The end of E3 2021 summarised the entire event. It was interesting but bland and dragged on for far too long without any substance whatsoever.
Personally, Take-Two Interactive's diversity panel was the worst showcase of the event. More because they took an important topic like 'diversity' in companies and turned it into a face roll of a zoom call. If anything I bet it's gotten people to hate the topic more now than before.
While we recovered from that, Capcom...showed up and that's about it. They had nothing new to announce and their updates weren't that interesting either. To be fair, they did suffer from a data breach that leaked most of their presentation and even then it was underwhelming.
Ubisoft's penchant for shoehorning everything Tom Clancy related into a forced futuristic setting continued with Rainbow Six Siege: Extraction and completely dashed the hopes of older Rainbow Six fans that prayed for a more tactical game and even disappointed people who sat on the 'Vegas' side of the fence. To be fair, Farcry 6 looks genuinely interesting but then they were too eager to pull the trigger on the season pass before the game was even out and left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
Microsoft and Bethesda's showcase was the best thing at E3 this year with a solid line-up of games and a sleek presentation that blew everything else out of the water. To nit-pick, Halo Infinite could have done with some more gameplay from the campaign but what they showed off from the multiplayer looked really fun. The value that Xbox Game Pass now provides is meteoric with day one launches of first party titles, EA Play being included and tons of games being added all the time plus cloud gaming just around the corner. For Rs 489 a month (Rs 699 for Ultimate), this is the game subscription service to beat.
Square Enix completely dropped the ball with an underproduced showcase that came off as tone deaf and completely unnecessary. Guardians of The Galaxy looks really cool but the presentation took up way too much screen time and then Babylon's Fall being announced as 'live-service' game completely took the wind out of their sails. It might still be an awesome game but the first impression has been anything but positive.
Nintendo didn't disappoint and stuffed their presentation with big reveals that genuinely had fans excited with the first new 2D Metroid title (not counting the remake) in 19 years, Breath of the Wild 2, Tekken's Kazuya Mishima joining the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster, Super Monkey Ball and many more.
And then Bandai Namco took the stage.
To be fair, most of their big titles they had to showcase had already been covered like Elden Ring, Scarlet Nexus and Tales of Arise but to dedicate an entire event to just one game to close E3 off was just dismal. I feel sorry for Supermassive games as it was likely not a decision in their hands but the entire 'showcase' just dragged on and likely did more harm than good to the reception of their game.
What made things even more sketchy was how the event was handled, it was first billed as a Bandai Namco Entertainment showcase before changing it at the last minute to The House of Ashes showcase which tells us that there was more going on behind the scenes than what was presented.
In a way it was the perfect way to close E3 in 2021. Some great announcements but on the whole, rather dull and uninteresting.
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