Microsoft is in love with the emotional, dramatic aspect of video games. They try hard to make every game they show for Xbox look like the second coming of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, complete with lots of dramatic music and CG cutscenes, but with very little gameplay. It’s a lot of bluster with little substance. It gets exhausting.

The opening trailers for Fable and Star Wars Outlaws were a waste of time. Since I’m familiar with the Fable IP, I assume this new game will be an RPG. However, I had no clue what Star Wars Outlaws was at the end of its trailer. It’s an awful way to present a game for the first time when the audience doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be about at the end.

Xbox Showcase presentations still have the feel of people who are non-gamers making decisions, who are out of touch with what gamers want, and substitute lack of substance with lots of manufactured enthusiasm and dramatic CG glamor. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to show gameplay during a reveal trailer. It’s the most reliable way to get gamers excited about your game.

However, they still had a small handful of games that had enough substance to them that looked interesting:

    • 33 Immortals 
    • Persona 3 Reload
    • Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
    • Jusant
    • Starfield

Starfield looks fantastic. In fact, given Bethesda’s notorious reputation for releasing games riddled with bugs and letting their player base create free mods to finish their games for them, and given how Fallout 76 was another of their games that launched with big promises and then fell flat on its face and didn’t come close to delivering on those promises, it looked a little too fantastic – meaning, I’m still skeptical. I don’t like the ship and robot designs, but if the gameplay and the visuals deliver what was showed in the presentation, it will be quite an achievement. Starfield’s release date is September 6th.