Respecting Your Characters: The Uncharted Series

You know what I like about the Uncharted series? It respects its characters. No, I’m not talking about the waves and waves of pirates, mercenaries, and agents that our hero, Nathan Drake and friends slaughter by the hundreds over the course of the series. I’m also not talking about the villains of the series at all. I’m specifically referring to the “heroes” of the Uncharted series, Drake and his motley crew of buddies. Instead of killing them off in an attempt at drama or motivation for the player, instead of replacing them with a new face every game to keep things “fresh”, the Uncharted series instead focuses on building a core family of friends for Drake. Sure, in many regards these characters are driven by clichés and Drake himself is a character archetype that’s been seen dozens of times in dozens of pieces of media. Much of what happens in Uncharted is utterly ridiculous and nonsensical, and all of it is framed as if from behind the lens of a camera filming the latest summer blockbuster. But because of the way this series treats its characters, they felt like real people to me, and the more the series went on, they felt more and more like friends that I actually cared about. By the way, spoilers for the entire Uncharted series follow.

Let’s start by taking a look at the first game in the series, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Early in the game, Nathan Drake’s mentor and longtime friend Victor “Sully” Sullivan is shot by the bad guy and is presumably dead for a good chunk of the game. Drake then teams up with newswoman Elena Fisher to complete the quest that he and Sully started. If I hadn’t already known he was alive and well thanks to me being super late to playing this series, at this point Sully seemed to be destined for two things: either motivation for Drake and some drama/baggage for him to carry throughout the adventure OR pull a 006 and ending up having faked his death and been secretly working with the bad guys, maybe even secretly being the big bad and Drake’s ultimate main nemesis. The game even hints at this outcome when it finally reveals that Sully is still alive through some video footage Elena manages to capture, but when Drake and Elena finally catch up with the cigar-smoking thief, it turns out it was actually option C: Sir Francis Drake’s notebook, which Sully had conveniently placed in his breast pocket, had stopped the bullet and ever since Sully had just been leading the bag guys along, hoping Drake would come rescue him. After reuniting, Drake, Sully, and Elena team up to search for the treasure, forming the core Uncharted family that would persist throughout all three current main games, though I didn’t know that playing at the time. To be honest, I’d guessed Sully’s life had been spared thanks to the old “thing in the breast pocket stopping the bullet” trick, but nevertheless, I appreciated that Sully was neither destined to be the twist villain nor emotional motivation for Nate, but the faithful buddy he was introduced as. At the game’s conclusion, Nate beats the bad guy and he and Elena almost kiss only to be interrupted by a wise-cracking Sully, before all three sail off into the sunset together, with some treasure Sully managed to swipe from some pirates off-screen.

The crew

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves at first opens with Drake being the only returning character, before we are introduced to newcomer Harry Flynn and then to Chloe Frazer, with Elena nowhere to be seen nor mentioned. I figured that Uncharted would follow the typical male-led adventure movie formula, with Chloe being the new female love interest and Elena just expected to be forgotten about, and us to not worry about what happened between her and Drake after the events of the first game. Sully gets some screen-time a bit later with a mission involving him and Nate that evokes the early moments of the first Uncharted, before he decides he’s “too old for this shit” and leaves the rest of the adventure up to Nate. I figured Sully would just be a character that shows up at the beginning of each Uncharted game during the “tutorial” sections, which would be fitting for his role of mentor, and probably be the only recurring character besides Nate, leaving the rest of the cast to be filled by new faces. The early moments of Uncharted 2 seemed to fall neatly in line with these expectations, but they were pleasantly altered when Nate gets momentarily separated from Chloe fairly early on and (in a fairly large coincidence) runs into Elena Fisher and her cameraman, leading to some humorous and awkward exchanges between the two (Elena evens makes a quip about being “last year’s model” when she introduces herself to Chloe soon after, and I appreciate the jab at the trope on the developers' part). Drake and Chloe then team up with Elena and the unfortunately doomed cameraman, Jeff, to continue jumping across buildings, hiding behind low walls, and shooting waves of faceless mercenaries, at least some of whom must have children or even a girlfriend. This is something else I like about Uncharted (no, not the obscene amounts of thoughtless killing): Drake isn’t always a one-man, unstoppable killing/adventuring machine; he’s often joined by a friend or three that all work together to work out the harrowing situation they find themselves in. Through these co-operative sections, I found myself caring more for my companions than if they had just showed up in cutscenes. The unfortunately doomed Jeff is shot and killed, but not before Drake tries valiantly to save his life, and Chloe, who seems to be constantly switching sides, rejoins the baddies, leaving Drake and Elena once again paired up for adventure. It felt nostalgic almost, once again having the Nate and Elena pair-up dynamic, like these two characters were destined to go on wacky adventures together. I love the chemistry between these two, and I was pleasantly pleased that the creators of Uncharted opted to not waste an established character and instead further build on her and Nate’s relationship in the sequel.

Nate and Elena eventually meet Tenzin, another new character and a native of Tibet. Tenzin, despite not speaking the same language as Nate, quickly becomes a reliable and likable ally. While he and Nate are exploring the Tibetan mountains, they encounter a strange yeti-like creature, which appears to kill Tenzin at first. Tenzin, however, is yet another character not willing to simply become a red shirt and, after regaining consciousness, saves Nate’s life from the monster. The two return to Tenzin’s village later on to find it under attack from Zoran Lazarevic’s goons, with a distraught Tenzin searching for his daughter, Pema. In a cheaper narrative, Tenzin would have probably found his daughter killed in the action and we would have seen a tragic scene play out in an attempt to make the experience more “dark” and “edgy”. Instead, Tenzin fights alongside Nate as they struggle to take back the village in an otherwise destructive sequence where many of the villagers are killed, but that luckily ends with Tenzin happily reuniting with this daughter, safe and sound. It’s nice to see a character like Tenzin, who plays a relatively small role in the larger plot, be treated with respect and be able to get a relatively happy ending. It’s also nice to see a non-English speaking, non-white character get treated in this manner in this series, as Uncharted certainly doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to representing non-whites (typically they’re the “bad guys” Nate is slaughtering in the hundreds, unfortunately).

Tenzin and Drake

Chloe is another story. Throughout the game, she seems to be being set up as a duplicitous character who will end up betraying Drake. She’s the adventurous “bad girl” to Elena’s more reserved “good girl” (not that Elena can’t shoot a gun and jump around on stuff just as well as Chloe). Basically, Chloe to me seemed destined to end up being someone the player is meant to jeer at and probably die some horrible or unfortunate death near the end, leaving Drake and the more morally responsible Elena to pair up. While Elena and Nate do indeed end up together in the end, Chloe at least gets some respect. It’s clear as the game goes on that Chloe is someone who cares about Drake, but is also someone who wants to protect herself. She lets go of this self-interest near the end though and agrees to help Drake and Elena take down Lazarevic. In the game’s final moments, it is Elena, instead, who is on the brink of death (wounded by a grenade explosion; there’s some ludonarrative dissonance for ya) and Chloe, who before was willing to let the unfortunately doomed Jeff the cameraman bleed out in a gutter because he was slowing down the group, now risks her life to carry the wounded Elena while Drake fights off hordes of Lazarevic’s goons. Drake goes off on his own to do the hero thing and take down Lasarevic, now powered up on magic Shambhala juice, while Chloe attempts to get Elena out of the hidden valley. Later on, as Shambhala is crumbling all around them, the final playable moment of the game tasks the player with saving Chloe, falling to her death while being attacked by a big blue monster man. I think this was a smart final moment, and a good demonstration of how the game’s creators still respected Chloe as an important character, despite clearly setting up Elena as Nate’s prime love interest. In these final moments, Chloe is a human being worth saving the life of instead of a selfish, duplicitous archetype that “got what was coming to her”. Even though they’re both involved in a love triangle with the male lead, it’s still sadly rare to see two female leads like this in a story like Uncharted’s, and both treated like important characters. After saving Chloe, the two of them rejoin a battered Elena who seems to be done for.

Not only did this series not simply discard Elena as “last year’s model”, but established her as a character that I really didn’t want to die at this point. The game cuts to what appears to be a funeral scene with a mourning Drake, leaving Elena’s fate purposefully unknown. Chloe shows up, asking Drake if he “loves her” before advising Drake to tell her so and then respectfully bowing out as the camera pans over to an injured, but very much alive Elena being helped by Sully. Once again the game ends with the same three characters, with the final scene this time being shared solely by Elena and Nate, playfully bantering with each other, and seeming like they’re going to stay together this time. At this point, this series had cemented two characters I cared about going forward and I was pleased that neither Elena nor Chloe were haphazardly killed off, but instead treated as characters whose lives mattered just as much as Nate’s or Sully’s. In a series where life is otherwise not treated with any respect at all and the “bad guys” drop left and right without any noticeable guilt or emotional impact on Drake’s part, it was surprising and nice to see that at least the game’s developers were more interested in developing and building the game’s central cast instead of killing them off or trading them off.

The ending of Uncharted 2

I didn’t quite know what to expect from Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, but I was hoping the series would stick with the route it had already established with its characters. The opening moments once again focus solely on Sully and Nate, and it seemed at first like Elena and Nate had once again split ways between games, which I was a bit annoyed by, but I tried to have faith that the game wouldn’t ignore their relationship. Soon enough, we are introduced to a new friend of Nate’s, Charlie Cutter, as well as the return of Chloe, to my pleasant surprise. Even though I praised the developers for treating her character with a degree of respect towards the end of the second game, I still figured that we’d seen the last of her. I was happy to see that Naughty Dog treated her as more than just a throwaway love interest for Nate and in part 3, we see that she, Nate, Sully, and Cutter are all part of a spiffy new thieving team on the trail of some wacky new adventure. The consistency of the characters in this series mixed with a few new ones really works to the benefit of these games in my eyes. This feeling of camaraderie is where the strength of the Uncharted series’ narratives lie (the plots themselves are fairly formulaic and do their fair share of aping from other sources, but I still find them entertaining enough). Despite being happy to see Chloe back, I was also a bit nervous that Elena had now been dropped, in favor of a no-romance plot with a cool gang of thieves, which would otherwise be totally fine, if the previous game had not established Elena as clearly a character who was going to stick around in Drake’s life.

After finding some clues in London, the team heads out on a globetrotting journey to find the keys to yet another legendary lost city. Eventually they end up in Syrbia, where Cutter is drugged and forced to give over some important items to the bad guys. Later, in his delirious state, he tries to kill Nate, but luckily comes to his senses before Sully shoots him. Cutter later finds some redemption by using some clever thinking to outwit the villainous Talbot and his agents, allowing Nate and the others to escape. Unfortunately, Cutter ends up getting caught and finds himself cornered by central antagonist Katherine Marlowe, Talbot and their cronies as his buddies helplessly look on. I figured Cutter was done for at this point and he’d end being a martyr, but once again my expectations were betrayed when Cutter jumped down a high castle wall to avoid getting burned alive, breaking his leg but nonetheless surviving to adventure another day. Unfortunately he and Chloe disappear for the rest of the game from this point on and while this absence is justifiable within the narrative, I still wish they at least appeared in the ending for some closure. Still, I’m glad Cutter wasn’t just fodder for a cheap death due to his status as a new and not as well established character. I’m not saying that characters can’t die (both the unfortunately doomed Jeff and Karl Schafer are killed off in Uncharted 2 after all), just that I appreciate when the characters opposite the lead aren’t all treated like they’re expendable.

Sully, Cutter, Chloe and Nate in Uncharted 3

It’s after this point when Nate and Sully need someone to escort them around Yemen that Sully gets an idea to call someone Nate seems very reluctant to reach out to. Turns out that person, happily, is Elena Fisher, and once again our main trio find themselves scuttling through ancient tombs together. It’s revealed through subtext that Nate and Elena got married in-between the ending of Uncharted 2 and the beginning of Uncharted 3, but separated for some reason, though Elena still wears her wedding ring. When Sully gets kidnapped by the baddies, Elena and Nate set off on a mission to rescue him, sharing some touching moments in-between. I was a bit disappointed that Elena ends up getting left behind for the final chapters of the game and doesn’t show up again until the ending, but given what happens to Nate after he stows away on the cargo plane en route to the Rub’ al Khali desert, I can see why the developers wrote the story this way. Speaking of Sully, he plays a much bigger role in Uncharted 3, and instead of just being Nate’s partner at the beginning of the game this time, he’s along for the ride for most of the adventure and we even get to see how he and a young Nate met, as well as some scenes near the end that strengthen their bond. The game’s ending involves Sully giving Nate his wedding ring back (which he’d kept after Nate “lost it”), which Nate shows to Elena before the two embrace. I liked the idea of Nate replacing Francis Drake’s ring with his wedding ring, symbolizing the shift of priorities in his life…at least until the events of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. The three of them walk off towards a plane-ride home, in a similar manner to the way the first Uncharted ended.

Nate and Elena share a tender moment in Uncharted 3

I’m not saying that the Uncharted series has the best characters or the best character development ever. All I’m saying is that it does a fair job of respecting the characters it does have and of focusing on building their bonds and relationships over the course of the three games, and also treats new characters like they are a part of the family as well. It doesn’t trade a new love interest for Nate every game, but instead focuses on a lasting relationship between him and Elena. It doesn’t kill off Nate’s friends or turn them into martyrs; they encounter dangerous situations, but somehow they pull through and this aspect only strengthens their friendship. I got the sense throughout this series that the lives of Nate’s friends were just as important to the games’ creators as Nate himself. It’s nice to see a series where, for the most part, characters aren’t wasted or killed off purely to make something more “edgy” or “shocking” or sacrificed in a lazy way to fulfill another character’s arc. In this regard, I’m pleased with the way that Uncharted handles its cast, and with the way that it builds a family around Nathan Drake, establishing a group of people that I grew to care about. There are plenty of criticisms that can be leveled at the Uncharted series, but besides being a fun combination of thrilling spectacle and exciting adventure, I think it does a fine job with treating its people with a degree of respect and care that I appreciate…the good guys anyway.

My Favorite Games from E3 2015

I tell myself that E3 is nothing but a week long commercial, a hype generator cooked up by business people in business suits engineered to make me want to give them money and treat them like gods and the games shown like holy artifacts, each trailer a hallowed gift. I tell myself to sit back, to be measured and aware of what E3 really is. But there was real emotion last week, there was genuineness, and there were games no one thought would ever see the light of day, games that look refreshing and imaginative, nostalgic games, and games that look like they are really taking the medium to a new level. Sure, the usual onslaught of cars, guns, and bloody killing sprees were there, and yes, all the corporate shilling was intact, but for me all of that was overshadowed by some of the most exciting video games I’ve seen get the spotlight at E3 in a long time.

These are, in no particularly ranked order, the games that stood out to me the most this past week. Whether they were extensively demoed or simply teased, it doesn’t matter. As long as it was a game that was announced or shown off in some fashion at this year’s E3, it’s applicable for this list. There are other games not present that I’m very interested in, but they didn’t make the cut either because I’ve already known about them for a while and didn’t find out much new, or because these ten games just eclipsed them somehow in term of surprising me or leaving an impact on me this particular year. These are the titles I’ll fondly remember from this E3, and the ones that I’m just really jazzed about right now.

Super Mario Maker (Sep. 11, 2015)

Nintendo had a rough E3 this year. Many people, myself included, were a bit underwhelmed by their Digital Event, people are complaining about Star Fox Zero’s controls, and some misguided individuals are petitioning for the cancellation of Metroid Prime: Federation Force. But if there’s one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that Super Mario Maker just looks swell. Easily Nintendo’s star game for me this E3, Nintendo’s celebration of Super Mario’s 30^th anniversary looks to be delivering on its full potential with robust and easy to use level creation and sharing options in addition to pipe-loads of quirky charm. It hits all the right nostalgic notes, but it’s also an innovative and spectacular idea. On top of all that, it’s kind of like a direct sequel or expansion to Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World all in one (like a new “Lost Levels”, except for all three games, and with not necessarily all brutally tough levels). Super Mario Maker feels to me like an apology for that lazy Super Mario All-Stars port Nintendo released for the series’ 25^th anniversary back in 2010. It had a very strong showing at the 2015 Nintendo World Championships before the show even started, and continued to make me smile all throughout the week. Like seriously, I can’t not smile watching this game.

ReCore (Spring 2016)

In the past, I’ve railed on CG trailers and how their abundance at E3 always annoys me. I’d almost always rather see actual in-game footage instead of just a pre-rendered movie that tells me nothing about how the actual work is going to turn out. This E3, however, I’ve realized that CG trailers have their place, and they can be done well. Right from the get go, I was interested after seeing “from Keiji Inafune and the makers of Metroid Prime” (umm…yes, please!), but even beyond that, the music and art design of ReCore immediately set a tone that pulled me in, evoking the likes of both Kino’s Journey and Metroid itself, while also being something fresh. The trailer for ReCore also does a great job of telling a succinct little story that effectively gives me an idea of how the game’s central mechanic is going to work, and the reveal of the title at the end drives this “core” concept home (sorry, I had to). ReCore, you have my attention.

Cuphead (1936 plus eighty years)

Do I even need to say anything? I think Cuphead’s footage speaks for itself. Shown for all of one second during an indie montage at Microsoft’s conference last year, it was the kind of thing that made me lean forward and say, “Hey, wait! Wait! What was THAT?” The description for the E3 2015 trailer on YouTube reads “Inspired by 1930s cartoons, the visuals are hand drawn and inked and the music is all original jazz recordings”…now that is how you sell me a video game. I love visually-creative platformers as a general rule, but Cuphead really stands out to me because of just how utterly seamless it looks. There is nothing about Cuphead’s presentation that gives away its status as a video game; it’s just a playable cartoon.

Beyond Eyes (Summer 2015)

I love seeing small indie developers with hugely creative ideas get the spotlight at E3, and this trend has become more and more prominent in the past couple of years. One of the most unique and special things about video games, and one of the many aspects of them still brimming with potential, is their ability to let us inhabit the role of anyone or anything, to let us walk in the shoes of someone or something else. The potential here to explore different life experiences other than our own and build empathy is enormous. In Beyond Eyes, the player steps into the shoes of a young bling girl looking for her lost cat. As she moves through her world using her other senses, the landscape and objects within it materialize around her, like watercolor paint expanding across a dry canvas. In one scenario, she might hear some rushing water and think it’s a fountain, only to get closer and realize that it’s actually a sewage pipe. Not only does the game’s art look beautiful and the concept show a lot of promise and originality, but this game is just one example of the power and potential of video games as a unique artistic medium, something that I really like to see at E3 in-between all the gun scopes and improved car textures.

Unravel (TBA)

…Speaking of which. Partway into the EA press conference, of all places, out onto the stage comes a shy, visibly nervous man with a tattooed hand and small doll made out of red yarn in his shaking hands. He goes on to explain that he got the idea for his game, called Unravel, about a small creature named Yarny that traverses beautiful environments inspired by Northern Scandinavia and leads a thread that connects all of us together, or something poetic and beautiful like that, when on a camping trip with his family. Unravel is a game aimed directly at my soul and my sensibilities. Saying in an interview that he doesn’t believe in “heavy-handed storytelling”, the game’s creative director, Martin Sahlin (the aforementioned tattooed man) says that he believes in "filling the world with interesting things, with clues, with details” that the player can discover on their own, adding that it's also fine if they don't because "it's more about the atmosphere and the feeling of the whole thing". So Unravel takes what I love about the Pikmin series (a small character running around huge photo-realistic environments) and presents a puzzle-platformer with reason and context for its level design, all wrapped up in a minimalist presentation? I think Martin Sahlin might be my soulmate.

Yoshi’s Woolly World (Oct. 16, 2015)

The yarn genre has really been taking off recently, hasn’t it? I love colorful Nintendo platformers, so naturally I anticipate playing and enjoying Yoshi’s Woolly World. But what sets this spiritual successor to Kirby’s Epic Yarn (which is one of my favorite platformers from the last console generation) apart from the likes of something like New Super Mario Bros. is just how much handcrafted effort seems to be being put into this game. Obviously, the game’s artistic design is a huge draw, with everything being crafted out of wool, fabric, and giant knitting needles; it truly looks like something I can reach out and touch and feel. But I just love that the developers actually crafted real-life Yarn Yoshis during the game’s development. In addition, the composer for the game, who is trying to have a different song for every level, actually took up guitar lessons to make sure the soundtrack was up to par. I’m really looking forward to finally playing this during the cool autumn months later this year.

Horizon: Zero Dawn (2016)

One thing that made this year’s E3 stand out to me was a theme of change, of growth, of this medium and this industry finally beginning to take the first steps of reaching maturity. Sure, there was the usual onslaught of sense-assaulting cartoonish violence, cheers for particularly brutal digital decapitations, and all the familiar faces and concepts present, but there was also creative-looking new worlds and ideas, more of a focus on narrative and how games can evoke emotion. The words “emotional narrative” were uttered onstage at Sony’s press conference, as opposed to another bland, self-defeating joke about “f*cking blood and guts! Video games, am I right?”. In addition, there was a very notable effort in making games and the gaming scene more diverse, to reflect a growing and diverse audience. There were more female presenters on stage and a surprisingly ample amount of new games featuring female protagonists or at least a woman in a strong central role.

Then there was Horizon: Zero Dawn, a game starring a woman that takes place in a world unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The game’s extensive and fantastic trailer/demo begins with a well-acted narration over beautiful panoramic landscape shots that tells the story of a modern civilization like our own falling and eventually being reclaimed by natural forces. We then see hunter-gatherer tribes emerge in a “post-historic” world that tells tales of the “old ones” that went extinct. We’ve seen this tale before, but it’s told so well through visuals, narration, and some truly gorgeous music that I was completely immersed and already on board with this game. Then the twist came: “…for this world was never ours…we’ve always shared it…”, the female narrator suddenly says as we see otherworldly mechanical animals enter the scene, first in the form of a few small scavengers, and then followed by massive robotic dinosaurs with disks for heads that come stomping across a stunning, sunlit prairie, like some kind of cyberpunk Jurassic Park. It’s wonderful, and the juxtaposition of the natural elements and the unnatural, metallic creatures makes for an immediately intriguing and fresh-looking world. That would have been enough to get my interest, but then the trailer seamlessly transitions into a lengthy gameplay portion where the familiar narrator, now fully revealed as our player character, starts creeping through wonderfully-rendered plants as she hunts mechanical deer in order to harvest some kind of green canister attached to their backs. Before reaching her prey, she kills a smaller beast, after which she subverts every law of E3 by expressing remorse and actually apologizing to the life she’s taken. It all culminates in a thrilling Shadow of the Colossus-esque battle with a robotic T-Rex thing. In a word: it’s breathtaking, a genuine surprise, and I can’t wait to see more (ok, more than a word).

…did I say Shadow of the Colossus?

The Last Guardian (2016)

It’s real, and Sony opened their show with gameplay of it.

I know I said I wasn’t putting these games in any significant order, but I obviously saved these last three for a reason. After years of rumors, cancelation scares, and many dashed hopes, The Last Guardian’s long-awaited, often doubted, and always hoped for return kicked off an hour of dreams. I said this E3 was special for showing signs that this troubled and stagnant industry is changing, but it was equally as special for how it spoke to a generation. How it resurrected old legends and made me cover my mouth in stunned disbelief. I just don’t even really need to say it, do I? The Last Guardian. It’s one of those games, those ones I sigh about at the end of every E3 press conference cycle because once again it didn’t show up. But this time it did.

The spiritual successor to a work of interactive art that defined an era of video games for me and remains one of my most cherished interactive experiences, The Last Guardian also just looks like an incredibly touching and ambitious game, and it’s central “mechanic” revolving around the bond of a young boy and his giant gryphon-cat-bird friend has me enchanted all over again. Sure, there have been many games since The Last Guardian was first unveiled back in 2009 that have aimed to capitalize on the emotional potential of interactive art, but The Last Guardian still excites me due to its promising concept and its masterful pedigree. It also just makes me tear up every time I see it (why does Trico have to look so much like my own dog?). I don’t even know if I’ll be able to handle this game when it hopefully, oh please hopefully, releases next year.

Final Fantasy VII Remake (TBA)

So they opened with The Last Guardian? I mean, what could they possibly have if they…Oh. Ooooooh. Even though it was set up by Adam Boyes beforehand, Final Fantasy VII fans have learned better than to trust a smug presenter promising the world. Even as the trailer went on and a recognizable Midgar began to be more and more slowly unveiled, with talk of “reunions” and “promises” accompanying the proceedings, I still wasn’t convinced. At first I thought it was a proper, full-fledged sequel to FFVII, then perhaps another movie. Even at the end of the trailer, at first only a logo appeared with no title. Well, in order to dissuade any confusion, to make things perfectly, perfectly clear, a single word appeared with booming fanfare afterword:

“Remake”

Now this is how you use a CG trailer. And what a fantastic trailer it is. Every word spoken, every shot, just designed to evoke specific emotions in those watching, just toying with all the fans hoping and anticipating. Now, I like Final Fantasy VII a lot, and there’s plenty of things that I admire about it, but I’ll admit that I don’t have as emotional a connection to it as many others, due to me not playing it when it was in its prime. I still remember how huge it was at that time though, and still have a lot of nostalgia for finally playing through it myself one summer years ago (though, I must shamefully confess, I never finished it, stopping just before the crater and Sephiroth; I hope to go back and run through the whole thing again sometime, this time to completion). I realize how massive the FFVII remake’s announcement is, and I think the way it was announced and the trailer itself is all brilliant, but it was almost immediately followed by an announcement that was my personal moment to start shouting things at my computer screen…

Shenmue III (When it’s ready)

Even as I write this, as I continue to look at the kickstarter (and yes, I backed it, of course I did) and the title: “Shenmue III”, I still can’t quite believe it, and I laugh to myself. Let me back up. I received a Dreamcast on Christmas day of 1999, right after it launched, and it blew my mind. Way ahead of their time, the games for that console delivered experiences I’d never dreamed of (heh…) in video games before. Sonic Adventure’s clean visuals and sense of speed made my jaw drop, Jet Grind Radio’s pioneering cel-shaded visuals and unique style were unlike anything I’d ever seen, and then there was a little game called Shenmue that made me realize the potential of video games. Never before had a game felt so real to me, had so much to interact with, and transported me to a place like the way Shenmue did. At the time, its detailed, fully interactable world, voice-acting (now notorious), and potent story-telling fully transported me, and not only cultivated my love of eastern culture, but cemented my love of video games.

I could go on. But suffice it to say, when Shenmue II was released in the west as an Xbox (at the time I only had a GameCube) exclusive, I was pretty bummed. I never played it, but I always, always wanted to. Well, now it’s finally time to get on ebay and pick up an original Xbox, I guess.

What made the announcement of Shenmue III (or to be more exact, its kickstarter) all the more potent was not only just how long it’s been since the release of Shenmue II (fourteen years), but because the continuation of Shenmue has long been nothing but a dream: the series’ continuation has become a joke, and has always been something I never thought would happen. But in front of a bewildered audience still recovering from Final Fantasy VII’s return, a shower of flower petals and Shenmue creator Yu Suzuki showed me that nothing is impossible, and that the legacy of Shenmue lives on, long after those enchanting Dreamcast days met with an all too abrupt end.  

Bonus! GameTrailers’ Live Stream

While not in fact a video game, I had to mention the always entertaining and somewhat revolutionary live stream that GameTrailers put on this year. Filled with genuine human moments and giving off the vibe of a bunch of friends hanging out and talking about E3, GameTrailers’ stream was the cure for the stiff, PR-fueled interviews and more “professional” streams that litter the internet during E3. Their stream was a constant highlight throughout the week for me, as I would dip in to see what they were up to, only to see Brandon Jones’ hilarious impersonations of his colleagues, Michael Huber crying about Shenmue, and more serious conversations about the potential of video games. The GT crew feels like a family and I just loved seeing their shenanigans all throughout the week. Also, their reactions to Sony’s “Triforce of Dreams” are simply the best thing on the internet.

Honorable Mentions: Dishonored 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, No Man’s Sky, Dreams, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Star Fox Zero, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, Earthbound Beginnings, The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, Fire Emblem Fates, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, FAST Racing Neo, Typoman, Kingdom Hearts III, Below, Edge of Nowhere, Soma…a lot of great and interesting games this year.

Some disappointments from Nintendo aside (that were, honestly, tempered by some great times with the still awesome Treehouse Live and some definitely fantastic-looking games on display; also puppets and Miyamoto visiting shrines and Mario courses on graph paper), this was a great E3. A legendary E3 even. And even though I tell myself it’s just a big, loud, silly, week-long corporate magic trick, hell if it isn’t a lot of fun, and hell if I’m not just excited for video games right now.

Splatoon Embodies Nintendo’s Creativity

Nintendo’s developers have a collective gift of coming up with a single unique gameplay mechanic and building an entire experience around it. In the case of the recently-released Splatoon, this concept was as simple as shooting ink. After deciding that a squid-human hybrid that could change between the two forms could, logically, shoot the ink as a human and swim through it as a squid, they then built an entire world out of the concept. The last Nintendo game I played before Splatoon that made me really think about just how creative the Japanese developer can be when given total freedom was Pikmin. A couple of years ago, when I sat down and really got into the Pikmin series for the first time, I was struck by not only the uniqueness of the actions I was performing in the games, but by the rich, fleshed out world the Pikmin lived in. I really had never experienced anything like Pikmin before (or since). And while parallels can be drawn between everything from the Super Mario series to SpongeBob SquarePants (and oh have people drawn those parallels), I feel quite similarly when it comes to Splatoon.

Perhaps one of the reasons why Nintendo’s games hold such a special place in my heart is because they capitalize on the medium’s core strength, interactivity, by taking a central gameplay concept and building a whole universe around it. In addition to this, when they’re at their best, Nintendo often shows me things I’ve never seen, even in familiar series. In Splatoon, evolved sea creatures live in a very human-looking city known as Inkopolis. At the center of this bustling metropolis is a plaza where the city’s youth engage in this world’s freshest sport: Turf Wars. Two teams of four “Inklings” (what the aforementioned human-squid, or kid-squid if you will, hybrids are called) compete to cover the ground with as much of their team’s colored ink as they can in defined arenas. When not inking and splatting each other, the kids buy clothing and shoes from all the most popular brands (and yes, there are multiple fictional clothing brands, each complete with their own unique logos) in a mall run by a colorful group of shopkeepers, including a giant shrimp in a beanie cap wearing sneakers on his many appendages and a bashful sea anemone with a rude clown fish living in her hair. On the other side of the plaza are a pair of Inkling newscasters named Callie and Marie (get it?) who are local celebrities among the other Inklings, as well as a shady humanoid sea urchin lounging in an alleyway, a pile of terrified-looking shelled creatures by his side (as well as a few suspiciously empty shells). As soon as I got the chance to explore this vibrant plaza, I immediately got the urge to leave it, to branch out and see more of Inkopolis. This world has its own language, its own slang, its own youth culture and celebrities. Not only that, but it has quite an involved history, which I’ll get into in a bit. The world Nintendo has built for what is at its core an online multiplayer shooter is so interesting and unprecedented that all I could think about was wanting to learn more about it and see more of it upon first booting up the game.

I thought the personality and culture seen in the main plaza was as far as the detail would go, but Splatoon’s developers went even further and decided to let curious players learn bits and pieces of the history of this world. Splatoon has a single-player mode, tucked unceremoniously out of the way, accessed from an unassuming storm drain in one corner of Inkopolis Plaza. The single-player adventure tasks the player’s Inkling with tracking down the missing “Zapfish”, electric catfish that power Inkopolis, which we are told have been stolen by the Octarians, an Octopus-inspired race that are apparently the natural enemies of the Inklings. We travel to their home of “Octo Valley”, and via giant tea kettles, explore bizarre underground spheres with artificial suns suspended from their rocky ceilings and fake skylines projected by dozens of giant monitors lining their walls. If this all sounds delightfully original and weird, it’s because it is. The level layouts themselves are well-crafted, taking ample inspiration from EAD Tokyo Super Mario games (Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario 3D World, etc.), and presenting plenty of creative gimmicks that make good use of the core concept of splattering ink around and swimming through it. There are giant inflatable sponges, inkrails, invisible walkways, spinning splatforms, and all manner of Octarian-built machines that try to splat our little Inkling with purple goop. The gameplay involves an interesting mix of stealth combat and ink-fueled platforming that makes for an engaging and novel design. The level aesthetics could be better (as interesting as the concept of the Octarians’ world is, most of the levels sort of blend together and all end up looking like similar mishmashes of floating junk by the end; while there are some more visually-distinct levels along the way, they all feel more like something akin to obstacle courses or test chambers than an actual world) and the music, while very creative in style, vocals, and instrumentation throughout the game as a whole, is very lacking in variety for most of the single-player adventure (you’ll be listening to the same two short tracks for most of the single-player levels unfortunately), but it’s a decent adventure nonetheless with fun stages and some truly fantastic boss fights being the absolute highlights (the final boss deserves special mention for being a boisterous, jubilant rave party of a finale that’s some of the most pure, blood-pumping, intense fun I’ve had in a game in a while). But while the single-player gameplay experience is a colorful, abstract journey about blasting at cartoonish anthropomorphized tentacle creatures, the completely optional “Sunken Scrolls”, one of which is hidden in each level, hold a much more intriguing tale. These notes start out by giving nifty little factoids about the world of the Inklings, with some gorgeous artwork accompanying them to boot, but end up telling a fairly detailed account of the surprisingly dark history of this fascinating world.

Skip this paragraph if you want to avoid spoilers (or still haven’t found all of the Sunken Scrolls yourself). Still here? Apparently, it turns out that the world of Splatoon is actually a post-apocalyptic version of our own (you might be surprised by how many of Nintendo’s colorful worlds are hinted, theorized, or confirmed to be post-apocalypse scenarios of our own…including Kirby) where humans ignored warnings of climate change and rising sea levels and eventually became extinct (yeah, there’s a message about climate change nestled in Splatoon; keep ignoring global warming people and we’ll soon be replaced by a bunch of fresh, paintballing squid kids!). In a world mostly consumed by the ocean, all manner of sea creatures sought the light of the surface and crawled out of the sea to occupy the now abandoned land (maybe it doesn’t make the most sense, but hey, it’s a neat story). Gradually over thousands and thousands of years, squids evolved into Inklings and Jellyfish evolved into…Jellyfish with eyeballs. In the beginning, the Inklings and the Octarians got along swimmingly (when talking about Splatoon, one must strive to use as many aquatic puns as possible), but as sea levels continued to rise evermore and the available land dwindled, the two dominant species began a real “Turf War”, with the victors (it’s implied partly accidentally) ending up being the Inklings. The Octarians were driven underground to live in caverns deep beneath the sea, while the Inklings and a variety of other species (who were apparently fresh enough to live aboveground with the Inklings) thrived and built the sprawling Inkopolis…or possibly just took over Tokyo, Japan, which Inkopolis is clearly inspired by, and renamed it. In the present day, while the Inklings enjoy engaging in less serious Turf Wars for sport and fun in majestic Inkopolis, with ample energy supplied by the bountiful Zapfish, the Octarians struggle to survive underground. Faced with an energy crisis in the form of a dwindling supply of electricity, coupled with an overall deteriorating society (the Octarians’ world is full of failing technology, lights and electronic signs shorting out, lopsided buildings, and an overall aesthetic that brings to mind a junkyard; the complete opposite of the bright and bustling Inkopolis above), the Octarians sought to steal the Zapfish from the Inklings. All this is told through text and lovingly composed, detailed artwork, ranging from diagrams showing the evolution and anatomy of the Inklings to old black and white war photos showing more realistic-looking adult Inklings holding old-world weapons during the Great Turf War. There’s also something about a cryogenically-sealed cat from the human era in there. I’m not kidding, this is actually the narrative to this game about kids that turn into squids and shoot each other with rainbow ink for fun. Needless to say, this aspect of the game took me completely by surprise, and I am very happily surprised. The contrast between the game’s colorful nature and this rather serious backstory is another part of the experience’s charm, and something that Nintendo often likes to do in their games. There’s tons of potential to explore this universe further, and maybe I’m the only one who cares about all this (as opposed to just ignoring that sewer grate and jumping into the online and splatting ink about), but I only hope a more expansive single-player is in the eventual sequel, where we get to explore less abstract environments and instead more of this world’s locales that feel like real places, and learn about more of this fishy universe.

Every inch of Splatoon is considered and designed to bring the vision of this unique world to life: the colorful visuals, the wacky and creative soundtrack, the character designs, and the core gameplay, which has been obsessively polished to a fine, tentacled point. It is abundantly apparent that the developers rigorously obsessed over making sure the way the ink effects felt was perfect, and it really shows: the way it looks when you splat it around, the sound effects when you plunk into it and swim around in it, the squelching sounds your messy footsteps make, it’s all so perfectly polished that I feel like I can smell the ink, and am immediately brought back to the experience of finger painting as a child. Satisfying is the word that comes to mind when thinking about Splatoon and its ink; it just feels so damn satisfying. This game-feel is something Nintendo always nails with its games, and perhaps this, combined with their often understated ability to craft unique, living, breathing worlds (when they really put the effort in) is perhaps why I keep coming back to them. And won’t shut up about their games.

Splatoon isn’t perfectly-executed, and there’s still tons of untapped potential here, but through its imaginative world-building, sense of style, music, level design, character design, and gameplay, Splatoon embodies Nintendo’s creativity, and represents their enormous potential for delivering brilliantly-unique new experiences when they branch away from their already established, safe worlds and characters. I’m not saying that the likes of Mario and Zelda haven’t been delivering creative new ideas for years as well, just that there’s nothing quite like an entirely new universe, new characters, new atmosphere, etc. with brand new gameplay concepts to boot, and it’s something I want to see more of from Nintendo. Given Splatoon’s success and current popularity, I’m happy that the potential for not only an expansion of Inkopolis, but for even more new worlds in the future is a definite possibility. Stay fresh, Nintendo.

The Mysterious Nature of Link’s Awakening

I posted this piece to a Zelda forum a while back, but after recently playing through the original black and white Link’s Awakening (I’d previously only ever played the Game Boy Color “DX” version), I thought I’d revisit these thoughts and expand on them. Heavy spoilers for Link’s Awakening are in the latter half of this post, but I’ll warn you beforehand when we get there, as well as put a marker where the spoilers end.

The first Legend of Zelda game I ever played and completed was The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX for the Game Boy Color. I remember my older brother showed me the original black and white version of Link’s Awakening and simply said something like, “This is Zelda.” I recall looking over his shoulder and watching him fight Moblins in the Mysterious Woods (from that day on, I would never, ever forget that music). I was immediately intrigued. I picked up the newer, color version of the game and dived in. I spent so much time just being enthralled at how you could cut grass and practiced doing a spin-attack to cut as much grass as possible in Mabe Village, where this adventure begins.

Link’s Awakening has a mysterious nature that I still can’t quite accurately describe to this day. The special, surreal feeling that this game exudes has remained unique to it even all these years, and many other games, later. After about a year of being stuck on a puzzle in the game’s second dungeon, Bottle Grotto (the one where you must defeat three enemies in a certain order), I fully immersed myself in the game during a week of being home sick from school with strep throat. I’ll never forget that initial playthrough. The endless feeling of discovery and intrigue the game provided was something I’d never experienced in a game before. I realize today that this sense of discovery was one of the key factors that initially attracted me to Zelda, and adventure and exploration games in general.

Link's Awakening DX for Game Boy Color

The entire experience is layered with mystery in a way that no other Zelda game has quite captured for me, not even Majora’s Mask, the spiritual successor to Link’s Awakening (don’t get me wrong: Majora is magnificent and mysterious in its own right, and equally as special in its own unique way). The game is full of baffling discoveries whose true purposes only become clear when you find the right tool, character, plot device or when you unlock some other mystery. I remember the first time I entered the abandoned House by the Bay. The music was so lonely and I could only wonder what the significance of this dark, decrepit shack was. Who lived there? Where were they now? Then there are the numerous secret passages and caves that one can find that lie just out of reach and seem impossible to get to, as well as countless other puzzling circumstances present in the game (why is there a flamethrower blocking my path in this cave, and how do I get past it?). The feeling of finally figuring out how to reach one of those secrets or solve one of those puzzling scenarios is one of the most satisfying feelings in all of my gaming career. Of course, you could attribute these elements to many Zelda games, but this one feels especially puzzling and cryptic at times (in a good way), often dangling a tantalizing secret in front of the player but leaving it up to them to figure out how to solve it. And then of course there is the incredibly memorable cast of characters and enigmatic narrative.

Everything and everyone in the game gives off this surreal, almost suspicious vibe. Character dialogue ranges from comically puzzling: “Yep!  Those're  my boys! I'm Papahl, pleased ta meetcha! I'll be lost in the hills later, so keep a look out for me, hear?” to oddly suspicious: “HO HO HO! I'm your bad guy this time!! HO HO HO!” to just plain surreal: “I dreamed that I turned into a carrot last night… What an odd dream...” The central narrative that winds through Link’s adventure is also shrouded in mystery, and the odd (yet charming) cast of characters only builds on this enigma. What are the mysterious Owl’s motivations? Who or what is the Wind Fish? Just what exactly is going on? Nothing is ever quite clear, and as a young kid playing it for the first time, the entire experience felt something like a dream.

…and Spoiler Alert for those that haven’t experienced this handheld gem… (skip the next four paragraphs to avoid major spoilers)

Koholint Island, the setting of Link's Awakening

…that’s because it is a dream. But this isn’t your typical “it was all a dream” story that reveals the twist at the very end as the main character wakes up, and doesn’t explore the concept any further than that. In Link’s Awakening, the dream narrative is woven into every facet of the game’s world and character interactions. Hints are dropped everywhere about the true nature of Koholint Island, and roughly three quarters into the adventure, the truth is revealed to the player, leaving them to ponder it for the remainder of the game and question every step they take. But this isn’t Link’s dream; the entire world in the game along with all of its inhabitants and a visiting Link exist within the dream of a slumbering deity-like being known as the “Wind Fish”. I said earlier that I can’t quite accurately describe the atmosphere of Link’s Awakening, but the best and most obviously appropriate adjective to use is “dreamlike”. One of the interesting aspects of this story is that all of the main characters are driven by selfish motivations, including Link, who wants to wake the Wind Fish so he can leave the island; likewise, the Owl, as an agent of the Wind Fish’s subconscious, manipulates Link into waking up the being, the “villainous” Nightmares…well, we’re told that they want to take over the island, but it seems to me like they’re just trying to protect their own existence. You see, if the Wind Fish wakes up, the dream will end and Koholint Island and everything and everyone on it will disappear.

The friendly couple with the quadruplets in Mabe Village? Gone. The two pen-pals trading letters? Gone. A chef that wants to start a restaurant chain on the island? Gone. And then there’s Marin, a curious young girl fascinated with Link for one reason: he is from outside the island. Marin envies the seagulls and wonders where they come from, she wishes she could sprout wings as well and discover what lies beyond the sea. Her curiosity and actions seem to be those of a sentient, intelligent being. But when the Wind Fish wakes up? She never existed…or did she?

Marin opens up to Link about her dreams

That’s the question at the heart of Link’s Awakening, and it’s a harrowingly complex one for a humble little Game Boy game that first released in 1993, and in a larger context for video games as a whole at the time. In the end, Link destroys the last of the Nightmares (who had been keeping the Wind Fish asleep interminably so their world would never disappear…can’t say I blame them), wakes the Wind Fish, and we watch helplessly as the island and all of its inhabitants are wiped from existence. Link wakes up in the middle of the ocean, floating on the wreckage of his ship, and watches the Wind Fish fly overhead as the credits roll, before “The End” pops up on the screen. It’s a starkly simple but appropriate ending. Just as the Wind Fish tells Link at the end: “It be the nature of dreams to end”. Have you ever had a dream that felt so real, so tangible in the moment, only to suddenly awaken and feel a sense of sadness that all of it is gone forever? I have. Sometimes when I’ve first awoken, I’ve tried to fall back asleep, to go back to the adventure that I was having. But I can’t. It’s gone, existing only in my memory and soon that will likely be gone too.

Now, if the player manages to complete the entire quest without ever dying (something I’ve never managed to do as it’s very easy to die in Link’s Awakening), we are greeted with an extra scene that differs slightly between the original black and white version and the DX version, but both basically amount to the same meaning. Essentially, it is implied in this bonus ending that Marin gets her wish and becomes a seagull. This provides some touching closure for Marin’s character and it also raises even more questions about just how real the world of Koholint really was. I can’t think of another action/adventure video game where the world and all of its people is not only not saved at the end of the adventure, but is completely obliterated, and at the “hero’s” own hands no less. This one aspect is enough to make Link’s Awakening unforgettable for me.

Marin

Major Spoilers end here for those who skipped ahead.

Beyond the mysteries and the intriguing narrative though, Link’s Awakening was a trendsetter for the rest of the Zelda series, and it never seems to get any credit for it. Not only was this the first time we see Link venture away from Hyrule, Princess Zelda, Ganon, the Triforce and all that business into a completely new place with a completely new story, mythology and characters, but Link’s Awakening also pioneered several trends that would go on to define Zelda games in the future, and that had an especially large influence on the Zelda game that immediately followed, that being the most widely regarded game in the series (and one of the most widely regarded video games of all time), Ocarina of Time. A large cast of uniquely quirky NPCs, a large trading quest that stretches across a sizable portion of the game (a la the Biggoron’s Sword quest in Ocarina of Time), a large collectathon side-quest, fishing, dungeons with unique background music and more of their own personality, a talking owl that serves as the hero’s guide, an ocarina with a more expanded role that plays several different songs used for warping and solving puzzles, and even the Lens of Truth (known as the Magnifying Lens here, but it essentially serves the same function) all come from Link’s Awakening. I’m sure many people would be quick to credit Ocarina of Time for bringing all of these elements into Zelda, but nope, it was the first handheld title in the series; a humble, often underappreciated little masterwork that established all of this. Ocarina of Time only developed these elements even further, and later titles continued to develop them and add to them. I would argue that Link’s Awakening is just as important to what the Zelda series would ultimately become and be known for as A Link to the Past is. As for the influence that Link’s Awakening has had on me personally, that should be clear by now: it’s one of the most important works of art in my life and continues to inspire me all the time.

So basically what I’m saying is that if you’ve never played Link’s Awakening, I highly recommend you change that, dammit! It is one of the deepest and most unique games in the Zelda series and tied as my personal favorite, along with Majora’s Mask and The Wind Waker. You don’t have to know anything about the Zelda series to get something out of this game (it was my personal first after all), so even if you have no experience with the franchise, I’d still recommend checking Link’s Awakening out. You can still find the original Game Boy cartridge and the DX Game Boy Color version online, but if you own a 3DS, you can simply download the DX version from the eShop for a few bucks (that’s the version I recommend anyway). Hey, while you’re at it, you can also download two Zelda games that are even more overlooked than Link’s Awakening: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, both of which also come with a high recommendation from yours truly.

What are your thoughts on Link’s Awakening? Do you have a similar memory of your first Zelda experience? Or of your experience with the first game you played in one of your favorite series? What video games give you a sense of wonder and mystery similar to my experiences with Link’s Awakening? Let me know! I’d love to hear about it!

Thanks for reading!

Nintendo E3 2015 Predictions

It’s that time of year again and so I’d thought I’d make some E3 predictions on the Nintendo side of things. Nintendo had a fantastic showing last year, with some great reveals, fun events, and just an overall incredibly positive atmosphere throughout the week mainly thanks to the excellent Treehouse steaming event. I’m glad that Nintendo recognized that they had something great last year and have decided to pretty much do the same gig again this year, which is fine by me. After fumbling for a few years, it seems the quirky company has found their unique E3 sweet spot. This year could be another great for them, or it could just be solid; what made last year great was all the surprises and just the overall presentation of the thing. I have no doubt the presentation will be on point again this year, but so far I’m a little iffy on whether they’ll have as exciting a show, with their lineup being composed of a lot of games we already know a lot about, an already confirmed absence of “Zelda U” (which could change, but I’m inclined to think not, as much as it saddens me), and no Smash Bros. to fall back on this year. Still, I’m hoping they have a few mystery projects in store.

First off, the obvious: Mario Maker, Yoshi’s Woolly World, and Xenoblade Chronicles X will all be present and demoed (and hopefully will get release dates, and in Xenoblade X's case, finally get a western release date), with a big focus on Mario Maker since 2015 marks the 30^th anniversary of the original Super Mario Bros. (they’ve already announced that Mario Maker is going to be the Best Buy demo title this year). Super Smash Bros. DLC will also be discussed, with a  release date for Lucas, perhaps they’ll surprise us by announcing that Lucas is available the very same day (they’ve already said he’s coming in June, so why not?). Some more DLC details will likely be talked about, perhaps a hint at another character, maybe the return of Wolf to tie in with Star Fox later this year, and also some talk about how the Smash Ballot is going. I’m also predicting that Mother 3 will finally be announced for a western eShop release to go along with Lucas, maybe for release also in June, maybe later in the year. The new Wii U Star Fox game will finally get its proper big reveal and be demoed extensively by the Treehouse, likely with Shigeru Miyamoto in tow, passionately talking about his game with Bill Trinen by his side as always. Speaking of Miyamoto, it’s possible we’ll some more of his “Project Guard” and “Project Giant Robot” games in more mature forms, and maybe with proper titles.

Star Fox is gonna be big this year

Next, the surprises: Most of the stuff above is expected, and most of it is games we’ve either already seen extensively or at least know about already, so I’m hoping Nintendo has some nice surprises in store for us. Here’s what I predict. First off, a new Metroid for Wii U from Retro Studios. We know that Retro has been working on something since the release of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze back in February of 2014. As much as I wouldn’t mind a follow-up to the sublime platforming masterpiece that is Tropical Freeze, I doubt they’re doing another DKC game. Maybe they’re working a new IP or something else, but it’s clear that people want a new Metroid from Retro, and I think Nintendo and Retro are both well aware of it. Given how much Nintendo has been catering to its fans lately, I think there’s a good chance that it’s happening. We’ll probably only get a teaser trailer and the game probably won’t be out until 2016 at the earliest, but we’re long overdue for a Metroid game, and even more overdue for a good Metroid game.

Hopefully the actual boxart won't be this terrible

My second prediction is either less likely or more likely, I can’t decide which. Miyamoto has already hinted that they’re planning a big Mario game for Nintendo’s next home console. We also know that EAD Tokyo, the group responsible for all of the 3D Mario platformers since the original Super Mario Galaxy has been working on a new Mario game, though they won’t say for which platform. This mystery Mario could very well be for Nintendo’s next home console (which would explain why they won’t say which platform it’s on), but I’m also still not completely ruling out another 3D Mario on Wii U. With the 30^th anniversary and all, I think now would be a good time to announce something like that. Maybe it would simply be “3D World 2”, but I’m predicting it will be something close to the Galaxy style, something that fans have also been asking for. There is definitely evidence that would make something like this less likely. Perhaps they want to focus on Mario Maker for one, and not distract from it. Or perhaps EAD Tokyo, assuming they are the ones developing it, want to put all of their energy and focus into this big Mario game for Nintendo's next console (which is something I'm not against). Some also say that Nintendo is not going to go back to a style more in line with Galaxy or dare I say, Super Mario 64 or Sunshine, and looking at the progression of the 3D games in the series and also hearing statements from the core people currently involved in the 3D Mario games, they’re probably right. I personally really want to see the next huge evolution in the series or at least something completely new (which in my eyes hasn't really happened since the first Galaxy, though arguments could be made that the 3D Land/World style was an evolution of sorts), but I wouldn't be completely opposed to another 3D outing on Wii U before then, and if that other Wii U outing is that revolutionary title, than that'd be pretty great too. I just have a feeling…something else Mario, something rather big, is going to show up this year.

Maybe...

I'm hoping there are some more surprises that I can't predict as well, even if it's just a teaser here or a small tech demo there; that kind of stuff is part of what made last year such a great E3 for Nintendo and I hope we see some more stuff like Miyamoto's "project" games, the cryptic Star Fox "reveal", and even the Zelda teaser; some stuff to get me excited in addition to the more substantial game trailers and demos.

One last prediction that probably won’t happen: So Eiji Aonuma has already confirmed that “Zelda U” won’t be making an appearance at this year’s E3. Aonuma and the Zelda team could change their minds and give us a short trailer or something, but I’m not counting on it. However, perhaps the Zelda series won’t be entirely absent. Given the game’s very positive reception, both critically and fan-wise, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got another 3DS game in the same style as A Link Between Worlds; the “Majora’s Mask” to A Link Between Worlds, if you will. It probably wouldn’t take too long to develop either, if it reused that game’s assets. Maybe we’ll get that reveal at E3 this year; after all, I’m unaware of any huge new 3DS games on the horizon, besides that new Fire Emblem game coming at some point. Obviously, this is a wild guess, and I’m not in any way expecting it, especially on the heels of Majora’s Mask 3D’s release. I’m thinking that Zelda will probably just take a break for the rest of the year, which is honestly fine by me. The Zelda series has gotten a lot of love recently and in order to avoid oversaturation, I’m fine with Link and Zelda (and Tingle) taking a break for a little bit. …Although I won’t lie: the void left by “Zelda U’s” absence at this year’s show is probably going to be felt, at least by me.

I wouldn't mind another dose of top-down Zelda goodness on 3DS

So there you go! Agree? Disagree? Have some E3 predictions of your own (Nintendo or otherwise)? Let me know!

I'm not sure what picture to put here, so just enjoy this photo of Iwata, Reggie, and Miyamoto hanging out with Donkey Kong

Hey, We Started a Podcast

Yup! My friend, Ryan Acheson and I, decided to get together in a room and record ourselves talking about our gaming histories, the merits of Super Mario Sunshine, old PC games, Sonic the Hedgehog lore, and much, much more.

This is the pilot episode to our as of right now unnamed podcast (name forthcoming). Essentially, the main angle here is both Ryan and I pick an important game from our past that the other has not played, and then we compare our partially nostalgia-fueled reminiscence on the games with the other person's fresh, modern take on these experiences. In this inaugural episode, I had Ryan play the original Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and Ryan suggested I play Rick Dangerous, a game which I had zero experience with before this. Likewise, Ryan had barely any experience with the original Sonic.

Sonic the Hedgehog is available in a lot of places (I also assume you've probably heard of the game at least), but if you aren't familiar with Rick Dangerous and want to get some context for the conversation, you can check out the Flash remake that I played here.

If any of this sounds interesting, or if you just want to listen to two people who like video games perhaps a little too much talk about them while you go on a run or write your thesis or whatever, you can find our musings (and ramblings) at the following links:

Here's the podcast in ogg format.

And here it is in mp3 format.

The current plan is to try to do this around once a month. I've never done anything like this and any and all pointers and constructive criticism is very welcome! Again, this is the pilot, an experimental beginning if you will, and I hope we only improve the format and discussion as we go on!

Please feel free to share this anywhere you want if you enjoy it and find any value in it! We'd appreciate the exposure and it would certainly help encourage us to keep doing this!