Edge September 2021

never mind the virtualised micropolygons, here’s roblox

If you want to make a triple-A game developer depressed, ask them why they bother spending so many late nights agonising over fiddly features barely anyone will ever notice when instead they could be cranking out Roblox concepts to an audience of millions of young people ready to reward them with hard cash in exchange for stupid-looking digital hats. Once upon a time, it was a kind of law that kids played Nintendo games, with all of the Nintendo quality guarantees built in, but the landscape has long since changed, and it doesn’t pay to be too Principal Skinner about it. For a new generation of players, the classic, supposedly critical ingredients – an engaging story, cunningly structured environments, and mechanics so polished you can see your face in them…

the show must go on

The 2021 incarnation of the greatest show on gaming Earth – the place where technical envelopes are traditionally pushed, where we expect the bleeding edge of interactive entertainment to be annually redefined – began with 1bit graphics on a 400x240 display. Yet the notion of Playdate opening the festivities at what we will charitably call E3 2021 was not as inappropriate as it first appeared. This was never going to be your dad’s E3, of course; COVID-19 saw to that. But so did the avalanche of publishers, media organisations and event companies that saw an opportunity to muscle in on a disrupted timetable, and hog a little of the biggest spotlight in games. The result was the busiest public schedule E3 has ever seen – and, at times, one of…

gong wrong

Also absent from proceedings this year were the Game Critics Awards, organised by the omnipresent Geoff Keighley, in which a pool of global media, us included, nominate the best games that were playable at the show. In its place came the official E3 Awards, and in keeping with the broader theme of this year’s E3, they paled against what they were meant to replace. Winners were chosen by just half a dozen participants, with categories limited to the ‘most anticipated’ game shown by each company that held a presentation under the official E3 2021 banner. The most anticipated game overall? Forza Horizon 5, despite Halo: Infinite winning the Xbox/Bethesda category.…

announcements

FORMAT PC is the clear winner in what we might have once called the platform wars. Just 32 of the titles shown over E3 week are console-only, compared to 115 which list PC as their sole format – though we’d expect many of those to make their way to one or more of the consoles in time Despite a good showing from Microsoft, the week yielded just 29 Xbox console exclusives Switch has the highest proportion of exclusive titles: 48 (including games that will also release on PC) Naturally, Sony’s absence had an impact on the showing of PlayStation exclusives – totalling just eight…

single and multiplayer

GENRE ORIGIN TITLES Across the game names on show, ‘world’ and ‘lost’ are the most commonly used words, each featuring in six titles DEATH GAME SIMULATOR BLACK WORLD STORY SHADOW LOST SEQUELS 2 is by far the most common number for a sequel; no game shown went above 6 Sheltered 2 King’s Bounty 2 STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl Jurassic World Evolution 2 The Outer Worlds 2 Aragami 2 Dying Light 2 Stay Human Passpartout 2: The Lost Artist Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings Of Ruin Psychonauts 2 I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy & The Liar Project Warlock 2 The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2 Slime Rancher 2 Red Solstice 2 Shadow Warrior 3 Age Of Empires 4 Rune Factory 5 Forza Horizon 5 Far Cry 6…

artisan crafts

Has wood ever been this good? As a child, Julia Prohorova was fascinated by dolls’ houses, but the one she coveted was too costly, so she crafted her own instead, using fabric, paper and whatever other suitable materials she found about the house. That desire to build tiny sets and scenes never left her. “Now I can afford to create any tiny houses or worlds I like,” she says. And what a delightful place she’s built in Woodo, a 3D puzzle game in which you slot in wooden pieces to assemble dioramas bit by bit. Prohorova painstakingly renders individual objects using Blender to see how they look in a scene, before making assets out of each in Unity. The process can be tedious, she admits; the results, however, speak for themselves. Prospective players…