Here we are in the middle of another Tokyo Game Show. There’s not a lot to expect from it in terms of news and whatnot, but there will be, as usual, a shit ton of trailers. I guess we might hear more from Capcom and Square Enix and their lineups begin to fill out. Attendees are probably wishing they were playing Persona 5, though, instead of wandering the show floor.
That does mean, however, that I’m going to be really picky about what I put into this Trailer Roundup. Overly so, in fact, since I’m probably going to do a separate thing just about TGS next week when it wraps up. There’s only so much you can throw onto a page, you know? You get it. I know you do. Plus there’s an Oktoberfest thing today and I want to go start consuming things with umlauts in their names.
So for your sake and mine, let’s get to some trailers!
Westworld — Dreams Trailer
Everyone is looking forward to this as much as I am, right? The casting is pretty damn great (James Marsden was meant to play a cowboy as much as he was meant to play Criss Chros), the production side is led by the folks you’d at least half want (J. J. Abrams and Jonathan Nolan have solid intuition on how to formulate unsettling pseudo realities), and has incredible source material from a 1973 Michael Crichton film of the same name.
So yeah, things are pretty promising for this new HBO series. We’ll see how it all shakes out, though, as Nolan has more experience with film and Abrams’ greater successes of late have also come from the cinema. He does have two Emmys, though, so hopefully his EPing will help guide Nolan in this new, small scale world of TV. The series premieres on HBO on October 2 at 9PM.
World of Final Fantasy — Tokyo Game Show Trailer 2016
This might as well be called Chibi: The Game. It’s like the designers looked at every Disney character and said, “Not bad, but we can go cuter.” At 1:01 might be the least threatening iteration of Ifrit I’ve ever seen or could ever possibly be conceived.
It’s weird, though, that the story also seems to fairy tale-like, as if they took narrative as well as aesthetic influence from more youthful Western media. But who knows, maybe this is just a ruse to slip the traditional Final Fantasy melodrama and hyperactive philosophical navel-gazing into more kids’ minds. I guess we’ll find out when it comes out for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita on October 25.
Final Fantasy XV — Tokyo Game Show 2016 Trailer
To be totally honest, I’m not into this trailer. It’s super long and drawn out and doesn’t do a great job of getting you interested in the story so much as just laying it all out there in broad strokes and oblique, dramatic promises. What it does do well, however, is showcasing the incredible look of the game. The milieu and motifs are stellar and definitely worth being interested in.
And that’s not because it’s overwhelmingly good but more than it’s such a curiosity at, like, every fucking turn. Cid’s hat, for instance, has punk studs all around the side. These people are wearing sneakers in medieval castles. It’s all a giant wtf and I want to know more. We’ll all know more when it comes out for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on November 29.
Nioh — TGS 2016 Trailer!
This looks like some classic Team Ninja shit right here. And I do mean that in the best way possible. Based on other trailers, the gameplay is actually more methodical than Ninja Gaiden combat, but this video really does get the blood and the hype going either way.
It’s odd to see, though, the contrast of those two things. Very obviously this is a studio immensely talented at action and fighting, but they seemingly want to try something new. This is while the public knows them for pretty much one thing. (Okay, maybe two things.) And the marketing somewhat reflects that ingrained knowledge. It comes out on February 9, 2017, for the PlayStation 4.
NBA 2K17 — Momentous Trailer
This is a mighty fine trailer. It really sells the concept of playing for glory and redemption and all that other stuff sports stories like to trade on. It is also really convincing in telling you that this basketball games might finally not look like floppy puppets trying to navigate a sport floppy puppets have no business playing.
It also highlights, however, the reality that most modern sports stars are just straight up assholes. They’ve built into themselves this idea that used to only exist in movies and Wilt Chamberlain’s bedroom that they are holy gods from on high. Michael Jordan at least knew he played like a dick. All the old guys did. But now they have this internal narrative of climbing the mountain and ending some nonexistent reign of terror, saving the world one basket at a time, when instead they’re just haughty jerks with terrible fashion sense. Anyways, it comes out for every non-Nintendo console on September 20.
Dusk — Reveal Trailer
Dusk was actually (unofficially?) at QuakeCon this year. I didn’t get to put any hands-on time with it, but it looks damn good, and New Bloods ringleader Dave Oshry did his thing on making it sound like the best thing made since fried pickles. It looks almost overwhelmingly retro, but trust me when I say it has moves that only modern devs would put into an FPS.
That full aerial inversion thing? Fucking dope. And the composer is Andrew Hulshult, the same man behind the killer soundtrack for that Rise of the Triad remake a few years back. He’s consistently the most metal af music man in the industry. So hopefully this game pans out when it release some time next year.
Rise of the Tomb Raider — Woman Vs. Wild Episode #4: Croft Manor
Basically fuck the first three minutes of this thing if you want to get straight to the good stuff. And also fuck the first three minutes of this thing because it’s just marketing fluff that no one wanted. Then you might get a bit excited as it talks about wandering Croft Manor and learning more about her family.
That’s super cool to think about because 1) Rise of the Tomb Raider was a fantastic game and 2) it reminds me of one of my favorite parts of Uncharted 4. But then fuck the entire video after it introduces zombies as the primary (only?) combat in the DLC and as some contrived metaphor for inner conflict and struggle. It comes out October 11 for the PlayStation 4.
Event[0] — Launch Trailer
First off, Ocelot Society is an incredible name for a studio. Second, the gimmick of this game is a really easy sell: talk to an AI like you would a person rather than click canned responses. Sounds pretty slick at first, but then you remember how terrible low-level natural language processing can be.
Case in point: SmarterChild. But also given the modern abundance of chatbot-related businesses out there trying to facilitate the average/non-machine learning programmer starting out with this sort of stuff, there’s promise here. This is especially true because the narrative premise is classic sci-fi and I fucking love classic sci-fi. It’s out now for PC and OS X.
Daymare: 1998 — First Announcement Trailer
I was into it at first. It was weird and genuinely scary. Just NOPE-ing my way to safety and out of the darkness. That is until they showed the combat. And then it all turned into just a real tepid, apathetic naahhhhh.
Who’s to say it’ll be good or bad at this point, though. It just looks like the sort of horror experience I’m not into, though it does draw some obvious inspiration from Resident Evil 4‘s legacy. That camera placement and character movement is a dead giveaway, though I guess you could argue what game doesn’t have some amount of that RE4 DNA in it now. Either way, it comes out at some point in the future for PC.
