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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
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.
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.
..........
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?
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