E3 Recap | Bethesda

Ready Slayer One

Bethesda’s E3 conference showed off more Doom Eternal gameplay, two new IPs and a massive Fallout 76 update including the Nuclear Winter battle royale mode.

Even though we knew Bethesda’s next-generation RPGs, Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI, wouldn’t get any screen time, Bethesda still delivered plenty of goods in the form of big updates for their existing titles, such as The Elder Scrolls Online and Rage 2.

Trailers for two new games - Deathloop from Dishonored developers, Arkane Studios, and GhostWire Tokyo from Tango Gameworks, creators of The Evil Within – also got shown off, but we’ll probably have to wait until next year for more on those. Let’s start with Bethesda’s biggest and bloodiest game of 2019.

Doom Eternal

With Earth on the brink of annihilation from a demonic invasion, the Doom Slayer returns to save the day in a dimension-hopping romp through Hell, Heaven, the sentinel home world and more. And it’s coming on 22 November to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC and Google Stadia.

Plenty more gameplay was shown at Bethesda’s conference and we got a glimpse of new environments, demons and of course weapons and mods, all culminating into what creative director Hugo Martin describes as “the ultimate power fantasy”. One new mod was a microwave beam for the redesigned plasma rifle which, when focused on a demon, will cause them to violently explode in the expected Doom fashion.

id Software also appear to have taken some notes from Titanfall as platforming and environmental interaction appears to be an integral part of Doom Eternal’s gameplay. One clip showed the Doom Slayer using his double jump and new horizontal dash ability to reach climbing walls, and the story trailer also shows the Slayer shooting a button to activate some swinging axes, letting them dice a mancubus into mancu-mince.

A new 2v1 multiplayer mode called Battlemode was also announced. Two players can choose from a selection of unique demons to take on an armed to the teeth Doom Slayer in a round-based fight to the death. Martin also describes the core of Battlemode as “demon strategy versus slayer skill”. id Software have a lot more to share about Doom Eternal and Battlemode at QuakeCon this summer.

New games

Sadly, not too much was revealed about GhostWire Tokyo and Deathloop other than that they exist and here’s a trailer. Either way they both seem like some intriguing concepts and have some excellent studios behind them. 

Firstly, GhostWire Tokyo from Tango Gameworks. CEO and Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami told the audience that this game is an action adventure game where players will rid Tokyo of a supernatural evil. Creative director at Tango Ikumi Nakamura clarified that it’s not a survival horror affair like Tango’s The Evil Within, but it’s still “spooky”.

GhostWire tasks the player with uncovering the mystery behind the sudden paranormal disappearance of many Tokyo citizens. Think spooky, paranormal Infinity War dusting. Nakamura said players will encounter conspiracies, the occult, and good and evil spirits while exploring a deserted Tokyo to uncover the truth.

Next up, Arkane Lyon revealed Deathloop. A first-person action game that’s “innovative, stylish and different from anything [Arkane has] done before”. Set on the mysterious island of Blackreef, Deathloop sees two rival assassins, Colt and Julianna, fighting each other to either break or maintain a vicious time loop that they are both trapped in.

Game director Dinga Bakaba says Deathloop will combine a “mind-bending story with meticulously designed levels” that let players play how they want, much like Dishonored. The trailer only sets up the vague premise of the game but it’s sounding like a super-stylish, supernatural shooter and definitely one to watch.

Wastelanders and Nuclear Winter for Fallout 76:

It wouldn’t be Bethesda without an appearance from Todd Howard. While he didn’t have anything to say specifically about Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI, Howard did reaffirm that the teams at Bethesda Softworks were still hard at work on their next-gen RPGs. 

He did have a lot to say about Fallout 76, however. Having listened to the community, Fallout 76 will be getting its biggest update yet called Wastelanders to kick off its second year. Wastelanders will add a new main quest, choices and consequences, full dialogue trees, new weapons and gear and one of the most requested features, human NPCs.  

With year one being about settling the wasteland after escaping Vault 76, year two will be all about the return to Appalachia, so Wastelanders will have new human factions vying for your support over control of the wasteland. Wastelanders is set to arrive this autumn and will be free to all Fallout 76 players.

Nuclear Winter was also announced as Fallout 76’s answer to a battle royale mode. It’s a 52-player, squad-based mode that’s grounded in the Fallout universe. Nuclear Winter has players competing in am irradiated battle royale to become the overseer of Vault 51. Much like any other battle royale game, there’s a shrinking ring, a nuclear firestorm, closing in on all sides, weapons and gear to loot, including power armour, but because it’s Fallout, nukes can be found as well.

The mode will launch later and will be free but is available to try right now in a Fallout 76 free trial that runs until 17 June.

Bethesda Softworks also announced a big update for its mobile Elder Scrolls adventure, Elder Scrolls: Blades and its arrival on the Nintendo Switch this autumn. The free update will include a new dragon questline, solo arena battles and a custom jewellery system and is available now. The team is also hard at work on their autumn update which will include a PvP arena mode and the ability to visit other players’ towns. Blades will also have cross play and cross progression even on the Switch version.

The Elder Scrolls Online

Elder Scrolls Online developers ZeniMax Online premiered a new ESO cinematic for the just released Elsweyr expansion chapter showing the chaos caused the dragons after they were unleashed and setting up the next two content drops.

Coming in August is Scalebreaker, a dungeon DLC adventure, followed by Dragonhold in Q4 this year. Dragonhold will be the story finale to ESO’s year-long Season of the Dragon story and will see the return of Redguard sword-master Sai Sahan as the leader of the Dragonguard. More of Dragonhold will be revealed at QuakeCon later this year.

Rage 2

Rage 2 has a lot of new content on the way in the form of weekly updates and its first expansion, Rise of the Ghosts, coming later this year. This expansion will include a new story, enemy faction, weapons, abilities and a new area to explore. 

The weekly updates will include new enemies, like the massive sand worm, and cheat codes such as low gravity and bloody mess. Two new vehicles will be coming too in the form of the skull motorcycle and the fully loaded pilotable mech.

Other announcements

Those were the biggest announcements from Bethesda’s E3 conference this year although it wasn’t everything. Machine Games also came on to talk about their two already announced summer Wolfenstein games, Youngblood and Cyberpilot, both launching on 26 July.

ZeniMax Online also announced that they were working on multiple projects and revealed their new mobile game Commander Keen. It’s a free Saturday morning cartoon style game which will have a story mode and PvP.

Finally, Bethesda revealed its new patented collection of software technologies designed to optimise game engines for game streaming. Bethesda claims that games that use Orion will faster and more fluid, regardless of the platform, making for an overall much better streaming experience.

If you’re looking for more game news outside of Bethesda, be sure to check out the rest of startmenu’s E3 coverage!