Lots of announcements and presentations! (Thoughts on all the video game shows from the last few weeks)

 Hey friends! It's that time where all the biggest announcements go on, with Summer Game Fest kicking off on Friday, the Xbox showcase on Sunday, and then the Nintendo Direct that just happened this Tuesday. It's a good time if you're someone who likes a lot of different news from different companies, and this season seemed to be pretty good for everyone (though especially for fans of JRPGs). Today I'd like to touch on some of the announcements that I was the most excited about, and maybe even some that I don't care about, but others certainly will be. I hope you've all enjoyed watching the presentations as much as I have, and I'll do my best to cover as much as I can!

Pretty Good Shows All Around!

    I have to start off by talking about the announcement that started off Summer Game Fest, a remake of Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Resident Evil has been on fire in the last few years, and I'm really excited to play the remake of this game, I've heard lots of good things about the game, though I'm not familiar with the story much at all. I know it revolves around the Redfields, but other than that, I know nothing and I'm really excited to play it when it comes out. It looks like we're getting two Cuphead games sometime in the near future, with one being the sequel to the game, and one being a retro-inspired platformer that looks to be inspired by Sega Genesis with games like Castle of Illusion. Pretty exciting stuff, as the first game was really neat, and it's nice to see it continue on in some way. A few years ago, Team ICO showed off its new game, featuring a character climbing up a giant robot, and we got some more footage of this game, now called gen ATLAS. I am not the biggest fan of Team ICO, but I know so many people are really excited for this game, and I'm happy for them. Hopefully this one will be more my cup of tea, but we'll see! Platinum Games is making a new game based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles storyline, "The Last Ronin." We didn't see any footage of it, but the concept is great, it depends on what part of Platinum Games handles it, but I'm really excited to see their take on the Turtles world. They do a great job with action games, clearly, so I think it'll be a good fit. Control Resonant got a new trailer and I feel like I talked about it enough last week to cover it, but this trailer focused on the world and the threat being faced this time around. It looks so good and I can't wait until I can play it for myself in September! Wolf Among Us 2 is back, and in addition, they're remastering the original game for modern systems. If you're not familiar with that whole story, The Wolf Among Us was a game made by Telltale Games which went bankrupt back in 2018, it was also known for many other games based on big properties such as The Walking Dead, Back to the Future, Game of Thrones, etc. The name is back, though it's an entirely new studio under the name "Telltale Games" this time, and I'm looking forward to what they have in store, as the original game was great! Tifa from Final Fantasy VII is being added to Street Fighter 6, which is great, because the final announcement of the kickoff event was Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the third game in the FFVII Remake Trilogy. I still need to go back and finish VII Rebirth, but I really loved Remake, so hopefully I'll get caught up in time to play this new game.

   Xbox showcases typically have very little to show that really interest me, but I'm happy to say that this one had quite a few things for me to be excited about. We got a look at a new Hellblade game, this time just called Senua, and as always, Ninja Theory makes some really wild looking games, with Hellblade honestly feeling much more like a horror game a lot of times than a traditional action game. I'm definitely looking forward to that one when it comes out next year (more on that one in a little bit). Crazy Taxi World Tour is also coming next year, which will be a great time as well, I'm sure! The trailer didn't show much other than the traditional Crazy Taxi gameplay, though we did see what looked like gameplay of a man fishing for a shark, so I'm not sure exactly how that will play out, but I'm certainly excited for more Crazy Taxi. Minecraft Dungeons 2 is coming in September, which is yet another game to add to the onslaught of new games that month trying to avoid the coming storm that is Grand Theft Auto VI. I really liked playing through the first Minecraft Dungeons with my cousin, so I'm looking forward to some more fun times with the sequel. A couple months ago, we saw footage of Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, and now we know a bit more about it. You play as Rose Belmont, seemingly the daughter of Trevor and Sypha from Castlevania III, and it looks really stylish. It's hard to say if this will hold up against the onslaught of indie developed Metroidvania games, but it certainly looks really promising, and I'm excited for it when it comes out on October 15. The last two announcements I'm going to touch on here have to be the biggest ones that I'm looking forward to from this show. Spyro is finally getting a new game in 2027, Spyro: A Realm Reborn! We saw very little about this new game, other than a clip that looked like an on-rails flying segment which reminded me a bit of Kid Icarus: Uprising, but I'm definitely looking forward to that. Crash Bandicoot 4 was exciting when it came out a few years ago, don't get me wrong, but I've always been more of a Spyro guy, so this makes me so excited. The other one was Persona 6! Along with a longer trailer for Persona 4 Revival, which we've known about for a little while, it's nice to get confirmation that Persona 6 is allegedly in development and that the key art released is green (which means something to the fans, after 3's main color was blue, 4 was yellow, and 5 was red). Honestly nothing was shown about that game, there was a shot of a graveyard which makes me wonder if there will be a major focus on death like in 3, but that was pretty much it. I didn't really care about the rest of the show, I'm happy for fans of Call of Duty and Gears of War, but I really don't care about either of those enough to cover them, so we'll move right along.

    Nintendo Directs are always fun, even when they don't have enough announcements that I really care about. There were a lot of announcements of different RPGs here, and of course, we got a pretty major announcement to end the show. They started off the show by spending a surprising amount of time talking about Rhythm Heaven: Groove, which is coming out on July 2. I'm personally stoked for this game to come out, since the previous games have always been a lot of fun, and have basically inspired a whole new sub-genre of rhythm games. They announced a new RPG mode as well as a lot of multiplayer minigames to play with friends, which should add a bit more meat to the bones of this most recent game. It's not necessary, because they are all a lot of fun, but they are always on the shorter side, so I hope the added content here will be good. Orbitals was shown off again, and I'm so excited to play that one with my brother, since it's coming out September 3. I don't even know what else to say about that game, other than the fact that it has a beautiful artstyle and hopefully will play somewhat similarly to It Takes Two or Split Fiction, due to the high quality co-op gameplay. They announced new Pokopia DLC along with a free update which allows Ditto to dive underwater. The paid DLC Expansion Pass for the game will include three more areas, the first of which will be underwater. It looks really nice, and it was a great game to play through, I don't see myself coming back to it to play the DLC right away, but maybe at some point. One of the bigger announcements here was a little more information on Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave. In this game, which certainly follows some cues from Three Houses, you choose to play as one of four characters, either Ciel, Dietrich, Theodora, or Leda, which seems to shape your quest in the same way that choosing which house you went with would change the game in that older game. I don't understand a lot of what was discussed, but I do know that Sothis, the goddess from Three Houses appears again here and is a bit older this time around. I'm certainly excited for my friends who are fans of Fire Emblem, but this doesn't really interest me too much. Xenoblade Chronicles 1, 2, and 3 are all getting Switch 2 Editions, with the first one already having dropped right after the direct, and the other two coming out later in the year. In addition, they announced a new game in the series, Xenoblade Genesis, which, as the name suggests, seems to be an origin story for the series, but it remains to be seen when it comes out next year. Again, I am very excited for my friends who like the series, but it's not much for me.

    The weirdest presentation of the show has to go to the announcement of Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. The game itself looks pretty good, going through a lot of the sports that were included a few years ago in Nintendo Switch Sports, along with the plane from Wii Sports Resort, Boxing, Tennis, Table Tennis, and most confusing... thumb wrestling. Let me remind you of the original conceit for Wii Sports. The idea was that you can't already play these games in your house, so along with being a great tech demo for the motion controls in general, it allowed for a unique experience that could approximate playing a sport. With thumb wrestling, however, you can just play the sport in real life as long as there's another person there with you. The whole thing just felt very silly and took up way too much time of the presentation, especially since this was the game that Nintendo decided to give the most screentime, with the Sports Resort section wrapping up with Mr. Koizumi demonstrating what a thumb wrestling match would look like in this game. To finish up, we got an announcement of all of the Kingdom Hearts collections, 1.5+2.5, 2.8, and 3+Re:Mind, which is nice considering we only got cloud versions of those games on the Switch 1, but now we get actual native versions, which is really nice. In addition, we got a trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4, which is apparently coming Day and Date to Switch 2 along with all the other consoles! That's really exciting as a Kingdom Hearts fan, even if I probably won't buy it for the Switch 2, I'm excited for folks to be able to try it even if they only have a Switch. The final game shown off here was the heavily rumored/ leaked remake of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It looks really pretty, but they showed us almost nothing in this cinematic trailer, in spite of the game coming this year. Some speculation is suggesting that they may have more footage in a potential September Nintendo Direct, but we'll have to wait and see about that!

    Gosh, there was a lot of announcements and good stuff going all around, but before I wrap up, I have to give a bit of bad news. Allegedly as reported by many sources, Xbox is looking at closing three studios, announcing it as early as the end of June, since that's when their annual budget projections run out. Those three studios are Compulsion Games (creators of South of Midnight), Ninja Theory (creators of the Hellblade series as well as Enslaved: Journey to the West and many others), and Double Fine (headed up by Tim Schaefer, creators of Psychonauts, Costume Quest, Brutal Legend, etc.). This is obviously a terrible piece of news, considering just how good so many of these games are, but they haven't been as profitable recently apparently, so Xbox is looking at shuttering yet another few studios that they bought. This should be especially alarming to you if you've read this far, because Senua, a game I talked about earlier in this post, is most likely not actually going to happen, since Ninja Theory is developing it. I'm so sick of this happening, there are so many great creative minds and talented developers that are being shut down because of situations just like this. It hurts, and I just hope you'll keep those individuals in mind as we all play the games that were created by them, and hope for the very best. The best scenario involves Xbox not being the absolute worst though, so that's unlikely. I don't want to sound like a shill for any other company, because across the board, the games industry has been in a rough spot in the last few years, but Xbox is especially guilty of this. So many are losing their jobs, even though the main reason for the games not selling is because of an executive telling them what to do, instead of what the team is passionate about. Please remember the people involved in the products you enjoy, they don't just appear on the shelf, and those people are hurting right now.

    Sorry to end this post on a downer note, but I had to say something about the state of games developers right now. I hope you've enjoyed reading some thoughts about the games coming out, this time of year is always exciting for that very reason, but so much of it is being crammed into September, which will make some sales lower than what the companies were hoping for, but we'll see how it goes when we get to that bridge. I hope you're all doing well, and thank you all so much for reading this post. I would love to hear from you all if there are any games you're looking forward to! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Dreamer, and keep your head up, I pray that there are good times ahead.