decades after first debuting at the Los Angeles Convention Centre, the Entertainment Software Association has announced it's finally laying gaming convention E3 to rest.

A statement was posted to the official E3 Twitter, which read: "After more than two decades of E3, each one bigger than the last, the time has come to say goodbye. Thanks for the memories." The statement signs off with "GGWP" in giant yellow letters.

In a statement to The Washington Post, ESA CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis said: "We know the entire industry, players and creators alike have a lot of passion for E3. We share that passion. We know it's difficult to say goodbye to such a beloved event, but it's the right thing to do given the new opportunities our industry has to reach fans and partners."

He continued: "There were fans who were invited to attend in the later years, but it really was about a marketing and business model for the industry and being able to provide the world with information about new products. Companies now have access to consumers and to business relations through a variety of means, including their own individual showcases."

It's been an unfortunate few years for the expo, with 2020 feeling like the beginning of the end for E3. The Covid-19 pandemic saw its 2020 show get cancelled, before coming back in a stripped-down digital format in 2021. While we said that the show was "better than we could have expected," it still didn't prove to be quite enough.

The following year saw E3 cancelled again, with the ESA announcing that there wouldn't be a digital or in-person show, but planned to return "with a reinvigorated showcase" in 2023. 

That, as we know now, didn't happen. Despite a partnership with PAX organiser ReedPop, huge hitters like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo revealed that they wouldn't be making an appearance at the show's first attempt to return in-person since 2019. Ubisoft, who had previously committed to appearing, subsequently pulled out just two months later. 

It led to E3 2023 being yet another cancelled event, something ReedPop global VP of gaming Kyle Marsden-Kish called "a difficult decision because of all the effort we and our partners put toward making this event happen." Six months later, in September 2023, ReedPop and the ESA ended its partnership and confirmed that there would be no E3 in 2024 either.

Despite this, there were talks of the ESA planning for a big relaunch sometime in 2025. Despite history, I was still holding out a little bit of hope that we might actually see some grand return in the future. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case.

The news of E3's demise is being touted as a real "end of an era moment," and it is. It was once the biggest convention in the industry, and being a part of it was a milestone for many working in games media and development. While it's felt like the expo's fate has been sealed for a hot sec, it's still sad to see an event that's as old as I am bite the dust. 

Events company ReedPop, which has been partnering with the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) for the past 14 months, will not be working on future E3 events. Reedpop has a good track record with live events, most recently organising PAX West in Seattle the past weekend, but didn't run a single E3 in that admittedly short timespan, with this year's event being cancelled due to a lack of involvement from the industry's big players.

Further to this, there will be no E3 in 2024. Well, no traditional E3. The ESA has told the Los Angeles Convention Center, where it's always held, that there will be no show next year, though it has stopped short of saying there will be no E3 at all. If there is, which I highly doubt, expect a very pared-back digital-only offering. 

The ESA is apparently, per GamesIndustry.biz, planning a big re-launch and reinvention of E3 in 2025. I'll believe it when I see it. E3 feels like it's dead and, as someone who was lucky enough to attend over the years and always set aside time to watch the big showcases, that's a damn shame. Geoff Keighley's offerings and the various other shows that happen around the calendar are fine and all, but E3 was the big one, the showstopper, and it feels unlikely it will ever return or be replaced.

ReedPop had inked a multi-year deal with the ESA and 2023 was supposed to be the big E3 relaunch post-Covid. In the end, what Reedpop president Kyle Marsden-Kirsh called "resourcing challenges" and a lack of industry attendees saw the event cancelled, with big publishers increasingly unconvinced that splashing the cash on convention space and huge displays is worthwhile for them.

The two companies say the split is a "mutual decision". ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis thanked ReedPop and said "While the reach of E3 remains unmatched in our industry, we are continuing to explore how we can evolve it to best serve the video game industry and are evaluating every aspect of the event, from format to location. We are committed to our role as a convenor for the industry and look forward to sharing news about E3 in the coming months."

You can now watch one of E3's most infamous and disastrous presentations in all its HD glory.

As far as iconic E3 conferences go, there's a lot of them. There's 1995's fantastic 299 moment, Keanu Reeves and his breathtaking appearance in 2019, and too many live hands-on mishaps to count. Perhaps one of the most memorable years, though, is E3 2006 with the absolute car crash that was Sony's press conference.

YouTuber Noclip has uploaded a pristine 1080p version of the entire two-hour conference to YouTube. It's almost entirely intact, bar a small two-minute gap that's missing around 90 minutes in. Mercifully, it's only for a Tiger Woods game. Though that could be devastating news depending on your passion for mid-2000s golf games.

It's the first time we've been able to see the entire conference outside of fuzzy, low-resolution snippets. Noclip says in the video's description that it was "sourced from two HDCAM's recording the source broadcast feed." Noclip is also searching for the missing Tiger Woods clip to completely restore the presentation, if by any chance you happen to be holding onto that sort of thing.

If you're not privy to Sony's infamous E3 2006 conference, I implore you to check out the YouTube video in its entirety. It's an onslaught of eye-wateringly cringe moments, a real lesson in how not to do a big ol' videogames presentation. It was the birth of the fantastic "Riiiiiidge Racer!" meme, a not-insignificant amount of time dedicated to a "giant enemy crab," and the deafeningly silent reaction to the announcement that the PlayStation 3 would be a whopping $599. 

The upload is part of Noclip's ongoing effort to preserve old videogame footage, which is all housed over on its secondary channel. The channel seems to be slowly combing through numerous E3 conferences this year—earlier this month it rescued footage from E3 2001, bringing never-seen-before footage of a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic presentation.

We also got the first look at behind closed doors footage of Neverwinter Nights from E3 2000 and 2001, though they're understandably only available in standard definition. Last year saw Noclip release unedited footage of cancelled Doom 4 gameplay, which was originally seen cut up in a documentary uploaded by the channel back in 2006.

The Entertainment Software Association is insisting that E3 isn't dead quite yet, though the Los Angeles City Tourism Board of Commissioners would beg to differ.

A ResetEra post shared a snippet of the board's most recent meeting, which seemed to all but confirm the death of the once-beloved gaming convention. A footnote inside the meeting's packet for convention sales, dated June 12, reads "includes E3 cancellations for 2024 and 2025." While that doesn't account for its future in 2026 and beyond, it seemed like the final nail in the coffin. After all, everyone seemed to do just fine without E3 around this year, and last year. It was a shaky time for the convention even before the pandemic, but now it seemed almost certain that we wouldn't see its grand return.

Never say never, apparently, because a spokesperson for the ESA has attempted to snuff out any premature grieving (or celebrating). Issuing a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, the trade body says it's "currently having conversations about E3 2024 (and beyond), adding that "no final decisions about the event have been made at this time."

It's a pretty vague response to an almost definitive footnote from the LA tourism board, but it could mean a multitude of things for E3's future. My theory is there's a pretty high chance we'll see a digital version of the event return next year, culling the need for a physical presence and all the financial woes that come with it. It would make sense with ESA president and CEO Stanley Pierre-Louis's comments earlier this year about the likelihood of an E3 2024, too.

"We're committed to providing an industry platform for marketing and convening but we want to make sure we find that right balance that meets the needs of the industry," he told GamesIndustry.biz shortly after this year's E3 cancellation in March. "We're certainly going to be listening and ensuring whatever we want to offer meets those needs and at that time, we will have more news to share."

Seems to me like a digital-only event is the most likely future for E3 right now, but even if it happens, will people be that bothered? The reception to its online-only presence last year was tepid at best, with our online editor Fraser Brown saying he didn't think it should ever return to an in-person event. "I'm glad E3 is going digital again, though I don't think it's going to survive indefinitely in this form," he wrote last year. 

As for me, I actually quite miss the chaotic weirdness that E3 brought, but I don't think we'll ever get it back even if it manages to return with a bang. We certainly got some oddities with this year's Summer Game Fest and beyond—strange Nic Cage appearances and sea shanties abound—but as senior editor Rich Stanton wrote in March: E3's disappearance is a damn shame. 

Like many of you, I watched the Summer Game Fest showcase today. At the end, host and SGF creator Geoff Keighley began announcing the big reveal and I rose from my torpor in a brief haze of excitement. Hideo Kojima, some Death Stranding 2 footage? Oh he's mentioned RPGs... FromSoftware? Elden Ring DLC trailer?!?

No. It was something that doubtless excites many, a new trailer for Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 2, but I am an absolutely ancient and wise being that knows a better version of that game already came out in 1997. FF7 remake was hardly the issue here though.

There is an important caveat about Summer Game Fest, which is that the narrative that it "killed" E3 or is going to replace E3 is a false one. E3 was killed by a lack of industry support, and probably some poor management decisions on the way there. Putting on something of the scale of E3, a physical event held in the Los Angeles convention centre for days, requires a lot of publishers to put up a lot of money. Don't look at Geoff Keighley when wondering why E3's gone. Look at E3, and look at the games industry and their preference for self-contained broadcast showcases over live events.

Nevertheless, the E3 period remains, and Keighley himself has tried to brand the various showcases as part of an overall Summer Game Fest. By that logic the Summer Game Fest period (I'm still not committing, Geoff) would incorporate things like last month's PlayStation showcase, the Xbox showcase, Starfield showcase, PC Gaming Show, Ubisoft showcase, Capcom showcase, and the Day of the Devs and Devolver Direct stream, as well as others. So there will definitely be bigger megatons than a FF7 Remake trailer. But it still isn't the same.

Over the pandemic years it was obvious why E3 wasn't happening, and we dealt with these digital substitutes in all aspects of our lives. There was the expectation E3 would return at some point, with all the ineffable qualities an in-person event where the giants rub shoulders bring. Now it's clear that's not going to happen, and watching tonight's Summer Game Fest showcase really brought home to me what we've lost.

Everything at SGF was something that would have been at a hypothetical "E3 2023" anyway, and ultimately you have to work with whatever's out there, so I'm not knocking the effort. But as the showcase named for the Summer Game Fest period we're supposed to be in, this felt almost tacky at parts like the Taco Bell delivery segment. The names were big, with the likes of Prince of Persia, Sonic, Yakuza, and Final Fantasy represented, but it felt like publishers were offering up the side projects while keeping the real meat for their own or a platform-holder's showcase.

When Nicolas Cage rocking up to talk about nothing is probably the most exciting element of a videogames show, I think you're in trouble. This all felt not just small but inconsequential. If these things are where you're supposed to see the future of games, I'm not sure I ever felt like that tonight.

It's something of a US industry failure to have let E3 die so easily. Japan still has Tokyo Game Show. Europe still has GamesCom. And they both still get big announcements and that buzz of getting a chunk of the industry together. I wonder whether the industry's making the same mistake it did with E3. If that's gone, and SGF is the thing to replace it, and we're all supposed to get excited about SGF now... well, Geoff Keighley needs better support than that.

As for E3 itself, though: That died with E3, and I don't think the US games industry is capable of truly replacing it. I'm sad that, at least for now, livestreams from rooms with small crowds interspersed with QR ads are our post-E3 future.

I'm psyched for the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake for two reasons: this entry in the series has never been playable on PC, and it's the pinnacle of what Metal Gear Solid was up until MGS5. That open world, less-narrative-focused capstone to the Metal Gear saga is a peerless stealth game, but MGS3 is really the pinnacle of the form Kojima was working in from 1998 to 2008, with the first four games. Today's CG reveal trailer, though, didn't really feel much like Metal Gear—at least not in the style of Hideo Kojima.

This short trailer reminded me just how much control Kojima exerted over the Metal Gear series, down to how they were presented at big industry events like E3. In the early 2000s, E3 press conferences were still stuffy affairs with businessmen in big suits talking about sales figures and audience demographics between game trailers. Konami certainly wasn't exempt, but the trailers Kojima brought with him were clearly designed to be events in a way other game trailers at the time just weren't.

The original MGS 3 trailer was not just a two minute hype reel. It was a gameplay showcase, a comedy, and a graphics engine flex all in one. Kojima was seemingly less interested in revealing the game's existence than he was making a mini movie that conveyed its tone. Over time his obsession with Hollywood has worn thin for me—I really do not care that he's gotten Elle Fanning and his other favorite Hollywood celebs to star in Death Stranding 2—but in 2003, nobody else was showing games this way.

I feel confident saying Metal Gear Solid 3 wasn't just the pinnacle of Metal Gear: it was also the pinnacle of E3 game reveals. It just keeps going, abruptly shifting tones from suspense to action to farce and back again, including meta jokes about Grand Theft Auto and more fake-out endings than that year's Return of the King.

As a piece of short-form storytelling it holds up really well 20 years later. It reveals little about the game as a whole, not giving up story details or even showing an actual stretch of the game in the way that a traditional "vertical slice" demo would. Instead the MGS3 trailer is more like an official work of machinima, crafting its own out of context battles to show off a bunch of Snake's new moves… including snake eating.

Konami says the remake will be "a faithful recreation of the original story and game design," so I'm hopeful that everything that made Metal Gear Solid 3 great will still be there. The jungle stealth and environmental systems hinted at the depth MGS5 would later blow wide open. A couple of boss fights are genuine all-timers, including the open-ended sniper battle against The End. What I love most about Metal Gear Solid 3, though, is how well the Cold War and nuclear arms race fit Kojima's style of political commentary. The setting allows for a certain degree of old spy movie camp while pulling back from the convoluted digital age politics of Metal Gear Solid 2. The 2003 MGS3 trailer—and its also superb 2004 follow-up, which shows off far more of the story—both reveled in that tone.

Is this kind of game reveal outright extinct in 2023? If not, it's certainly endangered. We're lucky if a reveal includes gameplay rather than an overly polished CG particle fest set to a pop song. Even in the best cases, today's manicured gameplay trailers aren't distinct creative works worth watching in a decade or two.

Today's Metal Gear Solid 3 remake reveal certainly won't be worth watching years from now, either. Perhaps there was no need for it to be—after all, it was going to be tough to outdo the original. But going full CG here has real "didn't even try" energy, especially as it's the first Metal Gear anything Konami has released since the 2018 disaster Metal Gear Survive. I don't think it's hero worship to say that Kojima never would've released a trailer this pedestrian. It at least would've undercut the tension with some silly text popping up on screen. 

GamesIndustry.biz, whose parent company ReedPop was organizing E3 2023 before its cancellation this week, has published an editorial which details some of what happened. The short if it, according to the site's head of games B2B, Christopher Dring, is that "the industry just didn't want this E3."

According to Dring, all but one major game company had been enthusiastic about participating in E3 2023 at the start.

"Companies were talking about taking up huge spaces," Dring wrote. "The E3 team was looking at how we could expand into the car park and use the extra areas that hadn't been used for years." 

ReedPop said as recently as February that the event was "full steam ahead." But even with E3 2023 just a few months away, contracts hadn't been signed, and the "mood changed," wrote Dring.

According to him, some of the reasons companies like Ubisoft, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo gave for pulling out were:

• "Our games aren't ready"
• "We don't have code"
• "We can't be seen to be extravagant in this economy"
• "The timing isn't quite right"

All are classic, evergreen excuses, but the one about extravagance has a topical bent—I could see Microsoft fretting over the optics of going all out at E3 the same year it laid off 10,000 employees. 

There will still be big gaming events this June. Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest is one, and you can expect major publishers to put on their own announcement livestreams. There'll be Ubisoft and Xbox events, and our 2023 PC Gaming Show will happen as planned, with the day and time still to be announced, as will the multiplatform Future Games Show from our publisher.

Dring said that ReedPop, which also organizes events such as PAX and New York Comic Con, "moved a bit slower than anyone would have liked" and might've needed a different communication strategy, but that the problem wasn't just that E3 failed to change, as Keighley suggested on Twitter immediately following the cancellation news.

"The pitch, I felt anyway, was good," wrote Dring. "It had the business and consumer components separate (or at least, as separate as was possible in that venue), it was more affordable, they were going to sort the wi-fi, improve the food, add a stronger digital component… it was everything everyone said they wanted. But in the end, it turns out, they didn't want that either."

Hard to argue with that last statement: E3 2023 would still be happening if the industry's biggest companies had stayed committed. Although ReedPop was organizing E3 this year, the event is still owned by the Entertainment Software Association, whose member companies are some of the very same that ditched the show. And this isn't the first time E3 has dealt with exits: adjacent-to-but-not-actually-E3 shows were a thing well before this year.

"In hindsight, perhaps E3 should have been more radically different," Dring wrote. "A heavier focus on digital, with the physical show focused squarely on the business side, without the reliance on booths to entice people in. But some might argue that's almost a different event entirely."

Dring says he's disappointed that E3 won't happen this year, a view shared by our own Rich Stanton, who praised the virtues of E3 as a messy, in-person business, press, and marketing event today.

Rich thinks there's no coming back from this, and at a glance, a lot of people seem to share the view that E3 is dead for good. Dring isn't sure if we'll ever see the three 'e's rise again, reiterating that it's the industry's show, and the industry has to want it back if it's going to happen—maybe in a year that there's console hardware to announce.

E3 did come back from its dreadful, scaled-back 2007 and 2008 events, so anything's possible. In the meantime, we'll see you in June for the 2023 Videogame Announcements Week.

Farewell then, E3. The announcement that E3 2023 has been cancelled is, make no mistake, the final act for what was until very recently gaming's showpiece event: The big summer extravaganza, the royal rumble where all the major platform-holders and publishers were crammed into the same space for a few days and had to directly compete with one another. This cannot be overstated: These companies alternately loved and hated the annual totting up of who had 'won', as well they might after having paid millions for the privilege.

It's an event that changed vastly from its early days as a mostly B2B conference into a shop window for the world, becoming the marquee moment for any given gaming year and the single most exciting time to be a gamer. And in the end it didn't change enough or, arguably more the case, the industry no longer wanted what it had to offer.

The first E3 set the tone and, while in 2023 some context is necessary, 1995's stage presentation by Sony is still one of the industry's most ruthless mic drops: Some would say this was the moment Sega died (as a platform holder anyway), and the old duopoly of the console wars was replaced forever. The Sega Saturn was coming to America and Tom Kalinske gave a presentation announcing a retail price of $399 including Virtua Fighter and, fearful of Sony, announced an earlier release date than PlayStation, in the process pissing off a bunch of major US retailers with exclusivity deals.

When the time came for PlayStation's E3 announcement, Olaf Olafsson, then the head of Sony Computer Entertainment America, gave a brief talk before summoning Steve Race to the stage. Race said simply '299' and walked off stage. The hollering and applause from the audience are instantaneous. Sitting in the audience, Kalinske turned to a colleague and said "oh shit."

You've probably heard about that moment before. You might not know it was up in the air until the last moment, with Sony determined to work out just how low it could go in order to enter the market as aggressively as possible.

"It was the opening event of E3, but the real discussion took place the night before in a hotel room where we all sat around and planned what the price was going to be," Phil Harrison, then of Sony, told me in 2020. "It involved a lot of very, very last-minute and very... I don't think some of our Japanese colleagues slept that night. I think they spent most of the time on the phone and sending faxes back and forth with Tokyo, just to make sure that it was possible to do what we were planning. But [the $299 price] was an aggressive move."

Harrison may not mention Sega here but, make no mistake, this was aimed at Sega. Point being that at the very first E3 you have this huge changing of the guard moment where one company's presentation is blown out of the water by another's, and things would never be the same again. In all likelihood PlayStation would have smashed Saturn regardless of what happened at that E3 but this is not the point: It would be like analysing the Rumble in the Jungle without acknowledging what Muhammad Ali did outside of the ring.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiidge Racer!

Cue dozens more moments like that over the next 24 years, with the industry's big players conscious of E3 not just as a showcase for their own wares but a spot in time where they would rub shoulders with the competition: And in the case of platform holders, often take them on directly. The onus was always on serious announcements (new hardware, new first party exclusives, absolutely batshit and simultaneously visionary stuff like Project Milo) and for players it was fabulously exciting to have that conflagration and argue about who won and who lost a given year. I remember watching in 2015 when Sony re-announced The Last Guardian alongside Final Fantasy 7 remake and, unbelievably, Shenmue 3: Whatever happened afterwards, whenever I think of my experiences in games I think of that night.

But the chest-beating is only half of the story. I've been lucky enough to attend E3 several times, with my last being 2017 when the show had the relatively new element of allowing punters as well as industry types on the floor, and while the show floor and the presentations matter, what was special about E3 was the face-to-face contact. It's hard in this light to ignore what Covid has done to society more generally, with in-person events still out-of-favour among some, but much as I now spend half my life on Google Meet and email, it is not the same and this is particularly acute when it comes to these things.

It's not just that journalists had the opportunity to meet developers and have a demo and a chat, but that the industry itself was doing this. A great spectacle I witnessed one year was Shigeru Miyamoto walking around checking out other games and the crowd parting to let him and his retinue through, then people following in the wake to see what he'd look at next. I once interviewed a Lionhead designer who said he'd seen a similar thing while on the Fable stand with Peter Molyneux, who muttered something like "you'd think he was God." Not to mention that time Steven Spielberg checked out Battlefield 4.

Those moments of perspicacity and human friction only come from putting the whole industry together in one place and, while Gamescom and TGS gamely soldier on (and are fantastic events), it is deeply sad that E3 won't happen again. The ESA is trying to be bullish about this event's future, but don't buy it. This thing is as dead as Dillinger, and not necessarily because it deserved to be.

Keigh-3

There are many game events that will jostle in the aftermath: PC Gamer's own PC Gaming Show, which debuted as part of E3, will continue, while sister event Future Games Show will take place during mid-June.

But let's be clear: The ESA is made up of the same companies that would form the backbone of any 'normal' E3, and they just didn't want it. The industry felt it no longer needed this event. But look at who's celebrating. The show had barely been cancelled when Geoff 'Game Awards' Keighley posted a bunch of unseemly tweets, which are probably more understandable when you know he had tried to be the man to revamp E3 rather than directly compete with it. Even so, eating someone's lunch and then celebrating the fact feels a bit crass.

Summer Game Fest is no replacement for E3. There is an alternate history here where the ESA and Keighley came to some understanding and we still had a vibrant, in-person event that was equally as important, but instead the ESA's inability to move on has left it here. The Summer Game Fest is pay-to-play and straight marketing, but that's what the big publishers want. And let's not cast Keighley as some rapacious villain when the ESA was every bit as cut-throat in its heyday, happily price-gouging for stand fees and the like, and has belatedly realised the world has changed.

E3 was always about marketing on some level, but Summer Game Fest is a marketing reel and, while there remains the capacity for the occasional human surprise (as with the Elden Ring stage-crasher at the Game Awards), there's nothing like the messiness and unpredictability of shoving everyone into a vast convention centre for days (and nights) on end.

This was an industry event, originally a spinoff because games companies felt CES wasn't giving them the respect they deserved, that became a global industry event as games grew faster and larger than anyone predicted. And maybe the ESA didn't know how to handle that growth beyond cashing the checks.

As platform holders and publishers became more moneyed, and the risks of the industry became ever-higher, to a company they all sought one thing: total messaging control. E3 with its two hour stage presentations, the burial ground of many an under-prepared executive, and its days and days of direct contact with the media and the public and closed-doors confabs, was an unpredictable element. And these companies don't want or feel they can afford that.

It's too bad. This was the calendar event that brought the games industry together, and let the sparks fly. We're now in the age where announcements are spoonfed—Nintendo Directs, slickly crafted Ubisoft presentations, endless one- or two-hour showreels where nothing can go wrong—but there's nothing behind the curtain. God forbid that these companies should have to go up against one another directly.

Why do it when they can focus on direct marketing and pretend there's nothing else out there? That's exactly what the games industry wants. It's certainly what Summer Game Fest and all their dedicated events will deliver and, if nothing else, that's why I'm mourning the event that, over the course of its history, saw hackles raised and sparks fly. It's game over for E3 and, if the games industry has its way, there will be no continues.

E3 returns in June, and for the first time since 2019, it'll return to the Los Angeles Convention Center. The gaming industry's biggest convention was cancelled in 2020 and 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with a scaled back online version hosted in 2021. Much has changed during those three years however, and now Ubisoft has joined Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo in confirming it'll be a no show.

A spokesperson for Ubisoft confirmed as much to VGC. “E3 has fostered unforgettable moments across the industry throughout the years,” the statement read. “While we initially intended to have an official E3 presence, we’ve made the subsequent decision to move in a different direction, and will be holding a Ubisoft Forward Live event on 12th June in Los Angeles. We look forward to sharing more details with our players very soon.”

Perhaps unsurprising, if it weren't for the fact that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said last month on a conference call that the publisher would appear. Perhaps Guillemot meant that in the Electronic Arts sense: in 2019, EA hosted its EA Play showcase in the days leading up to E3 2019, though it wasn't part of the convention itself.

It's not great news for E3. Five years ago it remained the biggest event on the industry calendar. The exit of major console platform holders is huge, but if it continues to lose major third-party publishers like Ubisoft, then it doesn't bode well for its relevance. During an age when most major publishers and platform holders host their own livestreams, and when the Summer Game Fest is pulling all the big reveals, a three-day physical event feels out of step.

Still, it'll be interesting to see how E3 2023 plays out. It'll be split between "business days" and "public days", so it could prove worthwhile for studios that aren't Ubi, EA or Sony to attend. It takes place on June 13-16.

Some would argue the absence of E3 for the last three years hasn't made a huge difference, but Rich Stanton ain't one of 'em. "We're worse off without E3, and the industry will seem like a more exciting place if it can somehow pull off its promised 2023 comeback," he wrote last year. 

The Entertainment Software Association made a big hullabaloo of announcing the return of E3 back in September, with PAX organizer ReedPop taking over the show. E3 2023 is set to be the first in-person version of the event since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. A planned split between business days and public days seemed like a real "have your cake and eat it too" situation, aiming to please the press and developers while still making money off public ticket sales.

But that plan seemingly was not enough to lure back the biggest companies in gaming: according to a report from IGN, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are all skipping this year's show.

The news is a major blow for E3's 2023 comeback. But it's also not a shock: Sony didn't have a booth at E3 in 2019, and E3's attempts to hold digital shows in 2021 (result: messy) and 2022 (canceled) have made it clear that publishers can get the word out about their new games without E3's help—and without paying millions of dollars for floor space in the Los Angeles Convention Center.

This year's E3 will face increased competition from Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest, which has already planted a flag in the month, promising a return in June with another livestream. Summer Game Fest is also likely to include another demo event for press after a positive turnout for 2022's "Play Days" event PC Gamer attended.

While it's still possible major publishers like Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and Take-Two will have a presence at this year's E3, some will doubtlessly follow the platform holders' lead here. Others, like EA, already opted to host their own events nearby years ago. It's increasingly hard to see E3 itself as a worthy expense for game companies that can rent their own event spaces for a fraction of the price, or for attendees paying for pricey tickets. In 2019, a three-day ticket to E3 cost $249.

In an interview with IGN, Phil Spencer expressed support for the ESA and said Xbox was still planning a showcase "at a time where hopefully it's convenient for press and even consumers that are going to the E3 event." Microsoft didn't confirm that it's skipping this year's show floor—according to a report from VGC, Microsoft's talks with the ESA are ongoing and it "could yet have a business and media presence similar to last year’s Gamescom, if not a traditional booth." VGC corroborated the news that Sony and Nintendo were skipping the event.

In a statement to IGN, ReedPop said that it has "received a tremendous amount of interest and verbal commitments from many of the biggest companies in the industry, and when we are ready to announce the exhibitors we are confident it will be a lineup that will make the trip to Los Angeles well worth it for the industry and consumers alike." But it sure sounds like ReedPop's going to have a whole lot of empty convention center space to fill before June.

We declared earlier this year that E3 should never be in-person again, but E3 apparently wasn't listening. In June, the Entertainment Software Association announced a partnership with PAX organizer ReedPop to make E3 return in 2023 and today they announced the show dates as well as a change in scheduling that will see the event split into industry and public days.

The big event will return to the Los Angeles Convention Center begining on June 13, 2023 with E3 Business Days, which will be restricted to "registered industry personnel" for hands-on time with upcoming games and probably lots of meetings and stuff. Business! E3 Business Days will run until June 15. 

June 15 will also see the start of the open-to-all (as long as you have a ticket) E3 Gamer Days, "inviting consumers to go hands-on with the future of gaming and connect with developers, content creators, media personalities, and more." E3 Gamer Days will be held in a separate hall at LACC, presumably to avoid potential rumbling with the business types, and will run through June 16, giving attendees the opportunity to "go hands-on with the future of gaming and connect with developers, content creators, media personalities, and more.".

Leading up to all of this will be a series of "partnered digital events" that will begin on June 11 and run for the duration of the show.

"E3 is one of the global gaming industry’s few opportunities to come together, unite as one loud voice, and show the world what it is creating," ReedPop VP of Gaming Kyle Marsden-Kish said. "Our vision is to reunite the industry by re-establishing the traditional E3 week, bring back that spark, and restore E3's role as a truly magical global showcase event for game creators and consumers."

A noble goal to be sure, but it remains to be seen whether anyone actually wants that week back. There was a time when E3 was far and away the biggest event of the year, but that's long past, and its declining relevance was thrown into sharp relief by its Covid 19-driven absence over the past three years, which seemed to roll along perfectly fine without it. 

Some people, by which I mean PC Gamer's Rich Stanton, miss the excitement and spontaneity of a live E3, and if he's correct in his assessment of its primary underlying problem—"The ESA is a shit show"—then putting it in the hands of ReedPop, which has considerable experience in managing public events, might at least get the show back on to some form of relevance. Much of its potential success lies with who ultimately signs up to take part. But with open-to-the-public PAX events already in plentiful supply, major publisher pressers succeeding as digital-only showcases, and of course Geoff Keighley's big Summer Game Fest show also set to run in June (specific dates for that one haven't been announced yet), the big question remains: E3 is back, but will anyone care?

Details on what's in store for E3 2023, including exhibitors, schedules, and hotel and travel guides, will be released in the coming months.  

E3 will return next year. The games industry's traditional summer showcase event is scheduled to be held in June 2023 under a partnership between the Entertainment Software Association and ReedPop (the organizer of PAX and numerous other pop culture conventions). The show will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where it had been held since 1999 until the pandemic hit.

ReedPop and the ESA promise to "reunite the global video game industry for a week of titanic AAA reveals, earth-shaking world premiers, and exclusive access to the future of video games." Additionally, the companies state that "The event will also highlight digital showcases and feature in-person consumer components."

E3 2020 was summarily cancelled, coming just three months after the first Covid-19 lockdowns in the United States. That year saw the inaugural Summer Game Fest from Geoff Keighley, alongside independent remote showcases from various publishers. In 2021, the E3 branding returned in partnership with those publishers, while the ESA stayed out of the mix in the 2022 non-denominational game announcement festival held last month.

We at PC Gamer definitely missed the chaos and spontaneity of a live, full-fat E3, but time will tell if a few years off and a new presenting partner will be enough to put the shine back on the industry warhorse. E3's troubles didn't begin with the pandemic, after all. In 2019, the ESA accidentally leaked the personal information of 2,000 attending journalists, content creators, and influencers, seriously damaging the organization's credibility.

I have to wonder if the damage might already be done in terms of breaking the ESA's ownership of the season. Vague sense of longing aside, we've been more or less fine sans E3 these past few years, and the returning ESA will have to compete with the Summer Game Fest for its own empty throne. Hopefully no one's personal data gets whoopsied this time.

Redfall, which made a surprise debut at E3 2021, is a new cooperative shooter from the Austin branch of Arkane—the studio that created Dishonored and Prey. In Redfall, you and up to three friends will face the full horror of a small New England town. Oh, and there are vampires, too.

The gameplay we've gotten from Bethesda makes an easy pitch: Left 4 Dead-esque co-op vampire shooting, in an open world, with RPG elements, guns to loot, and gameplay improv opportunities in typical Arkane fashion? Yes. Yes, very much.Here's everything we know about Redfall.

Redfall release date

When is the Redfall release date?

Redfall's release date is May 2, 2023. During their first games showcase of the year, Bethesda and Xbox surprised us with a not-too-distant release date for our vacation to Redfall island.

It was originally planned for summer 2022, but was pushed back in May 2022. Bethesda announced the delay in May 2022, saying that "The teams at Arkane Austin (Redfall) and Bethesda Game Studios (Starfield) have incredible ambitions for their games, and we want to ensure that you receive the best, most polished versions of them."

Redfall trailers

Here's the latest Redfall story trailer

In this Redfall story trailer from March 2023, we're starting to get an idea of how this sleepy New England island became a premier Dracula destination. As the trailer sweeps through shots of Redfall's open world areas, we're told how how Aevum Therapeutics, a sinister medical corporation—which ones aren't?—is to blame for the vampiric woes. Things went the way they usually do: shadowy company offers mysterious treatments, people start disappearing, cults begin to crop up that worship dark and terrible patrons in pursuit of achieving an unholy majesty. Happens all the time.

Are there other Redfall trailers?

The Redfall gameplay deep dive from January 2023 gives us an overview of the sorts of anti-vampire efforts we'll be undertaking while exploring Redfall's open world. Survivors at safe havens will offer story missions, while side activities will emerge as you explore—cultists might take over a local brewery, or a randomized "psychic space" will emerge for you to clear a vampire nest on the astral plane. We also get a look at Redfall's progression, loot, and cosmetics. Another gameplay trailer from IGN Fan Fest 2023 gives an abridged look of similar gameplay.

This past October we got another sneak peek into the world of Redfall with the Official "Into the Night" trailer. This spooky trailer really plays up the horror elements of this co-op shooter, and is filled with a LOT of blood.

This 2022 gameplay trailer from the Xbox & Bethesda showcase gives us our first look at Redfall's vampire-slaying co-op gameplay, and a lot of it. It looks like Redfall will play with a real Left 4 Dead rhythm, with some added complexity in character abilities and skill trees. Characters deploy active camouflage or deploy electric javelins and traps, all while exchanging some delightfully quippy chatter.

In 2021, we sank our teeth into the Redfall announcement trailer. It shows four playable characters hanging around an abandoned convenience store, before flashing back to an intense battle the group experienced on the same street. Using guns and various powers and abilities they fight a group of masked humans, followed by an encounter with Redfall’s primary adversaries: a swarm of powerful vampires.

Redfall story and characters

What is the story of Redfall?

While the specifics of Redfall’s story are unknown, Bethesda has sketched out the basic plot. According to a reveal page for the game, Redfall is an island town that "used to be known for its quaint streets, breezy boardwalks and charming neighbourhoods. Then the vampires moved in and ruined everything."

Redfall’s vampires are not typical undead bloodsuckers. Instead, they’re the product of a scientific experiment gone wrong. I assume that experiment wasn’t "Can we make vampires?" because that would be astonishingly stupid. The page also mentions that these vampires have managed to "eclipse the sun," which gives us some insight into their power (and Redfall’s willfully schlocky tone). Bethesda has yet to confirm whether Redfall is a tie-in with the classic Simpsons episode "Who shot Mr. Burns?"

Who do you play as in Redfall?

Redfall lets you play as one of four characters, each with a different backstory and particular set of skills. Here’s a quick rundown of the motley crew:

Layla Ellison

With a degree in biomedical engineering from Redfall Technical University, Layla worked at a local research organisation named Aevum Theraputics before the vampire attack. Her last memory prior to the takeover is of some terrible occurrence at the facility, before she woke up with powerful (and extremely purple) telekinetic abilities. In short, Layla is the mage of the group, able to push and pull objects in the world.

Devinder Crousley

Dev is a professional influencer specialising in cryptozoology and investigating the paranormal. He ventured into Redfall specifically to document the events happening there, and probably to sell branded trainers to his audience in the process. But he isn’t there exclusively to take selfies and flog crummy merch, he’s also an inventor, fighting with weapons of his own creation. This likely means there’ll be some kind of crafting or weapon-modding element to Redfall, centering around the Devmeister (which is surely how he refers to himself).

Remi de la Rosa

Remi de la Rosa is a robotics engineer and a special rescue operative from the US Coast Guard. She’s also a genius, apparently, exemplified by how she’s built herself an autonomous robot companion to fight by her side. The robot’s name is Bribón, which translates from Spanish roughly as "rascal." It is also adorable.

Jacob Boyer

There’s a little bit of Odin about Jacob. His experiences in Redfall have left him with a strange "Undead Eye" (might want to get some eyedrops for that), as well as a spectral raven companion who helps him out in battle (less certain eyedrops will help here). As you can probably guess, Jacob is the sharpshooter of the group, able to pop vampire heads better than anyone else in the team.

Redfall gameplay

Our Redfall preview didn't have our blood pumping

As you'll read in our hands-on Redfall preview, we're left with some reservations after a 90-minute demo session. Combat against Redfall's vampires and cultists didn't yet have enough punch to satisfy as a solo player, and its open world felt a little too empty to showcase Arkane's talents. We'll see in May whether the full game flourishes with some co-op companions in the mix.

Is Redfall just Left 4 Dead with vampires?

Redfall certainly has a lot in common with Left 4 Dead. Cooperative play, intense action, an undead foe.

There are also more specific features Redfall shares with Valve’s shooter. For example, there are multiple types of vampire that attempt to hinder your group’s progress in different ways. One example seen in the trailer is the Angler, which according to the reveal page "uses a psychic harpoon to drag you away from your team." In other words, it’s a handsomer version of Left 4 Dead’s Smoker.

But there are some crucial differences, chief among which is Arkane’s immersive sim heritage. In an interview with Gamespot’s Tamoor Hussain, Bethesda’s Pete Hines says that Redfall is carrying forward that design ethos, ensuring that powers and abilities are consistent and logical in terms of how they can be used in the world. There’s an example of this in the trailer, where Layla uses her telekinetic abilities to lift Jacob onto a rooftop, giving him a better sniping position.

Is Redfall an open world game? How will it play?

On Redfall’s website, Bethesda explicitly states the game is a "co-op, open world first-person shooter." That’s not all, either. In his interview with Gamespot, Hines states that the town will have a dynamic element to it. "Every time you play it, you’re getting something different," he says. "The world is changing from the last time you played it, in ways that are meaningful from a gameplay standpoint."

In the 2023 gameplay deep dive above, we get a good sense of Redfall's gameplay rhythm. You'll pick up story missions from survivors in safe havens around town, sending you out to do things like restore the lighthouse that vampires have knocked out of commission. While out and about in the open world, side mission opportunities will emerge, like breweries suffering from a vampire cultist takeover.

You'll also find "psychic spaces," which seem like little pocket astral planes for randomized encounters where you have to clear a vampire nest: go in, destroy a giant, beating heart while fighting waves of vampires, and escape while the psychic space collapses.

As you explore, you'll be able to take back sections of Redfall through activities like reclaiming safe houses, eventually fighting a regional vampire Underboss. Slaying them gets you their skull; collect enough of those, and you can use them to open doorways to fights against the Vampire Gods themselves.

Worth noting: any vampire-killing you do has a risk of pissing off the Vampire Gods badly enough that they send The Rook, a burly super-vampire, to hunt you down.

While an open world game is a new frontier for Arkane, the studio is making an effort to their own creative ethos. Speaking with IGN, Redfall's production designer Steve Horne said Arkane "wanted to maintain the things about Arkane's DNA that we love, things about our games in the past that we really appreciate: environmental storytelling, strong kind of narrative through-put in the world so the world feels lived-in, feels worth saving." As an example of how to achieve that, Horne described how the game's playspaces will have thousands of lines text in discoverable documents left throughout the game.

Does Redfall have loot? Cosmetics?

It does. You'll be able to loot all kinds of vampire-killing gear, from military firearms in all varieties of rifles, shotguns, and sidearms, to improvised anti-dracula gadgets for the modern Van Helsing. Based on what we see in gameplay videos, those weapons will have randomized attributes influenced by their rarity. A shotgun found in one trailer had a Destiny-esque gear rating, as well as its own rate of fire, reload speed, pellet count, and more.

It seems like there are plenty of visual options to choose from for your weapons, too. You can select a skin for the gun itself, and you can find stake skins while exploring in the open world.

Can Redfall be played solo?

Yes. In his interview with Gamespot, Pete Hines stated that "You can play [Redfall] essentially singleplayer, solo it, and play it by yourself. Or you can play it with other folks."

A blog post on the Redfall website from 2022 describes that solo play will be fully solo, meaning no AI teammates. That won't render you helpless against special vampire enemy varieties, though. In the blog post, Arkane studio director Harvey Smith describes solo play as having a more deliberate pace, saying that it "becomes more exploratory; you can use recon and stealth to gather info on encounters and avoid enemies or get the drop on them."

Redfall will require an internet connection

Apologies to offline singleplayer purists: Redfall is joining the long list of always-online games that'll require an internet connection, even if you're playing alone. As Bethesda's Redfall FAQ states: "a persistent online connection is required for single player and co-op." Presumably it's for inventory tracking and the like, but it's obviously a continuing frustration for those having to contend with rural internet service or metered connections.

However, that might change in the future: speaking to Eurogamer, director Harvey Smith responded to criticism of Redfall's online requirements by saying "we are looking into—I'm not supposed to promise anything—but we're looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future." While it's short of an official commitment, there's hope for eventual offline play support.

Is Redfall coming to Xbox Game Pass?

You betcha. Redfall is coming to Game Pass on day one.

E3 2021 was very different from most, we wrote last year, but some things never change: As the season of major reveals and announcements approaches, big leaks are bound to happen. But, well, maybe things do change? With the big week for announcements upon us—E3 is technically off, but the next few days will still see the Summer Game Fest, PC Gaming Show, Future Games Show, the Xbox/ – Bethesda Showcase, Wholesome Direct, and more—we have yet to see any major surprises blown.

The list of leaks in 2021 was beefy. It included a lengthy lineup of games that would be shown at E3, the announcement of Two Point Campus and a "Marvel XCOM game" from Firaxis (now known as Marvel's Midnight Suns), Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, and (of course) the long-awaited first appearance of Elden Ring, which Summer Game Festmeister Geoff Keighley himself teased on Twitter.

2022 hasn't been nearly as leaky, however. There have been predictions and rumors, as always—we've even got a list of our own E3 2022 predictions—but actual full-scale leaks, like when Walmart Canada blew the horn on Rage 2 (or, more recently, when premature preorders for Marvel's Midnight Suns let slip that Spider-Man and the Scarlet Witch are coming to the game) are in unusually short supply. (I guess we could count that as an early E3 leak, but it's still small-time compared to Midnight Suns' existence leaking out last year.) One potentially big spill came earlier today when Tom Henderson said that Hideo Kojima is currently working on a new horror game called Overdose, and given Kojima's friendship with Geoff Keighley it would be a natural Summer Game Fest announcement—but there's no mention of a planned announcement at the show in Henderson's leak. Even if the leak is accurate, it includes no imagery and scant details about the game.

Part of that may be due to the fact that Keighley has already spilled the beans on some of the big things coming this year, including the first gameplay footage from the Dead Space-alike horror game The Callisto Protocol, a playthrough of a campaign level from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 remake, and info on Gotham Knights. You can't leak what's already known, after all.

But another potential factor is that this could be a relatively light year for E3 season. Two years of Covid-related game delays have taken a toll, and maybe the lack of an E3 proper has convinced more publishers to keep things buttoned up until later this year. The shadow of Grand Theft Auto 6 looms large, of course, but Keighley said in a recent Twitter Spaces session (via VGC) that people shouldn't get too wound up about what's coming, because the focus will be on new content, not new games.

"What I would say is that a lot of the games we’re going to show you are going to be [already] announced…  games are going to show new content to you, like some of the ones I’ve mentioned," Keighley said. "We’ve got a couple of new game announcements in the show and hopefully some surprises if everything holds. But it definitely is a show that’s primarily focused on stuff that is announced."

"So we’re doing some good stuff for you, but definitely manage your expectations in terms of the megaton shocks that you’re expecting. This is not The Game Awards. We’ve got lots of good stuff to show you but buyer beware of some of the crazy rumors I’m seeing out there in terms of things people expect to get announced."

There's still time for an info-dam to break somewhere, but not much: The Summer Game Fest is set to kick off at 11 am PT/2 pm ET on June 9, and will be followed by other events including the PC Gaming Show, Future Games Show, Xbox-Bethesdda showcase, Guerrilla Collective, Wholesome Direct, and more over the next several days. Here's our full not-E3 schedule.

To paraphrase the old Vietnam-era anti-war slogan, suppose they gave an E3 and nobody came? We may find out next year, as the Entertainment Software Association has told the Washington Post that after three years away, E3 will come back as an in-person event in 2023.

"We’re excited about coming back in 2023 with both a digital and an in-person event," ESA president and CEO Stan Pierre-Louis told the site. "As much as we love these digital events, and as much as they reach people and we want that global reach, we also know that there’s a really strong desire for people to convene—to be able to connect in person and see each other and talk about what makes games great."

It's not an entirely new statement: The ESA made the same commitment in March, promising a return to Los Angeles for a "reinvigorated showcase" in 2023 that will also include a digital component. But it's an interesting bit of pushback against the many and varied online showcases that have cropped up in place of in-person events, like E3, that have been cancelled over the past few years because of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Major publishers, game sites, and Geoff Keighley have put together shows of various scopes to fill the void, and it's widely regarded to have been a very successful effort. The ESA, on the other hand, has struggled to even make that happen: It managed to put together a bunch of "official E3 streams" in 2021 but plans for 2022 were cancelled outright.

Still, Pierre-Louis believes there's a place for the old ways in this new world. "I think what’s great about all this experimentation is that companies of all sizes are trying to figure out what works best to promote the product and the content that they are looking to share with consumers," he said. "And I think there is a space for a physical show; I think there’s an importance of having digital reach. Combining those two, I think there is a critical element of what we think E3 can provide."

He may be right, but the ESA has a long way to go to prove it. Concerns about the pandemic have largely fallen by the wayside, but E3 now faces the even greater challenge of questions about its relevance. Individual publisher events and shows like the Summer Game Fest and The PC Gaming Show have very effectively staked out their territory; what does the ESA bring to the table that will make its once-legendary showcase event worth the bother, for exhibitors or viewers? The longer E3 is away, the easier it is to agree with Fraser's view that the event is dead, and should probably stay that way.

There won't be an E3 in 2022. The cancellation makes 2022 just the second year in over two-and-a-half decades that an E3 has not taken place. The other E3-less year was 2020, when the event was cancelled due to lockdowns at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The yearly Entertainment Software Association trade event started in 1995, and despite fluctuations in its relevance over the years (2007 was dire), it has consistently been regarded as the games industry's most important event. There was an E3 last year, although it was held online instead of in person at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This year, there won't be a physical or online E3. It's fully cancelled, although this isn't the end of E3 in general, according to the ESA.

"E3 will return in 2023 with a reinvigorated showcase that celebrates new and exciting videogames and industry innovations," the organization said in an email sent to PC Gamer. It's planning to return to Los Angeles for the show, but said there will be a digital component as well.

The question for this year now becomes how much we'll notice E3's absence. These days, in the minds of both gamers and the industry itself, E3 has become a conglomeration of many events and gatherings that happen on Twitch, YouTube, and in and around the LA Convention Center every June, not all of which are officially associated with the ESA's show. 

Flashy E3 press conferences from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and major game publishers have in the past been formally considered E3 events, but in recent years some of those companies have opted to do their own thing. Sony skipped E3 2021, for instance, and in recent years EA has been hosting EA Play Live around E3 week, but not as part of E3.

The convention, which would have happened June 11–14 this year, has also attracted shows from non-publishers. PC Gamer itself started putting on the annual PC Gaming Show in 2015. We'll be back this year: The 2022 PC Gaming Show is scheduled for this June.

Aside from producing and hosting the yearly Game Awards, Geoff Keighley has also become a big presence during E3 week with the Summer Game Fest. Following the news of E3 2022's cancellation, he tweeted a wink emoji. Later, he formally announced the return of the Summer Game Fest.

There were also a number of other E3 adjacent streams last year that may return this June alongside the bigger conferences. Since a convention center floor wasn't expected to begin with, the only thing missing from this year's E3 compared to last year may be the letter and number. We expect a large number of events to take place during that week in June, as well as before and after it.

E3 will be an online-only conference again this year, the ESA announced yesterday. This shouldn't come as a surprise, given the current situation with Covid and the Omicron variant. It's a bit tricky planning huge events when more lockdowns could be looming. Even when we're out of the woods, though, I hope E3 never comes back as an in-person event.  

It's been a while since E3 was the most important event in the gaming calendar, and it's always struggled to capture the breadth of the industry. It wasn't all that long ago that you could watch E3 and be left wondering if any PC games were coming out, the event was so disinterested in the platform. 

Now there are so many better ways to show off your game. There are digital events throughout the year, and developers have more access to their potential audience than ever before. It no longer makes sense for smaller studios to compete with the likes of Microsoft and EA when they can showcase what they've been working on in a more appropriate setting alongside a more closely aligned selection of games, like the Wholesome Direct. 

So what's the appeal of an in-person E3? The expensive booths, the massive competition for attention, the travel costs—all of it is off-putting. For developers on a tight budget or with disabilities—previous E3s have been wheelchair-accessible, but even travel can be a challenge for prospective exhibitors who suffer from chronic pain or other issues—it might not be an option.

What I see a lot of are developers, PR folk and journalists missing the networking and social elements. I sympathise with that. I got my first proper break after chatting to an editor outside a pub at an in-person event. It does make a difference. You're not going to get scoops or hot gossip in an online roundtable interview, either. But that speaks to another industry-wide problem: you're expected to go out drinking. I love a drink, and I've got a lot of great memories of boozy events, but it's not so great for teetotallers, people with social anxiety or anyone who'd rather avoid being hit on by drunk jerks.

Going digital comes with its own issues, of course. Setting up online events is a massive pain. There are even more technical hurdles to overcome, and god forbid you try to stream your demo when you've got journalists from all over the world with entirely different connection speeds wanting to take a look.

As a Scot with iffy internet, these last two years have been pretty frustrating, with too many previews being based on grainy, laggy demos. Just give me a code that will eventually self-destruct or something—please, no more streaming demos. But that's still an improvement on spending a week in LA running around a convention centre while sweating my arse off, only to come away with the same stuff I could have written up from the comfort of my flat. I will welcome the return of UK in-person events, but the fewer transatlantic trips I make the better.

So I'm glad E3 is going digital again, though I don't think it's going to survive indefinitely in this form. Last year, I kept forgetting which streams and announcements were part of E3, and which were part of some other completely separate showcase. And the way it's been broken up to consume the entire summer instead of just a few days makes it pretty exhausting even when you're not having to leg it around a physical space. Summer is probably always going to be full of reveals, but there are now so many alternatives that allow developers and publishers to sidestep the ESA. 

Regardless of what format is settled on in future years, E3 will be competing with the likes of Summer Game Fest, the latest of which was cheekily announced right after reports of the online E3 came out. Geoff Keighley has successfully positioned himself as the face of the industry, while E3 is this faceless monolith. And Summer Game Fest was set up specifically as an online event—it's not trying to adapt. Later in the year there's also the The Game Awards, which increasingly feels like a condensed E3.  

Gaming is now so distributed and complex that it's no longer served well by a big centralised event. E3 has simply outlived its usefulness. It had a good run, at least, and I'm sure it'll stick around for a bit longer, even if it's not as relevant as it once was. The name does still have weight, and I imagine showing off a game at E3 remains an exciting prospect for new developers. But it will just be one of several events taking place in the summer, not the star. Things are not going to go back to the way they were, which is probably for the best. 

E3 may never grace the halls of the LA Convention Center again—and if it does, it won't be in 2022. As reported by GamesBeat, the year's biggest gaming convention is going to be held online instead of in-person. E3 pivoted to being online-only in 2021, following its cancelation in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

"Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding Covid-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in person in 2022," the Entertainment Software Association, which organizes E3, told GamesBeat.

While Covid-19 no doubt played a role in this decision, the timing of the announcement makes it sound like the ESA is reacting to the current surge of infections due to the new Omicron variant. According to analyst Mike Futter, the ESA was already planning to skip the in-person event this year.

"This is spin", Futter tweeted. "The ESA's event last summer was... not good. And publishers have learned they don't need to pay exorbitant rates to the ESA to reach press and consumers."

As Futter points out, it's hard to see what future E3 has as an industry event, either online or in-person. Game publishers have learned they don't need the ESA's help arranging livestreams to show off their games, and the last two summers have seen the week of "E3" spread into a full month's worth of streaming showcases like the Wholesome Direct.

Fan-oriented events like PAX may live on when Covid-19 dies down, but 2019 might effectively have been the end of E3. I'd expect this year's summer of streams to rely even less on the ESA's organization than last year's did. Maybe this is the year Geoff Keighley fully takes over.

The big E3 2021 press conferences are long over, except for one. Instead of joining the other companies in mid-June, EA scheduled its yearly EA Play Live event for Thursday, July 22.  

The EA Play Live preshow will start at 10 am Pacific (see other timezones) on Thursday. The stream will be viewable on Twitch (embedded above) and YouTube.

What to expect from EA Play Live

Battlefield 2042, which will be out on October 22, got a gameplay trailer at the Microsoft E3 conference, but we haven't seen any uncut gameplay. It feels probable that'll happen at EA Play Live. We also know that EA will reveal the Battlefield 2042 mode made by Ripple Effect (the studio formerly called DICE LA)—details about it leaked prior to the show. 

Aside from Battlefield, we'll surely hear something new about Apex Legends and the usual sports games. Star Wars Squadrons studio Motive has games in production that we could see, and rumor has it that one of them is a Dead Space reboot. That seems like a good candidate for a reveal. There's also the next Need for Speed, although the most recent news was that it was delayed until next year.

What not to expect from EA Play Live

We know more about what won't be at EA Play Life than what will be. BioWare stated that it will not be showing anything this year, so Mass Effect and Dragon Age fans can stand down. Those games are still in early production, so it makes sense. Same goes for the new Skate, which won't show up, either. EA has also said we won't see any Star Wars games.

That leaves Battlefield 2042, a rumored Dead Space reboot, sports and ongoing games like Apex Legends and Knockout City. That may be the show, unless EA has more surprises planned.

Arkane Studios made its name as the mainstream advocate for immersive sims, the proud defender of a genre that seemed destined to fade into obscurity. The studio’s first game, Arx Fatalis, was Raphaël Colantonio’s attempt to make his own version of Ultima Underworld. Its more recent titles, Dishonored and Prey, were spiritual successors to Thief and System Shock, both lynchpin entries in the immersive sim canon.

Yet glance at Arkane’s upcoming games Deathloop and Redfall, and you’d be forgiven for thinking the studio has abandoned its raison d'être. Structurally, Deathloop has as much in common with a roguelike as it does Dishonored, placing emphasis on repetition and randomisation, including Dark Souls-style invasion-based multiplayer. Redfall, meanwhile, barely looks like an immersive sim at all. Arkane’s description of it as a “cooperative open world shooter” makes it sound like a blend of Left 4 Dead and Destiny.

Look closer, however, and Arkane’s immersive sim heritage is still apparent. While Deathloop’s premise may diverge from Dishonored, mechanically it remains similar, featuring a blend of gadgetry, magical powers and grisly combat. The studio has yet to show footage of Redfall in action, but the game’s website states it continues “Arkane’s legacy of carefully crafted worlds and love of creative game mechanics.”

Essentially, Arkane is trying to slip players immersive sim gaming by stealth, as if concealing cat medicine in a slice of fresh salmon. By strict definition, neither of these games could be considered true immersive sims. But they borrow from the same pool of principles where it suits them, embedding them into game structures that have greater popular appeal.

Some diehard Arkane fans may balk at this, but it isn’t a surprising change of direction. For as long as they’ve existed, immersive sims have struggled to attract a mainstream gaming audience. Looking Glass Studios, despite its enormous influence on the industry, only ever shipped one game that sold over half a million copies, the original Thief. Ion Storm’s Deus Ex, one of the most critically acclaimed games ever made, had sold slightly over a million as of 2009 – nine years after its release – and was actually surpassed in sales by its less well-regarded sequel Invisible War.

Arkane is probably the most commercially successful developer of immersive sims, the only other contender being Eidos Montreal with  its Deus Ex prequels. Dishonored was the second-best selling original game of 2012 (i.e. one that wasn’t a sequel or otherwise based on an existing series). But what success Dishonored did garner was still fairly minor compared to your videogame behemoths like Call of Duty and Fortnite. Dishonored 2 and Prey, meanwhile, both failed to live up to sales expectations.

The immersive sim genre’s struggle to find commercial success has always been somewhat mystifying. They are, after all, games that strive to give players as much freedom as possible. The goal of an immersive sim is to let players solve problems however they like, to ensure that the rules of the game world are consistent and logical, to provide tools and objects that can be used in ways the developers didn’t anticipate. They are the ultimate expression of sandbox gaming, fundamentally built on the principle of creative play.

That said, I probably just solved the mystery in the above paragraph. Immersive sims are hard to describe succinctly, while the freedom and creativity they offer is either abstract or so deeply embedded in the systems that most players will never see it. The name doesn’t help either. Aren’t most games in some way “immersive simulations”, in that they simulate a world intended for the player to lose themselves in?

Indeed, immersive sims confound what most players understand the word “freedom” to mean. For most players of modern games, the notion of “freedom” means the freedom to go wherever you want, to chase those distant mountains or explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy. This is why the open-world game has become the premier singleplayer experience. Immersive sims, by comparison, let you go “how” you want. You can break into the house via the front door, the back door, the second-floor window, or the basement. Ultimately though, you’re still breaking into the same house.

If you’re someone who appreciates complex and flexible level design, immersive sims are manna from heaven. But such designs are less instinctively compelling than plonking someone in front of a nice big panorama and saying “Go explore!” It’s telling that the most successful game series hovering within the remit of immersive sims is The Elder Scrolls, which bears many of the traits of Dishonored, Thief and Deus Ex, but has wide-ranging worlds to go with them.

It’s likely that the future of traditional immersive sims lies with the indie sector, as games like Gloomwood and Nightdive’s upcoming System Shock remake show. For those imsim aficionados who want to chase mainstream success, however, the only option is to adapt, which is what Arkane appears to be doing.

It isn’t the first developer to do this, either. Two years ago, Question (an indie developer with a strong immersive sim heritage) released The Blackout Club, a cooperative stealth game that saw players assuming the role of teenagers trying to thwart the machinations of a cult that has infested their sleepy suburban town. The mix of four-player co-op and a Stranger Things-like premise was clearly intended to appeal to a wide audience. Beneath that, however, was the classic mixture of stealth and gadget-based play that makes immersive sims so beloved among their fans, alongside a novel “Enhanced Horror” feature, whereby the game’s pantheon of gods will speak to players directly, sowing all kinds of chaos in a match.

There is a caveat. I checked in with Question’s co-founder Jordan Thomas, who told me The Blackout Club is “on its way to breaking even”. But the switch to multiplayer came with its own hazards. “With the live theater component being uncharted territory in games, I wouldn't hold [The Blackout Club] up as an example of risk mitigation. We traded one set of risks for another,” he says.

So while adding a multiplayer emphasis to an immersive sim style game may seem like an easy way to piggyback popular trends, making multiplayer successful comes with its own set of challenges. Ironically, rather than being a commercially safer bet, Deathloop and Redfall may face a completely different set of obstacles to becoming successful. Granted, they have significant advantages over The Blackout Club, namely all the publishing and marketing weight of both Bethesda and Microsoft, but that also means the metric for success is going to be much higher.

I hope they do succeed. Ultimately, immersive sims are a collection of ideas intended to enrich a player’s gaming experience. Exposing players to more of those ideas, regardless of how they’re packaged, can only be a good thing for the industry as a whole.

Remember the mo-capped Call of Duty: Ghosts dog that was a big deal at E3 2013? If not, don't worry. The bar for sharable E3 moments was lower then, and dogs are over. I didn't see a single mo-capped dog at E3 2021. I just saw birds. Lots of birds.

We're still trying to digest all the games and stories from E3 2021. There were packed streams full of back-to-back indie trailers, and now there are far too many demos on Steam for anyone to play. The new Microsoft-Bethesda super publisher is a little scary, and the future of PC gaming might have a lot to do with how Xbox Game Pass evolves over the next few years. It's such an incredible value right now that it seems irrational not to subscribe, but that is, of course, how they get us.

It's a lot to think about while we still have the "E3 Exclusive" motion graphic burned into our short term memories, so I've put aside deep thoughts to observe some of E3 2021's more immediate trends:

Rocket ships

The first teaser for Bethesda's sci-fi RPG, Starfield, is set inside a spaceship, but not a Star Trek or Mass Effect spaceship. There are no holographic screens that pointlessly float five inches in front of panels. The controls are physical buttons, knobs, and switches. It looks like a flight simulation enthusiast's abridged 747 cockpit setup. Superyachts and military-grade laptops also come to mind. I wonder about the effectiveness of the cup holder.

Bethesda wasn't the only one to bring thrusters to E3. Battlefield 2042 is obviously set just 21 years from now, and one of its maps takes place at the foot of a launching rocket. Next Space Rebels, seen at the PC Gaming Show, is a rocket-building sim with an FMV narrative. Ixion, also at the PC Gaming Show, is about building and managing a space station city. It's perhaps more speculative than the others (it starts with a dude accidentally blowing up the moon), but still references the look established by real space programs. (It bears mentioning that there will be aliens in Starfield, too, so it's not all lowkey sci-fi.)

That's just a few games, but my gut says that the possibilities presented by commercial space exploration—for discovery and for disaster—are only going to become more influential. There's a direct reference to SpaceX in Mass Effect Andromeda, and at E3 2019, Todd Howard and SpaceX founder Elon Musk shared a stage for a moderated discussion. Howard said that Bethesda visited SpaceX headquarters while doing research for Starfield, and described Starfield's space travel as "dangerous," like flying airplanes in the 1940s. (He said a lot more about Starfield during E3 this year.) 

There's a lot of interest in exploring space travel as something we could really be doing in a few hundred years. The Expanse is super-popular, and Netflix has been pumping out shows about perilous space adventures: Another Life, Lost in Space, Away.

Further into the future, both in terms of settings and probable release dates, The Outer Worlds 2 was announced during the Microsoft-Bethesda supershow, and we know that BioWare has another Mass Effect in the works. It's unlikely, but we could see a tease for that at EA Play Live in July.

Birds

As Wes pointed out, it was a big year for birds: White Shadows, Death's Door, Skatebird (as seen in flying across image at the top of this article), and Bird Problems all feature avian protagonists, and were shown at E3 2021.

Is that enough to declare it the "year of the bird," as Wes has? I'm not so sure, but I do agree with one thing: several games this year included birds. (On second thought, I am a bit tired of the "can you pet the dog" thing, so if we're switching to birds, maybe I can get behind it being the year of them.)

Left 4 Deads

What do we call these? Left 4 Dead-likes? That sounds terrible. I guess we'll stick with "co-op zombie shooters," but we all know what game they derive significant portions of their structure from. 

Two of the games shown at E3 this year were direct descendants of Left 4 Dead. Back 4 Blood is a co-op zombie shooter made by Turtle Rock, the studio that designed the original L4D. (It's complicated, but Turtle Rock was part of Valve for a while, and isn't now. Valve still owns the Left 4 Dead name, hence the close-but-not-quite allusion.) The other L4D descendent is The Anacrusis, a co-op alien shooter from a new studio co-founded by Chet Faliszek, who was Valve's top writer until he left in 2017, and who worked on Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.

There were other L4D-inspired games. Arkane's got one now: Redfall, where the zombies are vampires. I'm speculating a little given that the reveal trailer didn't show any gameplay, but it's clearly a 4-player co-op shooter about fighting off hordes of monsters. So is Evil Dead: The Game. 

Rainbow Six Extraction is one I've actually played, but I agree with Morgan that it's not as Left 4 Dead-ey as it looks on paper. We spent a lot of time creeping around popping alien goo bubbles. Still, it did have us reviving each other and dashing to an extraction area.

These aren't the first or only games that are a bit like L4D, obviously. Vermintide 2 is a PC Gamer favorite, as one example. Darktide, which wasn't at E3, will shuttle that idea from Warhammer's fantasy universe to its 40K universe sometime this year. There are many more beyond that.

I imagine the L4D rush will be a bit stressful for the developers competing with each other—it seems unlikely that they'll all release hits—but it's great for us. We'll just shoot whichever zombie stand-in turns out to be the most fun to shoot. I'm hoping Arkane's try works out, because vampires seem like a fun enemy. (At least until they teleport or turn invisible, two common and annoying vampire behaviors. One of the player characters seems to have their own invisibility powers, though, so that's nice.)

Things that weren't trends at E3 2021

Loot boxes: There are still some holdouts, and you'll have to tear FIFA Ultimate Team from EA's cold dead hands, but it seems like the industry is pretty much done with these things.

Battle royale games: Battlefield 2042 will not have a battle royale mode. Doesn't seem like much else will, either, and Ubisoft didn't even mention Hyper Scape. I guess Warzone, Apex Legends, Fortnite, and PUBG can just keep the genre.

Stomp-clap songs: A few years ago we couldn't stop hearing what we've termed stomp-clap songs. It's those songs that have a stomp, and then a clap, repeated, like We Will Rock You (but not that song). Sometimes there's humming. Here's an example. The industry seems to have moved on, and I kind of miss them now that they're gone, to be honest.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the seventh mainline Yakuza game, is now playable on Xbox Game Pass, it was announced at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase today.

Like a Dragon comes to Game Pass together with all Yakuza games that were previously unavailable on the service, so now you get to enjoy the entire Yakuza saga, starting from Kazuma Kiryu's adventures, all the way through to the latest release, which features the series' new protagonist Ichiban Kasuga.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon is the first Yakuza game with round-based gameplay, future Yakuza games will also be turn-based RPGs instead of using the series' previous fighting game style.

Battlefield 2042 was announced last week. The near-future setting is predictable, but some of the changes to Battlefield's core tenets are surprising. I guess we could've seen 128-player maps coming. It was going to get bigger eventually. But replacing classes with specialists isn't something I predicted, even as games like Rainbow Six Siege and Valorant remain popular.

Today at the Xbox and Bethesda show (still feels weird putting those two together), EA debuted the Battlefield 2042 gameplay trailer. You can watch it above.

We'll have more thoughts on the video shortly, but for additional detail on Battlefield 2042 itself, we've collected everything we know about it here.

Battlefield 2042 releases October 22.

E3 season is a time of big announcements and reveals, and game publishers put a lot of effort into keeping their surprises secret until the big moment arrives. But no matter how hard they try to keep every secret tucked away, leaks always find a way to spring forth in the days and weeks leading up to their grand events. 

Are they really so bad? You may lose out on that singular moment of pure surprise, but some leaks can actually drive pre-announcement hype to even higher levels by spurring anticipation for a big game. There's a big difference between hoping for something and having a reasonable expectation (with screenshots!) that it's going to happen, after all. Whether you live for 'em or hate them, leaks are inevitable, and 2021 has already given us a bunch of them.

With E3 (and all the rest of the summer's gaming events) in full swing, here's a look at everything that's leaked before we were meant to see it.

Leaks from E3 shows so far

💧 Reddit game list - A Reddit poster who's leaked games in the past posted a lengthy list of games that would be at this year's E3. Many of them were confirmed in early showcases like the IGN Expo, and given more credence by analyst Daniel Ahmad. Expect to see some of these games show up throughout E3.

💧 Back 4 Blood on Game Pass - It sure looks like Back 4 Blood is coming to Game Pass at launch in October, based on a leaked video that is now private. Microsoft will likely have plenty to say about Game Pass during its Sunday conference. (We'll have to see if this means Game Pass for PC, in addition to Xbox).

💧 Yakuza 7 on Game Pass - Another Game Pass leak! Actually... this one isn't really a leak. It's a social media tease from Microsoft. Last year's beloved Yakuza 7 is apparently coming to Game Pass, too. (We'll have to see if this means Game Pass for PC, in addition to Xbox).

💧 Two Point Campus – The follow-up to Two Point Hospital appeared prematurely on the Microsoft Store last week, and while it was taken down in relatively short order, the listing was around long enough for everyone to get a good look. Two Point Campus will let players build and manage their own institute of higher learning, where students can enrol in courses like Knight School and Gastronomy, which will teach them to make "giant pizzas and enormous pies." Obviously it's ready to go, so I expect to see this one made official during the Xbox/Bethesda showcase.

💧 Marvel XCOM game – 2K Games gave us a two-for-one leak last week, beginning with a "turn-based action game" from Firaxis, codenamed CODA and described as "XCOM with Marvel heroes." Personally, I'd rather just have XCOM, but this one might have a better shot at building an audience than Square Enix's struggling Avengers game: The source of the leak said characters will be voiced by "famous actors," opening the door to the possibility that the game may tie in with the Marvel films rather than comics.

💧 Gearbox's Tiny Tina spinoff – The second part of the 2K leak points us toward a new Borderlands game centered around Tiny Tina, possibly called Wonderlands. This was given credence by the discovery of "PlayWonderlands" in the source code for bechaoticgreat.com, a teaser site for "a new adventure from Gearbox and 2K" that will be revealed tomorrow, June 10, at the Summer Game Fest Kickoff livestream.

💧 Final Fantasy Origin – A Final Fantasy Souls-like? Sure, why not. Reportedly in development at Team Ninja, this will—if the rumor is true—be similar to Nioh, with "more accessible" gameplay than other entries in the genre, and difficulty settings, also not a regular Souls-like feature. The expectation is that it will appear during Square Enix's E3 show, and the hope is that it will have a new title if it does, if only to avoid confusion with the 2002 release Final Fantasy Origins.

💧 Elden Ring – Will Elden Ring finally show at E3? That's one of the year's big questions, and our in-house Ringer has a good feeling about it. Some of that no doubt arises from a Geoff Keighley tweet alluding to escape from gamer prison (where he's apparently been trapped since not showing Elden Ring last year), but it's bolstered by an early May leak of purported Elden Ring footage. It's dark and blurry, and seven seconds long, and doesn't really show us a hell of a lot of anything, but as Shaun said at the time, at least it's something.

Leaks for later in the year

💧 Halo TV series - This seems like it may be unrelated to E3, but screenshots from the Halo TV series have leaked. It looks like Halo!

💧 BattleCat – BattleCat is He-Man's giant feline companion. It is also, apparently, the working name for a new competitive shooter in development at Ubisoft that will mash up factions from the Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and The Division series in various game modes, including one that sounds alarmingly like Sonic the Hedgehog. Despite that, this one looks fairly solid as these things go, although the leak indicates it won't be making an appearance at this weekend's Ubisoft Forward event.

💧 The Division Heartland – The Division: Heartland was announced to the world on May 6. Ten days later, footage of closed beta gameplay blew out the door. It was low quality, but it revealed elements of the game that Ubisoft had not yet shared: It's a third-person cover shooter, at least one type of NPC enemies are called Pilgrims, and players can wield two guns and a melee weapon, and perform dodge rolls and sliding runs. For all intents and purposes it appears to be a Division game, although as suggested by the Heartland title and key art, it takes place in a much more rural setting than other games in the series.

💧 Tony Hawk Pro Skater – Jess Margera, drummer of CKY and brother of Bam, appeared to drop the dime on a new Tony Hawk Pro Skater during a recent Behind Closed Doors podcast. CKY has a track on the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 soundtrack, and Margera said during the interview that it will have a song on "the new one coming out too." The band does not appear on the recently-released Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 remaster, and later in the interview Margera says his kids are already playing that game anyway, strongly suggesting that he's talking about something else entirely—like a new Tony Hawk Pro Skater game.

💧 Call of Duty: Vanguard – The word on the street, thanks to a March leak, is that the next Call of Duty game will take us back to the morally simpler glory days of World War 2. The details are still very fluid—Modern Warzone reported that some elements of the game are actually set in the 1950s, possibly pointing to an alt-history setting where the war didn't end in 1945, while Eurogamer said it will have a traditional WW2 setting—but one way or another it looks like we're headed back to the past. A more recent rumor claims that it won't appear during the E3 festivities, however, but will be revealed in an in-game Warzone event later this year.

💧 Shin Megami Tensei 5 – This relatively recent leak came to us by way of the official Japanese Shin Megami Tensei website, which prematurely posted details about the upcoming game, including a release date of November 11. It's possible that date might only be for Japan, and so far Shin Megami Tensei 5 is listed as an exclusive for the Nintendo Switch (which is why we're throwing to Persona Central for this one), but Atlus has started bringing its games to PC and so we're hopeful enough to include it in our list.

Leaked and confirmed - a special case

💧 Battlefield 2042 – The latest iteration of EA's long-running Battlefield series leaked so much that developer DICE actually made a joke about it on Twitter. Despite the volume of leaks, which ran the gamut from blurry screencaps to a title, nothing too major slipped out, and in the end it all proved legit: Battlefield 2042 was officially unveiled today, the opening salvo in the looming battle for your online attention.

It's a long list of leaks, but remember that there's almost certainly more coming. The big summer of online events gets underway in earnest tomorrow with Summer Game Fest Kickoff Live, which begins at 11 am PT/2 pm ET, and big publisher showcases don't start until Saturday. That's plenty of time for even more to slip out, and frankly I'll be surprised if nothing else does. For the full lineup of all the shows happening this summer, keep your eyes firmly fixed on our E3 2021 schedule.

Intriguing narrative adventure Last Stop, developed by the team behind 2016's Virginia and published by Annapurna Interactive, got a release date as part of this year's Day of the Devs showcase. 

From July 22, you'll be able to join three characters in trying to figure out the meaning and origin of a mysterious green glow that upends their uneventful lives in supernatural ways. Even after watching the latest trailer, you might have a hard time figuring out what Last Stop is all about, but you might have picked up on the fact that it's spectacularly British. 

From recent previews, it's become clear that this single-player adventure is really making the most of its modern-day London setting.  Not just by having you board the tube and visit gentrified hipster neighbourhoods, but by putting you in the shoes of three pretty mundane people just trying to live their lives—a middle-aged single dad, a high school student, and a professional struggling with work.

On the other hand, the release date trailer above clearly wants to whet your appetite for the supernatural side of things. There's a man with glowing green eyes who might either be possessed on an alien skulking around, a middle-aged man who undergoes what seems like a Freaky Friday-esque body swap, and a researcher getting lowered into a green vortex. 

I want to know what all of these things are about, but I'm mostly excited for Last Stop because its game trailers have the genuine air of movie trailers. People act in quite dramatic ways, like chucking glasses, throwing themselves into surprise smooches, or staring into the green abyss with wide-open eyes. The whole presentation, even though the animation isn't super smooth, really does remind me of what many people like to call a "cinematic adventure".

The setting, too seems like fun, because as nice as alien planets and jungle landscapes are, it's sometimes nice to simply interact with something you know, right? I feel like games have a lot of Viking locations or apocalypses centralised in Oregon forests, but when do you get to see an ordinary tube stop in a game? Those things can be fun too, and it gives Last Stop all the charm of a Doctor Who episode. 

We'll see how things shake out when Last Stop releases July 22 on Steam.

E3 has finally released a complete schedule of the week's streams and showcases, a mere three days before everything is meant to kick off. Cutting it a bit close, aren't we?

The ESA unveiled its full rundown of all the official E3 streams taking place over the next week. 'Official' meaning that the E3 schedule doesn't contain every event happening around E3 week, including Geoff Keighley's Summer Games Fest on Thursday or Devolver's (presumably blood-splattered) Saturday show.

For those, we've got you covered over on our complete E3 2021 Schedule.

One of the bigger takeaways from this new schedule is word that Bandai Namco will be holding a presentation on Tuesday afternoon. Following some extremely shaky leaks and tantalising teases, we're all bracing for a proper first look at Elden Ring. Please?

Take-Two has also confirmed its own show on Monday morning. While most Borderlands news will likely take place at the Gearbox show, Take-Two and 2K have been leaking like a sieve, with news of a Marvel-themed XCOM making the rounds.

E3's official lineup doesn't start until Saturday. But E3 is bigger than E3, and the week really begins in earnest with tomorrow's Keighley showcase. Earlier, even, if you consider today's Battlefield reveal to be a part of E3.

This week in PC gaming is also available on YouTube. 

Welcome to This Week in PC Gaming, a show where we take a look at the new games, updates, events, and more coming at you over the next week, every week. Expect a new episode every Sunday morning and expect it to tell you something you didn't know or already forgot about.

This week we look at the medieval mayhem of Chivalry 2  along with Backbone, a game where you play a detective who is also a raccoon. 

Catch the new episode every Sunday here on PCGamer.com or subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified when a new episode goes live.

This Week in PC Gaming -  June 5 - June 12 

June 8

Chivalry 2

Backbone

Last year, along with many other fun things, E3 was cancelled. This year's E3 will be a free online event, and it's facing more competition than ever before. Initially scheduled to run over June 15 to 17, certain competitors took aim at those dates: Valve rebranded the semi-regular Steam games festival to Steam Next, and it's running from June 16 to 22.

The Entertainment Software Association has now announced its final plans for this year's event, and a change in date. E3 2021 will run from June 12 to June 15, and has "early commitments from Nintendo, Xbox, Capcom, Konami, Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros. Games and Koch Media." That is a fairly decent lineup of big-hitters, though whether anyone brings their AAA game remains to be seen. 

Notable by their absence are Activision-Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Sony, though bigger publishers skipping out was an E3 trend well before the pandemic. Xbox head Phil Spencer, at least, was happy about the news.

This press release emphasises that all of E3 will be free (this follows reports that the ESA had been considering charging for access). Stanley Pierre-Louis, president & CEO of the ESA, adds "We are evolving this year’s E3 into a more inclusive event, but will still look to excite the fans with major reveals and insider opportunities that make this event the indispensable center stage for video games."

The press release ends on an optimistic note: "The ESA looks forward to coming back together to celebrate E3 2022 in person." I never thought I'd miss those sweaty halls and terrifically over-priced hot dogs but, y'know, I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder of anything.

Following a report which said that the Entertainment Software Association has been considering locking elements of this year's online E3 event behind a paywall, the organization has declared that the show "will be a free event for all attendees."

The ESA announced in February that this year's E3 will be entirely digital because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The online event will feature "multiple keynote sessions, an awards show, a preview night, and separate streams from individual publishers, influencers and others," with media previews and streamable demos available during the week leading up to it, similar to the pre-show press events held by major publishers during conventional E3 shows.

A report published today by VGC said that multiple sources told it that the ESA was looking at charging for access to some parts of the event. The site said that a "major games company" it spoke to was critical of the idea, and that a firm decision had not yet been made. Then, very shortly after the report went live, the ESA tweeted that the online show will be free for everyone.

"We can confirm that E3 2021 will be 100 percent free for attendees and that there will be no elements at E3 2021 that will be behind a paywall," an ESA rep confirmed in a follow-up statement.

It's good news for gamers eager to see the show, and frankly I don't see how it could have gone any other way. In the early days of E3, which first ran in 1995, it was an industry-exclusive event, but in more recent years—and particularly with the advent of livestreaming—it's become much more open to the public. But the timing of the ESA's tweet and suggestion that the paywall story was not "real news" did not sit well with VGC's Andy Robinson, the author of the original report, who reiterated the validity of his sources on Twitter.

Whether or not the ESA was considering a paywall prior to today, we can be pretty certain that it'll stick to today's public statement: No part of E3 will be paywalled.

The ESA has previously announced that E3 2021 will run from June 15-17, but given the fluid state of, well, everything, it's not currently clear whether those dates still hold. One thing that is certain is that the PC Gaming Show will be returning in June—stay tuned for more information on that in the coming weeks.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of E3 last year, along with pretty much every other in-person videogame event, and while various digital showcases rushed in to fill that void, a hoped-for "online experience" to take the place of E3 itself never happened: The Entertainment Software Association committed to a 2021 event, but 2020 ultimately fizzled and fell off the map.

The current state of the pandemic is not what anyone hoped it would be when we were still back in the first half of 2020, but the ESA has confirmed that plans for a 2021 event are moving ahead. A VGC report says pitch documents sent to game publishers lays out plans for three days of livestreamed coverage running June 15-17, the E3 2021 dates that were announced last year. 

The plan is to have multiple keynote sessions, an awards show, a preview night, and separate streams from individual publishers, influencers and others. The week leading up to the event would be similar to the pre-E3 press events traditionally held by major game publishers, with media previews and publicly-available demos, and there are also plans for remotely-streamed playable demos for media.

"We can confirm that we are transforming the E3 experience for 2021 and will soon share exact details on how we're bringing the global video game community together," the ESA said in an email. "We are having great conversations with publishers, developers and companies across the board, and we look forward to sharing details about their involvement soon."

The loss of in-person events last year led to numerous independent online shows from various publishers and platforms including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Sony, and Microsoft, which demonstrated their ability to get their messages out to significant audiences without having to work within the confines of E3. (We also ran The PC Gaming Show as usual.) A return to a live event would surely be welcome (under better circumstances), but it remains to be seen how eager publishers are to throw in for a digital-only E3, given how they've previously managed on their own.

The ESA said that it will share official details on its plans for E3 2021 soon.

Update: The PC Gaming Show has been postponed, and will now take place on Saturday, June 13. The Future Games Show will also now take place on June 13, after the PC Gaming Show. Exact broadcast times TBA. The article below has been updated to reflect the changes.

We're not getting an E3 this year, but we are getting a June 13 (formerly June 6), and it's going to be a big one for gamers. Along with the return of Sean "Day9" Plott and Frankie Ward at the head of the PC Gaming Show, our sister site GamesRadar will bring us the Future Gaming Show.

"In the absence of E3 as we know it, showcasing new games in development through events like the PC Gaming Show is even more vital," PC Gamer global EIC Evan Lahti said. "We're excited to join forces with the broadcasts being created by Paradox, Larian Studios, Guerrilla Collective and our friends at GamesRadar to create an exciting day for viewers who love the spirit of innovation and creativity in gaming."

You might already be familiar with the PC Gaming Show, our annual E3 showcase of news and reveals, and if not you can catch last year's show right here. Guerrilla Collective (which is still scheduled for June 6 at the time of this update) is a new event for 2020, and will feature updates and reveals from indie developers and publishers from around the world, including:

• 11 bit studios (Frostpunk, This War of Mine)
• Another Indie (SIMULACRA 2, Yuppie Psycho)
• Coffee Stain Studios (Satisfactory, Deep Rock Galactic)
• Fellow Traveller (In Other Waters, Neo Cab)
• Funcom (Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, Conan Exiles)
• Good Shepherd Entertainment (John Wick Hex, The Eternal Cylinder)
• Headup (Bridge Constructor Portal, Pumpkin Jack)
• Humble Publishing (Temtem, Forager)
• Larian Studios (Baldur’s Gate III, Divinity: Original Sin II)
• Modern Wolf (Necronator: Dead Wrong, Out There: Oceans of Time)
• New Blood Interactive (Dusk, Amid Evil)
• Paradox Interactive (Cities: Skylines, Stellaris)
• Raw Fury (Kingdom Two Crowns, Atomicrops)
• Rebellion (Sniper Elite 4, Zombie Army 4: Dead War)
• Those Awesome Guys (Monster Prom, Move or Die, Floppy Knights)
• Thunderful (SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech, Lonely Mountains: Downhill)
• United Label (Eldest Souls, Röki)
• Versus Evil (The Banner Saga, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire)
• Whitethorn Games (Aground, StarCrossed)
• WINGS Interactive (Later Daters, Lord Winklebottom Investigates)
• Ysbryd Games (World of Horror, VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action)
• ZA/UM (Disco Elysium)

The PC Gaming Show returns on June 13 (time TBD) with Sean "Day9" Plott and Frankie Ward once again calling the action, and following it, the Future Gaming Show will showcase some of the biggest console, mobile, and streaming games of the year.

To ensure you don't miss any of the big digital game events happening in 2020, keep your eyes on our (not) E3 2020 presentation schedule.

Ubisoft has joined the parade of publishers holding their own digital E3-style events in 2020, announcing today that Ubisoft Forward, with "news, reveals, and more" will take place in July.

Aside from promising an "E3-style showcase," Ubisoft hasn't said anything about what we can expect from the show, but if I had to take a guess I'd say that we'll probably get a good eyeful of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, hopefully including some proper gameplay, which seems especially important after last week's less-than-impressive showing. We may also get an update on the status of Watch Dogs Legion, Rainbow Six Quarantine, and Gods and Monsters, all of which were delayed in late 2019 after Ghost Recon Breakpoint and The Division 2 both tanked.

There will no doubt be some surprises, too. Ubisoft announced in February that it has five "triple-A" games set to come out before April 2021, and I continue to hold out hope that Far Cry: Blood Dragon 2 will be one of them. (Mark 4 style, monkeytrucker!) One thing we probably won't get a look at is Beyond Good and Evil 2, which Ubisoft specified in that February announcement is not one of those five upcoming games.

Ubisoft Forward will kick off at 12 pm PT/3 pm ET on July 12. Streaming platforms weren't revealed but if I had to guess about that too I'd say that Twitch is probably one of them.

The cancellation of E3 2020 came as a blow to game companies and fans alike, and it also brought into question the longer-term future of the event, as game publishers made moves toward holding their own, direct-to-consumer online shows. As one industry analyst pointed out, if publishers are able to successfully reach fans directly, what's the point of having E3 in the first place?

Despite that, and the uncertainties about what's going to happen over the next 12 months, the Entertainment Software Association is planning on going ahead with the show next year. As reported by Gamesindustry.biz, the ESA told partners over the weekend that E3 2021 will run June 15-17, presumably preceded by a few days of pre-E3 press conferences held by major publishers. 2021 will also be a "reimagined" E3, according to the report, although details on how it will be changed weren't revealed.

Following the cancellation of E3 2020, several individual publishers, including Microsoft, Ubisoft, E3, and Devolver Digital either committed to, or said they are considering, separate online events in the absence of E3; Bethesda, unfortunately, confirmed last week that it will not hold its annual digital showcase this year.

Unfortunately, the ESA did not provide any updates on its own plan for an online replacement for E3 2020. When it announced the cancellation in March, the ESA said that it was "exploring options with our members to coordinate an online experience to showcase industry announcements and news in June 2020," but nothing more has been said about it.  

Update: An E3 rep declined to confirm the reported E3 2021 dates, but said that the planned "online experience" announced in June will not be happening. Individual digital presentations in lieu of E3 2020 are still in the works, however.

"Given the disruption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we will not be presenting an online E3 2020 event in June.  Instead, we will be working with exhibitors to promote and showcase individual company announcements, including on www.E3expo.com, in the coming months," the rep said. "We look forward to bringing our industry and community together in 2021 to present a reimagined E3 that will highlight new offerings and thrill our audiences."

The ESA held out as long as it could, but in the end it was inevitable: E3, the highest-profile videogame show in North America, was cancelled today because of the global coronavirus health emergency. 

The shutdown is bad enough in its own right, but making matters worse, it comes in the wake of growing questions about E3's relevance at a time when broadband internet has enabled game publishers to reach their customers directly.

In fact, industry analyst Doug Creutz told the Wall Street Journal (via Sarah E. Needleman) that the coronavirus could prove to be an existential turning point for E3: If publishers are able to adequately reach their fans directly through online presentations, the absence of the show could end up demonstrating beyond any doubt that it's simply not relevant anymore. 

Publishers respond

That's what many major publishers are looking to do. Almost immediately after E3 was officially cancelled, Microsoft's head of Xbox Phil Spencer took to Twitter to say that it will hold a "digital event" instead.

Ubisoft wasn't as firm, but said that it is also looking into streaming options.

Electronic Arts, which holds an annual EA Play press event at E3, has "continued to follow the coronavirus developments around the world very closely," a rep said in a statement. "Clearly the situation is evolving by the day, and we’ve been reviewing how it will change our plans for EA Play 2020.  We will share more soon."

Devolver Digital, which got the E3 cancellation rumor ball rolling downhill last night, is "bummed" about the cancellation but still plans on holding a Devolver Direct livestream in 2020. Speaking strictly for myself, as long as that warped festival of weirdness is happening, I'll be satisfied.

THQ Nordic had a slightly different take. I'm not sure this makes up for the whole 8chan AMA thing, but I do love this meme.

We at PC Gamer also put on a show during E3 week, and we're currently investigating multiple options to bring The PC Gaming Show back for 2020, and will have more to share in the coming weeks.

Indie reactions

While major publishers seem relatively unruffled by the cancellation, the situation is somewhat different in the indie scene. 

"While E3 is far less visited by indie devs than GDC is, especially so for international devs, this still means another opportunity for pitches, meetings, announcements, and opportunities gone," tweeted Rami Ismail of Nuclear Throne studio Vlambeer. "Whether this was good for E3, or a nail in the coffin, well, we'll see in a year."

Mike Bithell of John Wick Hex developer Bithell Games had similar thoughts:

International Game Developers Association

The IGDA, which has partnered with Gamedev.world and Take This to help alleviate the impact of the coronavirus on developers, predicted that the outbreak will drive a greater focus on online events in the future.

"The cancellation of two of the largest events for game developers to connect and market their games will certainly affect marketing strategies for 2020 and beyond. I believe we will see more online announcements planned by larger organizations, while smaller studios will come together to support each other for their own announcements," executive director Renee Gittens said. 

"The IGDA is launching a program to promote the game and fundraising launches of our members to our audience of over 100,000 game developers and fans. We hope that programs like this will help soften the blow from the loss of these events."

Gittens also clarified that its partnership with Gamedev.world "is for all developers affected by COVID-19, not just for GDC. The IGDA is considering other ways we can serve developers affected by the closure of E3 but has nothing definitive to announce at this time."

The end of E3 as we know it?

The loss of E3 will inevitably be disruptive, but the extent of that disruption will depend in large part on how publishers are able to manage it. Based on precedent, it may not be too much of an obstacle for the big companies: Sony skipped last year's event to no apparent ill effect and wasn't going to show up this year, and Nintendo has relied on its Nintendo Direct presentations rather than conventional E3 press events for years.

Interviews and hands-on demos will be missed, but that also presents an opportunity to spread that information out, rather than firing it into our veins like a blistering speedball of digital fury. 

For smaller studios and professionals who hoped events like GDC and E3 would lead to new connections, deals, and publicity, the effect may be far greater.

You can follow our coverage of all industry-related coronavirus updates here. For more information on the Covid-19 pandemic, visit the Centers for Disease Control for updates in North America, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, or the World Health Organization. 

E3, the highest-profile consumer-focused videogame show in North America, has been cancelled as a result of the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak. 

The ESA held out longer than GDC and other events because it doesn't take place until later in the year, and organizers had hoped that the June scheduling would be far enough down the road for the worst of the crisis to have passed. But the show took a big bump in March, when Los Angeles, where E3 is held, declared a state of emergency. 

"Following increased and overwhelming concerns about the Covid-19 virus, we felt this was the best way to proceed during such an unprecedented global situation," the ESA said in a statement to Gamespot. "We are very disappointed that we are unable to hold this event for our fans and supporters. But we know it’s the right decision based on the information we have today."

Concerns about the coronavirus come on top of growing questions about E3's relevance overall: Industry veteran Geoff Keighley, the creator and host of E3 Coliseum, announced in February that he wouldn't be attending the show, and production company iam8bit, which announced in January that it was working with the ESA to "reinvigorate" E3, has also withdrawn its services.

The ESA said that it would make contact with exhibitors and attendees about providing full refunds, and in lieu of E3 it is now "exploring options with our members to coordinate an online experience to showcase industry announcements and news in June 2020."

E3 is the third major North American game show to be halted due to coronavirus concerns: The Game Developers Conference was also "postponed" for the same reason in February, while SXSW, which features a big Gaming Expo every year, was cancelled in March. 

You can follow our coverage of all industry-related coronavirus updates here. For more information on the Covid-19 coronavirus, visit the Centers for Disease Control for updates in North America, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, or the World Health Organization. 

The recent postponement of GDC and other community and developer events due to concerns about the ongoing Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak led some to wonder whether E3, which is scheduled for June, could also be halted. The Entertainment Software Association, which organizes E3, said earlier this week that it was "moving full speed ahead" with planning for the show despite the concerns. 

But today the city of Los Angeles declared a state of emergency, prompting the ESA to release an updated statement saying that it is continuing to monitor the situation.

"The health and safety of our attendees, exhibitors, partners, and staff is our top priority. While the ESA continues to plan for a safe and successful E3 show June 9-11, 2020—we are monitoring and evaluating the situation daily," the ESA said. 

"Our E3 team and partners continue to monitor Covid-19 via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). We are actively assessing the latest information and will continue to develop measures to further reduce health risks at the show."

LA's coronavirus website states that there are only a few known cases in the region, and the ESA clarified, as did Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti earlier today, that the declaration of local emergency "allows the city and county to qualify for additional funding needed to prepare for Covid-19 in the future, if such funds are needed at all." The city is currently emphasizing "healthy hygiene practices," including regularly washing your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds and avoiding touching your face with unwashed hands, and also recommends having "extra food, water, medical supplies, and emergency kits," although given how prone the area is to earthquakes that's probably a good idea anyway.

E3 is still three months away, which is lots of time for things to change, but the statement bears a strong resemblance to those released by GDC prior to its decision to pull the plug. If the coronavirus continues unabated through April and into May, it's very possible that the ESA will be forced to make the same decision. 

We're following along with all industry-related coronavirus updates here. For more information on the Covid-19 coronavirus, visit the Centers for Disease Control for updates in North America, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, or the World Health Organization. 

Sony is skipping E3 for the second year in a row, the company has confirmed. In a statement sent to GamesIndustry.biz, the PlayStation company has indicated that it doesn't feel "the vision of E3 2020" suits its own focus this year.

"After thorough evaluation SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) has decided not to participate in E3 2020," a spokeperson for the company told GamesIndustry. "We have great respect for the ESA as an organization, but we do not feel the vision of E3 2020 is the right venue for what we are focused on this year."

Instead, Sony will participate in "hundreds of consumer events across the globe". With the PlayStation 5 launching later this year, Sony will likely host its own big press conference dedicated to that, as well as its regular State of Play livestreams.

It was a big deal when Sony bowed out of last year's convention: while publishers like Activision and Electronic Arts have scaled back their appearances in recent years, opting to skip big showroom floor presences, the absence of Sony's press conference was conspicuous - in addition to their first-party offerings, there were always trailers and announcements relevant to the PC space.

Update: ....and just in case you thought there might be a big console exodus from E3 2020, Microsoft will definitely be in attendace:

The ESA, the trade association that organises E3, is already planning for next year's event, which may involve more celebrities, arrangements with influencers and "paid media partnerships". ESA members have also approved a further 10,000 tickets for consumers, bumping the number up to 25,000. 

E3 used to be an industry event, but in recent years it opened its doors to the public. In a leaked pitch presentation (cheers, GameDaily), the ESA has proposed more of a consumer focus, including attractions such as basketball players participating in a tournament to market a game. 

The only thing anyone remembers about this year's E3 is Keanu Reeves (and maybe the Punisher's dog), so it's not surprising that the ESA wants to add more star power. I don't think anyone's going to be able to beat the impact Cyberpunk 2077's celebrity reveal had, though. 

The ESA has also proposed using influencers more, specifically to promote E3 beyond places that usually cover videogames. It also suggests offering influencers the chance to plug some charities or raise awareness instead of financial compensation. By aligning itself with social issues, says the ESA, it can "advance the industry's brand" and "store positive chits for future use" so it's in a better position to handle the next videogame scandal or negative article.  

Another potential deal does involve some cash. The ESA wants to pay media to extend E3's reach while still allowing the organisation to "control content and the message." The paid media partnership concept has already been put to the test, apparently. Tech Impact, a CNBC show, was built and distributed by the ESA, it says, though GameDaily spotted that the episodes don't make any mention of the ESA's involvement or that they're sponsored videos. 

It was only last month that the ESA leaked information about 2,000 members of the industry thanks to a "website vulnerability" along with media contact lists from 2004 and 2006. Addresses, phone numbers and other details were made available to anyone who wanted to harass a journalist or stalk an influencer. E3's also not in great shape. EA, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Activision—they've all reduced their presence, some to the point of barely being at E3 at all.

This all seems like a very desperate bid to rescue E3 from irrelevancy, and one that could be doomed to fail. The ESA's own members don't seem to want it, and they've already said they won't pay for celebrity appearances—there will still be a programme to invite them—and declined some other consumer-focused proposals. And it's not surprising, given that publishers already have much larger consumer events, like Gamescom, and a multitude of other ways to reach players.

Each year, E3 ends up being a proving ground for what could be the next big trend in gaming. Last year, for example, reflected the rise of the battle royale format as Nintendo and Sony fought over Fortnite cross-play, Battlefield 5 teased its own battle royale mode, and half a dozen indie battle royales vied for attention on the show floor. But E3 2019 was all about streaming and subscription services

Google finally revealed details about Stadia, Microsoft announced its Xbox Game Pass was available on PC, Ubisoft revealed its own subscription launching in September, and Square Enix suggested it has one in the works. And don't forget EA and Sony, who already have their own with Origin Access and PS Now. That seemingly distant idea of a Netflix for games, whether they're streamed or downloaded, is already here—and it's only a little bit terrifying.

Begun, the subscription wars have 

With cross-play becoming a big thing over the past year, what platform you choose to game on is becoming less important. And, as Jeff Gerstman astutely pointed out in his interview with Microsoft's Phil Spencer, it feels like the next videogame battleground is going to be over services like Microsoft's XCloud streaming, Stadia, and all the subscriptions that popped up at E3. It's conceivable that, in the near future, it might not matter whether you play on PC, Xbox, or Playstation—but it could matter which services and their related ecosystems you pay to use.

It's an exciting and subversive proposition. For $10 to $20 a month, you can now access hundreds of games, including upcoming releases like Watch Dogs Legion or The Outer Worlds. It's cool that gaming is becoming more accessible than ever, with cheaper options available for those who either don't own powerful hardware or can't afford to constantly shell out cash for every big release. As Spencer points out in the above interview, it's also cool that two friends who both own Xbox Game Pass can more reliably play games together since they both have access to the same library.

But videogame subscription services aren't Netflix For Games. Though the business model might be similar, there's some fundamental differences—and opportunities to exploit players are everywhere.

With manufacturers and publishers each turning their gaming catalogs into a subscription service, the competition will extend well beyond who can release the most alluring game. Price will obviously be a point of contention, but it's also feasible that companies will find more inventive ways to sweeten the deal for their customers—probably to the detriment of everyone who isn't a subscriber. 

Consider Origin Access Premier, which gives all subscribers a five-day head start on any of EA's newest releases. Not only did this create needless bullshit with Anthem, where EA pushed a clearly unfinished game out early and then encouraged players to wait for a "day one" patch (as if Anthem wasn't actually out), it also treats non-subscribers as an afterthought. To hell with everyone who was willing to preorder Anthem for $60, was the implied message, you should have subscribed to Origin Access Premier instead. So far Origin is the only service that offers that kind of incentive, but it's easy to imagine a world where Ubisoft carves out in-game collectibles that are only available to Uplay+ subscribers, or, even worse, a subscription with exclusive games not available elsewhere.

And with live-service games like The Division 2, Destiny 2, and Anthem becoming so popular, subscriptions aren't always going to be cheaper than the alternative. These games are intended to be played continuously for months and years, but if you're paying monthly to play The Division 2 through Uplay+, and you play for a long enough time, you're going to end up giving Ubisoft far more of your money than if you had paid the upfront cost—especially if, like Netflix, the cost of that subscription gradually rises over time. There's no guarantee that it won't, and at that point all your progress and time spent is held hostage—locked unless you continue paying or pay the original retail price you were trying to avoid in the first place. So much for being a great value.

It'd be cool to see some subscription services adopt a rent-to-own system so you're not forever beholden to the monthly fee and can gradually own a few of your favorite games that you're paying to play.

That isn't to say there isn't some good that can come from subscription services, though. They can offer great value for certain types of players: specifically, anyone who consistently spends more than the yearly fee on new games, and isn't too worried about going back to replay them. Someone who buys every yearly FIFA, NBA, Madden, and NHL game, for instance, if that person exists. 

There's something to get out of them for the rest of us, too. As Wes wrote, Square Enix has the opportunity to turn its legendary catalog of old games into a playable museum if it wanted to, and I think it's cool that I can dip into any of the classic Star Wars PC games using Origin Access for a quick shot of nostalgia when the whole bundle costs well over $200 on Steam.

During the week or so that I've had Xbox Game Pass, I've enjoyed sampling games that I otherwise wouldn't have bought but was curious about. And after I'm done sampling, I can cancel my subscription and just buy the games I want to own, or keep it going just long enough to play my fill for a lot less than I would have normally paid.

That's where I think subscription services should stay: An alternative, and decidedly secondary method of playing games. Subscription services are a great way to encourage companies to preserve their catalogs and make them available long after individual games lost their retail value. But the idea of a future where my games library is wholly tangled up in a patchwork web of different subscriptions, where I have even less control over how I play, is a scary one.

As expected, there weren't many "and it's out in just two months!" announcements at E3 2019. With new consoles on the horizon, the bigger multi-platform developers are preparing to ship the last of their current-gen games and teasing the games we won't see until sometime in 2020, a few of which are probably cross-gen. That means, of course, that we got lots of impressive cinematic trailers. 

Vague game reveals leave a lot to the imagination, which can be dangerous as the real thing doesn't always live up to the expectations set by flashy pre-rendered trailers, or even 'gameplay' trailers that are too perfectly-staged to represent the experience. (Has that ever happened recently? Nah, couldn't have.)  That means there are some risks being taken by the games below, which we've dubbed E3's most mysterious. 

We may not hear anything about some of them until June of next year, so for now, we can only wonder: What the hell is going on in these trailers?

Elden Ring

Someone broke an old ring. The bastard. That ring commanded the stars! 

That's the premise of FromSoftware's next game, Elden Ring, though it was expressed far more stylishly in the E3 announcement trailer above.

We do know some concrete things about Elden Ring thanks to a couple interviews with Hidetaka Miyazaki. It's an "open world style game" that you can traverse on horseback, it's FromSoftware's "biggest title yet in terms of sheer volume," George RR Martin wrote the "overarching mythos," and it's more like Dark Souls than Sekiro was.

That's basically what we expected from the rumors: a FromSoftware game, but bigger. I demand to know more about the big orc guy in the trailer. —Tyler Wilde

Deathloop

From Arkane Lyon, makers of Dishonored and Prey, it's a first-person shooter about two assassins stuck into some sort of deadly time loop (one could call it a deathloop, I suppose) on a lawless island called Black Reef. The intriguing part is that one assassin seems to be having a grand old time and wants to protect the repeating timecycle, while the other sees it as a prison and is hell bent on ending it.

How does this game actually work? I dunno. The trailer shows the two assassins killing each other a few times while doing battle with a bunch of other weird combatants using a variety of guns, melee attacks, and powers like teleportation and telekinesis.

The island looks weird and cool, surrounded by icy waters and home to a small city and several unusual structures, including a massive metal ring transmitting… something… that one supposes is the source of the time-repeating technology. What the hell is Deathloop, though? Some kind of battle royale made meta? Is it The Outer Wilds but with violence? Why does one character love the deathloop while the other hates it? And do we get to play as both of them?  —Chris Livingston

GhostWire: Tokyo

I think a GhostWire is when a ghost transfers ghost funds to your ghost bank account (Chase offers them), but I could be wrong. So what do we know for sure about the next big thing from Tango Gameworks? It's an "action-adventure" game, so it won't mimic The Evil Within's slower style of horror, but it is "spooky," as creative director Ikumi Nakamura spookily told us during Bethesda's E3 show. 

Aside from that, all we have is the cinematic trailer above, and the rest of what Nakamura told us. 

"People are vanishing in Tokyo, you must find out why," she said. "You will encounter conspiracies and the occult. You have to explore the world, face challenges to uncover the truth and save humanity. In the game, you will meet spirits, some are dangerous, some are peaceful, and survivors that each have their stories. You will need to ask yourself, is it normal, or paranormal?"

Also there's a cool guy with a bow, so we imagine we might be shooting arrows at things. Do arrows work on spirits?  —Tyler Wilde

Outriders

We do know the basic premise of Outriders: it's a co-op shooter set on an alien planet full of scary aliens to shoot. Pretty cut and dry. What makes me curious is the E3 trailer, which doesn't look anything like People Can Fly's previous work, such as Bulletstorm. It looks like what the new Doom games might be if they took themselves more seriously: dramatic and fiery. —Tyler Wilde

12 Minutes

The concept of 12 Minutes is not a mystery. Unlike some of these CG trailers, we know what it's about and what it actually looks like. It's a time loop game, set in a single apartment, and "what should be a romantic evening with your wife turns into a nightmare when a police detective breaks into your home, accuses your wife of murder and beats you to death." What's intriguing to me is the depth of possibility built into this concept, and how every small decision you make or action you take will take you down a slightly different path. 

Developer Luis Antonio has apparently been working on 12 Minutes since 2014, shrinking its focus from an entire town down to this small apartment. The trailer perfectly sets up the concept without giving away how many variables there will be to play with, and I have a feeling 12 Minutes is going to be the kind of game we're all talking about when it comes out, comparing our tiny discoveries with one another. What happens if I leave the fridge open the whole time? Maybe nothing, but I'm going to find out. — Wes Fenlon

CrossFire X

CrossFire is a very popular Korean game that's akin to Counter-Strike, but the trailer Microsoft played for CrossFire X, which'll be the first version to come west, didn't really scream Counter-Strike. On top of the expected multiplayer, we know that Remedy has been working on a singleplayer campaign for this version. And we have no idea what to expect. Nice trailer, though.  —Tyler Wilde

Halo Infinite

Among all of these, Halo is the game we got the best look at, but we're still full of questions. Why is it called Halo Infinite? Is it fundamentally different from the other Halo games in any way? Is the creepy hologram in the trailer really going to be how we remember loved ones in the future? Because it seems awful. A photo will do.

Here's everything we know about Halo Infinite so far, which isn't much considering it's Microsoft's flagship series.  —Tyler Wilde 

E3 2019 has come and gone, leaving us with a lot to look forward to and a few things to look back on. We're excited by plenty of the upcoming PC games we saw at E3, but not everything left us as thrilled as we felt when we saw Keanu Reeves being Keanu Reeves. We had our share of disappointments, too.

Sometimes our disappointment came from a game we saw for the first time, other times it was a game we'd hoped to see but simply didn't show up. Here are a few things from E3 that let us down for one reason for another.

The Avengers reveal was a little dull 

This could easily have been Square Enix's E3—a Final Fantasy 7 remake that's almost ready, and the long-awaited reveal of the Avengers game. The former delivered, but the latter didn't look too impressive, either in its public trailer or its behind-closed-doors demo. In an otherwise fallow year for big gameplay reveals, Marvel's Avengers should've been a slam dunk. Instead, it looked like a just-OK third-person action game that happened to have a lot of playable characters. Its long-term ambition to be a co-op game you play over many years feels far away from what was shown at E3. Hopefully its next showing will be more exciting. —Samuel Roberts

On the one hand there was bound to be a bit of disappointment no matter what—we've spent the last decade watching some good films filled with talented actors playing characters we've come to love. Suddenly seeing them looking and sounding completely different was always going to be a bit of a letdown. But it was sort of extreme. Iron Man's armor looks like it's made of plastic. Steve Rogers looks like your high school football team's assistant coach. It's all just a bit generic, which feels like a major shame since the films were anything but. —Chris Livingston

The new Splinter Cell is for cellphones

There was a lot of Tom Clancy at E3. We got a look at the next three episodes for the Division 2, plus news of a Division Netflix show, more footage of Ghost Recon Breakpoint, and confirmation of a Rainbow Six co-op spinoff game called Quarantine. Plus, Ubisoft keeps sticking Sam Fisher in everything from Ghost Recon Wildlands to Far Cry New Dawn. And just a couple months ago Yves Guillemot said we'd see something about Splinter Cell "at some point." So, you can't blame us for being absolutely primed for a new Splinter Cell announcement this year.

What we got instead was a mobile tactics game called Elite Squad. Not that there's anything wrong with that—we all play mobile games, and this looks like a fun one that pulls in characters from different Tom Clancy games. We were just hoping for a new Splinter Cell PC game starring Sam Fisher. Even just a tease to let us know it was in the works. Maybe next year. —Chris Livingston

There sure were a lot of 2020 release dates 

It's always exciting seeing gameplay footage or a trailer for something you've been looking forward to for years, and then seeing a release date announcing you've only got a couple of months before you can actually play it. But this year felt like a lot of games were trying to avoid the crowded holiday season and aiming for next year instead. Ori and the Will of the Wisps? February, 2020. Cyberpunk 2077? April, 2020. Dying Light 2, Halo Infinite, Wasteland 3, Marvel's Avengers: all 2020.

I'm not suggesting games should be rushed or crunched or shoved out the door until they're ready, but it's hard to not feel some disappointment when you finally learn a game you're waiting for is coming out later, rather than sooner. —Chris Livingston

The Cyberpunk 2077 controversy 

CD Project Red has once again gone into damage control mode after a poster featured both in gameplay footage and as a physical object at the event drew criticism. The poster was for a fictional drink called ChroManticore with the tagline 'Mix it up' and featured a possibly transgender model. The poster was called out by many as being transphobic (a manticore is a fictional beast having the parts of several different animals) and for fetishizing transgender people, another example of insensitivity from a company that has demonstrated it more than once in the past. It's also unclear what other representation of transgendered people might exist in the game beyond this sort of reference, which may be why CDPR quickly announced it is "working on" character creation options that aren't limited by gender.

The artist defended the poster, saying it's meant to criticize corporations that create hypersexualized advertisements to sell products in the dystopian world of 2077. I'm not sure the context helps, really. Pointing out some fictional future company's insensitivity isn't so clever when your own company has a poor track record of its own. —Chris Livingston

Not enough of E3's line-up was playable 

Without Watch Dogs: Legion, Doom Eternal, and Jedi Fallen Order, it wouldn't have been much of an E3 in terms of hands-on with the most exciting new games—Cyberpunk, Avengers, and The Outer Worlds offered hands-off demos. It's not that big a deal for you watching at home, and therefore I won't complain too much being lucky enough to be at the show, but it is kind of the point of having E3 to begin with.—Samuel Roberts

Everyone else liked Watch Dogs Legion except for me 

You ever have a take that's so out of step with your peers that you're pretty sure you shouldn't share it, but you do anyway, because what the else is the internet for? This is mine, and I fully accept that it may be bad: I did not like Watch Dogs Legion at all. I say this for several reasons, foremost of which is the tone. Imagine Attack The Block, Kingsman, and the collected works of Guy Ritchie thrown into a blender, but the extracted juice containing none of the jokes. To me, Legion felt witless and brash (witness the enormous anti-police graffito which used the C-word) in a way I expect from Saints Row rather than Ubi's supposedly slick hack-'em-up series. 

Then there's the combat which, absent of any serious cover system, was mushy as hell. It's all well and good trumpeting the fact that British cops will favour a non-lethal response, but I still soon turned Scotland Yard into the kind of massacre that makes the first Terminator film's equivalent shootout look a disagreement over a parking fine. More preposterously, I was only there to erase some CCTV footage on behalf of an NPC I was aiming to recruit. After the slaughter she was all "thanks for the favour, fam!" Uh yeah, maybe don't read the papers for the next couple of days. Oh, and as for the whole NPC harvesting thing, much as I like building collections of characters, I suspect this is going to be largely smoke and mirrors, with only voice modulation and slightly different perks (does '+15 silenced weapon damage' get your blood racing?) to distinguish recruits. 

Still, literally everyone else I spoke to thought it was brilliant, so there's a tiny chance they're right and I'm wrong. Tiny. —Tim Clark

Platinum's Babylon's Fall is probably dead 

Last year at E3, Square Enix ran a bizarre lore dump of a trailer for a game called Babylon's Fall, rapidly laying out the history of a fantasy world and then closing on a pretty cool action shot that felt very Platinum. Supposedly, the game was coming out in 2019. But here we are, halfway through the year with E3 behind us, and no sign of it. Since that E3 reveal, there hasn't been so much as an official tweet or blog post about it. I'm afraid Square Enix has quietly swept this one under the rug and we'll never see it again.

Then again, the official site is still around, and it still has a listing on Platinum's site, too. Maybe it's just delayed until 2020 or later. I hope it's still coming, because Platinum and Square's last collaboration, Nier Automata, turned out pretty OK. — Wes Fenlon

We knew we weren't getting more of The Elder Scrolls 6 but still wanted more of The Elder Scrolls 6

At last year's E3 Bethesda brought down the house by announcing The Elder Scrolls 6. We understand why: it was to soften the blow of announcing a multiplayer-only Fallout game and reassure us it wasn't abandoning singleplayer games altogether. We also understand why we didn't hear anything new about ES6 at this E3: there's basically nothing to tell. The game is years and years away from release. We have a long damn wait ahead of us. Starfield is coming first, and they're barely even talking about that yet.

But still. We were hoping for something. A little something. Hell, even just that same brief teaser would have gotten some whoo-hoos, I bet. I mean, we're still using that same damn screenshot from last year. It's all we've got. —Chris Livingston

Cyberpunk 2077 is set in the sci-fi sprawl of Night City, but you'll also be able to pop outside the skyscraper prison and explore the lovely outdoors. Beyond the city you'll find the Badlands, a district filled with ruins and largely abandoned after droughts and other crises. 

"The Badlands are the surrounding district around the Night City," lead quest designer Pawel Sasko told VG24/7. "Players can leave Night City and just explore that area—an area that is mostly sort of destroyed basically after all the droughts and everything that happened in the 50 years from 2020 to '77. And you can explore that, there are specific quests prepared for that, also open world content, so that’s definitely covered. It’s not only the city that you’re visiting."

The Badlands aren't entirely empty, and just as every district has a ruling gang, the outskirts are controlled by nomads. You can even choose nomad as your background and begin the game hanging out with your family of nomads. 

"These are people who live on the road most of the time, so they travel between the states and see the wastes, and sometimes they stop for a longer time near specific cities," quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz told Game Informer.

Cyberpunk 2077 will have six main districts, as well as some sub-districts, though the game's final size hasn't been settled on. It's a "substantial" open world, Tomaszkiewicz said, but exactly how long it will take you to travel across is hard to determine while it's still in development. 

We also learned about cyberspace at E3. Technically it's another way to leave Night City, letting you take a trip into the virtual realm. Like the Badlands, though, it doesn't like a pleasant place, and jacking in is a big risk. 

"Basically the cyberspace in our game is this extremely dark, grim place from the past," Sasko told us in our Cyberpunk 2077 E3 interview. "It's a past that has been divided by the black wall." You need help to get in, but as a Netrunner you can also hack enemies and turrets by using your cyberware tool, which is less risky. 

So we can explore the wasteland and hack into cyberspace, but sadly we won't be able to drive those fancy flying cars. 

We saw a cinematic, we saw Keanu, but Cyberpunk 2077's E3 demo has so far only been shown off behind closed doors. Like the first E3 demo, however, CD Projekt Red will be making it public eventually, and you won't have long to wait. 

"It's going to happen at exactly PAX West," CD Projekt Red community lead Marcin Momot said on Twitter. PAX West starts on August 30 and will run until September 2 this year. 

While the first demo was full of spectacle and certainly memorable, this one makes Cyberpunk 2077 feel more like a tangible game, giving a better impression of what we'll be doing in Night City. James called it "staggering in scope and detail". And yes, you'll be able to see a lot more of Keanu. He'll be following you around everywhere, seeing as he's in your head. 

Frontier has shown off Planet Zoo's E3 demo, previously revealed behind closed doors. The gameplay, narrated by developers, gives us a pretty detailed look at a built up zoo full of animal exhibits, from big enclosures to wee terrariums. Give it a watch above. 

Planet Zoo's easily one of most exciting things we got to see at E3, in no small part to the interesting stuff Frontier's doing with its menagerie. Each of them is unique, apparently, right down to their appearance and traits, some of which they get from their parents. And then each species has its own proclivities, like herding, and needs that determine how you build their habitat. 

The animation is a real high point. You can zoom in close to admire your animals, and Frontier seems to have done an incredible job bringing them to life. Giraffes constantly flick their ears, chimps always look like they're gurning and alligators swim through the water menacingly—it's all been recreated. 

You can build mixed habitats, as some of the animals like living together, and you can fill them with 'enrichment items' that cheer them up. The wildebeest really seem to like being able to rub against stuff for a good scratch, for instance. And like Planet Coaster, you can build your zoos around certain themes. In the demo, the zoo had Serengeti vibes, from the map itself to the buildings and animal selection. 

While animals are the stars, there are also some rides for guests, taking them on trips around the zoo, and finally we can see inside interiors. So you can follow a member of staff around as they go inside the kitchen to prepare food for the animals or hang around the staff room to see what they get up to on their time off. 

It's the most we've seen of the game so far, and it's definitely looking promising, combining the good bits from Jurassic World Evolution with all the great, modular, creative stuff from Planet Coaster.

We'll see more when the beta kicks off this summer, and Planet Zoo is due out on November 5.

E3 2019 is behind us, and over 70 PC games were shown in some form or another. Now that we're all home recovering, we've taken some time to discuss our favorite trailers and gameplay demonstrations from the week, choosing the 10 games we came away from E3 most excited to play.

We set no specific criteria for these awards, though we focused on games we got the best looks at—we're excited for Elden Ring, for example, but all we saw was a pretty cinematic. Even where we did get a good look, though, these awards are based on ideas and potential. We hope all of these games are as good as they looked at E3.

John Wick Hex

Samuel: Bithell Games' take on John Hex is a strategy game, as the name suggests, but it's not turn-based. Instead, the action is continuous, to replicate the moment-to-moment feel of a John Wick set piece, where goons arrive out of nowhere for close combat scraps. Each level doesn't last very long, and the tactical choices you have to make mid-battle are cool: is it worth rolling and grabbing that gun, at the risk of being hit by two incoming enemy bullets? Is it worth throwing your pistol since it's faster than aiming and shooting, even though the chance of hitting is only 70%? You have to think like Wick, basically. I played three levels of it at E3, and it really hit the spot as a fast-moving, fresh-feeling strategy experience.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Chris: It feels bold to make a Wolfenstein game where the star of the series has gone missing. It's also daring to make it a two-player co-op game (though you can play solo with the AI as your partner). But MachineGames may have managed to pull off both those risks nicely. BJ Blazkowicz's daughters, Jess and Soph, are fun: loud, cocky, and enjoyably energetic. There's lots of graphic, satisfying, Nazi-killing action, and just as importantly, lots of fun ways to work as a team that don't involve pumping lead into the scum of humanity. Working as a team to open doors, solve puzzles, activate elevators, and unlock secrets feels novel and takes the co-op to places beyond simply picking up your partner when they've been knocked down. MachineGames is partnered with Arkane, developers of Dishonored, which is evident in the level design which gives players lots of different options for combat and stealth. I'm excited to see more when it releases this summer.

Cyberpunk 2077

Wes: I almost wish Cyberpunk 2077 could remain an idea forever, because as it becomes a real game it will inevitably disappoint in some ways. But it's also shaping up to be by far the highest fidelity single-city RPG ever, unprecedented in scale and detail. Combining Deus Ex's approach to open-ended design with The Witcher 3's RPG chops brings this down to Earth, but in a way that still makes Cyberpunk 2077 thrilling to watch take shape.

James: Cyberpunk 2077 ‘s 50-minute E3 demo showed off the bewildering scope and detail of just one of Night City’s districts, which I’m thinking will be the true draw once it releases in April. What we saw of the combat stuck to the guns-blazing vs stealthy dichotomy we’ve seen in plenty of games already, but the people and history and atmosphere of the Pacifica district depict a setting that’s been carefully considered from every angle. 

Cyberpunk is an angry genre and Cyberpunk 2077’s portrayal of late-late-late capitalism and systemic racism are propped up to give players plenty of incentive to exercise their anger to, as digital Keanu said in this year’s cinematic trailer, “wake the fuck up” and get to burning that city. Let’s just hope the story and role-playing versatility within don’t simply treat these issues and people as set dressing. 

If we’re going to wallow in grim futuristic reflections of contemporary problems, let’s learn a thing or two along the way. Cyberpunk 2077 has the potential to be one of the few big-budget games that doesn’t shy away from ugly truths. Coupled with those stunning looks, complex stat systems, a diversity of playstyles, and, of course, Keanu, and we could have a modern classic on our hands. All that’s left to do is play it and find out.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Chris: I'm excited about the idea that you're not the only one who has been illegally turned into a vampire in the Mass Embrace at the start of the game. There are others, too, still out there somewhere in the city, and you'll be able to track them down and see how they're doing in a series of optional side-quests. Cara Ellision (who formerly wrote for PC Gamer) wrote these quests and they seem like an interesting way to tell the stories of regular people with jobs, with families, with lives, struggling to cope with their new situation in ways that your character might not be.—Chris Livingston

Tyler: The gameplay we were shown was a bit wonky—especially the combat—but as Phil said after his look at Bloodlines 2 at E3, it wouldn't be a true sequel if it weren't. I hope it's been refined by the time it releases next year, but the goofy ragdolls don't turn me off of the roleplaying opportunities. Phil, who wasn't controlling the game but was directing the choices, decided to play as a cocksure vampire who thinks he can talk his way out of everything, but always fails to do so. That'll probably be my approach.

Empire of Sin

Phil: Brenda Romero's new strategy game looks like the spiritual successor to Gangster: Organised Crime. Set in 1920's prohibition-era Chicago, you pick one of 14 crime lords, based on real gangsters from the time, and work to take over the city's underworld. You can assault, build and upgrade businesses, recruit underlings who will gain dynamic personality traits based on your actions, and even sit down with your rivals for tense negotiations.

Combat takes place in XCOM-style turn-based strategy encounters that are still affected by the underlying simulation. Cause too much carnage with grenades, for instance, and nearby police will be drawn to your location mid-fight. And Romero Games has already committed to comprehensive mod tools. This was one of the most surprising things I saw at the show, and I can't wait to see how deep the simulation runs.

Telling Lies

Phil: Her Story's Sam Barlow doesn't shy away from a challenge. His new narrative mystery, Telling Lies, draws inspiration from Breath of the Wild. Specifically, Barlow wants to create an 'open world' version of Her Story's scene search mechanic, where every thread you pursue leads to a satisfying story beat—even if it isn't directly related to the game's central mystery. 

Once again you're searching for words contained in video clips—although this time you're scraping the data from video calls its characters have made. It's a much bigger game, with four central characters and many more clips to uncover. To make that less daunting, new tools let you scrub through video clips, highlight terms from within videos themselves, and even bookmark to a specific point in time. It's a satisfying tactile upgrade to Her Story's systems, and—with Barlow being incredibly careful about not showing anything of the story—I'm excited to see what mysteries hide in its many, many scenes.

Doom Eternal

Phil: The combat is just as satisfying as in 2016's Doom, but Doom Eternal is doubling down on the resource juggling that so expertly set the pace of its predecessor. Need health? Punch it out of your foes with a melee takedown. Need ammo? Chainsaw an enemy and it will burst from their corpse. Need armour? Your shoulder mounted flamethrower will make that happen. Of course, everything is limited, meaning there's a delicate balancing act happening within each pacey display of gore-soaked combat skill. Enemies now gruesomely deform, combat mods feel more situational, and your Super Shotgun has a goddamned meat hook. Doom is arguably the best singleplayer shooter of this decade. Doom Eternal could well surpass it.

Wes: I'm in love with Doom Eternal's new way of implementing 1UPs—like all of Doom 2016, it's a clever rethinking of an age-old gaming staple, rooted in the idea of balancing challenge with the goal of never letting up on momentum.

Chris: It was sort of hard to imagine how Doom Eternal could top the acrobatic gunplay of 2016's Doom, but maybe it was obvious: more acrobatics and more guns. And dashing, climbing, and swinging around with the grappling hook all feel great thanks to a level design that makes it intuitive. At times during the demo my boots hardly seemed to touch the ground, and when they did it was just to stomp some grunt's head into mush before taking off again.

Hollow Knight: Silksong

James: Expect more lavish art, a triumphant orchestral score, and secrets to uncover for years, but Silksong isn’t just another Hollow Knight with a new face. This is Hollow Knight by way of Bloodborne, with a strong focus on agility and aggression in combat encounters and a much more complex moveset to work through them with. Nearly all of Hornet’s moves push her forward. The down attack is still allows you to bounce off of enemies, but Hornet moves down and forward at an angle, flinging you back and forth across arenas in a frantic bid to maintain momentum while slashing about to rid a room of armored bugs. Hold dash to move into a sprint. A well-timed slash while sprinting vaults you over the enemy, setting you up for another slash from behind or a downward dash into another aerial maneuver. 

Healing is different now too. Powered up from hitting enemies, the silk bar instantly and completely heals Hornet, a strong contrast to Hollow Knight much slower health recharge ability. It sounds like it simplifies things, but because you can only use it once the silk bar is completely full and because it completely heals Hornet, you’re encouraged to dance on the edge of death to get the full benefit of her healing power. It’s better to heal Hornet when she’s one hit away from death rather than four hits, for instance. Every hit you can ‘buy’ for her is more time spent alive, desperately chipping away at a boss’s health. These changes might not mean much to anyone that hasn’t played Hollow Knight, but think of it this way: the sequel to the best Metroid game ever now has much, much better combat. 

The Outer Worlds

Samuel: The only disappointing thing about The Outer Worlds' presence at E3 this year was that it wasn't hands-on. It might've been a contender for game of the show if it was, and if it plays as well as it looks. It really has been crafted to be the dream RPG for a certain generation of player, with quests that can permeate in a whole bunch of ways, colourful little planetary hubs, and a bizarre, dark sense of humour that fans of earlier Fallout games will no doubt appreciate (bacon-flavoured pig tumours are a popular food item on the world shown in the E3 demo). The presentation shown off by Obsidian was a little too slight at about 20 minutes in length, under half of what CD Projekt Red had in store for Cyberpunk, but I still emerged excited. Just let me play an hour of this damn thing. It looks so good.

Wes: The Outer Worlds seems like the exact RPG many of us crave right now—dense and reactive to our choices, but at a scale that won't take a hundred hours to see through. That hits the spot.

 Best of the show: Watch Dogs Legion 

Samuel: Ubisoft's open world hacking series gets a serious upgrade with Legion's novel central conceit: you can play as anyone you meet in a post-Brexit London dystopia, recruiting them to the Dedsec cause and unlocking them as your new protagonist. As the Ubisoft reveal showed, yes, this includes grandma assassins. The major twist, though, is that permadeath plays an important part of this game. If your new hero is gunned down and you don't surrender or end up in the hospital, they're gone. That should make each run through the game feel like a different story.

But there's a load of other neat ideas in Watch Dogs Legion. You can hack and control delivery drones, and drop explosive barrels and boxes on people from above. The three new, defined classes let you play as a stealth character with a brief invisibility window, or put you in charge of mini spider robots to let you infiltrate enemy territory. You're not forced to fight lethally, which is most welcome in a game where you're playing as ordinary civilians.

Chris: As someone with more than a passing interest in NPCs, Samuel's writeup of Legion sent it rocketing to the top of my most-wanted games list instantly. The trailer brought me back down to earth a bit—there was an awful lot of gunplay and this is London, not Chicago—but I'm still 100% into the premise of playing as a bunch of random nobodies instead of a single protagonist. Plus, there are plenty of non-lethal weapons and a genuinely great reason to use them—you can actually recruit your enemies, provided you leave them alive.

Mainly, I love games that let players tell their own stories, and Legion feels it could accomplish that because we'll all be playing it as a different group of people. I'm looking forward to hearing about everyone else's experiences as I am in having my own.

From March to May, Fallout 76's Wild Appalachia update delivered a steady stream of quests, items, events, and new features on a near-weekly basis. Regularly interspersed with those releases were smaller patches to fix bugs, tweak gameplay, and address community feedback. This summer, Fallout 76's Nuclear Winter update will bring a battle royale mode and 8-player raids, and in the fall the Wastelanders update will add human NPCs, dialogue trees, and new quests.

This relentless pace of new content and updates, and the community's unquenchable appetite for it, have become normalized in an industry where Fortnite is a constantly changing landscape, where developer crunch is under heavy scrutiny, and where Apex Legends is criticized by a chicken store for not adding new content fast enough.

At E3 we talked with Jeff Gardiner, project lead for Fallout 76, about how Bethesda manages to balance the players' expectations for new content without burning themselves out, the adjustment from working on singleplayer RPGs to a live game service game, and how faster doesn't mean necessarily mean better.

"You know, I've been at Bethesda for almost 14 years since Oblivion," Gardiner said. And I make and love singleplayer roleplaying games. So I had to learn very quickly on this project, how this works. And one of the things we have learned is, you know, things can't be done fast enough. And the faster you do them, the more likely they are to break."

Gardiner brings up Fallout 76's bobby pins, which players collect and use to pick locks. At launch, each bobby pin weighed 0.1 pounds, which meant players were being weighed down substantially for carrying more than a handful of the tiny items. A later patch changed their weight to a more sensible .001 pounds—but the fix didn't arrive quickly enough for some.

"Bobby pin weight, we missed and it got bashed. And Todd Howard got sent a box of bobby pins in the mail. And it was such a reaction to that, it sort of took us off guard. And again, like, we're only human. It's a 70-gig game, there's a lot. So we never do these things intentionally. And we never do them because we're, like, lazy."

"I mean, that's the kind of insinuation. Mistakes get made. So we try our best to find that balance between... we can't feed the beast fast enough. But the faster we feed it, the more likely it's going to get sick. So, you sort of have to find that really good balance."

Working too quickly to address feedback can sometimes create more problems. For instance, that bobby pin fix actually wound up being reverted by a later patch, which again made them weigh 0.1 pounds, meaning another patch had to shipped to fix them for a second time. Those types of rushed mistakes are how Bethesda arrived at its update schedule: a major patch every few weeks with a smaller one later to fix issues that may have resulted from that patch, or to add a few things that didn't make the original deadline.

Now "we're being smarter about what we're doing," he said. "In the beginning it was a sort of fire hose. Some of those patches had thousands of bug fixes. And so now we're slowing it down."

Balancing an asymmetrical game is a struggle, Gardiner says, and when it comes to nerfing certain weapons, like a double-damage shotgun that was too over-powered, he can sympathize with unhappy Fallout 76 players because he's a Warhammer fan. "And I learned if there's some exploit I'm using in my army, Games Workshop is going to come in and nerf it. So I better not buy all those miniatures, because I'm just going to be sad in a couple months. So, you sort of have to find that balance."

But complaints and negative feedback from the community isn't a bad thing. In fact, Gardiner thinks its more valuable than positive feedback.

"I can't tell you, the fans of this game have been incredible, the fact that they stuck with us and they send us this feedback, good and bad, right? Because we don't learn anything from good. Good feedback is great. And it makes me feel good. But I'm not learning from that. If I don't fall down and skin my knees sometimes I'm not running hard enough, right?

"It's been a humbling experience for us in a lot of ways," Gardiner says, "but one I think that's important for our studio. And I'm thrilled with 76 and what it's become, and where it's going."

That's another E3 in the bag, and as always there were lots of new games revealed, new release dates announced, and new trailers shown. All told, our list of every PC game at E3 2019 contains almost 100 games! Head over there to watch all the new trailers.

Below, we've plucked out the biggest news stories of E3 2019, and when you're done with those you can also check out the most awkward and wholesome moments from the show.

Biggest new game announcements

Watch Dogs Legion: It was leaked before E3, but we got the official reveal at Ubisoft's conference, and another 30 minutes of footage showed up as well. Sam played it, and came away very impressed. As rumored, you really can play as anyone in the city. It's out March 6, 2020.

Elden Ring: The collaboration between FromSoftware and George R.R. Martin is real, and the cinematic trailer is badass. Here's everything we know about Elden Ring so far.

Gods & Monsters: A new adventure from the Assassin's Creed Odyssey devs, coming February 25, 2020.

Rainbow Six Quarantine: It's co-op again, and out in early 2020. We got a cinematic trailer at Ubisoft's show, but not much more.

Ghostwire: Tokyo: A new action game from Shinji Mikami and Ikumi Nakamura  with a very weird, cool cinematic trailer. It's spooky.

Bleeding Edge: A third-person brawler from Hellblade developer Ninja Theory, which our E3 crew called "chaotic" and "messy." Read their preview here. Bleeding Edge is out October 25, 2019.

Outriders: A cool-looking (at least based on the cinematic trailer) co-op shooter from the developers of Bulletstorm. Coming summer 2020.

Deathloop: The cinematic trailer for Arkane's next game makes it look something like Groundhog's Day, but with assassins. No release date yet.

Zombie Army 4: Dead War: A continuation of Respawn's series of Sniper Elite spin-offs where Hitler's got a zombie army. Check out a gameplay video here.

Chivalry 2: The medieval combat sequel is going big, and Steven interviewed the devs to find out all about it. It's out next year.

Marvel's Avengers: We already knew about this one, but only its existence. We finally got to see it at the Square Enix conference, and Sam described a demo as not quite superheroic.

Microsoft Flight Simulator: The classic series is back, and the trailer is pretty. You can sign up for the alpha and beta.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga: Coming next year, all three trilogies will be reenacted in one Lego game. Check out the trailer here.

New release dates

Gears 5: September 10, 2019
The Outer Worlds: October 25, 2019
Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition: Fall 2019, beta sooner.
Terraria: Journey's End: Late 2019
Planet Zoo:  November 5, 2019
Doom Eternal: November 22, 2019
Ori and the Will of the Wisps: February 11, 2020
Cyberpunk 2077: April 16, 2020
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot: Early 2020
Final Fantasy 7 Remake: March 3, 2020 on PS4, and the wording suggests it could come to PC later.
Phantasy Star Online 2: Spring 2020, finally.
Halo Infinite: Holiday 2020
Wasteland 3: Spring 2020
Ghost Recon Breakpoint: October 4, 2019
Marvel's Avengers: May 15, 2020

Keanu Reeves is a Cyberpunk 2077 character

Keanu Reeves appeared at the Microsoft conference to announce that Cyberpunk 2077 will release on April 16, because Keanu Reeves is in Cyberpunk 2077. Catch him smoldering at the end of the trailer. It turns out he's a "digital ghost" who lives in our head, and Jody thinks Reeves is perfect for the role.

Meanwhile, James got a look at 50 minutes of new gameplay (which hasn't yet released to the public). Here's what he thought.

One of the other things we learned this year is that non-lethal runs are now possible. That wasn't the case last E3, but CD Projekt made the change based on feedback it got. There was also some controversy this week over art in the game that some view as transphobic, and a response from the artist saying its meant to reflect corporate exploitation. 

Elden Ring details

While all we got to see was the dramatic, gorgeous cinematic trailer above, the Elden Ring announcement has us excited. We've learned a few details since the big debut at the Microsoft conference:

• Elden Ring will be more Dark Souls than Sekiro and way bigger than both
• Elden Ring's open world will not have towns, will be traversable on horseback
• George R.R. Martin wrote Elden Ring's 'overarching mythos'
• And FromSoftware didn't think he'd actually agree to work on it

AMD announces new graphics cards: Radeon RX 5700 XT for $449 and RX 5700 for $379

The biggest hardware news comes from AMD, which announced the  RX 5700 XT and RX 5700 graphics cards, which are built to challenge Nvidia's RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 cards. Jarred's got breakdown of the announcement here. 

Xbox Game Pass is now available on PC, a Ubisoft subscription arrives soon

The Xbox Game Pass PC subscription service is now available, and it's currently $1 for the first month. After that, it's $5 a month for access to the game library, which includes Metro: Exodus, Forza Horizon 4, Sea of Thieves, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, and a bunch more (sort by PC here to see the whole collection).

If you want in, you'll have to download the new Xbox app, which looks a lot better than the old one and seems to bypass the awful Microsoft Store. We also talked with Phil Spencer about it.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft has also launched their own subscription service called Uplay+ which gives you access to its entire library of Ubisoft games (around 100) for $15/month. 

If you're having trouble figuring out which subscription service you should get, we have a handy guide.

Terraria unveils its massive Journey's End update

The PC Gaming Show brought us some major news about Terraria: the fourth major update is on its way. It's called Journey's End and it's packed full of exciting stuff, like new enemies and challenges, special events, new mini-biomes and a new world-generation system. All told, there are over 800 new items being added.

There's also a new difficulty level that's even harder than before, called Master Mode. If that's too hardcore for you, there's something more relaxing being added as well: you'll be able to play golf.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 gameplay revealed

Teased during the PC Gaming Show, we finally got a chance to see some long, uncut footage of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 (the longest name ever, whew). It's actually kind of surreal how much this looks like a more polished version of the original Bloodlines but still retains some of that charming jank.

We'll have more Bloodlines 2 info soon. 

Watch Dogs Legion is crazy ambitious and we like that

Though leaked just before E3, Watch Dogs Legion has blown us away with its ambitious simulation of life in London, where every NPC has relationships, schedules, and can be recruited to join your resistance movement. Sam was really blown away by it when he played the demo, and we're also excited to hear that there's a wealth of non-lethal options for beating up bad guys. Chris, meanwhile, is already obsessed with the backstories and traits of NPCs.

Oddly, there are no actual dogs in Watch Dogs Legion, but mark my words, by the time it launches it will have them, and you'll be able to pet them.

Check out everything we know here.

More E3 2019 news

• Dr. Disrespect banned from Twitch and kicked out of E3 after filming in a public bathroom
• Shenmue 3 will be an Epic Store Exclusive for one year, and some Kickstarter backers want refunds
• Quite a few Epic Store 'exclusives' are surprisingly coming to the Microsoft Store
• Age of Empires 4 is 'making good progress', and Microsoft will talk about it later this year
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is less linear than expected
• Borderlands 3 E3 demo shows off Moze and her mech
• Fable wasn't at E3, but Microsoft has 'a lot of great stuff waiting in the wings'
• The Division 2 will take players back to Manhattan next year
• Ubisoft's PvP roller derby game has a free alpha, playable now
• Warframe teases ship-to-ship combat at PC Gaming Show, offers free Nekros Prime
• The Dota Auto Chess modders are making a version exclusive to the Epic Games Store
• Klei's Griftlands is back as a card battle RPG, alpha starts this July
• Fallout 76's battle royale modeis pretty good. It's also getting human NPCs in the future.
• SNES classic Trials of Mana is headed to PC next year
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will have a Spec Ops cooperative mode
• Shemue 3 is now an Epic exclusive for one year
• Sea of Thieves has attracted 2 million new pirates since the Anniversary Update
• Blair Witch is gonna be a game

Not E3 news, but still news!

• Dota Underlords is Valve's version of Auto Chess, and it's out now
• GTA Online's fabled Vinewood Casino will actually open soon
• Riot is being investigated for gender discrimination
• ThinkGeek's online store is closing, and everything is 50% off
• Bethesda's lawyers shut down the Doom Remake 4 mod
• The Witcher 3 has sold over 20 million bathtubs. I mean, copies
• Star Control lawsuit settled, and amicably, somehow
• Steam's library overhaul is coming soon and looks sweet