What Won E3 2015? | GameSided Roundtable

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Rebekah Valentine (Twitter)

I found most of the conferences, on the whole, to be a bit disappointing. There were a few shining moments early on, but not enough to make any one company stand out in my eyes. My favorite game, though, came out of Sony’s conference: Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Post-apocalyptic land where nature has taken back over? Beautiful. Really bad-ass female lead with cool hair? Awesome. Robot dinosaurs?! I’m sold! The reveal video for Horizon Zero Dawn completely captivated me, and may end up being a motivating factor in my future purchase of a PS4, if it keeps sounding as good as it did last week. Right now it looks like a sort of Monster Hunter/survival/Skyrim-type game. I do worry that my high hopes for the game won’t pan out. Maybe it’s all just killing monsters and there won’t be much in the way of story, or maybe actual gameplay won’t be very attractive. Hopefully Guerilla Games takes their time and is able to make something worthy of that first reveal reaction.

Annie Lee (Twitter)

Opinions on E3 seem split this year. I’m going through different websites’ summaries of E3 and piles of tweets, and it doesn’t seem like there’s an obvious answer on whether E3 2015 was a great one or a dud. But one thing’s for sure, there were many fantastic individual elements to look forward to in the coming months. Bringing it all together though is the sheer ecstasy that only gamers can get at moments like the unveiling of Final Fantasy VII and Shenmue III. While having never played the Shenmue series and played FFVII only briefly, I found myself watching countless video after video of gamers’ reactions when those games were announced during the conferences. You can’t beat joy like that. Those kinds of moments at E3 reminds us that our excitement over video games comes from a deeply invested attachment.

Daniel George (Twitter)

EA had easily one of the most unevenly-paced conferences during E3 2015. Whether it was backloading their show with stagnated cuts to and from sports titles, including a painful conversation with Pele for everyone who doesn’t care about soccer (most everyone watching the events), or spouting out mobile titles that looked to fill up time until the Star Wars Battlefront gameplay, it just seemed to be business as usual.

That is, until Unravel was revealed.

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A heartwarming platformer, Unravel was announced by the game’s director Martin Sahlin, and he could not be more nervous to be in front of a live audience and in front of hundreds of thousands watching at home. Through nervous shaking, he powered through to show off what would quickly become a crowd favorite. The Unravel Twitter account has been keeping up the cutesy approach, with the Unravel protagonist hanging out in an assortment of different locations and trying out different games on the E3 2015 show floor. People cared not strictly to feel sorry for the guy on stage, nor because the gameplay looked like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Unravel brought some well-timed humanity to a conference well devoid of it. And for that, I am grateful.

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