The E3 Game Announcements That Made Us Giddy With Excitement

Jeremy Ray
Games Xbox
Games Xbox PlayStation PC Gaming

The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, a.k.a. E3, has come and gone. From eagerly awaited sequels to brand new IPs, publishers announced their upcoming video games.

Here are the ones we’re most excited for.

EA

First out of the gate was EA. Though to be fair, EA wasn’t really “at” E3; the studio ran its own EA Play event.

It was a quiet press conference, all things considered. Announcements included Unraveled 2 and Sea of Solitude.

Most importantly, fans learned there’s a Star Wars game being developed by Respawn — the studio that brought us the Titanfall games. It’s called Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and it takes place between Episode III and IV. Players will play a Jedi who survived the Order 66 massacre and is hunted by Imperial forces. We have some ideas on the game’s antagonists and settings, which you can read about here.

While there was no gameplay from Fallen Order, we got a look at Battlefield V‘s Grand Operations mode. There will also be a Battle Royale mode coming to the game. Surprise?

We also got the chance to see Anthem in action. It won’t have any romance options, so we rounded up a few of BioWare’s best romances over the years.

Finally, Command & Conquer is heading to mobile with Rivals. That sentence alone is probably enough to break your heart.

Read more about the E3 EA press conference here.

Microsoft

The usual suspects made an appearance for Microsoft. We’re getting a new Gears of War (and two spin-offs), a new Forza Horizon, and a new Halo.

But the publisher and manufacturer surprised everyone by announcing the acquisition of five new studios. They aren’t lightweights, either — we’re talking big players like Ninja Theory. Clearly, Microsoft was out to show it’s dedicated to solving its first-party title crisis.

Truth be told, the best parts of this hype-filled conference were the third-party games. Leading the way was Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, one of several Asian-themed action games.

Speaking of Asian-themes, a huge roar came when footage from Jump Force — a kinetically charged Dragon Ball ZNaruto-One Piece fighting game — was shown. The anime style is brought to life in fleshed-out 3-D models.

We saw trailers for Kingdom Hearts 3 (featuring the Frozen characters), and the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 — all of which look absolutely fantastic. Oh, a little NES game called Battletoads was announced, too.

Yep, the fighting frogs are back.

Read more about the E3 Microsoft Xbox press conference here.

Bethesda

Also known as Pause for Applause: The Press Conference, this at times awkward show dilly-dallied a bit before getting to the Fallout 76 section we all wanted to see.

Then we had the huge announcement that each other person from your vault in 76 will be a real person, in a 100% online experience. Fallout Shelter was also announced to be on new platforms on the same night.

Gameplay from another post-apocalyptic first-person shooter, Rage 2, was shown including some wild vehicles and weapons.

On the fantasy front, an Elder Scrolls: Blades game was revealed: a procedurally generated dungeon crawler. An Elder Scrolls Legends relaunch is coming with all new visuals, and lastly, we were shown a beautiful logo for The Elder Scrolls VI with some rolling hills in the background, leaving us to speculate on where it could be set.

Read more about the E3 Bethesda press conference here.

Square Enix

Square Enix had perhaps the most disappointing presentation of the convention. Their pre-recorded announcement included looks at the previously announced Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Kingdom Hearts III, and Dragon Quest XI, but nothing that was particularly enticing.

Another prestige RPG, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood will have a crossover with Capcom’s Monster Hunter World.

There was a sneak peak of Babylon’s Fall, the new game from Platinum Games, maker of Bayonetta and Nier: Automata. Not much was revealed, but due to the quality Platinum is known for, all eyes are on that one.

We also got quick looks into Just Cause 4 and The Quiet Man, the latter of which features a deaf protagonist who seems up for a bit of a scuffle.

Read more about the E3 Square Enix press conference here.

Ubisoft

The majority of what Ubisoft showed off was Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, The Division 2, and Skull & Bones. All three titles were playable at E3, and all of them were received very positively. Stay tuned for our impressions.

There’s also a new Trials game in the works: Trials Rising. It looks to increase the number of players in a multiplayer match and hopefully will have just as much in the way of level building and sharing.

A good deal of time was spent on previously released titles, and in this case, we see that as a good thing. The amount of post-release love Ubisoft has given Rainbow Six Siege has seen it become one of the most popular FPS games today, offering a different kind of information war that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will be doing its best to emulate this year.

For Honor boasts a similar story. After a disastrous launch and a year of fixing, Ubisoft made it into a playable, fun experience worthy of competitive play, and it had more content to show off at E3.

The Crew 2 was also on display, as was a new IP from Ubisoft in Starlink: Battle for Atlas.

Read more about the E3 Ubisoft press conference here.

PC Games

Not to be forgotten, there was the PC Gaming Show at E3. We got to see some progress on Star Citizen, which won’t be out anytime soon, and some more quirky indie titles that look promising on PC.

Maneater is one of those titles, in which you play a shark preying on humans who stray too far from the beach. Stormland is an open world VR game in which you play a robot who can continually upgrade itself.

We also got a look at Mavericks, a battle royale game aiming for a ridiculous 1,000 players in one game. We got the chance to play a smaller scale demo of the game and speak to the developers, so stay tuned for more info on FANDOM.

Read more about the E3 PC press conference here.

PlayStation

It might not have had the 50 games shown in Microsoft’s presser, but the PlayStation conference was all about quality. Trailer after trailer was shown of some seriously sweet looking games, starting with a long gameplay demo of The Last of Us Part 2.

We were also treated to a stretch of gameplay from Ghost of Tsushima, a brilliant open-world samurai simulator from Sucker Punch, the studio behind the Infamous games.

Nioh 2 was announced, and the brief trailer made it seem like the protagonist will have some kind of demon transformation available.

Another long stretch of Death Stranding was shown, and still nobody has any idea what the game will be like other than the protagonist is a Norman Reedus-lookalike carrying a big backpack. Oh, there’s also a mysteriously de-aged Lindsay Wagner (our article image).

Marvel’s Spider-Man featured the Arkham-brand of choreography combat seems made for Spidey, but we were a little worried about its quick-time events. The web-slinger has his hands full with a slew of foes.

A remake for Resident Evil 2 is in the works, and the Remedy game we were all expecting to be Alan Wake 2 is instead Control, which is looking very interesting indeed. Control features a female protagonist who has telekinetic abilities.

Read more about the E3 Playstation press conference here.

Nintendo

Nintendo had the last press conference of the event. There were many things we would’ve loved to see — a new Star Fox, a new Advance Wars, the new Metroid, to name a few — but the main announcement came in the form of a new Smash Bros game: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The changes to gameplay look great, and fans were delighted. Every character from the previous games will be playable.

Fortnite will be Fortnite, and the battle royale phenomenon stole many of the headlines with the announcement that it was coming to Switch.

We also saw Pokémon Let’s Go, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which look great, but we really do wonder when Nintendo will give the Fire Emblem treadmill a break in favor of an Advance Wars game.

We’re big fans of Killer Queen here at FANDOM, and Killer Queen Black looks great as well.

Read more about the E3 Nintendo press conference here.

Let it never be said that 2018 was a quiet year for E3 game announcements. There’s a lot there to feast your eyes upon, and a lot to get excited about. The second half of this year just got a lot more crowded, and the early months of 2019 are looking to be almost as packed.

Jeremy Ray
Decade-long games critic and esports aficionado. Started in competitive Counter-Strike, then moved into broadcast, online, print and interpretative pantomime. You merely adopted the lag. I was born in it.