BENGALURU : E3 — The Electronic Entertainment Expo was only super relevant to gamers when social media wasn’t as effective as releasing key specs of new games and tech innovations in gaming. Despite the obvious absence of Sony and Activision this year (even Xbox was disappointed at their nemesis’ cop out), E3 is still an important event that sets the year’s colour tone for the vibrant rainbow of videogaming. However, why would we want to watch five hours of an E3 keynote when a YouTuber releases the highlights an hour later? And perhaps even, why would we want to watch 40 minutes of trailers when a columnist tells you exactly the games and innovations you should be excited about?
This year, the trend of ‘keeping games bigger and experience different’ is rendered in game names too: with ‘Halo Infinite’ and ‘Doom Eternal’. In this league comes the trailer of Ubisoft’s WatchDogs Legion. You might remember WatchDogs as that one game which entertained you by allowing you to hack any character’s fictional phones for conversations and fictional bank account details (apart from its advanced-techy super stealth missions). Now, the game lets you play as ANY of those characters in the universe — meaning there are no ‘Non Playable Characters’.
What’s also great is that Legion allows to take a non-lethal path to victory (I would like to call this ‘Ahimsa gaming’), a step in a mainstream game that will go a long way in dispelling the general public’s apprehension towards excessive gore and violence in videogames.
Nintendo asks us to say Kon’nichiwa to a new evolution of the Pokemon game, its gameplay looking unrecognizably 3D and flawless; and a sequel to ‘A breath of the Wild’ where Zelda might be playable! Cyberpunk 2077 made a reappearance this E3, showing off the scale of its universe with its futuristic cars, physically augmented droid like characters, and a robotic-armed Keanu Reeves playing a character in this heavily promoted game that releases in 2020.
E3 2019 celebrated the epic — subtlety had no place in the biggest MMO name drops — a flashy trailer for ‘Black Desert’ PS4, and the trailer of ‘Last Oasis’ delighting with its woodpunk locomotion of wind-powered land ships is worth a watch. As I write this, E3 still happens; so, rest the excitement until the games release.
Highlights
■ The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) opened on Tuesday at the Los Angeles Convention Center
■ At E3 events hardware manufaturers, sofware developers and publishers from the gaming industry present their products
■ Video game conventions are a common sight every year at E3
■ Sony has been a part of E3 since its inception. Bit, for the first time this years, the company is not taking part.