I always enjoy E3, even the disappointing ones. There’s something really exciting about having non-stop reveals and trailers for several days. It’s the dopamine hit of seeing something new and shiny, or seeing something you’ve been anticipating for a while. Every year, I try make a list of games to keep an eye on so I don’t completely forget about them (especially about the ones that enter development hell and then show up again suddenly several years later). This is that list.
New Games
These are the games that I’ve never seen before E3. I think all of these are legitimate new announcements, but if one of them was announced prior to E3 and I just missed it, then this year’s E3 was the thing to put it on my radar.
If you know me, you can probably already assume that Metroid Dread is on this list. Like many, I was really hoping to see news of Metroid Prime, especially since I never got the opportunity to play any of the first three, but I will gladly take a new 2D Metroid. I played Metroid Fusion for the first time last summer on my good ol’ GameBoy SP from 2003, so a brand new sequel on the Switch was a pretty hype announcement for me.
I absolutely loved the trailer for The Outer Worlds 2, especially as someone who’s pretty sick of trailers showing the title card for a game and nothing else (looking at you Bethesda). That being said, it seems like the actually release is pretty far away, but I did enjoy the first game enough to put this on my list.
I enjoyed Borderlands 2 and the Tiny Tina’s DLC enough to pay attention to Tiny Tina’s Wonderland. That being said, I wasn’t a huge fan of Borderlands 3, so I’m a bit skeptical.
Finally, Slime Rancher is a game that I only played a bit of, but I moreso watched someone else play it. It’s a cute game, so I’ll definitely keep an eye out on Slime Rancher 2.
Already Anticipated
Breath of the Wild is still one of my favorite games of all time so it was exciting to finally being able to see an update on Breath of the Wild 2, albeit a short one. The initial announcement already gave off a relatively dark vibe, but this one further cemented it. I really having verticality in games so seeing these sort of sky islands is really exciting. It seems like there’s also some fun new gadgets to play around with. Also, it looks like Link has a prosthetic arm? There’s no way Nintendo would let Link lose an arm…right?
Tales of Arise looks really cool. I haven’t played too much of the Tales of series, but Arise looks really pretty so I’ve been following it since it was announced a couple E3s ago. Likewise, Sable is an indie game that I’ve been following for a couple years almost entirely due to its aesthetics.
I was curious about Monster Hunter Stories 2 when it was announced, but I got more interest in it after seeing it in the Nintendo Direct. It almost looks like a mon game? I know nothing of the first game, so I don’t know if I’d actually play this one, but I’ll throw it on the list.
Shin Megami Tensei V has been one of my most hyped Switch games for quite a while. I’ve been wanting to get back into the mainline SMT games again, but it seemed like the port of Nocturne was pretty iffy for how expensive it was. SMTV looks pretty good so far – quite true to form.
And finally, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles has been my most hyped game of 2021 since it was announced, and my only planned “day 1” purchase right now. I didn’t actually watch the E3 footage because I wanted to minimize spoilers, and also apparently the presentation was really boring because it showed off the gameplay of Ace Attorney (but like…there’s not actually that much gameplay…it’s basically a visual novel…). I spent years debating if I should just watch the fan translations on YouTube, but never ended up doing it out of laziness, so I’m really excited to finally get it officially localized and released.
Ports
Port announcements can be pretty lame, but I figured I might as well include them anyway. Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster looks like there’s high odds of it being a lazy port, but admittedly I would really like to actually own a copy of FFV and FFVI that don’t look god awful like the current Steam/Mobile ports. Skyward Sword also seems like a remaster that is going to be priced too high (because Nintendo) without many actual updates, but I’ve never played the game before, and I do like the 3D Zeldas, so I’ll probably end up getting it anyway (eventually).
Games and Other Bits 