Bethesda did not disappoint at this year’s E3, boasting three upcoming titles that all bring something different to both present-gen and next-gen consoles.
The conference began with a demo of The Evil Within, a survival horror developed by Tango Software and published by Bethesda. After a quick introduction by Shinji Mikami, the mastermind behind Resident Evil, the real-time game-play demonstration began with the player character arriving at a police-surrounded Beacon Mental Hospital. Upon entering the building, you see bloodied bodies lying throughout the lobby. A survivor is found in what appears to be the security room, and, while watching the security footage of a ghostly hooded enemy taking out three security guards, the same enemy appears behind the player and renders him unconscious.
Once you awake, the terror truly begins. Waking up upside-down, strung up by a rope, you see several others strung up and dead, and this massive creature tearing off a man’s torso and butchering it. You swing toward one of the bodies to grab a knife stabbed into its stomach, and cut yourself loose. The remainder of the demo is the player-character sneaking and hiding and running from this massive, gore-smeared enemy angrily searching for you (and who has, of course, suddenly acquired a chainsaw-like weapon). The knowledge that you have no way to protect yourself makes the game-play even more terrifying. After finally escaping from the hospital, you open the door to the outside to find that the entire town around you has caved into the ground, and is lying in waste.
The presentation continued with a quick combat-system demonstration, which looked a LOT like that of Resident Evil 4 minus the awkward camera angles. The player utilized guns, melee weapons, mines, and even fire against the horde of zombie-like monsters. The demo ended with the player-character walking through an almost-imaginary system of tunnels to discover a bloodied body in a room at the end, where the multi-armed blood-monster from the teaser appears and instantly kills you.
The Evil Within contains scares that are much deeper than the jump-scares that most games today contain (though I did jump several times) and goes for something deeper, darker, and much more haunting. The survival-horror is set for a 2014 release on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, and PC.
Next in the showcase was Wolfenstein: The Last Order, an alternate-history first person shooter. The game is set in an alternate 1960 in which the Nazis have won the war and have taken over the world. You play as William “B.J.” Blazkowicz, the protagonist in the 1992 release Wolfenstein 3D, who a Bethesda representative described as a “Nazi-killing badass”. To give the game a more authentic feel, many of the characters speak German, and the short beginning demo was almost entirely in German with English subtitles.
The second demo to show off the combat system put B.J. on a bridge pitted against Nazi soldiers and giant gunned robots. The fight featured gatling guns, plasma-esque guns, and rifles that made the game-play feel a big less serious and more just Nazi ass-kicking fun.
Wolfenstein: The Last Order is set to release some time next year on both present-gen and next-gen consoles.
The last title that Bethesda showcased was The Elder Scrolls Online. Though this game was playable at E3 (and believe me, I played way too long), many PvP features were not. The game takes place all across Tamriel, including Morrowind and Daggerfall. A quick introduction explained that roughly 200 players can participate in a single raid, and there will be many PvP matches and instances that can be fought with or against friends.
Robust first- and third-person camera options made the game feel much less like WoW and more like the Elder Scrolls we all know and love.
The real-time combat keeps the player from getting bored with simple button-mashing and auto-lock. Like all Elder Scrolls games, the character customization abilities are almost unfathomably deep and detailed. The freedom that you have in the Elder Scrolls game is not minimized whatsoever with The Elder Scrolls Online, and Bethesda is making sure that this game feels just as enjoyable as their single-player RPGs.
The Elder Scrolls Online has been announced as a PS4, Xbox One, and PC release, but with no set release date as of now.