Microsoft just showed off a ton of stuff at their E3 2018 Xbox press conference, including new Halo and Gears of War games, Fallout 76, The Division 2, Dying Light 2, a shiny Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, and a new samurai action game from the makers of Dark Souls. Personally speaking, I’m most excited about that last one, but there were a lot of good-looking games in general at Microsoft’s show. It was basically just a long run of trailers, but still a welcome jolt of excitement after yesterday’s sleepy Electronic Arts press conference. Many of the games shown were from third-party developers and will be available on other systems, so it’s a good idea to revisit my post from last year that broke down the various possible definitions of the word “exclusive” in this modern era. Advertisement Ready to dive in? Let’s do this. They kicked off by announcing Halo Infinite. The teaser was light on information, but showed what looked like the original Halo, some marines driving a warthog, Master Chief holding his helmet and, apparently, Chief loading an AI (Cortana?) into his helmet. No release date on this one. Ori and the Will of the Wisps still looks beautiful. We got a good look at the sequel to Ori and the Blind Forest, which debuted last year. Looks like the same mix of gorgeous visuals and surprisingly tough gameplay. Main question is how many times the sequel will get me to cry in the first 15 minutes. It’s coming in 2019. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a ninja game from the makers of Dark Souls, and I am excited enough for it to write a really long subhed for this entry! ! You know how I described Team Ninja’s excellent Nioh as “basically Samurai Bloodborne”? Well, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is ninja Bloodborne, and it’s actually being made by FromSoftware, the developer of Bloodborne and Dark Souls. Advertisement Hell yes. Hell yes! I will play the heck out of this, right after I finish playing all of Bloodborne for the second time. You play as a ninja with a prosthetic arm. He has a grappling hook, which means: traversal mechanics in a From game! (Not that “roll over a ledge and down to a weird platform” doesn’t count as traversal mechanics.) Also lots of sword fighting, huge bosses, monsters, and so on. Jason saw a separate demo of this game earlier today and will have more about it on Kotaku soon. He seems psyched, though. It’s coming in 2019 and will also be on PC and PS4. Bethesda gave us a first look at Fallout 76. It’s four times the size of Fallout 4, and set in the hills of West Virginia. As expected, it focuses on the years shortly after the bombs dropped. Not a lot of other details on how the game actually works, though of course my colleague Jason Schreier has already reported that it’ll be an online survival game with base-building, sort of like Rust or Ark. I’m sure we’ll learn more tonight at Bethesda’s press conference. Advertisement The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is a new game in the Life is Strange universe. It looks like a charming game about a young boy with an active imagination whose stories come to life. It’s out as a free download on June 26th. Advertisement We got more Crackdown 3 Terry Crews antics. This game still looks pretty silly, as much later Saints Row games as early Crackdown. The trailer was trying pretty hard, but hey, the game lets you drive your car up a building, so whatever. As we reported late last week, the game has been delayed one final (hopefully?) time to February 2019. Advertisement Metro: Exodus is still looking nice and bleak. Nothing major or new in the trailer, just a bunch more good Metro stuff, this time in an open (or at least more open) world. Love these games; will definitely play this one, too. It’s coming out on February 22, 2019. Looks like February of next year is gonna be a hell of a month! Advertisement Kingdom Hearts 3 will have a Frozen world. The newest game in Square Enix’s extremely confusing but equally charming action series will feature a Frozen world featuring Elsa and Anna along with Rapunzel from Tangled. Last night Square Enix announced that it’ll be out on January 29, 2019. Advertisement Forza Horizon 4 takes the series to Britain, goes full shared-world. I love Forza Horizon 3 and will definitely play a new one of these games set in Britain. This one is being described as a seamless, shared-world online game, as opposed to previous games, which were more instanced and filled with AI “Drivatars.” There’ll be a 60fps mode on Xbox One X, which is nice; I love playing the third game at a high frame rate on PC. This is one of the few games at this conference that’s an actual exclusive, which means it’ll only ever be on Xbox and PC. It’ll be out on October 2, and will be included in Xbox Game Pass on the same day. Advertisement Advertisement Microsoft opened a new studio and bought a bunch of indies. They didn’t like, do any of that live onstage or anything, but they announced that they had. Xbox head Phil Spencer introduced the new Microsoft studio The Initiative, and also announced several studio acquisitions. Those acquisitions include State of Decay makers Undead Labs and Forza Horizon studio Playground Games, the second of which will be working on a new project in addition to Forza. Microsoft also bought Hellblade studio Ninja Theory as well as Compulsion Games, makers of We Happy Few. A couple of those studios had already been making games with Microsoft as their publisher. This all seems like Microsoft investing in having more in-house studios working on Xbox exclusives for the future. Advertisement The Division 2 is moving to D.C. in the summertime. The very first thing we saw in Ubisoft’s Division 2 demo was a sweaty, verdant jungle, which is about as far as you can get from the first game’s wintry Manhattan streets without going to like, Mercury. After the intro teaser came a lengthy staged multiplayer demo that looked pretty much like more Division, but set in a much more colorful and vibrant environment. At one point, one player subtly shamed another player for being underleveled, which is probably the most realistic interaction I’ve ever seen in one of these canned E3 multiplayer demos. Anyway, I’m on board with this game. It’s coming out March 15, 2019. Advertisement Shadow of the Tomb Raider heads to some nifty looking new places. Not a ton of new information about the game in the trailer they showed, but hey, it looks like another game in the style of Crystal Dynamics’ first two. At one point Lara got to cover herself in mud camouflage and do a Rambo-style takedown on a patrolling goon. I’ll play it. It’s out on September 14. Advertisement There’s a new skating game in the works called Session. This sure looks like a skating game. I like skating games! Devil May Cry 5 is real, and looks like a good time. At one point in the trailer, a massive demonic boss stuffed a car into the mouth in his stomach, then belched fire. The game was described on stage as a “true sequel” to Devil May Cry 4, without no mention of Ninja Theory’s surprisingly great 2013 take on the series. DmC 5 is coming in Spring of 2019. Cool. Advertisement Cuphead is getting an expansion. It’s called The Delicious Last Course, and will be out in 2019. I never got past the delicious first course of this delightful, hard-as-nails game, but I have a feeling those who did will welcome new characters and bosses. Advertisement Bandai Namco announced Jump Force, a massive anime crossover fighting game. It’s got Naruto! It’s got Goku! It’s got lots of super intense fighting action! Kyaaaaaah! Advertisement Dying Light 2 is more Dying Light, with a much more reactive open world.<doc-sep>NEW A vastly improved search engine helps you find the latest on companies, business leaders, and news more easily.<doc-sep>Above: A big baddie turns up in Anthem This morning in Los Angeles, Electronic Arts kicked off E3 2018 with a press conference in which they announced a new Star Wars game, an Unravel sequel, and took a longer look at BioWare’s upcoming RPG Anthem, which is out next February. It was a straightforward way to begin E3: light on major news, with a focus on games we already knew about. Here’s everything EA showed and announced. Advertisement Battlefield V gets more destructible environments and a battle royale mode. The next Battlefield game will bring back the destructive environments that DICE ran wild with in Battlefield: Bad Company. In the World War II-based Battlefield V, tanks can blast through buildings and destroy cover in real time. Also, your character can dive-roll through windows? Hell yeah man, I’ve always wanted to do that in a game like this. “No loot boxes. No premium pass,” the developers reiterated on stage. They also announced “royale reimagined” for Battlefield, meaning that Battlefield V will be getting a battle royale-style gameplay mode. I’m shocked. Shocked, I say! The developers said they’ll have more to share on that mode later in the year, and we’ll see more of the game at Microsoft’s Xbox conference tomorrow. Respawn’s Star Wars game is called Jedi: Fallen Order. Respawn’s Vince Zampella confirmed that means you’ll be playing as a Jedi, lightsabers and all. The game takes place “during the dark times” between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, when the Jedi are being hunted. Per EA on Twitter, it’ll be “an original Star Wars story around a surviving Padawan set shortly after the events of Star Wars: Episode III.” It’s coming in holiday 2019. Advertisement Advertisement Battlefront II is taking on the Clone Wars. Star Wars Battlefront II is getting a bunch of new stuff this year, including a new squad system, a new starfighter mode, a new command-post capture mode, and new heroes and maps taken from the Clone Wars. There will be new heroes including General Grievous, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Anakin Skywalker. Advertisement Unravel Two brings Yarny back for a co-op adventure, out today. It looks as cute as the first game, but has a co-op focus that has both players using their yarn abilities to swing around and avoid hazards. They were sure to stress that you can play it in single-player, if you want—the other yarn character just wraps itself around Yarny and you can control them both. The demo also had this weird bird chasing the yarn creatures around, and it was pretty stressful. Go away, bird! Advertisement EA also pulled the first Beyoncé of E3, announcing at the end of the presentation that you can buy the game... today! It’s on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Sea of Solitude is all about loneliness and depression. It’s another EA indie, this time from German studio Jo-Mei Games. The game was introduced in a winningly wandering way by writer/creative director Cornelia Geppert, who seems pretty great. It’ll be out in early 2019. Advertisement Command & Conquer is returning as a mobile game. After those announcements, EA hosted a resoundingly unexciting stage demo of a new competitive Command & Conquer mobile game. It’s called Command & Conquer: Rivals and it definitely looks a competitive mobile RTS. I don’t really know what else to say about it. You can watch a gameplay overview here. Advertisement We learned more about BioWare’s Anthem, coming in February. During an on-stage interview segment, BioWare manager Casey Hudson, Anthem executive producer Mark Darrah and lead writer Cathleen Rootsaert talked about how they’re approaching their much-hyped action RPG. They seem pretty focused on story, and Rootsaert said they’ll be adding things to the game “for years to come.” Advertisement As we already knew, the sci fi action game is designed about the “Javelin” exo suit you wear. Since your character is a person who wears the suit, you can change your suit whenever you want to fit the mission or your team makeup. So basically, Javelins are changeable character classes. There’ll be no loot boxes in the game (not a huge surprise), and there’s the expected customization options for your mech. We saw a gameplay demo that looks like the same third-person, Destiny-ish gameplay we’ve already seen. Slick though, and some pretty big bosses. I’m also happy to report that the soundtrack during the demo was synth-heavy in an appealingly Mass Effect-ish way, especially in quieter moments. Watch that demo here: The game’ll be out on February 22, 2019. For more on Anthem, read this post compiling everything we’ve learned about the game. Advertisement A few other things: We got a dramatic trailer for FIFA 19, which is out on September 28; an enhanced “Origin Access Premiere” subscription service is coming later this year that’ll give full access to EA’s big PC games; Madden is coming to PC; We got a trailer for Madden Overdrive; and EA CEO Andrew Wilson talked up their “Play to Give” program supporting various charities. And that’s it for EA! Feels like last year’s EA press conference was just last week. But no, it was an entire year ago. You are now a year older than when you first found out about A Way Out. I’m not, though. Every year, I stay the same age. Advertisement We’ll be here all week covering every E3 press conference and with news, interviews, and hands-on impressions from the show floor. Stick around.<doc-sep>
Microsoft’s E3 2018 press conference has come and gone, leaving Xbox diehards with new games to look forward to and dates to circle on their calendar. Halo Infinite, Gears of War 5, Forza Horizon 4, Cyberpunk 2077, and a new game from FromSoftware are just some of the games that received exciting trailers and release dates during Microsoft’s press conference. 15 world premiere titles and 18 exclusives were shown during Microsoft’s keynote, which Phil Spencer kicked off by talking about gaming’s unifying qualities. So much happened during this year’s Xbox conference, but here are the biggest and best announcements you need to know about. Halo Infinite brings Master Chief back Halo Infinite is the sixth game in the franchise, and is set to bring Master Chief back to the franchise. A brief cinematic trailer for the game played at the beginning of Microsoft’s keynote, but no other information was given. Cyberpunk 2077 trailer A trailer for Cyberpunk 2077, the long-anticipated game from CD Projekt Red, the development team behind The Witcher franchise, has arrived. The trailer demonstrates the anarchic future that citizens are forced to live and survive within. There are fancy cars, futuristic looking guns and tons of opportunity to hang out with cool-looking hackers. There’s still no release date information at this time, meaning that hopeful fans will have to wait a little bit longer, but the trailer should be enough to go on for now. Devil May Cry 5 announced Capcom is introducing a new entry into the Devil May Cry series, and Hideaki Itsuno, the game’s producer, says it’s one of the best in the series. Devil May Cry 5 is the first game in the series since Devil May Cry 4, which was released in 2008. Devil May Cry 4 was followed by Ninja Theory’s DmC: Devil May Cry in 2013, but Devil May Cry 5 is the next official game in the main franchise. Nero, Devil May Cry 4’s star character, will return as a playable character. Devil May Cry 5 will be released in spring 2019. Just Cause 4 announced A trailer for Just Cause 4 confirmed what we’ve known for a few days already: Just Cause 4 is in the works. A trailer for the game returned the series to its roots, promising tons of explosions for players. There are some new additions, however, like a tornado that players will have to contend with during their missions. The game’s darker atmosphere is a slight deviation from the rest of the franchise, but an intriguing turn nonetheless. Gears of War 5 announced Gears of War 5 is the next game in Microsoft’s Gears of War franchise, and a new cinematic trailer provides a little tease on what players should expect. Gears of War 5 is a direct followup to 2016’s Gears of War 4, and is the first title following Microsoft’s acquisition of the title from Epic in 2016. The game will again follow Gears hero Kait Diaz, and is said bring the game back to where it all began. Gears of War 5 launching in 2019 for Xbox One. The Division 2 heads to Washington, D.C. next year The Division 2 will take place in Washington, D.C. — and the game’s tone may be a little too on the nose. A cinematic trailer for the game asked how a city and civilization is supposed to protect themselves when the enemy is coming from within and a corrupt government looms. The gameplay trailer, however, focused on a forested area within the city that reeks of post-apocalyptic vibes. A crashed Air Force One plane can be seen deteriorating in the distance. The trailer focused heavily on combat between two groups of players in an abandoned parking lot somewhere in the city. More Washington, D.C. statues could be glimpsed as the trailer came to an end, but the trailer focused heavily on players’ ability to wander around fallen historical monuments. The Division 2 will launch on March 15. Dying Light 2 announced Dying Light 2 is the next game in the open-world zombie survival franchise. A trailer for the game debuted during Microsoft’s E3 press conference, with a more in-depth look at gameplay airing directly after. The game returns players to the post-apocalyptic world, but introduces a few new ideas. Players’ decisions will directly influence the game and shape the society they live in, according to one developer.