In the ashes of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, amid the bloat and pretense of the games industry, always must there be a presentation... always must there be game trailers... and always must there be those who commentate. So it is that we find ourselves in the aftermath of this year's collected summer showcases, a cavalcade of announcements and information to parse in its wake. For my part, I set forth to note the games that stood out among the pack. Today, we go over the high points of the Future Games Show , the Xbox Games Showcase , the PC Gaming Show and, yes , even the Ubisoft Forward . Heaven help us all... Future Games Show The High Point: Duck Detective: The Secret Salami The premise of “riffing on the hardboiled detective story with talking cartoon animals” would be a fine selling point for a game in itself. The choice to also lean into a sticker book aesthetic, complete with characters hobbling around as barely moving objects in a scene? Now that's a fun time ...
Fifty minutes or so, out of a live stream that went on for over two hours. Yeah, sure, there's been more strenuous ways to justify churning out several hundred words about an assortment of game previews. (The 1hr5 mark, for those looking to cut to the chase.) FINAL FANTASY XVI I am entirely convinced from this trailer that the background for this game's development was that someone at Square got really into Game of Thrones a decade ago (oh god...) and made the connection that it could work for Final Fantasy . I certainly buy that it'd take them approximately that long to move this game down the development pipeline, both because game dev is a messy and uncertain process and because Square Enix. That said, as "Japanese takes on moderately-grim Europeon medieval fantasy" go, this doesn't look half bad. XVI seems to be carrying over the quasi-real time combat system that worked for Final Fantasy XV , and the choice of high-fantasy aesthetic and setting after seve...