Like most gamers around this time of year, everyone here in the AYB Content team is eagerly awaiting this year’s E3 conference. While we won’t have anyone covering the show floor this year (I’m crossing my fingers to be there next year), we’ll all be watching the news, streams, social media and forums religiously.
Instead of just building up hype for upcoming games though, we thought this would be a great opportunity for our readers to get to know the content team a bit better! So we’ve prepared mini E3 wishlists and bios for everyone on the content team. Also, be sure to check AYBOnline for our coverage of the E3 keynotes and reveals!
Here’s a handy list of all of the keynotes in central time:
- Oculus: June 11th, 12:00 PM CDT (not technically part of E3, but we all know you want to tune in)
- Bethesda: June 14th, 9:00 PM CDT
- Microsoft: June 15th, 11:30 AM CDT
- EA: June 15th, 3:00 PM CDT
- Ubisoft: June 15th, 5:00 PM CDT
- Sony: June 15th, 8:00 PM CDT
- Nintendo: June 16th, 11:00 AM CDT
- Square-Enix: June 16th, 12:00 PM CDT
- PC Gaming: June 16th, 7:00 PM CDT
Without further ado, here is our content team member’s wishes and predictions for E3 2015.
Jake “TheBreakfast” Carewick
What year was your first E3?
E3 2003. I vividly remember watching the Half-Life 2 trap town tech demo with my brother, and demonstrations of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, which was still known as “Oblivion Lost” at the time. I also remember following the game’s development for four years after that.
What is your favourite memory of E3?
“One million troops. Wow.” Honestly though, it’s a toss up between lengthy behind-the-scenes reveal for Half-Life 2, or the big reveal “this is no FPS, this is MGS” trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4.
What do you expect from this year’s show?
I have a lot of predictions, and I have a feeling I’ll be spot on in almost all of them.
- VR: Big stuff from HTC/Valve, Oculus and Sony; new VR devices from unexpected vendors (Apple) accidentally revealed by developers
- Sony: Guerrilla Games’ rumored new IP, Gravity Rush PS4 port/sequel, Heavenly Sword sequel (Hellblade), Rime, and something new from Quantic Dream. Maybe the return or reboot of a classic IP (like Jak and Daxter, or the long rumoured re-purchase of Crash). Probably some Project Morpheus stuff too, and more HD re-releases.
- Nintendo: StarFox reveal trailer, Metroid teaser, Fatal Frame, and maybe the long-rumored new IP from Retro Studios. Sadly, Legend of Zelda is confirmed as a no-show by Nintendo (fingers crossed they’re lying). I’m also betting they’ll spend an uncomfortably long time on Mario Maker. Also, I’m betting we’ll hear about a WiiU price drop.
- Microsoft: New Gears of War + HD collection announcement, Halo 5, and Forza. They’ll also have the “exclusive reveal” of the new Call of Duty. Maybe something related to Banjo Kazooie or Battletoads. Quantum Break confirmed as a no show.
- EA: Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Mass Effect 4, and a whole bunch of Star Wars. This one is almost a sure bet. Weird surprise: Star Wars horror game from Visceral Games.
- Ubisoft: Third person action stealth with tower climbing. Also The Division, and Rainbow Six: Siege. Maybe a new Splinter Cell. Crossing my fingers for Beyond Good and Evil 2, though I’m not getting my hopes up.
- Square: I’ll predict what they won’t show: info on the new Kingdom Hearts. What they will show is a lot of new stuff on Deus Ex, Final Fantasy 15, Mad Max, Just Cause 3, and Tomb Raider. I’m gonna throw this out there too: Legacy of Kain.
- Bethesda: a bit more on Fallout 4, Doom 4 gameplay reveal trailer, Quake 5 teaser, Dishonored 2 teaser and Dishonored “definitive edition” HD re-release. Also, new expansions for Elder Scrolls Online. This is their first-ever press conference, so it will probably be a big deal.
- PC Gaming show: Big focus on Star Citizen and probably VR, as well as Microsoft blowing smoke about Windows 10 and their “commitment to PC gaming.” Honestly, this one could be anyone’s game, but I’m crossing my fingers for something big.
What is your biggest wish for this E3?
I have high hopes tempered with low expectations. I’d love to see Red Dead Redemption for PC (fat chance, especially considering Rockstar doesn’t really do the whole E3 thing), a new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game (now that GSC Game World is back in business, this could be possible), and of course, The Last Guardian. Unfortunately Valve will not be showcasing anything at E3 this year according to Venturebeat (and many others), so 99% likely there will be no Half-Life 3. Still, fingers crossed, right?
Jesse “Radiophage” Mackenzie
What year was your first E3?
I’m a terrible example for the rest of the site, actually — I normally avoid E3 itself and its keynotes, and stick to watching news coverage afterwards. It’s like I’m allergic to hype. Go read everyone else’s instead, they’re not as bitter and jaded as I am *chomps cigar*.
What is your favourite memory of E3?
Alright, I’ll say it: this video skewering the Sony presentation at E3 2006. (Fun fact: Google will only autocomplete a search for Ridge Racer if you have four “i”s!)
What do you expect from this year’s show?
I’m going to go a little meta with this one: I expect to see E3 taking big steps to redefine itself. They’ve lost the crown of “premier videogaming exhibition” to PAX, and they will have to move either closer to or further away from the PAX model in order to survive.
We already know what their first move is in this direction – inviting the “prosumers” to cover the exhibition along with more seasoned journalists. It’ll be interesting to see what else they do to redefine themselves.
What is your biggest wish for this E3?
I would love it if we saw a big, dramatic shift AWAY from missile batteries of optional pre-order gated season-pass day-one DLC bullshit, and TOWARDS reasonable, respectful business models. Yes, I know I wrote about this a month ago, but it still grinds my gears, dammit!
“Orion”
What year was your first E3?
My first E3 was back in 2003, Losing my shit over the announcement of Halo 2. Yes I know – I was a different person back then.
What is your favourite memory of E3?
Oh man THIS is the hardest question to answer, I hate you Jake haha. I think E3 as a whole in 2010 – 2011. Here I am watching E3 and the reveal for Deus Ex Human Revolution, Mass Effect 3, Bioshock infinite. 2011 was an unreal year for me all these stories were meeting their end, and new adventures were about to start!
What do you expect from this year’s show?
I’m expecting one hell of a show! E3 has of grown in popularity among gamers, and has become the source of “end all be all” events and news. This is truly the big guns’ time to shine and wow the fans to get them pumped for what’s new and exciting in the upcoming months. I believe we may just have the biggest and best E3 since 2011, as PC gaming is back, and much more. THIS will be the show to watch, think of it as the gaming equivalent to the Super Bowl.
What is your biggest wish for this E3?
- New Elder Scrolls title, something tells me this will happen in the Elsweyr region
- Valve teases us with more Half life 3, more cryptic messages
- Nintendo showing in game footage of StarFox and release date
- More Amiibos announced, breaking parents wallets and souls
- Microsoft, I want so so badly to announce a new Age of Empires, with future tech or even bring Halo Wars over to PC after all these years. PLEASE
- Xcom 2 Gameplay Trailer, Special Edition announcement and where I can get it.
- New Gears of War, basically a given
- Another Disappointing Halo 5 trailer
- Doom trailer and game play PLEASE
- Some Disappointing VR stuff that Jake will lose his mind over and tell me allllll about
- Losing my mind at the Deus Ex trailer and more info
- Left for Dead 3 announced.
WILD CARD GUESSES
These are things I’d like to see happen with no prior hint or grounding, just wild things I’m throwing out there.
- Half Life 3, announced through cryptic puzzles only discovered exactly 3 Months, 3 weeks and 3 days after event.
- New Duke Nukem announced, delayed 11 years immediately
- Doom and New Wolfenstein crossover announced
- Pokemon announced, for Wii U
- Half Life 3, confirmed Ouya exclusive by end of conference.
- Halo 5 announced coming to PC
- GameStop exclusive Half Life trailer, Only shown at 3 Stores in random parts of North America, my predictions are: Seaford, Delaware, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Taylorsville, Utah. Confident in these locations
- New Bioshock shown/Announced, Not actually Bioshock but we all know it is.
- Paid Mods announced again by Valve
- Season Passes declared obsolete and a monument to the pass, Games released actually complete, DLC no longer a thing.
- DOTA 4 announced, 3 never happened, it never happens. New Make your own character features shown off.
Kevin “Pumcy” Carbotte
What year was your first E3?
Oh god, I can’t even remember what year I first tuned in to E3. I guess it would have been highschool, so late 90’s. I remember finding E3 because I used to always search for information on prototype consoles. That’s when I found IGN, and of course they were covering it way back then. I’ve made a point to pay attention every year since then, often booking time off work when I was younger to catch certain live streams.
What is your favourite memory of E3?
That’s so hard to quantify. There’s been so many amazing things revealed at E3, but I think I’m going to answer this in a different way.
My most memorable E3 moment has nothing to do with the games or hardware being revealed. It was everything to do with the situation.
I used to work in an IT Help Desk, and we had access to extra computers, and a backup internet line used only if the main one drops. My partner and I were both huge game nerds so we set up a laptop to stream all of the live events and IGN interviews being streamed all week. We didn’t really get any work done. It was awesome!
What do you expect from this year’s show?
I EXPECT GREATNESS!
No, seriously though I think the biggest show stoppers are going to be the VR announcements. With Vive and Oculus coming out before the next E3, this is where all the big reveals will happen. Pre-order announcements are very likely. Retail hardware will be displayed.
This will be the third E3 for the “next-gen” (can we really still call them that?) consoles and it should be a great year for software for them. In the first 18 months of the XboxOne and PS4 being on the market we’ve seen some good games, and some great advancements in graphics, but maturity in games doesn’t usually happen until year 3 or 4. It takes a while for devs to get used to the new tools, and we’re about to see the real potential of these platforms.
For the PC side of things we’re going to see some very very impressive looking games. Now that consoles have somewhat caught up, graphics fidelity has really gone up a few notches in the last couple years. With the release of GPU’s like Nvidia’s GTX 980ti, and the AMD’s upcoming rumored Fury line, we should see PC games move to the next degree of realism in the next couple years. Expect to see the first demonstrations of those advancements at E3. This is the first time in nearly a decade that a PC specific press conference is happening. Many things will be revealed, especially with DX12 on the horizon. Devs will be eager to show off what the new API can do.
As for hardware, it’s been confirmed that AMD is launching the latest Radeon cards, and rumor has it a new lineup to compete against the Titan cards from Nvidia. At the very least, we’ll be seeing new GPU’s with HBM memory that should be a HUGE improvement in performance over standard DDR5.
What is your biggest wish for this E3?
I wish for too much from E3, but I wish to see something truly mind blowing. I hope we get completely blind sided by the announcement of something no one saw coming that makes everyone step back in awe. That tends to happen at E3 from time to time, and I hope we’re not let done this year.
David “Owned” Alberto
What year was your first E3?
2010 Was my first E3 that I can remember,the The Force Unleashed II and SW:TOR Announcement by Lucasarts, Those dominated the landscape for me. I didn’t spend a lot of time gaming outside of WoW and Counter-Strike at that time, They definitely caught me with those.
What is your favourite memory of E3?
The prospect of being able to play a star wars MMO really made my year in 2010, though it did take awhile to get going, it was still my favorite memory for the show.
What do you expect from this year’s show?
Honestly I try to go into E3’s without any expectations, this way I never get let down. There are always things that will either wow or disappoint you, but I try not to build it up to much. Since there won’t be a big hardware reveal this year as we are early/mid cycle on the next gen products, I think it’s going to be a fairly quiet year.
What is your biggest wish for this E3?
The one and only wish I have is GAMEPLAY for Star Wars Battlefront. That’s it, that’s all. Wrap it into a bow and send it on it’s way.
Matt “Greyfox” Kondracki
What year was your first E3?
That’s a tough question to answer. It’s just an old blur in my mind but it was in print sometime in the early 2000’s or late 1990’s in an EGM mag where I read all about Dan “Shoe” Hsu’s, Jennifer Tsao’s, and Shawn Elliott’s impressions of the show floor. EGM was my door to that world and I dove into their E3 issues obsessively. My first visual experience was blowing off school work in computer class so I could download and watch the Halo 2 stage demo. Sure it turned out to be a heavily scripted “representation” of the final game but it was fucking amazing. The crowd’s gasps at the Chief boarding a Ghost. The hollering when he whipped out dual weapons. And who didn’t lose their shit when they heard the line “betcha can’t stick it” at the end?
What is your favourite memory of E3?
A tie between the Halo 2 stage demo and Half-Life 2 tech demo from E3 2003. It was a good year.
What do you expect from this year’s show?
Mirror’s Edge 2 gameplay, Fallout 4 gameplay with actual colour, XCOM 2 teasing me like a saucy minx, Dave Lang getting belligerently drunk on Giant Bomb’s broadcast.
What is your biggest wish for this E3?
More The Last of Us but I know it’s a false hope. YOU’RE MY GIRL ELLIE!
So there you have it, the content team’s wishes and predictions for E3 2015. Do you agree with our lists? Let us know what you’re most looking forward to in the comments below!
