Squeenix had a surprisingly short show for us, this year, clocking in at just over three-quarters of an hour. But, dude, kudos, it’s a densely packed show. Honestly, pretty much exactly what we want from an E3 showcase. An actual showcase, Rapid-fire games, games and more games. So let’s dive right in.

Guardians of the Galaxy

At first glance, like myself, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is going to be Marvel’s Avengers all over again, but no. It’s a single-player, third person action-adventure. And it actually looks pretty good, I must say. Though, it’s a tad odd for me, because the design for Starlord is…he looks like a friend of mine. There’s also a dog in a spacesuit. A Russian spacesuit. We all know what that means.

Final Fantasy and Legend of Mana

Final Fantasy I-IV are being re-releasesd and, uhm, that’s all we really see. So that’s nice.

Legend of Mana is a tad more informative, showing some brief footage of actual gameplay, but still gives is very little to work with. I mean, you should pretty much know what to expect from both series’ by now, so we don’t really need anything else.

Marvel’s Avengers

After a questionable start, Marvels’ Avengers is certainly starting to win people over, and there’s quite a nice chunk of extra content coming down the line. New game modes, randomised and repeatable boss fights and new story content. Not least of which being the Black Panther expansion, which was featured prominently.

Babylon’s Fall

Well, it would seem that Squeenix have heard our complaints about their lack of campy, fantasy epic RPGs, and responded with Babylon’s Fall. It’s campy, it’s epic, and it’s an RPG. Devloped by the guys behind NIER Automata, Platinum Games, that should give you a very solid idea of what to expect. More of a hack and slash approach, sure, but we all know that Platinum can pull that off with ease. The key downside here, is that they’re pushing it as a Live Service game. The promise of continuous extra content is good, but that term still holds a bitter taste for many. Still, it’s Platinum.

Life is Strange

First up is a remaster of the original series. And, well, it’s a remaster alright. More interesting is the new series, True Colors. Protagonist Alex is an empath, she actually feels the emotional state of the people around her. In gameplay terms, it allows her to hear what people are thinking, and thus open up new conversation options. So, more like telepathy in practice. It’s pretty much an alternate take on what Max could do, but without the option to go back and redo things. Whether this will actually add any significant weight to the choices players will make ultimately rests on how invested they are in the narrative.

Final Fantasy Origin

Chaos. Chaos chaos, chaos. Chaos! Did we mention chaos? I mean, seriously, that single word amounts to about 80% of the trailer. I’m not sure exactly what it all means, perhaps you’re going to get a Subway sandwich with Dave from Gamestop? That sounds about right.

Team Ninja are bringing all of their trademark edginess and heavy combat focused flair to the table. Not a bad idea for a Final Fantasy game really. It’s a far cry from where the franchise started, yes, but it’s a logical progression of the direction they’ve been taking in recent years. I just remain uncertain what the goal is, here. Something about carnal knowledge?

All in all, this was a pretty good show. There’s quite a lot of other stuff we didn’t go into detail about, including some rather spiffy looking mobile titles, and a bit more about the Final Fantasy VII Remake. We know that will be coming to PC eventually, but for now, it remains locked behind Sony hardware. So watch this space and we’ll update you as soon as we know when we’ll be getting our grubby little mitts on it.