Sony disappointed with its E3 2017 presentation, revealing very few new major titles and only offering more footage of previously revealed games.
Sony placed games firmly at the forefront of its E3 2017 press conference, with there only being a few distractions from its endless stream of new gameplay footage. While this was certainly a confident move, the considerable lack of any big announcements left the entire presentation feeling underwhelming, as did the majority of the games releasing in 2018.
With Microsoft having fumbled the reveal of the Xbox One X, failing to outline any substantial reasons why viewers of its presentation should splash their cash on the console and struggling to sell 4K (a problem Sony also faced with its PS4 Pro reveal), many turned to Sony to pick up the ball with its E3 showing, continuing its tremendous momentum of the past few years. However, the event largely focused upon delivering extra footage for the likes of God of War, Spider-Man and Detroit: Become Human, and while it’s always great to receive a closer look at games that are just over the horizon, it doesn’t exactly make for the most compelling E3 press conference.
PlayStation VR owners will at least be pleased with the surprising amount of new games that were announced with the headset, with Sony having mostly neglected to support the hardware since its launch late last year. Though there were no huge new announcements for the platform, games such as the horror title The Inpatient were certainly interesting and offered hope that the PS VR won’t be resigned to a similar fate to the Vita, as had previously been suggested. Bethesda is also continuing to milk Skyrim‘s udders, with the game now making its way to the PS VR in a move that should prove to sell more than a few headsets given the RPG’s continued popularity.
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It was impossible for Sony to keep delivering internet-breaking E3 conferences, with them having spent every year since the PS4’s announcement blowing their competition out of the water. This was a decidedly down year for Sony in this regard, with there being few exciting announcements and a lot of games with 2018 release windows. Unfortunately, many of these games don’t even have exact release dates locked down, so we have no idea just how far into the future we’ll get to play what Sony showed to us.
One of the few major upcoming games with a confirmed release date is Days Gone, which will launch on December 29, 2017. I’m finding it incredibly difficult to get excited by this post-apocalyptic, zombie-ridden action game, with all footage we’ve seen of it thus far (it also closed Sony’s E3 press conference last year) offering little that we haven’t seen in the various other games that utilize a similar setting. This footage showed the protagonist, a cookie cutter bearded man, taking on an enemy outpost using diluted stealth mechanics, and it somehow looked even more derivative than it did last year.
God of War looked as good as it did when it was debuted, though very little new information was revealed about it. Detroit: Become Human shows a lot of promise, but it can only be met with cautious optimism considering Quantic Dream’s last release, the woeful Beyond: Two Souls. Uncharted: Lost Legacy and Horizon: Zero Dawn‘s ‘The Frozen Wilds’ were also highlighted, though it’s difficult to get too excited about DLC expansions, and the Shadow of the Colossus remake/remaster is good news if nothing jaw-dropping. Monster Hunter World was announced, and it appears as though Capcom has specifically catered it to a Western audience, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. The show was wrapped up with footage from Insomniac’s Spider-Man, which looks fantastic and is definitely one of the highlights of this year’s E3, but again, there’s no confirmed release date.
Unfortunately, the biggest talking points were what was missing from the press conference. The Last of Us 2 was nowhere to be seen, while Death Stranding was also strangely absent despite it appearing in the promo reel that played before the conference. Final Fantasy VII Remake also remains M.I.A., while Shenmue 3 continues to hide in the shadows since its shock E3 2015 reveal. Perhaps this is why Sony’s E3 2017 was free of big name announcements — many of the biggest talking points from the company’s past few E3 shows have revolved around games that we have still yet to play, with this year’s E3 at least limiting itself to games that should definitely be making their way to the PS4 in the near future. Unfortunately, this doesn’t exactly make for a particularly compelling show.
