If Microsoft’s presentation was about quietly building up its core franchises and showing off technical prowess, Sony’s was about making your dreams come true. Sony never lacks for an ambitious E3, but the sheer number of games it was showing off became ridiculous.
Sony started the show with a pretty hefty chunk of gameplay footage from The Last Guardian and offered up a release date of “2016.” Considering the sheer hopelessness we’ve had about ever actually seeing this game, we’ll take it. But it set the tone for the show, to say the least.
The next game you never thought you’d see and yet, are actually seeing happen, right now, before your very eyes? Shenmue III. Yep, after nearly 15 years of fans bugging the creator about it, Sony got a Kickstarter going for the game that largely created the concept of open world gaming. It’s already crossed its $2 million goal, so the game’s happening.
Uncharted 4 got a demo, which is essentially the action-adventure we know and love from the franchise. If that weren’t enough, Sony has a new franchise from Guerrilla Games, called Horizon: Zero Dawn. It’s about post-apocalyptic cavemen fighting robot dinosaurs. Here’s some gameplay footage, but admit it, you were sold just based on that sentence:
Finally, there’s an odd world-builder called Dreams from Media Molecule. Imagine a claymation LittleBigPlanet and you’re close to the mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt3DWMXkI7g
In third-party news:
- Final Fantasy VII is being fully remade, and coming first to PS4.
- There’s also a weird, adorable game called World of Final Fantasy where you can turn into the Funko version of various FF characters as you play through an adventure.
- Sony has ganked Microsoft’s prized Call of Duty DLC exclusivity. If you want to play the beta or get the map packs for Black Ops III first, better get a PS4.
- A new, episodic Hitman game is on the way with an oddball structure where the game is added to over time, as players complete missions and essentially drive the direction of the game. It’ll still just cost you $60, though.
- We saw the opening of Batman: Arkham Knight, which is spectacularly creepy.
- There was more Star Wars: Battlefront footage, this time dedicated entirely to the survival mode.
- No Man’s Sky was demoed, and the scale of the game is absurd. No wonder we still don’t have a release date.
Sony also noted that its attempt to murder your cable company, PlayStation Vue, is coming to new markets with its a la carte channel selection. But really that was just a breather for a pretty heavy presentation.
There will be a lot of arguments about which company won E3, but no matter what, Sony delivered a lot of fascinating games that we can’t wait to play. Even if they really need to give us a firm date on The Last Guardian. We’ve been hurt before, Sony. Is the ability to pet a digital griffin really too much to ask?