Bethesda E3 2019: The Good, the Bad, and the etc.

Bethesda have been very naughty this past year. Let’s see if they managed to make up for all that silliness at this year’s E3. No spoilers or anything, but you probably already know they didn’t. Let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the rest.

The Good

Well, it’s Doom Eternal isn’t it? I find myself in a constant state of flux about the whether to even pay any attention to conferences like this. Developers, directors and producers will stumble their way through teleprompter scripts talking for way too long about a game, when one could generate the exact same amount of hype from a sentence or two. Here, I could do it – Doom 2016 is the best FPS of the last decade, and the sequel looks bigger, better, more bombastic, and more brutal. Done. I don’t need to know or see any more until I sit down and it blows my balls off later this year.

Yummy!

The Bad

When is a door not a door? When is a mobile game not a mobile game? The answer is not “when it’s on the Switch,” because then it’s just a mobile game on Switch. When is the cake not a lie? When you eat piece of cake and realize that Elder Scrolls Blades is the real lie. Kill it. Just kill it now, please.

No. I don’t want this. You can’t make me want this!

The Obnoxious

The hooting and yelling here was the worst of the entire E3. You people are animals. You know how snot-nosed kids who put their pants on backwards are always trying to be the first comment on YouTube videos? Well, it turns out that if you transpose that to being the first to yell out during every single moment of silence at a press conference, you’re actually even more of a repugnant excuse for a human, and you should never be allowed to enter a public event again, unless it’s your turn in the village stocks.

See, I don’t want to hate this guy because he has a Young Bucks shirt on but…nah, he’s scum. Subhuman scum.

The ‘Apology’

Now this, this was cringe-worthy stuff. It’s getting a little insulting that Bethesda can make such lackluster products — especially at launch — and then come to E3 the next year and make ‘oopsie’ jokes about their terrible games. Worse still, they expect us (and by us I mean real people, not the employees in attendance here) to laugh at these jokes and forget the months of lying, month-one price cuts, broken servers, bugs, nylon bags, and customer data leaks. Honestly, Todd, I’m surprised we’re all still here too, but we’re definitely not here for Fallout 76.

We trusted you, Todd. You and your poop mouth.

It’s even worse to see Bethesda try to backtrack on the dreadful premise for their wanky game by expecting praise for adding in choices with consequence and human NPCs. They’re supposed to be in a Fallout game! Hey, but that’s not all! How do you truly try and pull up a such flagging pile of weasel dung by the skin of its arse? Stick a battle royale mode in it, of course!

The Pronunciation

Also, Jeff Gardiner, the PROJECT LEADER for Fallout 76 said “nucular” instead of “nuclear.” I think that says a lot, don’t you?

The Legend

Shinji Mikami is a bonafide legend, and Ghostwire Tokyo looks incredibly interesting. An action adventure game where you fight supernatural enemies, uncover conspiracies, and deal with the occult, all set in a gorgeous rendition of Tokyo. According to one moron in the crowd, “it’s gonna be hype.”

Magic!

The かわいい ^_^

Ikumi Nakamura is freakin’ adorable. Seriously, I’d be mates with her.

Nope, I definitely don’t think this undercut the dark and serious tone of the video…

The Obligatory

Oh, Elder Scrolls Online has dragons? IT’S SUPPOSED TO HAVE DRAGONS! Oh, my word, guys, Bethesda are just releasing their games and then finishing them one year at a time.

Are all dragons just blind to giant spears or something?

The Anus

Commander Keen wants you to “get Uranus to Mars.” I generally don’t tend to go anywhere without my anus, if I’m being truly honest.

This meandering, listless tripe was legitimately described as a ‘race’

I’ve never played the original Commander Keen, but even I know that they’ve ruined it. Also, if anyone can think of a worse opening line than, “Imagine a classic Saturday morning cartoon in free-to-play mobile game form,” then I would very much like to hear it.

The Jerk

There is a man that exists whose first name is Jerk.

Cool.

The Worry

Will the co-op nature of Wolfenstein: Youngblood ruin the game’s ability to deliver story insanity the way The New Colossus did? It’s a wobbly tightrope to walk, trying to get two people engaged in a story instead of talking to each other and just wanting the game to get going again. I’ve personally struggled to take in anything from the multitude of co-op games I’ve played in the past, because my mate and I just want to have fun instead of sit quietly and listen to exposition. If there’s one game that can slap the attention of two idiots back on the screen, however, it’s got to be Wolfenstein. I quietly have faith.

Mmmmm…stabby

The Guy From Walking Dead

Deathloop looks like another classy effort from Arkane Studios. It sounds like it will play in a similar way, as the guys described it as their signature gameplay. Because we didn’t actually see any of that gameplay, it’s not clear exactly how this game will play, but I’d love it if somehow this became a two-player competitive game where you and a friend are hunting each other throughout each loop.

Supriiiiiiiise!

The Backslapping

People talking about how great your games are to pad out not having enough great games? Classy, and not self-aggrandizing at all. I definitely cared about what gaming meant to all those weird people sat in a dark room, and preferred hearing their stories of how Bethesda changed their life instead of watching footage of video games.

Oh gee, wow, great story. PLEASE tell me more

The Verdict

Well, this was a bit of a dumpster fire wasn’t it? Bethesda’s smug wanker brigade were out in full force trying to re-convince a gaming public rapidly losing faith in them that they’d done absolutely nothing wrong, all their dreadful games are immensely popular, and that we should all be playing mobile versions of beloved franchises. Give me a ruddy break.

Without their second party studios, Bethesda would be royally screwed. They are extremely lucky at this point to have geniuses like Shinji Mikami and the guys at id producing the goods for them, while they waste their time pissing away years of fan reverence with broken games and mobile phone garbage. It felt incredibly weird to watch such a beleaguered game developer able to still trot out incredible games that other people make, but in fairness it served them well in terms of their immediate future. Their main attractions, Doom Eternal and Wolfenstein: Youngblood, are sure to be fantastic, but they’d already been announced ages ago, and the long-term quality of Bethesda’s output is decidedly unknown thanks to little gameplay of anything else worth a damn. Very, very underwhelming.

3/10 should apologize again