E3 2016: All The Highlights In One Place
Wow! Another E3 is almost over, which means it’s time to burn the bodies and send notes to the families. Who won? Who lost? Who will go to the Hague? We can’t answer these questions, but we can help you out with a list of all the best bits you might have missed from the big publishers. Let’s dive right in!
Sony
- Sony’s innovative hiring of an orchestra to perform at their E3 conference this year was a bold and ambitious artistic statement — as was pouring molten lava into the orchestra pit 30 seconds into the show. Over the smell of cooking flesh and the crunching, snapping noise that tubas make as they are rapidly superheated, Sony chairman Shawn Layden confirmed what we all knew: the exits were sealed. Strap in for Sony!
- Kratos is back, and it’s a new beginning for our favourite mass murdering criminal psychotic as he’s finally accepted into a government-sponsored mechanic apprenticeship at a local garage, where a kindly old man is willing to overlook his bloodsoaked past and see the tortured soul within. Early footage of the game shows a now-bearded Kratos watching The Shawshank Redemption in his single-bedroom apartment and sobbing. Incredible stuff.
- The thunderous applause when talented artist and sexual violence enthusiast Hideo Kojima took the stage more than drowned out the faint screaming of one struggling percussionist who clung to wretched, smouldering, impossible life at the bottom of Sony’s artificial volcano. Kojima unveiled the first look at his new game, which has the working title of Norman Reedus’ Dick. “It’s quite literally 70 hours of Norman Reedus’ dick,” Kojima confirmed, struggling to make himself heard over the still-cheering crowd, many of whom were now shirtless and/or masturbating. “I’m not even kidding about this. Why are you all still applauding?” he added, before leaving the stage in confused bewilderment.
- There was a brief error in the presentation where Sony appeared to be announcing an open world zombie survival game, but Sony PR have now assured us that that would be “totally lame, haha” and confirmed that they “have no idea how that got there”.
Microsoft
- E3 this year for Microsoft was all about the hardware — and Xbox head Phil Spencer knew it. Opening up his torso to reveal a complicated artificial neuroskeletal system lit with a soft, friendly green glow that spoke of inhuman knowledge, Spencer explained that something called “Scorpio” was coming and would be built using technology from “our benefactors, who only want the best for us”.
- “Scorpio is going to really shake up the console market. And a lot of markets. It’s going to destabilise a lot of bonds between atoms. On a wide, possibly global scale. That’s all I can tell you for now,” he said, gently closing his torso, which sealed with terrifying smoothness and left no visible seam. Project Scorpio will have an RRP of $299.
- Backing up the hardware announcement was Microsoft’s new ‘Play Anywhere’ cross-platform imitative, which means gamers will only have to buy a single copy of a game in order to have invasive nanobots inserted in their bloodstream that can track them “anywhere” with “no escape”.
- The Forza Horzon series has been charged with larceny and shipped to Australia, after it was caught stealing a loaf of bread. The new Australian edition of the game will allow players to perform authentic “sick doughies” and authentically “impress the fuck out of Darlene, because she’s fkn hot and I haven’t had a root in weeks, ya mad cunt”. Look for that in November.
Nintendo
- It’s important not to be mean to our friends at Nintendo, especially after that horrible tachyon field accident at their headquarters which saw every Nintendo executive permanently shifted three years into the past.
- This year’s (2013, Nintendo Time) announcement saw [Mario/Pokemon/Zelda/Metroid] going open world, with a brand new focus on [the completely unchanged core mechanic] that will really come to life under the open world system. It’s going to be a real [Mario/Pokemon/Zelda/Metroid] game, that’s for sure!
- While there was still no news on the next console, Nintendo did confirm that it would have “the latest and greatest technology that is available to us in this, the year 2013, which is the year it is currently”.
Ubisoft
- A bleeding and woozy Ubisoft CEO Aisha Tyler, who secured the title from former CEO Yves Guillemot moments before the conference in what insiders describe as an “unbelievably vicious” knife fight, took the stage to announce Open World Ubisoft Game 2016. Both Tyler and her neck wound gushed about the unprecedented level of freedom in the Open World Ubisoft Game series, although many members of the press seemed to be more interested in the phenomenal amount of blood Tyler was losing — far more than a human body should be capable of even holding.
- A new expansion for The Division called Ghost Recon: Wildlands was announced, with Tyler eagerly announcing that “only seven games remain” until “the ancient curse inflicted upon us by a dying Tom Clancy is lifted, and we are finally free”. The announcement caused the lights in the auditorium to flicker briefly and one unlucky intern was turned to ash by a spectral hand that loomed from the darkness, but overall the mood seemed positive. Plus, you can drive buggies.
- Trey Parker and Matt Stone introduced a new entry in the South Park series, a follow up to The Stick of Truth called 37 Hours Of Fart Noises. Speaking through an ‘interpreter’ (Stone, who turned around and grasped his buttocks so he could open and close them like a crude mouth) Parker shouted the word “poop” over and over again until Aisha Tyler chased him and Stone from the stage with a hose.
EA
- Titanfall 2 is the big hitter for EA this year, with an excited EA CEO Andrew “Sports” Wilson taking the stage to perform a complex katana-based interpretive dance that “represented the spirit of a mighty robot with a big sword”. Journalists close to the front row were impressed to note that Wilson made all the “woosh!” and “shing!” sword movement noises with his own mouth.
- The presentation of the Mass Effect Andromeda trailer was halted briefly as a clique of Social Justice Warriors stormed the stage, taking BioWare developers hostage and forcing them to add a female protagonist to the game in real time. “I don’t want to,” stammered the BioWare developer as the SJW’s feminism pressed into the hollow of their throat, drawing a trickle of blood. “This isn’t what real gamers want!” “Shut up,” said the SJW, dying their hair blue with their free hand. “Just do what I tell you or I’ll shame you online!!!”
- “And make the Asari not conventionally attractive, so that men won’t want to fuck them!” another SJW added, misandrily. The BioWare developers whimpered as they complied.
- After order was restored, a blazed up Snoop Dogg demonstrated a 64-player map of Battlefield 1, rushing from seat to seat as he insisted on playing all 64 soldiers himself. 13 minutes into the one-man presentation he paused for snacks, but passed out and began snoring before Wilson could arrive with an authorised bag of Doritos®, The Gamer Snack For Gamers™.
Bethesda
- The new, rebooted Prey was finally unveiled on stage: not a video game, but a cage fight to the death between representatives from Human Head and Arkane Studios, while Pete Hines watched, hooting, naked to the waist and smeared with glistening pig fat. The rights to produce the next Prey game were awarded to Arkane’s Raphaël Colantonio, who won the brutal fight by snapping the neck of Human Head’s Chris Rhinehart, tearing off his legs and throwing them into a crowd of horrified but swag-hungry games journalists.
- A remastered HD Skyrim is due to be released later this year, with Bethesda engineers hard at work copying and pasting the best HD texture mods from the PC version but ignoring the mods which make breasts bigger, make breasts shinier, make breasts bounce, add more breasts, cover the breasts in fur, and replace wagon wheels and shields with floating orbs of breast flesh.
- Pete Hines, now re-clothed, attempted to introduce trading card game Elder Scrolls: Legends but was stymied when the game collapsed and went into cardiac arrest while attempting to climb the stairs. There were several long awkward minutes as Hines performed CPR on the game before giving up and having it shot behind a hastily-arranged curtain. Anybody with an active Elder Scrolls: Legends account will be offered a full refund (in Hearthstone credit).
Wow! What a show, huh? Who do you think won this year’s E3? Sound off in the comments!!!