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E3 2015 – Sony Press Conference – Live

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SONY E3 2015 Press Conference

*Live blog. Please refresh*

-Just a few minutes till the show. Some quick hopefuls: Uncharted 4, LOL THE LAST GUARDIAN? 

-6pm – Press conference is live. Showing a sizzle reel for all the upcoming Sony games.

-Please welcome Shawn Layden. New reality of gaming is boundless. More than traditional gaming with the social connectivity. First game of the night, highly anticipated by the Sony community. Heroism and companionship, poetic story telling. Alluding to Uncharted? Nope, The Last Guardian. WTF!!?!?

The Last Guardian

-Trailer shows gameplay. The child and his beast. His giant, winged griffon thing. The child mimics jumping and the beast jumps across the valley, and waits. The player traverses down the ladder and makes the jump himself, but won’t make it, so his beast catches him on the other side. We command the beast via the child we play. Very much like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. More like ICO with map platforming puzzles. Incredible level physics destruction. We need to make the run as the platform starts to come apart. The griffon misses the catch but uses its tail. Incredible emotional puzzles involving both the player and out beast, as we climb on its back and assist its climbing the ruins. The beast act and whines like a dog, has horns and feathers and little wings.

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– Sony has reintroduced The Last Guardian. 8 years after the first announcement. 2016. Acknowledge the visionary director behind the title.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

–Guerrilla Games Herman Hulst is up next. Makers of Kill Zone. Latest franchise. Captured on the PlayStation 4. Trailer starts in a cave covered in cave painting and hieroglyphics. Showcases Native Americans. Alludes to a time after the fall of man, of the big cities. Of the re-birth of a new planet as the cities faded away. New life. New tribe.

“The first to hunt, the first to raise our bows.”

The animals are now robots. A new take on the battle between man and machine.

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-Game looks gorgeous. Huge techno dinosaur-like creatures. Smaller techno deer-like creatures. Traditional bow and arrow, but with arrow mods. Awesome destruction elements. Game play shows the huntress taking on a large robotic dinosaur with the bow and arrow, one on one. One bow mod is a grappling tether that can attach to the ground. Then highlighting the weak point, takes it down. Horizon: Zero Dawn.

“A storm is coming”

From the creators of Kill Zone, this game looks absolutely incredible.

Hitman

–Square Enix. Pre-rendered trailer showing an impressive future, celebrities, important people, and then cut with an agent running, cut to a sniper. New Hitman. The agent running in the woods was Hitman. Beautiful trailer.

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-World premiere of the new Hitman. Exotic locations. High profile targets. Agent 47 returns. Most ambitious title to-date. Starting with a digital release.

-PS4 exclusive beta to PS4 first.

Street Fighter 5

-Starts with a gameplay trailer. Showcases some of the iconic fighters. Very cool gameplay with the same art style as the previous game. PS4 beta starts July 23rd.

No Man’s Sky

–Hello Games, Sean Murray. No Man’s Sky. Gameplay starts in the ship, and leaves the space station to space. Shows that we’re on the boundary of two warring factions where we can join in and take sides.

-Zooms out and shows our current location in the current solar system. Pulls back and shows more stars, that can be reached. Pulls back more! Forever more. Every point is a sun, and each sun has a solar system with planets and life. The map zooms out forever. Sean says most of these places have never been visited and may never be.

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-We’re gonna pick a place at random, and travel to a place we haven’t been to. Procedurally generated galaxy, undiscovered. Scans of the solar system shows points of interest. Beacons are found, and this is where you can upload discoveries, as we land on the planet. Not the prettiest planet he jokes. “I’ve seen better”. Every planet is fully destructible. The planet’s sentinels show up and we walk away under water, and fish are shown. The beacon is found to upload our discovery. Every planet is new and unique.

-Will announce a release date soon. Trading, fighting, exploring, survival. It’s a huge game.

Dreams

–Media Molecule, makers of Little Big Planet. New game challenges our ability to create. Think of a dream like world. Share the dream space of others and share you creation to others. Game is like a moving painting. Using the controller at the paint brush. Quick, intuitive, and fun. Piece together a painting and then act it out, using controller performance capture as puppeteering. Quick trailer shows some of the dreams made with the tool: piano player, polar bear, space battles, teddy bear vs ground monsters, back to the piano player who  is now a polar bear. Game doesn’t have typical polygons or animations. Art is fluffy looking.

Firewatch

-Intense mystery in the Wyoming wilderness. Firewatch. Blocky models and very colourful. Trailer is narrated by a woman’s voice and we talk to her throughout the adventure. First person forest adventure game. Dark and mysterious adventure.

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Destiny

-Next great adventure in Destiny. Trailer announces Orix, the Take King. Follows the Crota Raid. Orix is out for revenge, as we killed his son, and is bringing a dark army to hunt us. Shows the new subclasses for each guardian. New enemies, new planets?

“Orix is coming. You’ve got his attention, now go get his head”

Destiny: The Taken King coming September 15th, 2015. Exclusive content on PlayStation.

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

-Trailer starts with Jocob Frye’s voice, but the main focus is Evie Frye, his twin sister. Shows the new weapons for Evie, the cane-sword, and throwing knives. Exclusive missions called the Dreadful Crimes, for the PS4.

World of Final Fantasy

-Cute little trailer with cartoony characters.Welcome to Grimwoir. Show’s tiny monsters. Adorable enemies and heroes. Small in stature with a grand fate. Small and cute. PS4 and PS Vita. World of Final Fantasy.

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-Very special treat from Square Enix. Trailer shows a revolutionary city, with ominous music. Jaws-like. Final Fantasy 7 Remake. First to Playstation 4. People are flipping out!

-4 new games from Devolver Digital:

  • Ronin – assassin-like 2-d sidescroller.
  • EITR – pixel hack and slash.
  • Mother Russia Bleeds, pixel gore brawler.
  • And Crossing Souls, cartoony adventure game.

–Shenmue 3? “Time to unfold the story.” Announced via Kickstarter. Yu Suzuki comes to the stage to discuss the project. Countdown to the kick off of the kickstarter. 5,4,3,2,1.

-Start funding. 2 million dollar goal.

Batman Arkham Knight

-Steam works type trailer, with old music. Joker. Batman Arkham Knight. :).  Joker is in a furnace getting torched. Flames turn into the bat symbol.

-First person perspective of Officer Owens in a diner. Gets attacked by scarecrow and starts to seen crazy enemies. Scarecrow Missions exclusive for PS4.

-This game looks especially dark. and comes out next week. WOo!

Project Morpheus and Playstation Media

-VR landscape look awesome, providing such innovative game options for developers. Morpheus will allow co-op game play with other people. Multiplayer game Rigs is shown, 3 vs. 3 multiplayer arena game. Morpheus is a choice, add value to the console.

-Partnered Playstation Music with Spotify. Expanded Playstation View, live TV streaming service. Allow users to subscribe to individual channels, not ties to bundles. PS Plus members get discounted rates.

-Playstation is partnering with Activision to bring Call of Duty. Playstation gets COD first now.

Call of Duty Black ops III

-Deepest and most engaging COD ever, campaign, multiplayer, and zombies. Gritty campaign, redesigned from the ground up. Load-out available before the mission starts, and supports 4 player co-op.

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-Game looks good, and smooth. Starts in a ship, and we find the pilot with reenforcing bar stabbed through the chest. The ship falls and we need to leave. Very futurist looking. New powers available with the suit. Advanced battleground with lots of spider tanks and walkers. Ability to control friendly walkers. Level destruction looks amazing. Lots of digital HUD elements. Story sizzle reel trailer wraps up.

-David Vonderhaar – Treyarch. Introduce Black Ops III multiplayer. Game play trailer shows new powers and mobility, and female fighters. Underwater parts to the maps. Multiplayer looks fast and epic.

-New era with Call of Duty and Playstation. New home of Call of Duty, getting all dlc map packs first.

-Sizzle reel of upcoming titles. Hitman, Batman, Dues Ex, Mad Max, Uncharted, Horizon, Destiny, Metal Gear Solid, MLB, Street Fighter, LEGO, The Last Guardian, and Until Dawn. Ratchet and Clank too.

-PS Vita sizzle reel up next: Tearaway, Dreamers, Tony Hawk, among others.

Star Wars

-Star Wars music blasts into the arena. Shawn Layden is back to discuss Disney Infinity, Twilight of the Republic. Epic light-saber combat. Rise Against the Empire playset. Disney Infinity 3.0. Wold premiere trailer – Rise Against the Empire. Ends with Boba Fett.

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–Star Wars Battlefront. Patrick Bach – DICE, comes to the stage. Here to discuss the co-op and solo game modes. Battle game mode, hero encounters, trials, and survival are the solo and co-op options for the game. Trailer debut for Survival – wave based gameplay. Shows storm troopers and shock troopers. Gameplay looks amazing with authentic sounds and blasts. Lots of sparks, like the movies. Split screen support. Tag line – Live out Your Fantasies.

Uncharted: A Thief’s End

-Small title up next, which requires no introduction. Only on PlayStation. Long delay here….

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-Starts with a statue of Black Beard. Naughty Dog. Nate and Sully enter the shot, and open a large wooden door into a market. Gameplay shows lots of people milling about the market. Looks like the demo is having controller malfunction though. Nate’s not moving.

-Demo restarts with the Pirate statue. LOL. Woops. Visuals look amazing at least. Lots of interactions with the civilians.  Gun fire in our direction, and the real demo begins. Amazing physics, and level destruction. Great animations as expected. Gun play looks a little more consistent and refined. Still Triangle to pick up ammo. Witty dialogue still apparent between Sully and Nate. Great dialogue.

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-Amazing level platforming and the ability to drive vehicles. Different paths can be taken to avoid enemy gunfire. Great level destruction while driving. Seems we can drive anywhere. Come across a construction site, and have to go off-road. Enemy truck drives through the wall. Camera zooms in on Nate and Sully to show highlighted points of interest.

-Driving sequence is amazingly detailed. Following a convoy now, off-road. Nate jumps up front and tell Sully to grab the wheel. We grapple on the truck and swing under the bridge and the truck attached to the convoy. Demo ends when we are about to crash into a wall.

*breath*

-Press conference over.

-Phew. Typical with Sony’s Conferences, there’s no room for breathing, just game after game. They’ll probably break the internet with FF7 and The Last Guardian, and Uncharted 4.

-E3 Day Zero is over. Tomorrow I’ll talk about Square Enix’s conference. Hopefully more info about Hitman and Dues Ex.

-I’ll prob discuss a little more about my thoughts and opinions on each announcement, and what has me most excited.

-iRogan

WHOA PSN, Settle Down….

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You’re giving me a 5 DAY extension? Not Hours, Not Minutes? So kind.

Whatever shall I do with this extension? Does it bring back the sadness and the lack of support over the holidays? Can I redeem this for real currency to buy games? Can I take these days, and choose which calendar days I want to be specifically extended?

How about, during your next outage, I cash in one of these exotic days? Is that possible? No? Nothing?

So my coverage just goes from June 24th to June 29th? ‘Kind’ doesn’t do this service. I’m lost for words to describe my thankfulness.

E3 2014 – Sony Press Conference

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Well, its finally time. The final conference of the night. Hopefully trying to end big, Sony Computer Entertainment’s Press Conference is up.

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Predictions: Uncharted 4, The Last Guardian (finally), Maybe something from The Order 1886.

Sony opened big with Destiny, revealing The Traveler, stating we’re Earth’s last hope. This game has everything: its big, its a FPS, it’s an RPG, it’s got a MMO style campaign. It’s gonna be huge. Bungie’s new world is going to be a big investment, and it’s obvious that PlayStation is backing them pretty hard.

Andrew House – President and Group CEO of SCE comes out and describes how the PlayStation brand caters to gamers, releasing the best games on the best console. July 17th will be the Destiny Playstation beta, and PS4 owners will get a first-look alpha on Thursday, June 12th, 2014. They also announced an exclusive Destiny White PS4 Bundle on September 9th, 2014 for the full launch of the game.

The Order 1886 is up next, and we get a nice reveal trailer/ gameplay blend. PS4 exclusive. Dark setting with our hero getting attacked by a zombie-like man who transforms into a werewolf. Very cinematic, very dark, very cool setting.

Indy IP up next – Entwined. Shows two very vibrant origami like creatures. Brought to us by the dev Pixel Opus, their first game. You control both characters at once, using both joysticks, in a tunnel-like obstacle based game. Available now on PS4.

SuckerPunch’s Infamous: Second Son announced stand-alone DLC featuring a female lead. Doesn’t require the original copy of the game. Infamous Second Son: First Light. August 2014.

Blazing along with new exclusives, Little Big Planet 3 announced. 4 player co-op with 3 new character: Oddsock, a dog which can jump off walls, Toggle, a fat guy who’s strong enough to push object or weigh them down, but can shrink to fit through tight spaces, and Swoop, a parrot that can fly, and carry other players. November release.

Shuehei Yoshida announced that LBP1 and LBP 2 user created levels will be transferable to LBP 3 which enhanced graphics.

From Software announced Bloodborne, a new gruesome creepy title. Gory fighting, zombie dogs. Coming 2015.

Next up is the big Far Cry 4 gameplay reveal. Ubisoft’s conference gave us the opening introductory sequence, now we get to explore. Location is Kyrat, high in the mountains. Very much a Far Cry game, and it looks gorgeous. much improved engine. You’re fitted with a wingsuit and grappling hook, which allows you to swing over gaps or scale the side of cliffs. You can shoot and drive, hi-jack other cars while driving, and wing-suit out of the vehicle if you happen to plummet off a cliff. Very bright and colourful locale. Looks like there’s 2 player co-op options as well. Second player is introduced and arrives on a little helicopter to pick you up. Definitely new uses for the wildlife and an elephant helps you attack a secured fortress. Tagline “every second is a story” November 2014. Exclusive to the PS4, a friend can join your game even if they don’t own a copy.

Adam Boyes – Publisher and Developer Relations comes out and talks about letters from the fans and what they want:

Zombies: a very fun, colourful trailer is before us showing a zombie outbreak, as a runner with headphones misses all the events behind him, as he slowly turns himself. Very cool. Pretty gross. Dead Island 2. Deep Silver does cool trailers.

Diablo 3 PS4 edition announced, gets bundled with exclusive The Last Of Us enemies and themed dungeon, and exclusive character class.

We get another montage trailer for Battlefield: Hardline, basically summarizing the gameplay heist reveal we got from EA earlier today. Highlights on the zipline and grapple gameplay mechanics.

Fans want exclusives: Disney Infinity 2.0 will have Hulk on Playstation. Destiny will have lots of PlayStation exclusive maps and guns.

Jumping into more from the indy developer section of the conference. Paradox Interactive announces Magicka 2 – Learn to Spell, again. Should probably learn to spell magic first. Tim Schafer and Double Fine remastering Grim Fandango, exclusive to PS4 and Vita. Devolver announced some indy games coming exclusively to PlayStation console: Broforce, Not a Hero, Hotline Miami 2, Titan Souls, The TALOS Principal, and others. Journey’s dev, Giant Squid announced their new game too: an underwater setting with a scuba guy: ABZU. Looks incredible.

Last but not least from the indies – No Man’s Sky from Hello Games, an infinite space and planet procedure game. Every player starts on their own unique plants. Vast and boundless. Planets have wildlife, and water habitats, players get an X-Wing to fly around, there’s space ships and dinosaurs, and then you can leave the planet’s atmosphere and there’s space battles, and you can fly right into another generated planet’s atmosphere. Pretty incredible showing from this tiny team. #mind_blown. Colourful and vibrant, no two planets alike.

Hardware time: Sony’s PS Camera solo sales exceed their expectation, announced their VR, Project Morpheus. And then outcome the sales and social numbers. Later this year, utilizing the sharing functionality, PS4 users will be able to publish videos right to Youtube.

A quick sizzle reel is shown advertising all the free to play titles coming to the Playstation consoles, and Vita. 25 titles coming. Truly free to play, doesn’t require PS+.

Playstation Now: open Beta starts July 31st for PS4 in Canada and US. PS3 and Vita shortly after, later to Sony TVs. 100 titles during the beta to test rental duration and pricing.

Sony still showing strong support for Vita, with 100 titles in development, and the ability for remote play a huge selling point, and cross title purchases. Playstation TV, their little peripheral, that allows sharing over 2 TVs, and streaming Playstation Now, remote play, $99.

The conference is getting a little stale at this point. Sony, as a company, is more than just the games, so they have to sell us on their other hardware endeavors, and services. But wrap it up.

We get a gameplay reveal of Mortal Kombat X. Looks great. Sub and Scorpion of course, and two new characters. Not as smooth as the rendered reveal, but looks real good. More brutal x-ray moves, smooth fluid, BRUTAL animations and effects, and new environmental interactions, and weapons.

Back to Sony Services to wrap up the hardware side of the company. Brian Michael Bendis comes out to reveal Powers TV show, 2 seasons green lit. Sony original, only on Playstation. Rachet and Clank the movie, 2015 and a remastering of the original game, for PS4.

Alright, moving on, time to bring out the heavy hitters, Sony, to wrap the show.

Last of Us Remastered, included Left Behind DLC, July 29th, 2014.

Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain trailer. The game looks incredible. The story, as always is confusing and convoluted, and jumps around. Hard to follow, but I’m stoked. Kojima was right a couple weeks ago when he said the trailer was a little hard to watch. There’s some gruesome looking parts. No announce date of course.

Rockstar, an E3 rarity, announced GTA V for PS4 this fall. Online profile will carry over from 360 and PS3. I’m sure this will be available on Xbox 1 too, but Sony got the right to announce it.

Finally closing in on the end of the show now: Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham Knight. Recently delayed, and thank god for that. Extra time is a blessing well deserved to polish this masterpiece. Visuals – incredible. Gameplay with the Batmobile – amazing. Scope of the city – Daunting. Batman’s new suit is ridiculously high-tech. Armored batmobile that goes into a tank-like mode, and can strafe. Batman wrecks this city. Rocksteady said this game would be faster paced, no more climbing through vents, you shoot through vents, and you can launch yourself out of the car, and it’s AI will patrol the city while you fly around. Fast maneuverability is key in this show-case. Next gen only – Playstation gets exclusive Scarecrow nightmare missions. Can’t wait.

Alright, the time has come, what will Sony close the show on?

You guess it, Uncharted 4. Nathan Drake and Sulley, one last time. Back to the jungle, and Drake’s model and face looks damn near real. A very dark and ominous feeling to the trailer, but he’s still wearing that wedding ring. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. 2015.

Sizzle reel to close the show. Thanks for coming everyone. 19 games shown.

No The Last Guardian from Team ICO. There’s always E3 2015.

Thanks for hanging with my today, it’s been tiring.
Stick around for new reviews and previews coming soon.

iRogan signing off.