Best of E3 2019 Awards: All Winners Announced
Every year, E3 unloads more gaming announcements, trailers, and details than any one human brain could hope to process. To help you find the games you need to pay attention to, IGN's team of editors – many of whom possess at least one human brain – has been dispatched to the show to take in a superhuman amount of information and highlight the best ones out there by nominating them for one of or more of our Best of E3 Award categories.
We've now chosen our Game of Show for 2019 and winners for each category. Congratulations to all our winners and nominees – we're incredibly excited to play all of these games when they come out!
Just a reminder: a Best of E3 Award doesn't necessarily mean a game is going to be amazing – it just means that it demos well in its incomplete state. Think of these as rewards for games that set their sights high and do a good job of making us believe they can hit their lofty goals, creating the enthusiasm and joy of anticipation that fuels so much of this hobby. To see what games actually make good on those promises, make sure to check out our reviews and our Game of the Year Awards every December.
Bloodlines 2 Is Still All About Player Choice
2020 is going to be a busy year for RPG fans. 2019 ends with The Outer Worlds, Cyberpunk 2077 is out the following spring and between the two comes Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.
After seeing a half hour of the bloodsucking sequel when Paradox first announced it at GDC of this year, it was clear that the team behind it - which includes some of the original developers - is very much attempting to recapture whatever lightning managed to strike with the original. And, based on what I've now seen here at E3 2019, they're very much succeeding.
Cyberpunk 2077, Control, and More Games Get RTX Ray Tracing – E3 2019
Cyberpunk 2077 just keeps getting into the news this week with its release date and Keanu Reeves joining its cast, and now confirmed support for Nvidia's RTX ray tracing technology.
Nvidia and CDProjekt Red confirmed the game will come with real-time ray tracing when it releases on April 16, 2020. In terms of what type of ray tracing the game will feature, users can expect ray-traced ambient occlusion, which means the game will render more realistic shadows by calculating how the light is interacting with objects in the environment.
DC Comics Will Finally Introduce Batman Villain The Phantasm
One of the most memorable Batman: The Animated Series villains is finally making the jump to DC's comic book universe. Batman/Catwoman writer Tom King tweeted a teaser image showing the Dynamic Duo being stalked by The Phantasm.
Check out the teaser art by Clay Mann below:
Art by Clay Mann. (Image Credit: DC Comics)
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Nintendo Direct E3 2019 Review
Nintendo has long been known as a master of the unexpected, and every direct has included one surprise or another. I feel like Nintendo outdid themselves this time, though — both for better and worse. Animal Crossing getting delayed into next year was a gut punch I thought I'd never recover from, but once I was dazzled by Banjo-Kazooie's fakeout reveal for Smash Bros., and the bombshell of a Breath of the Wild sequel, I was floored.
Nintendo has stuck with a recent trend of teasing expectations with a bunch of quick looks and trailers to get you interested, while luring you into watching deeper dives into select games shown on their Treehouse livestream right after the direct. The result is either awesome or a bit frustrating, depending on your schedule. With the big spread on Pokemon Sword and Shield covered last week, the direct was free to focus on many more titles than we could have possibly expected, and we even got a nice (and funny) introduction to the new President of Nintendo of America, Doug Bowser.
Why Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Won’t Allow Human Dismemberment
We finally had the question of "What does Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order look like?" answered at EA Play on Saturday. And then our own Miranda Sanchez got to see an extended version of that demo shortly thereafter. Now I can also answer the obvious follow-up question, "How does Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order play?"
To set expectations up front, I didn't see anything new that Miranda didn't. I simply got to play the back half of the extended demo; basically, I played what EA first aired on their livestream. Read Miranda's preview to get the full rundown of that presentation. I took the controls after warming up in a combat tutorial.
Marvel’s Avengers E3 Gameplay Demo Looks Like You’re Playing the Movie
Square Enix showed off Marvel’s Avengers on its E3 2019 stage, but the footage only offered a brief glimpse of actual gameplay. IGN attended a behind-closed-doors extended gameplay demo where we got a much better look via 25 minutes of honest-to-goodness Marvel’s Avengers gameplay.
The demo started in the same way as the E3 footage: with an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge during the A-Day celebration. While we weren’t told if this was the opening of the game, we can assume it’s the beginning, or at least early on. It felt very much like a tutorial area as a little time was spent controlling each hero. Gameplay automatically switched from one Avenger to the next as the events of the story dictated. Here’s a description of what it’s like to play as each Avenger.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 Is a Deeper RPG Than You’d Expect
As a fan of the previous Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, and the X-Men Legends franchise before it, I comfortably sank back into the groove when I played a short demo of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. But what surprised me most about Team Ninja and Marvel Games’ follow-up to the last entry 13 years ago is that, as much of the core of the experience is retained, the developers have done an impressive job of modernizing and expanding on it for a more varied, and possibly quite deep, experience.
Marvel’s equivalent of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate “Everyone is here” moment, Ultimate Alliance 3’s character roster continues to grow and grow. I spent most of my time in the demo with just a few — the close-quarters Wolverine, the shooting-and-hovering Star-Lord, the flying powerhouse Captain Marvel, and the mixed-ranged and close-up Thor.
Nintendo Confirms New Details About Multiplayer in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Aya Kyogoku and Hisashi Nogami of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons development team revealed a few more details about how couch co-op and online multiplayer will work in Animal Crossing: New Horizons in an interview with IGN at E3.
The New Horizons demo on Nintendo Treehouse live stream showed Kyogoku and Nogami playing local multiplayer, each of them using a single Joy-Con to play. They revealed during the stream that up to four players could play this way and then confirmed to IGN that they’ll all be playing on a single screen, not split-screen.
Then, when it comes to online and local wireless, up to eight players can be on an island. This is doubled from New Leaf’s previous 4-player limit. And though there is a travel theme to New Horizons, Kyogoku confirmed you can’t set up a tent on a friend’s island. However, Kyogoku told IGN you can make up to eight playable accounts on one Nintendo Switch and they will be able to live on the same island. You cannot have multiple islands, however.