A somehow cheesy opening with a classic 70’s promo TV commercial showing Bethesdaland with all their current games which (is meh). Soon after that, Bethesda boss Pete Hines arrived to “cheers” from the crowd. We then had a brief recap of Bethesda’s recent releases and successes – DOOM, Dishonored 2, Prey, Fallout Shelter, Fallout 4, Skyrim Special Edition and console mods.
Then it was time to get to business, and the first cab off the rank was virtual reality, with 2 VR announcements.The first is DOOM VFR.
and the second was, of course, Fallout 4 VR.
https://youtu.be/jspdtha3t1k
Fallout VR was described as the first full and complete open world game playable in VR, while DOOM VR was labelled “it’s so hot right now”, so it presumably isn’t a full game in the same way Fallout 4 VR is.
Next up Bethesda spent a little while talking about how good The Elder Scrolls Online is, including a look at the recent Morrowind expansion.
This was a lead up to something called Creation Club, which is a marketplace for premium content on PC, PS4 and Xbox One coming this summer. It’s paid mod scheme (*smirk), in other words, but there will be content from Bethesda itself as well as partner developers, as well as the best community creators.
Elder Scrolls Legends got a bit of love, too, with word that Android and iOS versions of the card battler are releasing soon. It’s also getting a Heroes of Skyrim expansion on June 29.
The Skyrim build of Switch was showcased with word of a Skyrim Amiibo activating a Legend of Zelda Link skin. (*Nintendo is smirking with a dollar sign on their eyes)
https://youtu.be/_7980ZPK8Dg
Arkane followed with a look at the new Dishonored 2 DLC. It’s gonna centralized on Billy going after the Outsider himself.
Bethesda moved on to Quake Champions. As predicted, it made a big fuss about the title’s eSports potential (LOL!) You’ll get a slice of that enormous pie eventually!! The World Championships final takes place August 26 at QuakeCon and there’s USD$1 million in the prize pot. Also, BJ from Wolfenstein is in Quake Champions. (YAY?)
Then, we moved on to something everyone expected but sheered wildly for anyway: The Evil Within 2. The trailer was very dramatic and full of amazingly varied settings and situations, plus a pretty strong hint that the plot will be unfolded somewhat – good news for those of us still puzzled over what was going on in the first one. The Evil Within 2 launches Friday October 13.
The last “coming attraction” of Bethesdaland kicked off with a live-action section with a big robot dog, leading into a cinematic trailer for Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. Channeling some of that retro America diners-and-flag-waving of Fallout, but without the nuclear devastation, and seemed to show a Nazi-occupied USA. Well, that’s timely, isn’t it. It looks amazing but somehow the trailer was a mess, jumping from scenes to scenes which is hard to follow.
Everything Bethesda announced and showed is coming out this year. (Hurray?)
Notably, there was nothing from Battlecry Studios. Although Bethesda hasn’t made a formal announcement, we can only expect that it might be cancelled and it’s been a no-show since E3 2016 – and we still don’t know what that team is up to – if it still exists.
Overall, the only thing memorable was the trailer for The Evil Within 2, and everything else was just as expected.
