E3 2017 - Bethesda Conference Rundown

It’s 5AM in the UK, and I’m up earlier than a man without children should be, sat watching Twitch. Why have I done such a thing? Because Bethesda, that’s why. I’m hoping for a new IP and an addon to DOOM. Sadly, neither came, but here’s what we did get from the big stage show.

The show started in a really nice fashion, with a selection of vox pops from the staff of Bethesda and their children. The staff are all telling us how they have their dream job and they love it, the children are telling us that their parents make games which make people happy. It’s not a game, but nonetheless it’s really cute. But you’re not here to find out how cute their pre-show reel was are you? Let’s talk games.

VR

Global VP and president of marketing for Bethesda Pete Hines comes to the stage and here’s where the meat comes in. He starts out with a talk about VR. There’s two VR games coming this year, both of them were playable at E3. Neither are a new title, but a VR mode for existing games.

Later this year, we are being treated to Fallout 4 VR and DOOM VFR. From the footage that we have seen, it looks like we’ve got that “jump forward” type movement and otherwise it’s more of the same. To be fair, it’s probably unwise to change a winning formula. I can see a few people getting very sick from DOOM in VR, but vomiting is half the fun of VR, right?

Elder Scrolls

Contrary to the wishful thinking of most of the internet, there’s no mention of Elder Scrolls VI. There were a few things about the series brought up though. The first was the already-released expansion to Elder Scrolls Online in the form of Morrowind. The star of the show here is a giant bear fighting with you, even the staff are rewinding the trailer to see him again. There’s a lot shown of clockwork city, with giant steampunk style automatons. It’s all looking very pretty.

We also saw Elder Scrolls Legends and the new cards coming to the game. Next month sees the release of Android and iOS versions of the game, and alongside those, there’s a new set arriving on the 29th of June which is entitled Heroes of Skyrim, because clearly Bethesda haven’t milked Skyrim enough yet. As if that point needed reiterating, we also saw Skyrim for Nintendo’s Switch, complete with Amiibo support!

Creation Club

Bethesda tend to encourage mods to their games. They were one of the first companies to bring mods to consoles and their games have benefitted from them hugely on the PC. To add to that, they’re introducing what they are billing as the Creation Club. This seems to be a mix of in-house, third party and community mods. There wasn’t any word on whether this will offer anything that Steam Workshop doesn’t, or if it is set to complement or replace Steam’s service. We did get told that it will be cross-platform though, with PS4, Xbox One and PC all getting access to the service. No word on the Switch however. There was also no mention of cost, although see our news section for more word on this.

Dishonored 2

Now the dust has settled on the patchy release of Dishonored 2, it’s time for an update to the game. This will be called Death of the Outsider, and it seems to centre around an assassination mission against a black-eyed gentleman known as The Outsider. Expect to see it on the 15th of September.

Quake Champions

Quake Champions is currently in beta so we already knew it was coming later this year. What we didn’t already know is that it’s going to be accompanied by a massive tournament. The 26th of August sees the Quakecon event in Texas, and there Bethesda are holding the Quake World Championships. As one of the games which started the concept of esports, it’s fitting to see a major tournament centred around the latest title in the Quake series. With a prize pool of a million dollars, we can expect to see a lot of competition in this one.

The Evil Within 2

There was a long and very detailed cinematic trailer for this one. The original Evil Within was a moderate success, if not a world-beater, but it looks like Bethesda are pulling out all the stops with this one.

All the horror tropes are there; there’s a minor key version of a pop song playing to creep people out, a father who has lost a daughter, said daughter coming back from the dead, and lots of creepy white liquid. Between the creepy screaming faces morphing out of what appears to be white paint and the zombies that are wandering around, this looks like it’s going to be a very unnerving title. There’s a distinct Death Stranding vibe this time around and you can see that Kojima’s styling for his mystery game has influenced things a little.

At the end of the trailer we caught the release date, and surprising nobody, they announced The Evil Within 2 is coming just before Halloween on Friday the 13th of October.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

This was probably the big reveal of the show. Not that it hadn’t been hinted at, but the fact that they’re so far along with it is a surprise. We saw our first look and had a release date thrown at us all at the same time.

This time, we’re looking at what appears to be a dystopian alternate history where the Nazis won. 1960s America is a very different place, with cat monkeys and giant mechs. Of course everyone speaks German and everyone has to show their identification papers all the time. It’s like Trump’s America but with more umlauts.

We meet our old hero who’s now joining two resistance movements together to fight the Nazis. There’s a meeting between two southerners over whiskey and a random background oboe player, and then the action starts.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus looks a lot like the new DOOM did. Especially with sections that appear to be on some kind of vessel that looks remarkably like the UAC. Presumably it’ll be using the same engine. If it’s as good as the new DOOM was, then I will be happy.

We don’t have long to wait to find out if it’s good or not either, as the title is nearly ready. Release date is set for the 27th of October, although no platforms were announced.

So that was Bethesda at E3. Perhaps not the biggest presentation that the company has ever done, but it certainly had some great moments. Personally, I was hoping for that rumoured sci-fi franchise, but apparently that isn’t ready to go just yet. Given Bethesda’s recent history of announcing games relatively close to release, it might not actually be too far off, but at the moment, I’m going to wait for The Evil Within 2 instead!