E3 is the sort of thing that publishers and developers spend the whole year planning for. It's grand gestures and big reveals. But sometimes it's also something much more appealing - quirky little moments in games, fleeting instances where you glimpse something truly human happening. Here, then, are the best individual moments of E3 2018, with GIFs where appropriate. The Cyberpunk 2077 commuter with his head on fire
Is the follow-up to The Witcher 3 channelling Blade Runner? No - it's channelling Robocop, and this beautiful, comical, horrifying moment proves it.
Once more, we close the book on yet another E3. Whether or not you feel like you saw what you wanted to see, it was certainly the annual spectacle we've come to expect. At the very least, we've seen some Death Stranding and as such, it seems we now have the video game version of Kevin Costner's The Postman we've all quietly wanted for years. On top of all of that, we've got another batch of this week's best deals to check over. As usual, we've got deals that'll work in the UK, deals that'll work in the US and some deals that will work in both the UK and US, as well as presumably many other places. Let's get started. The vast GOG Summer Sale comes to an end this Sunday but the lovely folks over there have gone and sent us a few hundred game keys to give away to folks just like you. To be in with a chance of winning (and there's a fairly good chance you'll get something), follow the link below and enter.
Bungie has killed Cayde-6, Destiny's wise-cracking chief Hunter character. It's an emotional moment for fans of the game. Cayde, voiced by Nathan Fillion, has been with Destiny players since the first game came out in September 2014. Now, he's dead, as revealed by a new story trailer released for upcoming expansion Forsaken. Why kill Cayde? That was my first question as I sat down to interview game director Christopher Barrett and project lead Scott Taylor at E3 this week. That and, is Cayde actually dead, as in good and proper dead? It turns out Cayde really is dead, good and proper. That's what Barrett and Taylor told me, anyway, and they sounded serious. It's all a part of Bungie's drive to give Destiny 2 a darker tone after the series veered too far into jokey one-liner territory. And who's Destiny's jokey one-liner extraordinaire? Poor old Cayde.
It was the E3 where we half-expected Sony to break cover with its plans for the next generation of PlayStation hardware, but come the hour, it was actually Microsoft that confirmed that its hardware engineers are hard at work architecting what Phil Spencer called "the next Xbox consoles". Implying that more than one new Xbox is in development right now is an interesting - and dare we suggest, deliberate - choice of words. This was swiftly followed up by a report from Microsoft/Windows-focused website thurrott.com, describing a 'family of devices' currently in development under the 'Scarlett' codename, set to arrive in 2020. Thurrott's insider stories along these lines are typically well-sourced and the timelines tie-in with the arrival of the technological building blocks that will enable next-gen hardware. But with Spencer talking about new hardware in the plural and the Scarlett project reported as more than just a single console release, we have to wonder what form the next generation is going to take, and what separates each of these machines from a technological perspective. After all, in the here and now, Microsoft often refers to its Xbox One 'family' - similar devices in many ways, but with radically different levels of rendering power. There are further strands to weave into the discussion here, with Spencer revealing his annual E3 interview with . It's well worth a watch, with the Xbox boss seeing next-gen as an opportunity to focus on higher frame-rates and to leverage the firm's existing work with variable refresh rate and 120Hz display technology. Spencer also sees the arrival of new hardware as the means by which CPU and GPU power can be rebalanced line with what we see on today's PCs, as opposed to the situation we have now where even Xbox One X - the most powerful home console - is pairing a six teraflop GPU with low-power x86 CPU cores originally designed for tablets.
There's more bad news for Telltale, the company behind the Walking Dead and Minecraft: Story Mode series of adventure games, with its ex-boss suing the company. The reports Telltale co-founder Kevin Bruner, who became CEO in January 2015, filed the suit in late February, claiming breach of contract and other allegations. The dispute revolves around Bruner's ousting as boss of Telltale in 2017. Bruner remained on the board, and now says the company was contractually obligated to provide him with informational support as he prepared to sell his holdings in common and preferred stock. But Telltale cut off communication. At around the same time, in September 2017, Telltale hired Peter Hawley, a former executive at the Zynga game company, as chief executive.
The developer of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has debunked what it calls "misinformation" and "oversimplified tales" about the way the game is developed. The criticism here revolves around the re-use of certain assets across PUBG's maps, and the buying of pre-made assets from the Unreal marketplace. Posts like the one below occasionally pop up on the , alongside the accusation that the vast majority of the game's maps were bought-in. Some even accuse PUBG of being an "asset flip" game. This debate kicked off again this week after PUBG creator Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene expressed his frustration at the "asset flip" jibe in an interview with Geoff Keighley at E3, saying it "kills me a little inside".
How do you duck a question about the politics of a game which pits a citizen militia against a corrupt government in modern-day Washington DC? Well, you could start by talking about the weather. "I loved the coldness of the first game, and to be able to go to DC and actually get to feel the humidity and hot summer of East Coast weather," The Division 2's creative director Terry Spiers to Polygon at E3, when pressed about what it meant to stage an armed uprising in the capital of his own country. "That's what I'm most excited about." This kind of chipper, non-committal platitude has become as natural as breathing for Ubisoft, even as its various Clancy properties bury their expensively accessorised noses in topics like the South American narcotics trade or the ethics of torture. It's all rather odd when you consider the pride, not to say enormous smugness, Tom Clancy himself took in the links between his stories and the shadow realm of superpower relations and national security. on TV in 1998, for instance, arguing for a change of law to permit the assassination of heads of state with reference to his 1996 door-stopper Executive Orders. in a memorably unsympathetic Washington Post profile, boasting of the "half-million" calls he received from admiring reporters in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm. With their starchy casts of alpha nerds and special operators, visions of an America that is at once wargod and underdog and steamy accounts of missile launches and fleet manoeuvres, Clancy's books were warmly embraced by the military establishment. Colin Powell - former US secretary of state and one of the minds behind the bogus case for Saddam's secret WMDs - once declared that "a lot of what I know about warfare I learned from reading Tom". Ronald Reagan was also a fan: while negotiating with the USSR in Reykjavik, he recommended Red Storm Rising to Margaret Thatcher for its "excellent picture of the Soviet Union's intentions and strategy". Clancy, who never served in the armed forces thanks to acute near-sightedness, reveled in all this, name-dropping high rank contacts to reporters and railing against peaceniks and grifter politicians in speeches at academies and bases. You wonder what he'd have made of Ubisoft's determination to avoid seeing Tom Clancy games in any kind of context, to show us footage of democracies on fire while talking gaily of blue skies and "exploring a new city".
PES 2018 doesn't have a World Cup update - EA has FIFA's signature on that official licence. But it does have a small group of dedicated fans who have put the time into creating an unofficial World Cup update for the game. Konami's football game is famous for its option files - edits that add official player names and kits, among other things, to the game. Back in the day, I'd spend hours manually editing player and team names in PES to make them real life accurate. These days - in fact for some time now - PES players have been able to download and install community-created option files that do all the work for them. There are a handful of pretty decent World Cup option files for PES out there. The . For PC players, the is a great choice. It adds a new World Cup-themed menu for the game, new logos and font design, new updated kits for national teams, correct lineups and formations and even new tattoos. Check it out in the video below. It's pretty impressive work!
Cast your minds back almost a year ago and you might remember the mania that accompanied Amazon Prime Day, an event that was originally a one-day-only batch of discounts and special offers Amazon offered up in order to celebrate its anniversary. The event itself started back in 2015 and now, a few years later, here we are - Amazon Prime Day is an annual thing and a bit of a mini-Black Friday in terms of bargains and rushes on stock. This year's Prime Day is set to take place on 16th July, 2018. While Amazon makes a habit of keeping the exact day of the event under wraps until shortly before launching, it seems as though a stray banner has given the game away for this year's event, as that the aforementioned imagery went live sometime yesterday, proudly stating: "Starts at noon, 16 July. An epic day (and a half) of our best deals." The extra time allotted to what is still proudly called "Prime Day" is not unprecedented, as last year's Prime Day festivities took place over a 30-hour period. The extra six hours brings the total event time up to the previously mentioned "day and a half" timeframe. The 16th itself is later than Prime Day is traditionally held (usually taking place around 12th July), though with the World Cup Final taking place on 15th July, it's a safe bet Amazon has gone with a later date in order to keep the spotlight purely on Prime Day.
Fortnite's shopping cart is a lot of fun - but it doesn't look like Epic's laughing. Fortnite's first vehicle - if you can call it that - has been added and pulled from the battle royale game multiple times since it went live in May as Epic battled to prevent players from using it to glitch under the map. This week, Epic added the shopping cart back into the game only to pull it again a couple of hours later.
We've come a long way from Assassin's Creed not letting you play as a woman - or from doing so only in short sections of its campaign. Assassin's Creed Odyssey will let you play through the entire game as either female or male mercenaries Kassandra or Alexios - and just like the game itself, its reversible cover will let you pick your favourite. That's according to creative director Jonathan Dumont, who revealed the detail in a AMA last night.
The first episode of Life is Strange 2 arrives on 27th September 2018 - that's just three months away. It's actually titled Life is Strange 2, as well - to delineate it from Dontnod's original series and the excellent prequel spin-off Before the Storm. Life is Strange 2 will comprise of five episodes. The teaser below shows the game's title being stitched onto a worn backpack. More details, a post on the game's says, will be revealed in August (likely Gamescom).
Fortnite has a habit of releasing a cool new thing in the game and then pulling it just hours after launch - and it's done it again. Yesterday, Epic released patch 4.5 for the all-conquering battle royale game and with it Playground mode. Playground LTM (limited time mode) lets you train, explore and battle in a care-free environment. You can drop onto the island with up to three friends and do things like practice building or just mess about, free from the stress of the normal last player standing gameplay.
When at the end of Bethesda's E3 show, the message was clear: we're working on the game but it's a very long way away. We saw a very brief trailer of a mountainous, coastal environment, and then a logo, and that was it. But what were we seeing? Was this the setting of the new game or a kind of red herring - a generic Elder Scrollsian scene made for the trailer? Has Bethesda Game Studios even settled on the region we'll play in yet? I thought we'd wait yonks for an answer but as luck would have it I got one from Todd Howard at Spanish conference Gamelab this week.
Last week, Beyond Good & Evil 2 creator Michel Ancel told fans to expect a . It was disappointing news, perhaps, for those eager to explore the kind of worlds glimpsed in last year's flashy E3 debut trailer. But it was also news which should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone following the game's still-early progress. What sort of game will Beyond Good & Evil 2 be? It's still hard to say - a year on from the tech demo shown behind closed doors at E3 2017. Over the 12 months, Ubisoft Montpellier has periodically streamed updates to its loyal followers on Twitch, but these have mostly just been opportunities to share concept art and answer questions. For this year's E3, Ubisoft Montpellier packed a proper gameplay demo in its suitcase, one which showed off co-op play and some early combat and exploration systems - but it was another glimpse which left us with probably more questions than answers. I'm excited for Beyond Good & Evil 2's story after hearing how the dots connect between the two flashy CGI trailers shown thus far. Likewise, I'm delighted by this year's confirmation BG&E1 stars Jade and Pey'J are back for definite. For those in need of a recap, last year's trailer saw our crew of heroes steal a set of coordinates and set off for something named Moksha's Gate, a mysterious object described by Ubisoft Montpellier as "a door in space", led by a captain who shared a familial resemblance to Jade. This year, we caught up with the crew later on, with the captain mysteriously missing, as Jade herself pops up as an antagonist and seemingly ends the mission to Moksha's Gate for good.
Sea of Thieves' second time-limited event, Gunpowder Skeletons, does exactly what it says on the tin. Rare's swashbuckling pirate simulator has added skeleton enemies which carry gunpowder kegs. Naturally, you'll want to stop the buggers before they can get too close and blow up. Blow them up first and you'll gain renown from the Bilge Rats - Sea of Thieves' new faction who look after the game's time-limited events. Like the last event, which saw you tracking down Skeleton Thrones, you'll gain Doubloons for your trouble which you can then use to buy limited edition outfit items or trade in for reputation with the game's permanent factions.
Blizzard has seemingly unveiled Hammond, its latest Overwatch hero. Hammond is a hamster in a mech suit. A teaser video posted to Overwatch's official Twitter account shows Hammond rolling in wearing a hulking metal suit, like one of the droidekas from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Turrets fire, and the camera zooms in as the top pops open to reveal... the cute hamster within. Fans have reacted in surprise to the reveal - and delight that Hammond's identity as a hamster was correctly called by Overwatch reddit user just 24 hours ago.
Last October, EA shut down Visceral Games, which had been working on a secretive under-wraps Star Wars project led by Uncharted creator Amy Hennig. The game - codenamed Ragtag - was said to be too linear by EA bosses and . Since then, , we've heard nothing about the aftermath: what had happened to Hennig, or what the future might still hold for the game under its new guise. Today, at the Gamelab conference in Barcelona, Hennig revealed to Eurogamer's Rob Purchese that she had actually parted ways with EA as of January this year and was in the process of starting up her new, independent studio - but had not yet had the chance to announce the change or set the record straight. As for that exciting-sounding Uncharted-inspired Star Wars game she had been creative director of - it's not good news. Read on for her full response.
Given absolute freedom to race anywhere you choose, The Crew 2 is one of the most exciting racing concepts on PS4 and Xbox One consoles. For those who missed the original, it hands you a miniaturised version of the USA, from New York to San Francisco, remixed and remodeled for you to freely explore. Four years on, the canvas is now even bigger for this sequel - and to help with that heightened scale, developer Ivory Tower adds boats and planes to an existing warehouse of supercars, giving you more ways to get from state to state. The sense of scale is often staggering - a supersized version of Forza Horizon, if you will - and the idea is realised surprisingly well on all consoles. Of course, you can bypass all of the game's open-world roaming, and just jump straight to set racing events on a 2D map. It's far more practical, but ultimately it's hard not to experiment with The Crew 2's engine in a more free-form manner, just to see how far it goes. Certainly in my experience escalates to a point I didn't expect going in. First, there's the breadth of the terrain. Taken at a macro level, the breadth of landmass is a marvel - it's just as much experimenting with this side of the game as the actual racing. The engine gives you all the tools you need to migrate quickly: take a vehicle anywhere in the world, freeze the action, and then zoom out and out until you see a full top-down view. It's like an in-game Google Earth - even letting you walk around to admire your collection of boats, planes and cars. The orbital camera mechanic has similarities to Driver San Francisco - itself an unusual last-gen racer, which let you detach from your vehicle. It's curious to note this was developed by Ubisoft Reflections, who also had a hand on the original The Crew, and you have to wonder if some ideas were carried over between the two projects.
The Australian Classification Board has announced that, following a successful appeal by publisher Gearbox, Compulsion Games' psychedelic dystopian adventure We Happy Few will now receive a R 18+ classification, enabling the game to be sold in the country. Back in May, We Happy Few was in Australia, effectively banning it from sale, after it fell foul of the ratings board's strict policies on drug use in games. The board claimed that its drug-use mechanic, which can make progress easier in some circumstances, "constitutes an incentive or reward for drug-use and therefore, the game exceeds the R 18+ classification that states, 'drug use related to incentives and rewards is not permitted'". In response, Compulsion Games noted that We Happy Few's "overarching social commentary is no different than Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, or Terry Gilliam's Brazil", highlighting that the game unfolds in a world where use of the drug Joy is mandated by the authorities, and that "the whole point of the game is to reject this programming and fight back".