PlayStation Conference Recap - E3 2015

The final conference of the day, Sony, kicks off with a montage of clips from various upcoming and released games available on Sony consoles. Representative Sean Laden comes on to kick things off with an opening speech.

The first game being shown is the long-awaited Last Guardian which has been in the works seemingly forever. Gameplay is shown, with a boy running around a ruin and then interacting with the now iconic griffin-like creature we have seen glimpses of previously. At one point, the boy leaps over a giant gap and the creature catches him in its mouth before he falls, indicating that platforming will make up at least some of the experience. Later, the ruin starts crumbling, kicking off a sequence where the boy and the creature try to find solid ground. The game is slated to release in 2016.

Following this surprise, a new IP is introduced from Guerrilla Game. A trailer plays showing a man walking through a cave looking at petroglyphs. We then learn that the game will take place in the future, where cities went back to nature and people were forced to adapt to the changes. The setting looks to be a mixture of first-nations style tribes and remaining robotic technology, with gameplay revealing it will be a sort of third-person action game with you playing as a female hunter of one of the human tribes who uses a bow and spear to dispatch enemies. Horizon: Zero Dawn is the name of the game.

Another CGI trailer starts rolling directly after, and it looks to be a new Hitman. The game is called just that: Hitman. The game is announced for “Consoles” and PC, although it will have a PlayStation exclusive beta accessed by pre-ordering and six contracts that will only be on the PS4.

Street Fighter V is the next game announced, coming to PS4 and PC. This will also have a PlayStation exclusive beta accessed by pre-ordering. Sean Murray from Hello Games is on next, for an update on No Mans Sky. He gives a gameplay demo, reintroducing the title as a huge sandbox, quickly jumping in to a space battle, and then transitioning to a map showing the huge scale of the game, slowly zooming out to a massive area containing countless stars and solar systems. He claims that players will try and get to the centre of the galaxy as the overall objective, and then jumps to a random undiscovered location. Upon landing on the planet’s surface he travels to a beacon to upload discoveries about life on the planet. The release date remains a mystery.

Alex Evans from Media Molecule is on next to talk about their next project titled Dreams. This is a sort of modelling/sketching program that lets you create a scene and manipulate it. The sketches are called dreams, and the showcase ends with a few of the “dreams” that were created with the software being shown.

Next up is Firewatch with a trailer revealing some new gameplay clips. The game still looks very intriguing, with the dialogue taking place over the radio and an odd tension permeating the whole thing. After this trailer concludes, it’s on to Destiny, and a trailer is shown revealing the next addition to the game, titled The Taken King. A handful of PlayStation-exclusive content is revealed to be arriving with the expansion.

After this, Assassins Creed Syndicate is on. A trailer narrated by the male sibling in the dual-protagonist pair is shown, with clips of the female sibling Evie in action. Some PlayStation exclusive missions are announced for the title. With that out of the way, Final Fantasy is the next topic of discussion. A trailer for a new entry featuring mini-characters titled World of Final Fantasy is unveiled for PS4 and PS Vita. Continuing on the Final Fantasy theme, another trailer depicts a futuristic city, revealing a remake of Final Fantasy 7 that will be coming first to PlayStation 4.

Devolver Digital are next up, with it being announced that four new games are being developed by the studio for the PlayStation 4. Quick trailers are shown for them, with most of the titles looking to employ 2D action and a pixelated art style. After this, Shenmue is the franchise at hand, with a brief trailer revealing that after a long wait, Shenmue III is on the way, pending a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Next, A trailer for the upcoming Batman: Arkham Knight. It mostly takes place form a first person view, with a police officer going into a restaurant, having a run-in with Scarecrow, and then hallucinating and shooting at zombie-like creatures. Presumably this is related to the PlayStation exclusive missions the game is coming with.

Project Morpheus is now being discussed, alongside a new arena-shooter called Briggs. Morpheus is described as an optional addition to the console. Spotify integration is briefly discussed, as well as PlayStation view for television.

Back to games now and in a surprise turn of events, Black Ops III is the next game up, having historically occupied the Microsoft conference. The first thing announced is a campaign built from the ground up for co-op. A gameplay trailer from the campaign is run, with the expected mixture of set-pieces and shooting, though with four players instead of one. The trailer switches between the perspectives of the different players as it progresses. The Exo-suit introduced in Advanced Warfare appears to be making a return. At one point, one of the players gets in a sort of four-legged Mech to do some damage.

A multiplayer trailer plays next, showing the usual mix of action and XP dumps that tastefully avoids showing a more realistic depiction of getting endlessly killed from behind; one clip shows a player wall-running and using a bow. PlayStation will have early access to map-packs for the title, and exclusive access to the multiplayer beta.

A montage trailer filled with gameplay clips from PS4 and Vita games leads into a segment with Star Wars music that turns out to be the unveiling of a new Disney Infinity pack which includes a variety of Star-Wars related playsets that will come first to the PlayStation console. Star Wars Battlefront is the next topic of discussion, with Dice General Manager taking the stage to discuss the title. He describes battles which will see teams facing off with AI support, PvP hero modes, and a survival mode which gets a trailer.

The trailer depicts a couple of soldiers in a canyon environment defending against waves of attacking shock troopers. The number of enemies increase toward the end, while the players seem to have improved ordinance such as orbital strikes at their disposal to help even the odds. This mode can be played in solo or co-op.

To close things off, we get a trailer for the much anticipated Uncharted 4. After a false-start leading to a replay of the start of the demo, Drake and Sully are seen making their way through a crowded Mediterranean town before engaging in a firefight with some baddies and trying to escape by running through some houses. At one point, Drake gets into a fist-fight with a soldier, revealing a revamped melee system. Drake then takes control of a jeep, driving through the streets and back-alleys, dodging armored cars with funny banter between the two characters occurring all the while.

As the trailer comes to a close, so does the Sony conference.