Nioh
Team Ninja, the people who brought us the notoriously hard Ninja Gaiden series, have returned with a new samurai game. Set in feudal Japan, the gameplay we’ve seen so far promises fast-paced bushido combat in a world inspired by Japanese mythology.
Nioh clearly draws a lot of influence from the Dark Souls series with its daunting difficult level and a deliberate battle system focused around the use of stamina – or ki. Much like the bonfires in Dark Souls, the player must fight their way to new shrines in order to save their progress.
When faced with enemies, you will be able to switch between three sword stances with different movesets and benefits. The high stance deals greater damage at the cost of more ki, the low stance gives you better defense and the middle stance offers a more balanced approach.
The Last Guardian
Sony’s press conference hosted one of the most anticipated reveals in the history of E3. After nine long years of waiting, The Last Guardian has an official release date.
Originally conceived as a PS3 title, production on The Last Guardian began back in 2007. Continuous delays and the transition to the PS4 kept pushing the release of the game back. The game’s turbulent development left many of us wondering if the game would ever come out.
The game follows a young boy who is kidnapped and taken to a castle. There, he meets and befriends another prisoner – a massive half-bird, half-dog creature. Together, they must evade their captors and escape the castle.
The lead designer and director of the game is Fumito Ueda, the man behind the critically-acclaimed Shadow of the Colossus and Ico. The Last Guardian will feature Ueda’s signature artistic style, full of beautiful landscapes and ruins in muted sepia.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Nintendo dedicated their entire E3 Treehouse event to showcasing Breath of the Wild, and with good reason. This new game looks like it will be the most ambitious project from Nintendo in quite some time. With very little information available prior to E3, there were many new mechanics and concepts to introduce at the show.
Breath of the Wild marks a return to the fundamentals of the Zelda franchise with a renewed emphasis on exploration and non-linear progression. You can tackle the dungeons in any order you want and there are plenty of secrets to find while you explore the massive open world. Among those secrets are 100 small dungeon areas – called shrines – which unlock new abilities and items.
Link can traverse the land by riding horses, gliding through the air from high points and even scaling many of the surfaces out in the wild. Your ability to climb and perform other activities will be limited by a stamina meter. We can only hope that it is less restrictive than the much-reviled stamina system in Skyward Sword.
Resident Evil VII
While many of the upcoming games were only available to play at E3, the demo for Resident Evil VII was out on the PlayStation Store right after it was announced.
Set in a derelict house straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the demo tasks you with escaping from the building. Along the way, you find a video tape which depicts the grisly fate of a camera crew that previously explored the house.
The demo is definitely reminiscent of PT, the playable teaser for Silent Hills. Both demos offered atmospheric, first-person exploration in spooky houses and they both turned out to be teasers for new installments in traditionally third-person survival horror franchises.
It has been confirmed that Resident Evil VII will be in first-person and it will support PlayStation VR. The developers also said that the demo isn’t necessarily representative of the actual game. Instead, it serves more as a preview of the mood and atmosphere they want to achieve in the final product.
Nonetheless, what we’ve seen so far suggests that the game will be a dramatic departure from both the third-person survival horror the series was built on and the schlocky, action-movie style of some of the more recent installments.
Dishonored 2
The follow-up to Arkane Studio’s 2012 title, Dishonored 2 continues the story of royal bodyguard Corvo Attano. This time around, you can play as either Corvo or as deposed empress Emily Kaldwell as they fight to regain the throne from a mysterious usurper.
The sequel moves the action away from the bleak whaling town of Dunwall to Karnaca, the thriving coastal city where Corvo was raised. The developers have said that they focused on world-building and storytelling in Dishonored 2, an element that was sorely lacking in the previous game.
With multiple solutions to every obstacle and a variety of paths through each level, Dishonored 2 is designed to suit whatever play style you choose. You can rely on stealth to get by your enemies, you can fight them all with sword and gun or you can choose a method that’s somewhere in between.
The gameplay at the show highlighted several new arcane abilities at the player’s disposal. The new Domino power, for example, allows you to link multiple opponents together so taking out one means they all go down. The demo also featured a mission which has the player jumping back and forth between two different time periods.
Never Sleep Gaming 