The much hyped Sony press conference at E3 2017 was nothing if not theatrical. Opening with a sultry, sitar-led musical performance and then transitioning to Uncharted: The Lost Legacy‘s trailer, the presentation started off strongly, but technical issues with the stream plagued the ambitious production. The presentation was a bit clunky and overstuffed with performance art, but was low on the talking heads and interviews we saw at other press conferences over the weekend.
No new PS4 upgrades were announced this year, and the hardware offerings were very VR heavy. The presentation had a healthy number of esports titles, though not many new games were on display; just established titles or games that we’ve seen previews for at previous events.
Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite
We’ve been seeing bits and pieces of this game at conferences for months now, and the E3 2017 was very story-heavy with no new game play. The trailer introduced a new villain for the game’s campaign mode:
The character models still look a bit unpolished, but here’s the gameplay trailer from months ago, which seems to be a better esports representation. The game will be available on September 19th, 2017 for Xbox One, PS4, and on Steam.
Call of Duty:WWII
The much anticipated return of boots-on-the-ground Call of Duty was confirmed with Sledgehammer Games’ extended trailer with multiplayer game play. We see genuine World War II era guns, that for the most part, look like they fire with reasonable speed and have the right “weight” to them. The game certainly looks like it certainly plays a lot slower than the most recent Call of Duty titles (which included wall-running, jetpacks, and exo-suits to aid in movement speed and directional capabilities).
Will this be the first title pro players don’t turn on after six months? Only time will tell. So far the pros have been (almost) universally supporting the game.
Edit: The /r/codcompetitive reddit is fed up with the idea of tanks in the multiplayer mode.
The game will be released on November 3rd, 2017 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows.
Bravo Team
Soon after the extended Call of Duty trailer, another boots-on-the-ground shooter was offered, but this one was for the PSVR: Bravo Team. It looks like a very basic, modern FPS game that also has the virtual reality element that is really hot in gaming marketing right now (though it is unclear how many top dollar VR peripherals people are really going to be buying over the years). The game is included in this esports recap primarily because it wouldn’t be surprising to see a big company like Sony attempt to make further inroads in VR marketing by packaging the game as an esport in the future and holding multiplayer tournaments (if there is a true multiplayer mode).
Destiny 2
Ah, Destiny: it’s the sci-fi space opera MMO FPS that could have been so many things, but ended up being a bit middle-of-the-pack in terms of futuristic games due to clunky storytelling and endless DLCs. The E3 2017 trailer for Destiny 2 introduces a new Big Bad, Dominus Ghaul, the leader of the Red Legion who has destroyed humanity’s Last City. The trailer is without the one-liners from Cayde-6 that were prevalent in the initial trailers, and focuses more on the ominous story line and offers some nice shots of the what the newest versions of the warlocks, titans, and hunters will look like. A few snippets of gameplay were tacked on to the end of the trailer, but we already got a good look at some game play last month with the extended “Homecoming” trailer.
The game will be available on PS4 on September 6th, and PC users will get the game on October 24th. Open beta begins July 18th, and access is available when you pre-order the game.
