E3 2015 - Sony Overview

The final conference of the day isn’t always the easiest slot. With hours of dubstep, sizzle reels and PR talk already gone, it’s difficult to capture the attention of the crowd. That is, unless you are Sony.

Opening the show with none other than the biggest enigma in the industry The Last Guardian, it was like we had all stepped back in time to 2009, where we once again watched a small child interact with his giant dog/bird hybrid to solve puzzles and cross platforms. With a release window of 2016, Shuhei Yoshida, President of First Party Studios, took to the stage claiming “you don’t know how long I’ve waited for this moment” to a standing ovation from the media and fans alike. It’s finally happening.

This news was quickly followed by yet another exclusive, this time from Guerilla Games, the developers behind the Killzone series. Although we had heard murmurings of this dinosaur RPG for some time, the reveal was so much better. Horizon: Zero Dawn sees you take control of a female protagonist in a once futuristic, but now barren and green world hunting the last signs of the former civilisation; giant robotic dinosaurs!

      

No Man’s Sky also returned, where developer Sean Murray displayed a live demo, in which he showed the vast, expansiveness of the universe, picking a solar system at random to explore. The worrying thing? He said there will be millions of planets that you won’t ever see! Expect an announcement in the coming weeks and months.

The exclusives didn’t stop coming either; Street Fighter V received another trailer, we saw more Uncharted 4 gameplay (which crashed during the playthrough). We also finally got to see what LittleBigPlanet developers Media Molecule had been working on, a ‘design your dream’ game Dreams, although they were very vague with what exactly the game involves.

      

Sony were also proud to continue their third party support. Square Enix’s Hitman reboot will receive the beta first on PlayStation as well as six exclusive contracts while Batman: Arkham Knight gave a spoiler filled ‘Scarecrow Missions’ trailer, again exclusive to the Sony platform. Their partnership with Destiny also continued as a trailer for expansion ‘The Taken King’ was shown, with PlayStation consoles again receiving exclusive maps, weapons and armour.

We also got a first look at female assassin Evie, who will be one of two playable characters in Ubisoft’s latest instalment to the Assassin’s Creed franchise. According to the cinematic trailer, she takes a more cautious approach than the style of her brother, who we have seen in previous glimpses of the game. Yet again, PlayStation will receive exclusive missions, this time solving crimes alongside a ‘famous detective’.

Disney Infinity 3.0, which features characters from the Star Wars films across to packs, will also be coming to PlayStation consoles first. With an Boba Fett figure for good measure, you’ll be able to add to your collection this Autumn.

     

Perhaps the biggest third party announcement though was with Activision. Formerly partners with Microsoft, the Call of Duty creators are now teaming with Sony, meaning that map packs and betas will be on the PlayStation 4 before anywhere else.

The stars of the conference however weren’t in the new IP or Project Morpheus (which received only a very brief mention) but into of the most well loved franchises in the world. Dreamcast sweetheart Shenmue, which was a famously unfinished series of game, had it’s Kickstarter launched for the third iteration of the story and within a matter of hours has already reached its goal of $2 million. But perhaps even bigger than that was the very brief, cinematic reveal of the Final Fantasy VII remake. That’s right, a remake, not a remastering. Both games will be multiplatform, but will launch on PlayStation first.

It may not have been the legendary Sony 2013 press conference, and although there is still a huge hole in Sony’s first party line-up, it was the ideal conference for fans of generations gone by.