Let´s Talk About that Nintendo Direct & Sony State of Play

 A double punch of gaming presentations.

You know what? I will be talking about the week’s double hitters: the Nintendo Direct and Sony State of Play of the 13th. Well, the 14th for the latter in my time zone. Back on ‘Let’s Talk About… 1.0’ I tried my best to get a prediction post out before the show and my thoughts on presentation out as fast as possible after airing. You know, ride that hype train. The returns on those posts were… not good. Add in all the frantic work it took to get these articles out in a timely manner and well, I decided to just not write them anymore.

This time around though, I feel like giving my thoughts once more. Not only did we get two gaming presentations in mere hours of each other, a Nintendo Direct followed by the Sony State of Play, but there’s enough there (or wasn’t there in some cases) that I feel a strong urge to talk about. And, I do have to agree, I kind of miscalculated my game reviews. Playing Pokémon White 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, two RPGs, at the same time might be lots of fun but is not good for my schedule.

So without further ado, let’s dive into the juicy announcements these two presentations had on offer!

Fire Emblem: Engage

There had been some leaks, some info and a few screenshots, about a new mainline Fire Emblem game a few months back but its reveal was still a surprise for me. This outing, set to launch not long from now in January, feels very much like a celebratory outing. The big gimmick in this one is that using these special rings, you can summon old heroes from past games to fight with you. It seems like they act as a support unit rather than a full-blown playable character. Good call; with lots of Fire Emblem characters surely to come to this game making the all full units would have bloated the cast.

I’m, to my own surprise, actually not that excited about the title. I like Fire Emblem and I like what I’ve seen. The game looks good visually and the gameplay snippets look like an improved and polished version of Fire Emblem Three Houses, which was excellent. Still, my energy to Engage is low. Perhaps it’s because I’m not that fond of the gimmick, didn’t particularly care for it in Fire Emblem Warriors and don’t particularly care for it here.

Still, it’s Fire Emblem. I’m keeping my eye on it and knowing myself, I’ll get more hyped closer to launch.

Octopath Traveller II

Going from ‘I’m not as excited as I thought I’d be’ to ‘I scared my dog with the sound I made when I saw this reveal’. Octopath Traveller II, the sequel to Square Enix’s Team Asano’s first outing and the start of the ‘HD-2D’ imprint that would bring games like Triangle Strategy and Live-A-Live, is due next February and I can’t be more excited.

I adore Octopath Traveller. From the graphics to the music, to the gameplay, to each character’s individual story. It’s not perfect, not by a long shot, but Octopath Traveller, to me, was a magical experience. I pondered what a sequel could bring, the game did well enough to warrant one but never allowed myself to think about it too much. I didn’t want to set myself up to be disappointed because my expectations were unrealistically high.

I still listen to the soundtrack regularly, Square Enix put it up on YouTube for free, but I’d long stopped thinking about a sequel. When the words ‘Octopath Traveller II’ came on screen, it was the biggest gaming surprise I’ve seen in a while.

The game looks excellent, the music sounds just like the first and the trailer made sure to make it clear that the story of the 8 characters will intertwine. The lack of the latter was the number 1 point of criticism the first game received. We don’t know more than that but I don’t need to know more. I’m getting this game day one.  

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Lastly for Nintendo was what nearly wanted to see: the sequel to the Breath of the Wild or, as it is now known, Tears of the Kingdom. With that title also comes a solid release date: May 12th, 2023. This game has taken a lot longer to come out than I think anybody expected when it was revealed back in 2019. With the title and that concrete release date, I think we can finally look forward to this game in earnest.

The trailer shown here is very much a tease. It didn't show much, other than some wall carving that no doubt will tie into the story, alongside gameplay of Link running around the floating island in the sky. Even if it was all rather vague, Nintendo knew what they were doing when they made Tears of the Kingdom their ‘one more thing. It is the most anticipated Nintendo game at the moment and lo and behold: it is THE thing everybody is still talking about. 

God of War: Ragnarök

Speaking of which, on the PlayStation side, we have a similar case. Sony ended its presentation with its most anticipated title: God of War: Ragnarök. They gave it a new ‘story’ trailer. With only 2 months out, we still don’t know that much about this game and while this new trailer is pretty long, clocking it at just over 3 minutes, so we get to see quite a bit.

Even so, what we get to see is still vague. Unclear. Shrouded in mystery. We have narration, but it’s not clear who the narrator(s) is or are. Not initially, at least. Is that a bad thing though? That we still don’t know that much about the title? I don’t think it is. Trailers are always a tug of war between revealing too much or too little. Both will bite you. Ragnarök is a sequel so we already have some good idea of what to expect based on its predecessor. Keeping the finer details under wraps will only help build anticipation and make the game a fresh and surprising experience when it launches this November.

I do think Santa Monica needs to show a gameplay trailer, just to get a clearer picture of that aspect of the title but beyond that, I think we’re good marketing-wise. And that special edition God of War controller? It looks very nice. Very nice indeed.

Rise of the Ronin

The last game I want to talk about is the newly revealed Rise of the Ronin. An open-world action RPG set in late 19th century Japan from Team Ninja. You know, the studio behind Metroid: Other M. Probably not the title they want people to remember them for but it’s the one I know them from.

Anyhoo, this title looks interesting. Nothing that immediately jumped out at me but it looks flashy with its combat and a little less grounded (in a good way) than Ghost of Tsushima.

Yeah, let’s address that elephant in the room. You can’t get around how similar these two games look. Both are AAA PS5 exclusives set in feudal Japan starring a Samurai, or more accurately a Ronin, as the playable character. Because of these similarities, I didn’t really get why Sony would pay to make Rise of the Ronin an exclusive. Mulling it over though, I think I can see the reasoning behind the decision.

Ghost of Tsushima did good business but developer Sucker Punch doesn’t seem to have any interest in a sequel. Rise of the Ronin could fill the void a lack of Ghost of Tsushima 2 has left once it releases in 2024.   

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Those were the 5 games of this week´s Nintendo Direct and Sony State of Play I wanted to air my thoughts on. There was other stuff that I liked but I want to keep this post manageable and of a good length.

Overall thoughts on both presentations? I think the Direct was really good. Nintendo is very good at making these presentations. Good pacing and a nice variety with some heavy hitters to hype folks up.

The State of Play was weaker. God of War Ragnarök felt the only real big game in the line-up. Rise of the Ronin was a nice surprise, but not a big one and the rest was a lot of small stuff I didn’t really care for. Still, the online discourse was positive so I’m in the minority here.

Both suffered just a tad from the lack of stuff I would’ve liked to see, the heavily rumoured Winder Waker HD port and Horizon Forbidden West DLC respectively. Their lack is a bummer but with something like Octopath Traveller II, who am I to complain?