We here at oprainfall don’t pick sides, and try to love all games equally. It’s challenging, but we owe it to our readers to be as impartial as humanly possible. That said, I’m here today to recap the highlights of Nintendo’s portion of E3, brief though it was. While it’s true Nintendo didn’t hold a proper conference like the other big publishers, I would say that they showed off more quality games instead of a huge quantity of questionable value.
First, let’s talk about the two huge titles they spent the majority of today discussing. The first one is Pokémon Sun and Moon. They went into a lot of great details about the upcoming games, and it seems like the wait to November will be a difficult one. Not only did they show off new Pokémon, such as Yungoos and Pikipek, they also showed off a new four-player Battle Royale mode that looks quite intense. Besides all that goodness, they discussed graphical upgrades and new modifications to the user interface to make things more intuitive and fast paced for all their fans.
Then there was the new Zelda, Breath of the Wild. What can I say except that it looks exceptional? I had my concerns about an open-world Zelda, but it doesn’t just look like a Skyrim clone, thankfully. The essential spirit of every Zelda game appears to be intact, just with a greater focus on free roaming and user choice. It does appear to be a bit more challenging than previous games, with less hand holding and more emphasis on scavenging, survival and technique. Oh, and there are new Zelda amiibo, which is just unfair to all our wallets. Especially the one with movable parts…
Many of you would think that there ends this article, but you would be wrong. Though I wasn’t a fan of how they handled it, Nintendo did do a brief demo of some great indie titles yesterday, as well as pushing out some PR for upcoming titles today. My personal highlights were Axiom Verge and Severed making their way from Vita to 3DS, but they also showed off Jotun: Valhalla Edition, Harvest Moon: Skytree Village, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, a new Mario Party game, a new Ace Attorney, new versions of Runbow, Deluxe and Pocket, Monster Hunter Generations and Azure Striker Gunvolt 2!
Oh, and they also managed to sneak in a sale on the eShop that has 17 fantastic games on sale from 20-50% off! Including titles such as Shin Megami Tensei IV, Majora’s Mask 3D, Project X Zone 2 and Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward! So, if you don’t already own any of these great gems, you owe it to yourself to check them out for a digital discount.
So, yes, Nintendo didn’t “win E3,” but neither did they fail it. They did things their own unique way as usual, and, like it tends to, it made an impact. If you doubt that, you obviously weren’t on Twitch or YouTube watching Treehouse footage of Breath of the Wild today. Hopefully next year Nintendo will have even more great games to show off, perhaps one or two fancy new NX games! And, if you didn’t see any of the footage today, you should definitely check out the trailers below for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Pokémon Sun and Moon!
