Okay, so I finally watched it. Posting thoughts before I watch the Gears E-Day direct. I see what everyone’s been saying, it lacks some of that “OOMPH” energy Xbox shows have had in the past. I’d say SGF did snag a lot of the exciting reveals including ones that surprisingly are getting a lot of Xbox support with Play Anywhere.
I think what also became a surprising problem is Xbox’s many shows now. Metro got announced at the Xbox first look. Minecraft Dungeons 2 was announced at Minecraft’s event. ESO for once could’ve had a worthwhile update at the showcase with XPA and PC game pass but those already happened and were announced at ESO’s event. We already knew what F76 was doing. COD was an awful way to end the show because it already had it’s big reveal and it’s been taken off of game pass. Pacing in general was an issue. Front loading with Gears and Fable just made the rest of the show drag. I think Phil, Sarah, and Matt had also created a good system of splitting up the show with quick breaks and announcements with the three of them. Sharma at the start and Booty at the end was just kinda long. I do like breaking up the showcase in proper segments for just a quick update to tell us why we should be excited about Xbox as an ecosystem in different areas. That ad for the Xbox anniversary edition console just thrown in the middle with no commentary was just kinda weird to me.
It also just didn’t at all feel like a 25th anniversary despite them saying it a few times during the show. Like it wouldn’ve been a nice one to record to venue screening live to see crowd reactions and make it feel more like a celebration. Then after post the digital broadcast. They also could’ve done stuff like bring Phil and Sarah on to officially thank the community for the past years at Xbox and wish Sharma and Booty the best moving forward. Do something to make it feel special. Heck bring in the Rock and do a callback to the original Xbox reveal. Even if they didn’t do it live they could’ve put that in the digital broadcast. A video message from him or a montage of “looking back at the past 25 years”. Something to “show not tell” that they were celebrating a 25th anniversary.
Overall, I’d still give the show a B+ though. There were some great third party reveals and good gameplay (Castlevania looked sick). The biggest problem is that it felt like an extended version of last year’s showcase. So many of the games were already announced with their hype moment and now this was the release date & release window plus gameplay. I think the only unannounced games from Xbox first party were Spyro and Senua.
We’ll have to wait for Intergalactic to see how they will do this gen because both games that they have released so far were a disappointing in terms of tech (they don’t even have any form of RT) and smoothing out the edges of the animations in the TLoU1 Remake caused some issues gameplay wise (animation priority over precision e.t.c.). But I guess you can say that TLoU1 Remake was almost a cashgrab so yeah probably not a good indication of what’s to come.
I think E-day looks better than anything from SONY & all the more incredible that it’s doing it all at 60FPS. Also, that’s how you show off a game, non-stop pure gameplay.
By the way the showcase on YouTube has 2.2 million views and is still #1 trending for gaming with #2 being Atlus repost of the Persona 6 trailer with 1 million views. Xbox got such a good get for game pass.
Maybe someone at Microsoft is sleeping with a Sega executive? Stranger than Heaven is shaping up to be massive and now we’re also getting Persona 4 Retold and Persona 6.
I would argue Ninja Theory is up there with ND if not slightly better with Hellblade 2. Looking at the Senua vs Thórgestr fight in particular the small micro expressions on their faces as their weapons make contact, there are times when the characters in that game look real because I don’t see even a hint of uncanny Valley when I look at them. I am not the biggest NT fan but I have to give them their flowers on that one. I am always surprised that Hellblade 2 isn’t brought up more by the graphics whore crowed but i suspect it had to do with what console it appeared on first.
I don’t disagree with this, I would say Hellblade 2 itself is still unchallenged, but it is clearly a more lean, direct and focused game. It has no grand scope, length, or much variety in terms of how you engage with it. Visuals and animations it’s still the top dog, but it also does less in the way of everything else around it, which is worth considering.
It’s smaller scope but the team is small and the budget of the game is a fraction of Intergalactic’s for example. It offers all the UE5 feature set and as Joe_Sinister1 already said it’s the only game that can be compared to live action instead of a good CGI movie just because there’s almost no uncanny valley effect from the game’s visuals. Smaller or not this is an achievement on itself.
Also last gen Sony 1st party visuals were helped by the fact that all of them were targeting 30fps, now that the 60fps modes are mandatory they can’t push the visuals as much. Unless Intergalactic is only 30fps (which I doubt it) I don’t expect to see it offering anything extraordinary when compared to the best that we’ve seen this gen.
