The Top 8 E3 Predictions

Welcome all to another edition of The 8 Ball! With E3 around the corner, I wanted to come up with a list of my expectations, hopes, and possible dreams, of what I want to see announced/shown. Some of these are specific to my wants, but others are stuff that has been rumored about for a while. Let’s begin:

#8: Granblue Fantasy: Relink

This is on here because it’s been over 3 years since the above trailer, back when Platinum was still working on it and nary a word has come out since then. Well, other than to say that Platinum isn’t working on it anymore, since early 2019. Judging from the trailer alone, this game still looks very cool and fun to play, but given the long development time and almost no news on it, who knows if it still even resembles this game? I still want this game to come out though and see if I can enjoy it.

#7: New Assassin’s Creed Game

I’m not sure when/where it will take place but I fully expect an Assassin’s Creed game to be shown off. They may finally bite the bullet and do the ninja one, especially since Tsushima showed there is an obvious desire for it, or may try something new? It’ll actually be pretty interesting because of how Valhalla ends. The current “present day” character, Layla, basically merges with some AI program, and spits out Basim, a character from the 9th Century that you met/battled with. Then again, they show so little care as to the present day narrative, that I doubt they’ll do anything with him either.

#6: A New Fire Emblem

While I don’t think they’ll have gameplay footage or anything like, I expect there to be at least a small, “this is the name of the game” trailer for a new Fire Emblem shown. I think Three Houses really shored up popularity/support for Fire Emblem as a franchise and a lot more people are now wanting to see where the series goes from here. Will it go into an even more social-aspect part, or will it revert back to some of the older Fire Emblem games?

#5: Sony buying Crash and/or Spyro

Kind of at this point, Activision owning either Crash Bandicoot or Spyro is a farce. They’ve pretty much said their only two goals moving forward are “MOAR CALL OF DUTY!!1!” and “Ruining what’s left of Blizzard’s reputation”, with their studio combining and raft of employees leaving. While the recent Spyro/Crash remastered games came to all the consoles, I, and many others, still generally identify them as Sony mascots. Why not just have Sony close the book on this finally and snap up either (or really, both) series up from Activision so that a company can actually make use of them?

#4: Beefed Up PS5 Emulation

Recent PlayStation 3/PSP/Vita events have shown, “Hey, people actually give a crap about these old consoles”. At least it would to a normal CEO but Jim Ryan is everyone’s fool with his “Old games are bad looking, I don’t get why anyone would play them!” nonsense. Let’s hope that someone in charge at Sony is actually listening and gets the point, with PS1, PS2, PS3 emulation. It’s never going to be “Pop in your old Kileak: The DNA Imperative disc and play”, but I could see them just re-selling PS1/PS2/PS3 classics (like they did on the PS4) and doing it that way. It’s not perfect, but something is better than nothing.

#3: Metroid Collection

It’s basically a given that a Zelda collection is on the way. What it’ll have in it is a mystery, but probably the mainline Zelda games, and possibly an HD port of Minish Cap or something. That’s all well and good but you know what is also cool? A little franchise called “Metroid”. Aside from handheld games (which are all good) there’s actually only been 6 console versions of Metroid, and for a franchise that is 25 years old, that isn’t a ton of games. Everyone wants a Metroid Prime Trilogy re-release but why not have Nintendo go “Oh, we’re also including Metroid, Super Metroid and Metroid: Other M (aka the bad one) on the cart as well.” I’d happily pay $60 for at least 5 of those 6 games.

#2: Fable Gameplay

Microsoft showed off that one little teaser a while ago but why not show off some actual gameplay now? I actually don’t expect a ton from this, I’m sure it’ll look like how Fable used to, just with better graphics and such. They may show off a “normal” hero character, then show him or her, becoming good and evil, to show the alignment system. I also fully expect someone to fart on someone else in a trailer for this game. Because you can’t really have a Fable game without someone sharting themselves.

#1: Crackdown 4 Announcement

DERP

#1: No Switch Pro

If there is one rumor that I hope dies at E3, it’ll be that of the “Switch Pro”. The basic idea is an upgraded Switch model with a better processor, bigger tablet size, a dock capable of 4K gameplay, and who knows, maybe it’ll grant wishes if you bow to it every night. Nintendo isn’t on the forefront of technical graphical prowess, nor do they really want to be. They want to make affordable and unique hardware for the masses, and having this thing, which would probably be expensive and split the user base, just wouldn’t serve them well. Besides, the Switch and Switch Lite’s are selling well on their own.

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List which E3 Predictions/Hopes you expect to see

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