The Gamers Lounge Reactions and Thoughts on Microsoft E3 Conference

Microsoft had many great announcements and features at their E3 conference this morning.  Many new games were shown, features were announced, and one demonstration that stole the show for a lot of onlookers.  

Gameplay footage of Halo 5 Guardians was shown.  The game was said to be built from the ground up with epic worlds and battles at an epic scale.  The footage shown was a team of 4 spartans hunting for Master Chief.  It appeared that players are able to give commands to team members to help get through battles.  Josh Holmes of 343 Industries also mentioned that Halo 5 features drop in/out multiplayer and the maps are 4 times the size of any other maps from other Halo games.  He also presented a new “Warzone” multiplayer mode.  In this mode it is the player vs. everything; other players and AI enemies.  The graphics in Halo 5 Guardians looked great and I look forward to the game getting closer to launch.

The World Premier of a new Xbox One exclusive franchise called Recore was shown.  The trailer showed a woman and her robotic pet walking through a desert.  Based on the footage, it looks like this could be an interesting game to follow in the coming months.

Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, made the announcement that Xbox One backwards compatibility is coming.  The backwards compatibility will work with Xbox 360 games that developers allow to be made backwards compatible.  This will work with both physical and digital games and will be available this holiday season.

The Xbox One Elite Wireless Controller was announced.  It features swappable components, button and paddle remapping, sensitivity adjustments and more.  The controller will be released this fall.  No specific date or price was given.

Fallout 4 was shown.  It will feature full character customization and can be played in both 1st and 3rd person views.  An announcement was also made that mods made on the PC version of Fallout 4 can be played on the Xbox One version as well.

Peter Moore of EA made a couple of announcements.  He announced that EA Access will be free this week to all Xbox Live Gold members.  He also announced a couple new games that will be added to the Vault, Titanfall, which will be added this week and Dragon Age: Inquisition, which will be added this fall.  Members of EA Access will now be able to begin playing games before their street dates, such as Madden 16 on August 20th.  He also showed a trailer for Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2.  The game features new characters, worlds and modes and will be released in the Spring of 2016.

A Forza 6 trailer and footage was presented.  The game features 26 destinations, 450 cars, 24 player multiplayer and runs at 60 fps at 1080p resolution.  The game will be released on September 15th and looks amazing.

A World Premier trailer for Dark Souls 3 was shown.  Not much was shown, except an early 2016 release date, but it was pretty exciting none-the-less.

Tom Clancy’s The Division was shown with gameplay footage.  It looks like it is going to be a great Action RPG set in New York.  It was announced that Xbox One players will get the first Beta in December.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege was also shown.  It was also announced that Rainbow Six Vegas and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 will come free with Rainbow Six Siege on Xbox One.

Many indie titles were shown, including Beyond Eyes, an adventure game where the main character is blind and Cuphead, a 16-bit style platformer that features 1930’s cartoon style graphics.  It looks like a bright future ahead for indie games on Xbox One.

RARE announced RARE Replay which will feature 30 classic RARE games, such as Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie, R.C. Pro Am and Battletoads.  RARE Replay will be released on August 4th for $30.

RARE also revealed their newest Adventure game, Sea of Thieves.  The trailer showed lots of explosive battles on ships and some on land adventuring.  It looks like a game I will be keeping my eyes on as it develops further.

Fable Legends was shown and will be free-to-play on Xbox One and Windows 10.  It was announced that players on both platforms will be able to play together.

Xbox Game Preview was announced, which is a program that allows players to buy and play titles while they are still in development, similar to Steam Early-access titles.  Every game in the program will have a free demo for players to try before committing to buying.  The program starts today.

Gameplay of Rise of the Tomb Raider was shown.  The graphics and lighting in the game looked amazing and the gameplay was very intense.  It is set to be released this Holiday season.

Gears of War Ultimate Edition was announced.  It is a remake of the original Gears of War and will be released on August 25th.  A public beta for the game starts today.

A teaser trailer for Gears of War 4 was also shown with a release date of Holiday 2016.

A demonstration of Minecraft being played using the Microsoft Hololens was shown.  They were able to use a special camera that showed everyone what it looked like through the Hololens.  First, the man using the Hololens put a “screen” on the wall of the stage and played your everyday Minecraft using a controller.  Another player joined his game and the game looked and played just as it would on a PC or console.  The player then turned off the screen on the wall and walked over to a table on stage.  Using a voice command, he turned the table into a 3D view of the Minecraft game.  He was able to walk around and look at the world from all angles.  He was also able to “lift” the Minecraft world up and look below ground to help the other player find materials underground.  He was able to use commands to help guide her to the right spot.  There were many voice commands he used to do different things in the game, such as saying “lightning strike” did just that, sent a bolt of lightning to the world.  This demonstration was amazing and makes you wonder just what else you will be able to do when development is complete and what games other than Minecraft will be like.  This demonstration was the moment of the conference for me, as I’m sure it was for many others.

Make sure you stay tuned at The Gamer’s Lounge for more E3 updates and news!