Month: June 2019

LOS ANGELES—Bethesda Softworks announced Sunday that it is getting involved in the increasingly competitive field of cloud gaming. But rather than announcing a service to compete with the likes of Google Stadia or Microsoft's Project Xcloud, Bethesda's Orion system is focused on improving streaming performance on the platforms that already exist.

While most cloud gaming efforts try to improve performance by throwing hardware at the problem—often in the form of prime data center locations loaded with high-end servers—Bethesda says Orion is instead incorporated "at the game engine level." The result of what Bethesda calls "years of research and development," the company says its group of patented Orion technologies can optimize frame rendering time by approximately 20 percent per frame. Improved compression also leads to streams that require 40 percent lower bandwidth for the same quality, reducing the potential costs for both users and streaming services, Bethesda said.

At a pre-E3 demonstration attended by GamesIndustry.biz, the 2016 edition of Doom running on a MacBook went from 7 ms of combined GPU rendering and encoding time to 5.3 ms. That may not sound like much, but when it comes to increasing streaming quality and reducing apparent latency, every little bit helps. Average bandwidth usage in a 10-minute gameplay test reportedly dropped from 23.43 Mbps to 13.67 Mbps at the demo, while GPU utilization on the server side dropped from a high of 64 percent to a low of 55 percent.

LOS ANGELES—After what Bethesda's Todd Howard admitted on stage was some "well-deserved criticism" at the launch of Fallout 76, Bethesda rolled out the first phase of its turnaround plan for the game at its E3 press conference tonight.

That plan starts with Nuclear Winter, a 52-player Battle Royale mode that sees players fighting for the role of "overseer" using Fallout's usual lineup of guns, power armor, and some "exclusive perks" to upgrade your own abilities. That mode will be available as a "sneak peek" during a free trial of the full game starting June 10 and running through June 17.

Then, in the fall, a free update being called "Wastelanders" will introduce new elements including a full quest line, new rewards, full dialogue trees, and the much-requested return of human non-player characters. Players will also be able to choose between siding with two different factions: Settlers and Raiders.

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  If your workplace has rules that restrict images of virtual blood and gore, consider this your last warning: DOOM Eternal only looks more gruesome from here on out. [credit: id Software ]

SANTA MONICA, Calif.—I don't often get as jazzed about an in-development video game the way I have about DOOM Eternal. After playing its 20-minute E3 demo to completion for my first time, I yelled, "AGAIN! AGAIN!" like a child unwilling to get off of a rollercoaster (and was thankfully granted another go at the fun). Upon getting home and preparing this article before Bethesda's Sunday E3 press conference, I combed through a full playthrough video provided by the developers like a sad ex flipping through a photo album. I had to look again. I wanted to remember.

That's not my normal way; I'm a gaming curmudgeon to put it lightly. And yet I am struck by how pristinely iterative this game feels—a perfect execution of the cheesy poster quote, "If you liked DOOM 2016, you'll love DOOM Eternal." By carrying familiar elements forward and then supercharging them with compelling twists, DOOM Eternal (launching November 22 on Windows 10, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Google Stadia) could very well rank alongside past elite sequels like Super Mario Bros. 3, Uncharted 2, and Burnout 3: Takedown.

Familiar demons, meet new flamethrower

I mention those specific sequels because they each returned to unsurprising gameplay mechanics and art styles, only polished like crazy and met with a zillion new features that all somehow fit. DOOM Eternal sits in that category, so much so that a peek at its supercharged screenshots might elicit a mix of "ooh, crazy demons" and "uh, haven't we seen this before?"

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  Oh, hey! Commander Keen is back! But...

PC gamers of a certain era fondly remember Commander Keen, one of the most technically proficient side-scrolling action series to land on MS-DOS. Fans of its creators, id Software (perhaps better known for Doom and Quake), have always wondered when the relatively cutesy series might see a revival since its halcyon PC years of 1990-91.

That day was Sunday, as announced by Bethesda at its E3 press conference. But fans may not have seen this version of Keen coming.

The new Commander Keen, as shown in the above gallery, will "soft-launch" on iOS and Android "this summer" as a free-to-play platforming game. Gameplay specifics were not clarified either at the press conference or the game's brand-new announcement site, but this smartphone game appears to revolve around tapping on smartphone screens to direct players' upward hops (recalling '80s arcade games like Ice Climbers) and activate attacks.

Enlarge / Tim Schafer introduces himself as part of Microsoft for the first time.

LOS ANGELES—"For the last 19 years, we've been independent. Then Microsoft came to us and said, 'What if we gave you a bunch of money.' And I said 'OK, yeah,'"

That was the half-kidding way Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Broken Age) Founder and President Tim Schafer introduced the company's newly announced acquisition by Microsoft Game Studios. Schafer appeared on stage at Microsoft's pre-show conference, ready to joke about the new partnership with Head of Microsoft Studios Matt Booty.

"I am a team player," Schafer said on stage. "Whatever you need from Double Fine we'll make for you. Halo stuff, Forza stuff, Excel stuff. Whatever you want, we are there."

Enlarge / Moments before the beginning of the Xbox press conference at E3 2019. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

LOS ANGELES—Without its direct console rival Sony anywhere in sight at this year's E3, the team behind Xbox took advantage with a Sunday press conference that revolved around games, games, and more games. In particular, Microsoft finally began paying forward its investment in various acquisitions over the past couple of years to make a huge Xbox Game Studios statement in the form of legitimate gameplay variety.

Even with that in mind, nobody in the room was surprised to see one game elicit the loudest response: Halo Infinite, now confirmed for "holiday 2020" as a launch title for the code-named Xbox Scarlett console.

"We lost. We lost everything."

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  He's back.

Unlike the game's E3 2018 tease, this year's reveal revolved around "game engine footage" that bordered on the kind of stuff you'd expect from a pre-rendered sequence. This quality came primarily from lengthy zooms on an unnamed civilian stuck floating in space on a UNSC vehicle. The trailer begins with this character waking amid booming alarms, which he deactivates by clumsily twisting a valve in a ceiling compartment.