This year’s Bethesda E3 Presentation opened with a thank you to players, developers identifying as gamers, and a montage of the studio’s previously released games. Pete Hines, SVP of global marketing/communications at Bethesda, then explained how this would be a community focused presentation.
Todd Howard, the Executive Producer at Bethesda, took the stage and spoke briefly about the players, challenges, and criticisms over the past year. Todd brought specific attention to Fallout 76 and its community, thanking them for the support and feedback. Then he quickly moved on to the meat of the presentation starting with The Elder Scrolls: Blades
Craig Lafferty, Project Leader, and Matt Carofano, Art Director, indicated that The Elder Scrolls: Blades, which is in early access, has now become the largest mobile game for Bethesda. Incoming improvements include new jobs, solo arena battles, custom jewelry system, and a new dragon questline. These new improvements arrive tonight but the big news was that the game is coming to the Nintendo Switch this fall with cross play and cross progression with the mobile version.
Jeff Gardiner, Project Leader of Fallout 76, and Tom Mustaine, Co-Studio Director of BGS, introduced Wastelanders. This fall update for Fallout 76 will be the official start of year 2 content. Wastelanders will contain human quest NPCs, a full main questline, new rewards, new dialogue trees, and long-term story arcs.
They also announced that starting June 10th until June 17th there will be a free trial for Fallout 76. During the free trial, players will be able to have a sneak peek of a new game mode from the upcoming Nuclear Winter Update. This is a battle royal type game mode for 52 players.
The new action adventure game Ghostwire: Tokyo was announced next by Shinji Mikami, Executive producer at Tango Gameworks, and Ikumi Nakamura, Creative Director at Tango Gameworks. The game’s teaser video looks amazing. The premise of having to investigate mass disappearances with occult influences sounds interesting, but I would have liked to see more gameplay.
Matt Firor, Studio Director at ZeniMax, then took the stage to talk about The Elder Scrolls Online. A new cinematic trailer was released and as always it looked great. Unfortunately, details about the next two DLCs were very sparse. It was revealed that the Scalebreaker DLC will be arriving in August and would contain 2 new dungeons. The Dragonhold DLC will release towards the end of the year with a new zone, Pellitine. Sai Sahan will also be returning to the game and the Dragonguard will be reformed, further details about this DLC will be released at QuakeCon.
An unexpected announcement was by Kira Schlitt, Creative Director, for Commander Keen a mobile free to play game from ZeniMax Online Studios. The game is a modern take on the cult classic. You play Billy and Billie who build gadgets from household items to fight against evil and save the universe. The game will include a story mode and a battle mode for head to head play. A soft launch is slated for this summer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtQjGPfkEe8&feature=youtu.be
The success of Fallout Shelter was mentioned along with the upcoming release for The Elder Scrolls Legends: Moons of Elsweyr card expansion on June 27th, 2019.
Rage 2 also has its own set of up upcoming new features releasing this week. Included in the release will be new cheat codes from the wasteland wizard, pilotable mechs, motorcycles, one-wheeled “armadillo” vehicle, sand worms, and more. The Rise of the Ghosts expansion was also teased but no release date was provided.
Jerk Gustafsson, the Executive Producer at MachineGames, announcing two new Wolfenstein games. Wolfenstein Cyberpilot is a VR game where you play a hacker who takes control of the enemy war machines and will be available in July. Wolfenstein Youngblood will also be released this summer on July 26th. Youngblood is set in the 1980ies, two decades after New Colossus, and centers around to sisters looking for their father in occupied Paris. This will be the first Wolfenstein game with Co-op.
Dinga Bakaba, Game Director, and Sebastien Mitton, Art Director, from Arkane Lyon announced the new game Deathloop a first-person action game. Few details were provided other than there are two assassins trying to kill each other on the island of Blackreef. Each time one of them dies they return to life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXv5IDp8y74&feature=youtu.be
In the tech space Orion, a patented collection of software technologies, was announced by Robert Duffy, Chief Technology Officer at ID Software, and James Altman, Director of Publishing at Bethesda. Orion will serve to optimizer game engines for streaming. In doing so it can reduce latency by up to 20% per frame and require up to 40% less bandwidth. For developers, the SDK will be easy to use and integrate with existing game engines. To demonstrate Doom (2016) was played on stage at 60 FPS streaming to a mobile phone. They also announced that Bethesda would soon begin public trials of Orion. If you are a fan and want a chance to try steaming Doom to your home, you should sign up at www.SlayersClub.com.
The final game presented was Doom Eternal. Marty Stratton, Executive Producer, and Hugo Martin, Creative Director, indicated that the player will travel across multiple dimensions. They emphasized the importance of engaging level design and handcrafted combat. Also announced was multiplayer Battlemode where 2 players take on the role of demons and 1 player takes on the role of a slayer. Each type of demon will have their own abilities and will be able to summon AI demon to help defeat the slayer. Doom Eternal will be released on November 22nd, 2019 with a collector’s edition that contains a slayer helmet, more details about the game will be available at QuakeCon.
There was also a nod to The Elder Scrolls 6 and Starfield being in active development during the presentation. Unfortunately, no further details were given about these two titles. The event finished up with a nice video montage using the new games content that was featured.
Catherine Daro
The Elsweyr cinematic is beautiful. Khamira hissing at the dragon was badass.