On to my third day of E3 round-up, and today I want to look
at a few games that I’d not heard of before last week, but which have
definitely caught my interest for various reasons.
Cyberpunk 2077
I love the cyberpunk aesthetic (along with steampunk and
most other -punk genres, now that I come to mention it…) and I love RPGs, so
this one was always going to have my interest. The past few RPGs to catch my
eye have all had set male player characters, so I was happy to learn that Cyberpunk will
have a more traditional character creator with gender options featured. Given
the setting, I’d love to see the possibility of trans and non-binary character
options in there too - since, as I saw pointed out recently, the cyberpunk
theme of sculpting your own body to better fit your needs and wants ought to
fit really well into narratives around gender identity. The fact that, after
lovingly customising your character’s appearance, you’ll apparently be in
first-person for the gameplay is a bit of a surprise - but there’s so much to
hook me in to this that I can guarantee I’ll be following it very closely from
here on.
Sea of Solitude
This one has so many things I love: an apocalyptic setting;
mental health themes made manifest; a Journey-esque visual style; the
sea. It’s on the EA Originals label, which didn’t do A Way
Out any harm and seems thus far to be a decent way of getting indie
games more exposure without hiking the price up. I haven’t seen much, but so
far I like what I see.
The Quiet Man
I have such mixed feelings on this one! The optics in the
trailer were pretty awful, both in the literal sense - the transition from
live-action to CGI was far from seamless; and the figurative sense - the
attractive white protagonist beating up a group of Hispanic men after an
incredibly mild provocation is so shockingly out of touch with the current
state of the world that I genuinely wonder if he’s going to turn out to be the
villain. Hopefully it will make sense in context - or better yet, he’ll
just have a different and more satisfying set of baddies to fight in the
finished game.
But here’s the thing - ever since I saw B.J.
Blazkowicz destroy a few dozen Nazis in an incredible FPS wheelchair
rampage in the latest Wolfenstein game, I have been hunting
for more representation of disabilities among action game protagonists. The
Quiet Man seems to be a deaf vigilante, something in the Daredevil line,
and speculation that the game will take place mostly without sound fascinated
me. Plus, the developers are promoting the fact that it can be completed in one
sitting - which some are calling a weird thing to boast about, but I think is
secretly a bit of a selling point for those of us balancing our gaming hobby
with time-consuming adult commitments.
Twin Mirror
I’m on a bit of a kick at the moment for games that draw
inspiration from Twin Peaks - an easy hobby to indulge,
because that show was incredibly influential on game designers. The very title
of Twin Mirror suggests a connection, as does the fact that it
is being developed by Dontnod, who also make Life is Strange, which
seems to consider a scene that doesn’t feature at least one Twin Peaks Easter
Egg something of a failure.
Watching the trailer for Twin Mirror, you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching footage from Life is Strange... or Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, Deadly Premonition… or even a photorealistic remake of Night in the Woods. It contains such an abundance of visuals and tropes that I like; my worry is it will be totally buried by them, being too close in theme and story to the aforementioned games to really distinguish itself as something worth checking out. I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye on it, all the same.
Control
I have to confess that I haven’t finished either Alan
Wake or Quantum Break yet, but Remedy’s upcoming game
reminds me of why I want to get back to them. That being said, I’m not without
my concern about Control’s story: not because I think I won’t like
it, but because I know I will. In fact, I already have. It’s uncomfortably
close to free-to-play fan-made indie game SCP: Containment Breach,
and while the broad concept behind SCP wasn’t 100% original,
there does seem to be some very specific crossover in places
with Control. I’m very torn between how cool this game looks and
and how much I would hate to support a big company who ripped off a tiny indie
team. Now that they’ve been asked, Remedy have acknowledged the influence
of SCP, so I’m hoping that more details will emerge to allay my
concerns further, because this game looks like it might be incredible.
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