In just four months, Bethesda will be taking the stage in LA’s Electronics Entertainment Expo – or E3, as the cool kids like to call it – to bestow on the gaming masses something big and shiny that looks like a game and hopefully plays like one too.
What could that special game(s) be? We won’t know until the Dragonborn shouts, but a gamer can dream, can’t he? Read on about the five games Bethesda’s surely going to give us this summer and five it definitely won’t.
Dishonored 2
A gothic, stealth-action, steampunk game is a mouthful of a description for any game just as much as Dishonored‘s a mouthful of an experience. Three years and a wealth of DLC later, it’d not hard to imagine that Bethesda could sneak in one of its most unique – and relatively untouched – IPs onto their show floor.
If it’s a go: A year or two ago, I would’ve said that Dishonored could be too cult for E3, but trust me when I saw Dishonored has its fans; fans dedicated enough to slap together many a fake leak, including a rather convincing one last year. Like any good conspiracy, the leak alone seems to have grown that fan base a good deal more. I’d expect nothing less than the applause and manly squeals that Dishonored deserves.
If it’s a no: There’s undoubtedly a great sequel somewhere in Dunwall or abroad, but there’s probably not a timer on cooking the Dishonored goose. A few audible sighs might echo through the convention halls, sure. Yet Dishonored 2 is a cool, midsummer night’s dream that most of us would probably be fine with dreaming about a bit longer, if not only to give Bethesda agency to pick what ending they’d follow up.
Doom 4
Just about everyone who owned an NES, loved guns, and or had super open-minded parents back in the day probably remembers blazing through Doom’s hellish good times. The franchise’s seen better days since its rocky 3D debuts, but its long-delayed fourth game’s a card Bethesda could still whip out onstage.
If it’s a go: We’re still waiting on using those beta codes we got with Wolfenstein a year ago and we’re still drumming our fingers waiting to bite into a current-gen Doom, or however they’re capitalizing it nowadays. If Doom 4‘s amazing, than that’s something.
If it’s a no: Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, but with every waking day and no news at all from id Software or Bethesda, Doom 4 seems like more and more of a passing daydream. Unless it’s sorted out its demons, figuratively and otherwise, no Doom 4‘s sadly just a big shrug waiting to happen. Wrong 4 Bethesda!
Wolfenstein: The New Order 2
In a year or even a generation of passive, uninspired shooters, The New Order relaunched Wolfenstein for a new generation. A new era and a new order of killer Nazis opened up the field to old-school shooters some of us knew and loved. Maybe it’s not impossible that Bethesda would like to keep the ball rolling.
If it’s a go: It’s totally possible Bethesda could throw fans as early of a bone as Square Enix did with last E3‘s Rise of the Tomb Raider reveal. If so, it need not be much to get us sold. A bloody horrifying, blood amazing pile of kills courtesy of one B.J. Blazkowicz or whoever they have is probably just fine by fans. Make if big, sparkling, and decked with iron dogs and fans go wild.
If it’s a no: Then so be it, no Wolfenstein’s probably a better Wolfenstein for now. We probably couldn’t expect to see it for at least another two years if Bethesda’s diligent enough in a sequel. No New Order 2 definitely won’t leave many grudges, but it’d be a swell tease.
Brink 2
Somewhere along the line, Bethesda decided that people needed to see what happened when you threw a dozen misshapen Dreamworks character models into an FPS still in its beta. The result was Brink and it’s probably the game you always see in lonely bargain bins.
If it’s a go: Sometime after the hysterical laughter dies down, we all start looking for The Onion logo hidden in Bethesda’s press releases or we pray we find the username “BadJester24” to show up buried in the video code. No, this can’t be an E3 headline. This is just what happens when you actually do eat an expired bag of Doritos. Guess the surgeon general was right all along.
If it’s a no: At the back of our minds, we all compose our top ten lists of what could’ve gone horribly wrong at E3 and Brink is buried too thankfully deep in our subconscious to muse on. I mean, c’mon, Bethesda’s a company, not an SNL skit.
The Elder Scrolls VI
Let’s not kid ourselves. Bethesda’s making a big fuss about something and if you’re going to the trouble of holding an E3 stage show, it’s go big or go home – or rather, The Elder Scrolls big. There’s nothing that speaks to the game industry like an Elder Scrolls game, nor is there anything that says RPG like a dragon.
If it’s a go: Elder Scrolls games take roughly two lifetimes to beat assuming you have food, water, and possibly an IV drip on hand and the buildup to them seems like half that time – not that we’d need it. But then, we never need an Elder Scrolls game. It needs us to answer their beckon call. And not “just another Elder Scrolls game,” mind you. The Elder Scrolls Online taught us what happens when you release that. An ensemble orchestra, a chanting choir, an enormous world, a 1080p dragon’s breath filling Bethesda’s stage screen – there’s not much that it takes to conjure up Elder Scrolls hoopla in a crowd. Bye, Skyrim. It was fun, those four, sleepless years.
If it’s a no: Some of us might just bang our shields and brandish our virtual swords for a good while, but we all know deep down we’ll just drown in our sorrows by playing…Skyrim. You’ve just got to finish that Sylvester Stalone dragon mod you were working on last week, anyway. But you tell yourself you need another Elder Scrolls because it’s been four, stinking years since a real one and you can’t have been wasting your life this long on one game…right? RIGHT? FUS RO DAH!!!
A Wet Sequel
You remember Wet. You know, that “not safe for work” game you eyed in the bargain bin in passing that you thought was, um, not safe for work in a different way before you looked it up. It had a hot woman on it with a gun, which arguably composes half of E3’s lineup.
If it’s a go: As we all tiredly google Wet, we find out it had a premise not based on “ahem” what we thought it was about. Worse, it had a storyline just long enough to have “gameplay,” qualifying it as a “game.” We scroll through the Wikipedia page and see something about a bounty hunter, a Texan bounty hunter, and something about biker gangs and briefcases. Could be fun, we guess, kind of?
If it’s a no: Nothing left to do but dole out a big “I told you so.” That is, if there was anyone who made a bet on a Wet 2 reveal. Wait – that’s this author. Never mind, stop reading this. No, wait. Do keep reading.
The Evil Within 2
It’s probably in the same boat as Wolfenstein, but if horror gaming’s been on the upswing lately, then The Evil Within certainly had something to contribute to it. A sequel’s surely in the cards, if not just a tease.
If it’s a go: Should we find out what really happened to Sebastian Castellanos at Beacon Mental Hospital, there’ll probably the people still drying out their pants from last year and the few, crazy people putting on new underwear for The Evil Within 2. Let’s get cracking.
If it’s a no: It’s probably only been since Resident Evil 4 or Silent Hills 2 that a horror game’s ever benefited from a sequel. That the scary returns should only diminish the farther it went on might be a small comfort in never seeing another of The Haunted again, but then, some of would still want to. And I envy none of you.
A Star Trek Game
Once upon a time, Bethesda made Star Trek games. Who’s to say it couldn’t happen again? We know there’s a new movie on the horizon and there’s still a criminally unexplored license to exploit.
If it’s a go: Puzzled faces and furrowed eyebrows furrowed to the limit would likely follow such an event, but a new Star Trek game’s just brimming with the possibilities – wait, just what do you do with a Star Trek game? A third-person cover shooter? A top-down strategy game? A point-and-click adventure? The latter’s probably preferable for a story-driven Star Trek, but you don’t understand what those geeks in point ears are scratching their chins about. You just like those J.J. Abrams movies with Sylar from Heroes and Benedict Cumberbatch’s Not-Khan. Or you are one of those geeks and you just wanna see a 1080p Picard you can sip Earl Grey tea with in the holodeck. Either way, this’ll be interesting.
If it’s a no: There’s probably no game that’ll ever do fans the justice of sitting around a table negotiating with a frumpy looking alien for two hours. For that matter, we wonder to ourselves why Telltale isn’t making the darn thing.
Rage 2
RAGE was a post-apocalyptic, RPG-ish, first-person shooter set in a radiated wasteland, developed by id Software and published by Bethesda of all companies. It looked, played, and felt like a game by another name you know and want a lot. Like, a LOT.
If it’s a go: RAGE was the flashy, vicious package you wanted out of 2010 and had some of the gunplay to match, but boy did you ever forget about it since. That it was in first-person just made you think more about Fallout: New Vegas which, in turn, made you think about Fallout 4. Thus, that a RAGE 2 reveal should be taking up Fallout 4 stage time just makes you mad. MAD. That’s it, you’re rage-quitting this sham of a convention along with the entire Internet. Suck it all, wrong mutants Bethesda!
If it’s a no: Eh, you’d like to know what could be done with a faster, bigger RAGE, but to be honest, you don’t want to know that much.
Fallout 4
By now, Fallout 4‘s like a sports game. We’ll riot if we get it and we’ll riot if we don’t, but albeit with the former resulting in a 1000 hours less of our lives not behind our controllers and keyboards. Suffice to say, this is the big one. So big that, honestly, could any E3 handle the fallout either way?
If it’s a go: About a minute after we close our opened-jaws, our hands will raise to the heavens. It happened. It finally happened. “Fallout 4 is real! Fallout 4 is real!!!!” we scream. Long before we faint face-first into our keyboards, we manically type something indiscernibly giddy all over our social media. “Something something something #Fallout #OMG #TakeMyMoneyLOL” we message to everyone on our friends lists and probably everyone that’s not.
If it’s a no: “WHAT?!” WHAAATTT?!!” we utter to our inanimate screens. Cue tears. Cue conspiracy theories. Cue another lineup of “What we want from Fallout 4” lists that we all write and read through clenched fists and our burly tears. Bethesda, we just can’t handle this “will it or won’t it” kind of relationship. We think…we think we’re just gonna have to think about seeing other people right now. Just for now…excuse us.
What say you, reader? What do you see Bethesda announcing at E3? Is it too soon to dream or just nigh impossible to know? Tell us in the comments below!