This year, E3 is pretty tough to speculate as to what will be shown across all the exhibitors. I’ve had a stab at what Sony might deliver already, but this post is all about what the mad scientists over at Nintendo will showcase for us in their E3 Nintendo Direct.
Well, there’s the first thing to expect. Nintendo won’t be demonstrating any of their games or hardware on a press conference style stage like the others, but will continue to deliver the bombs via Direct format. Last year their E3 was very much all about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And justifiably so, the game now out in the wild (no pun intended) is absolutely sensational and rightly so deserved to be the star attraction of Nintendo last year.
This year it seems Nintendo are very confident about Mario Odyssey. There is no official confirmation yet, but judging by the press images for the show, it’s very much Mario taking centre stage. I guess that could be seen as a given as he’s Nintendo’s mascot and all. But even the blurb about “Nintendo Spotlight” name drops Mario Odyssey.
So let us speculate what else will be shown during Nintendo’s E3 Spotlight.
Given the huge impact that Legend of Zelda made at the start of the year and the universal praise it received I think that Nintendo will start by giving us a closer look a the DLC / Season pass that will see the first part release in the Summer. Makes sense.
Moving from the very brief Zelda DLC segment, We’ll move right onto what will be Nintendo’s big winter game Mario Odyssey. It’ll be a pretty in depth trailer and discussion about the game that’ll take up a little longer than most would want from the direct. But that said I expect it to look pretty incredible, and introduce the other characters that might make an appearance somewhere in the game like Peach or Luigi.
Nintendo will be also very close to the launch of their next new IP ARMS, so expect a final quick trailer of this. I initially thought they’d give a larger focus on this, but Nintendo did a ARMS specific Direct on 17th May to reveal the remaining characters and modes. So due to the info from the direct, I expect just a quick trailer here.
From one new and hopefully successful franchise, to another new franchise that took on well in Splatoon. We’ll get some trailer and look at Splatoon 2.
A quick change of pace from game we already know about to an indie reel section that shows a plethora of already established and popular indie games coming to Switch as well as a few new ones that are somewhat ‘Exclusive’ like Fast RMX. Moving straight from the Indie reel to a 3rd party developers reel and perhaps with a quick ‘Switch’ to representatives of some of the developers like an EA rep to reveal FIFA / Madden / NHL / Need for Speed are all coming to Switch, then over to 2K to show off NBA2K18, Perhaps Activision to briefly mention that Call of Duty WW2 will in some capacity be on Switch, Ubisoft will give a quick display of a Watch_Dogs 2 port and the new Assassins Creed game will be Switch bound, and of course back to Bethesda to show us Skyrim again. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Skyrim at this point? But apparently it’s a pretty large open world game about dragons! Sounds good.
Back to Nintendo and a trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Fire Emblem Warriors.
Again to slow the pace a little Nintendo will discuss the use of entertainment apps and an internet browser, confirming that the likes of Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, 4OD and such will now be available after a firmware update. And that an Internet browser will be implemented before the year is out in further updates.
And now, in typical Nintendo style, at this point of the direct we’ve had reminders of all the existing announced Switch games that there are, we’re all at the point where we’re about to openly bash Nintendo and shout about how their Direct was terrible, how they are doomed, how they’ve lost E3… until..
A final flurry of new unannounced games begins. The first isn’t the biggest hitter, but it’s one that’s been rumoured and recently leaked. It’s the Rabbid & Mario crossover game.
Now the real megatons hit, the screen goes black for a new trailer, and the infamous GameFreak logo from Pokemon fame appears, an incredible trailer is shown revealing what looks like one of the largest Pokemon games yet. And finally it’s announced… Pokemon Stars is officially confirmed, in some capacity it is the first ‘proper’ Pokemon game to feature on a ‘home console’. Yes I know we had the Pokemon Direct featuring Ultra versions of Sun & Moon, but we can still dream right?
And then another black screen, music kicks in and all sounds very sci-fi. A glare of blue light starts to brighten the screen up and it looks like the blue is in an orb shape, it the light ball then extends and what appears to be a cannon starts to show. It’s an arm cannon, an arm blaster, what ever you want to call it, but it’s attached to a figure in orange. It’s Samus, it’s Metroid, and it cuts to incredibly epic looking first person shooter. We did it, we did it, we got Metroid!!
Nintendo’s conference ends with a thank you message from the Nintendo staff who presented the conference. They tell us that some of the games featured will be seen in more detail throughout the duration of E3 via the Nintendo Treehouse.
It’s not the best direct they’ve ever had, but it’s certainly not the worst.
– Murr
