Adison here with the Square Enix Conference coverage. I’m incredibly excited for the probability of a Final Fantasy 7 remake to be on its way into our lives. I know a lot of people like the original, and a lot of people think it’s just nostalgia hued appreciation. FF7 was the very first RPG style game I ever played as a kid, it’s what got me into gaming as a whole. I went back after and played many of the older Final Fantasy games and grew to like those as well. The possibility that this much beloved game will have a full remake is too great that I don’t really have much room for anything else. We know Just Cause 4 is coming due to the earlier Microsoft Conference. There’s even Kingdom Hearts’ third installment, which I personally could do without. I don’t know what more to expect from Square Enix, but I do hope for some kind of surprise beyond what I hope for. There’s always the next installment into the Life is Strange world from DONTNOD.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

The new Tomb Raider games have been a bit hit and miss for folks. There are some people clamoring for more, and some wishing they’d stop. A lot of people want them to return to a similar formula as the old games. Regardless of what we might be wishing for, here’s what we’re getting. Lara is off to put an end to Mayan apocalypse and in the process beat the heck out of Trinity baddies.

There are more tombs to raid, and a deeper combat system to look forward to. Just in the trailer we got to see toxins in use, grappling and hanging folks up with ropes. I was actually quite impressed with the leap and stab maneuver myself, as it didn’t seem like it was excessively forced in its execution. The game will also allow multi-kill takedowns and some other interesting things. One more amazing thing to look towards is full underwater survival and exploration, this is a good element to have in this type of game!

Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood

The latest expansion for the online Final Fantasy game many have come to love features a bunch of new content. More raids and story based questing is present. In addition, it adds more and crafting recipes. People will be more excited to discover new lands to explore. Not much more was commented about this, except that there will be some form of crossover between Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter World.

The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

The already mentioned release of this game will hopefully draw people back into the fold of this wonderful universe. Life is Strange was, to me, a masterpiece, though I suppose the graphics could have used a bit more work. The brand new storyline presented here comes off as fun and playful, but who knows what might be lurking in there. The full game will be available for free as of June 26th, 2018. I imagine that they mean the first episode of this game will be free, but we’ll just have to wait and see. DONTNOD are fantastic at what they do, and making choices matter. With that in mind, look forward to how this game’s choices might impact the future of Life is Strange 2. The creative directors seemed like a couple of decent fellows, and I’m glad to give them my support on this endeavor. Go get em, guys!

Dragon Quest XI: Echos of an Elusive Age

Interesting design choice on the characters is what leap out at me right off the bat. It seems to harken back to a more traditional style of design, in which the characters feature large eyes and slightly abnormal face shapes. I guess my first impression of their structure was something like how Dragon Ball Z looks in 3D graphics. The game seems to promise more of the same kind of beloved Dragon Quest that we’ve always had. Not only is this new life in this franchise awesome, but those of us who only game on PC will be delighted to know that it will be there! Release date is set for September 4th, 2018.

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius x Dragon Quest 2nd Collaboration

We’re likely to see characters and monsters from the Dragon Quest games to feature in Brave Exvius. There may even be events associated with them, but I’m not sure. They didn’t really expand on this much, it was just a notation type glimpse. This was largely done in honor of the coming Dragon Quest game. I played this mobile game for a bit, and it was decently fun. Give it a shot if you’re curious, probably a good time for it.

Babylon’s Fall

Platnium Games Inc, a studio best known for action heavy adventure games like Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Nier: Automata showed up at the conference with a trailer for Babylon’s Fall. The trailer gave us a rather interesting timeline segment followed by a glimpse of a battle. No other information was presented except that it will come to PS4 and Steam. Here’s hoping it will be a good one, since it’s a title I wasn’t expecting to see!

Nier Automata: Become as Gods Edition

Folks who have wanted this game on the Xbox One will be delighted to know that it’s on its way. Fans can expect this hit to jump back into their lives, or into them for the first time, June 26th of 2018. To be perfectly frank, I don’t know that there’s much different about it. I also haven’t really ever been that interested in this game, or many of the others made by its developer group. That doesn’t mean it’s not great, go try it out for yourself.

Octopath Traveller

A slight interest in this game, I suppose, that seems to allow you to tread eight different paths. I mean, I suppose that’d be hard to guess based on its name, right? We got a peek at some rather simplistic looking graphics that harken back to the older generations of gaming. A combat system that might have fight right into a SNES RPG game. Who knows what to expect from this game really? Look for it around July 13th 2018 on the Switch.

Just Cause 4

Another look at Just Cause 4. Rico Rodriguez returns in what the developers might believe is their biggest open world game yet. Lore heavy environments are hopefully going to intrigue players, making it so it’s not just a run around shooting sort of situation. I’m moderately impressed with the introduction of an even deeper world destruction system. Even more impressive is the addition of wild and dangerous weather! Expect to see Tornados, lighting, sandstorms, and chilling blizzards.

These additions are focusing on adding a bit of randomness and more exciting and unique play to the game. What’s more, you can completely customize Rico’s grappler, adding boosters and even more graspers. They claim the stakes are being raised in the game with more intelligent enemy AI and archetypes. Expect a much more fun and maybe even frustrating time trying to clear out that map folks! Just Cause 4 will be making its way to PC, Xbox One, and PS4 on December 4th 2018.

The Quiet Man

Being given a glimpse at something is often the way of things at these conferences, and this one follows the mould perfectly. Here we had a mix of film and graphics as a teaser for this game title, sadly it didn’t really tell us much and relied largely on guy beating up bad guys to draw us in. This type of teaser doesn’t really work for me, as not only does it not show anything worth looking at, it also didn’t mesh the two parts well. Only telling us it will be on PS4 and Steam is about as much as we get, aside from the name.

Kingdom Hearts III

I am so underwhelmed by this game as I was by its previous installments. They show the same poorly done trailer with terrible audio mixing for this it as they showed with Microsoft. I don’t know if they just didn’t realize it was messed up, or if it was intentional to display their very serious lack of attention to making this good. As I said in the intro I knew this was coming, and it’s pretty much more of the same as all the other games. The game has almost no draw for me, personally, and they didn’t give us much more information about it. Look for this game, if that’s your type of thing, January 29th 2019.

As you might expect, we got more of the same that we already saw in the Microsoft Conference. We did however have a surprise awaiting us in the form of Dragon Quest XI, which came with a new trailer and release dates. I was very brought down to find out there wasn’t a single lick of mention about the Final Fantasy 7 remake, and I’ll be honest; that’s a mistake. Watching the actions of the people I would say a lot of folks were equally disappointed. There was some interesting stuff to look out for here, and a good chunk of stuff to probably just forget about. I personally don’t see a release to a new system as a big deal, but I know others do. In the end, not an overly exciting showcase for Square Enix.