Introduction

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is upon us once again! This year is shaping up to be a big one, with both Square Enix AND Bethesda holding their own full press conferences along with the usual Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, and EA, presumably to announce some exciting upcoming titles. Especially noteworthy this year is Bethesda, who have never held an E3 press conference like this before and have recently announced their upcoming sequel to the Fallout franchise, Fallout 4.

Where To Watch

You can watch live streams of E3 events through the following links:

http://www.twitch.tv/Twitch
https://www.youtube.com/e3

Schedule

E3 2015 is taking place June 16-18, with press conferences being held on the 14th, 15th, and 16th. Check the schedlue below:

Bethesda Press Conference - Sunday @ 6:30 pm
Microsoft Press Conference - Monday @ 9:00 am
EA Press Conference - Monday @ 12:30 pm
Ubisoft Press Conference - Monday @ 2:30 pm
Sony Press Conference - Monday @ 5:30 pm
Nintendo PRess Conference - Tuesday @ 9:00 am
Square Enix Press Conference - Tuesday @ 10:00 am

(All Times are in Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), please check below to get times in your local timezone)

IRC & Live Discussion

For the past 3 years I've held an unofficial live chat and discussion of E3 via IRC and this year is no different. You're all invited to join me and anyone else interested in E3 and video games at #E3 on irc.adelais.net. If you've never used IRC before, you can follow this guide to get it set up and use the command /join #E3 to join the room.

One of the benefits of staying in #E3 is our custom bot which has a number of functions you can access by sending it ![commands]:

-E3- LIST - List of each major event at E3 this year
-E3- TIMEZONE [SET ] - View what timezone dates are shown to you in. Set your timezone using !timezone set . Ex. !timezone set gmt-5 or !timezone set America/New_York
-E3- TIME - Displays current time for you to verify you have the correct settings.
-E3- NOTIFY [ON|OFF] - Enables/disables personal notification when events are about to begin.

So by using !timezone you can set which timezone you want the E3 schedule to be sent to you in. Using !notify on will allow the bot to send you direct notifications when an E3 event is coming up or starting. Additionally, the bot announces to the whole channel when events are coming up or starting so you can still stay up to date without the above. The topic will always change to reflect any current events coming up as well.

News Roundup

Bethesda Press Conference
News Summary
Full Conference Video
Doom Gameplay Trailer
Dishonored 2 Announcement Trailer
Fallout 4 Gameplay Trailer
Fallout Shelter Announcement Video

Is anyone else on board for Fallout 4? I was actually pretty impressed by what they revealed. It looks like they've made honest attempts to address a lot of the issues I have with Bethesda games, but I'm still a little bit miffed that prior to this event they claimed the engine was "brand new" which I feel is dishonest since they admitted it was still Creation Engine which I wouldn't call "brand new" but that's not really important any more. The first minor detail I noticed is how the lip syncing appears to be a million times better overall. Also that they recorded thousands of common names in dialogue is very impressive, I've always wanted a bigger game to attempt this.

I'm interested to hear what people think about it, both long time fans of the series and those who've never played before. What's your opinion?

Just watched the gameplay trailers, I've never been this hyped for a fallout game. Looks like they made the gun play more like a traditional FPS which I'm very excited about.

I don't really understand why people are falling once again for this Bethesda hype. I see trailers and an announcement on Fallout 4 and all I can think of is waiting for it two years later for the GOTY. By then, it'll have all the DLCs, no bugs (and you KNOW Bethesda will always have bugs), and a ton of mods to play it with. At the very least they'll have released unofficial mods to take care of the bugs that did stay.

I'm not at all that excited because I just played NV last year so it's still pretty fresh for me. I kinda wish Obsidian stayed on and made F4 as well because those Black Isle guys really know how to make a Fallout game and they fixed alot of issues F3 had (like the reliance on VATS, the broken skills, and having reputations alongside karma). Plus there was that bonus of having interesting DLCs that connected with each other and weren't just episodic but of differing styles. I don't really know anything about F4's changes so I don't know if they retained any of the shit that made NV great for F4.

I have no qualms with the use of the old engine and just want more wastes to explore. F3, for all its flaws, had better environments and just had a more different tone. I wouldn't mind some of the wackiness F1/2/NV had, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Quote from Hewitt

I don't really know anything about F4's changes

wait, what? then why are you even commenting on them?

they're adding a ton of new features and the execution looks great so far. I love the visuals as well, seems like they took a page out of Bioshock Infinite and did away with the dull green/orange filters which I'm extremely excited about. I'm not falling for anything, I genuinely enjoy Bethesda's games. they never disappoint.

I never commented on F4's changes. I'm just saying that I hope they retained things that Obsidian set up for. That's all.

yeah but you're talking about people falling for "bethesda hype" when you haven't even seen what they're excited about. I don't get it.

I put those 2 sentences in 2 separate paragraphs, dude. I talked about NV's features then talked about hopelessly expecting them in F4 in the 2nd paragraph.

The first paragraph is just about Bethesda's games in general. Weren't we all excited when F3 was announced (well maybe not as excited at the time because the F2 fans might've taken offense at the FPS shift)? Weren't we all crushed when the thing was riddled with bugs? How bout when Oblivion and Skyrim first came out? Oh and then we had all these DLCs that kept being churned out that made us expect to pay for them every month. I've never bought anything for any version short of a GOTY. For Borderlands, for Fallout 3, for Skyrim and Oblivion. Because then I know the company isn't going to try and swindle me any further. I'm excited about Fallout 4; I just don't think I'll be seeing it when it comes out on November. The hype is just for that.

Wait for it, for god's sake. Stop pre-ordering these shitty open betas.

I guess I'm just saying, this discussion is about the what, 15 minutes or so of footage that was just released about it? why not watch its so we can talk about the new features instead of the usual anti-hype rants everyone goes on whenever Bethesda announces a new game

I get what you're saying though

am I the only one who will (try to) watch all of these?

Hewitt I don't see how you could possibly say someone is "falling" for Bethesda hype, when their last three big games, Fallout 3, Skyrim and Oblivion have all been absolutely amazing. Sure there's bugs, but that's what happens in games this size. Anyway, I can't honestly remember a single bug when I played Fallout 3 back in 08. Of course, it's a buggy piece of shit trying to run it nowadays on Windows 7 with a quad core CPU because Bethesda never bothered patching it.

But anyway, I am very hyped for this game. The things that interested me the most:

- face creation looks balls deep
- females (I sense another 2 hour long face creation coming on)
- modding weapons
- FPS mechanics improved to be less clunky and more like a conventional FPS, as Exilement said.
- graphics are realistic. By realistic I mean they're not showing off bullshit top-tier graphics that these crumby "next gen" consoles won't be able to handle. (looks at you, Witcher 3, Dark Souls 2, Watch Dogs, Bloodborne)
- and obviously the damn base creation mechanics. Although I have a little trouble getting excited about building anything in games these days. Minecraft spoiled us with infinite build possibilities. Once you've built something block by block from the ground up, it's hard to get excited about copy/pasting set pieces around.

I'm watching them all too, we have E3 playing at work here. Generally the people in #E3 on IRC are there to watch them all

Quote from Cronos

- females

You could do this in FO3 and NV too, not sure why the crowd went nuts over that.

Probably in reference to the Assassin's Creed thing. On an un-gameplay related note one of the pre-order options includes a Pip-boy. Checked Aussie prices and it was like 200 bucks in stores so fuck that.

But on a game related note that character customization thing is going to drive me bonkers. I'll be spending hours trying to get shit right.

Edit: Also I can't help but be reminded of Call of Duty Ghost from the dog. That's the future of video games peeps, canine companions.

Quote from Exilement

You could do this in FO3 and NV too, not sure why the crowd went nuts over that.

There was a controversy based on some supposed leaked information that was this Fallout will have a story mode that you can only be a specific male in, and after the story is done you can be anyone. People were upset because of what you said, they were unsure why they suddenly decided to go this direction. Fallout has never had a voiced protagonist either so that also made people believe the rumor. Just to give some context.