Bethesda may not have had whole lot of new games to show off its during 2017 E3 press conference, but everything mentioned on stage will release this year. That’s a welcome change from a lot of big pressers, which tend to feature exciting news for titles coming out several years down the line, if at all.
Join us as we take a quick look at everything announced during this year’s Bethesdaland 2017.
Bethesda wasted no time digging into the announcements, with two virtual reality games listed for release in 2017. Up first, Doom VFR, for Virtual … Frickin’ … Reality, in tune with the game’s brash attitude.
To much less surprise, Bethesda’s VR wing also officially announced Fallout VR, a game teased at E3 last year and shown in limited bursts. Both systems are clearly designed for HTC Vive, with the headset and controllers appearing prominently in both trailers.
Beyond that, we still don’t know much about Bethesda’s virtual reality ports. They’re clearly ambitious titles that are intended to be more than just simple display and input changes.
In what appears to be an attempt to bring back the infamous and short-lived mod monetization introduced for Skyrim a few years ago. Bethesda has worked with some of the best mod developers for both Fallout 4 and Skyrim to produce mods and cosmetic items that won’t affect save files or game integration. The Creation Club website is already live, and the service should begin rolling out this summer.
Next up, Elder Scrolls: Legends will be rolling into the Skyrim universe, with the Heroes of Skyrim expansion. It will bring in new cards, and of course new quests to complete, to coincide with the adventures into everyone’s favorite dragon-ridden land. If that sounds up your alley, the expansion will be available on June 29th.
We still may not have a release date for Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch, but that didn’t stop Bethesda from showing off an early build of the ported RPG for Switch. Of note, the game apparently includes Amiibo support, allowing users to scan their Breath of the Wild amiibo for unique armor, and even the Master Sword, in Skyrim. It also supports motion controls, allowing users to raise a shield and swing a sword without pressing a button.
In a twist-filled Dishonored 2 DLC announcement trailer, Bethesda showed off a new campaign for the stealthy adventure title. In the brief cinematic, a friendly NPC from the main game stalks enemies, and eventually rescues a character featured in the other Dishonored 2 DLC, Knife of Dunwall. The name of this DLC is intrguing, as well, since The Outsider is the source of the mystical powers featured in Dishonored.
Bethesda’s frantic FPS is in full-scale comeback mode, and the company made two big announcements regarding that return to prominence. The first is the re-introduction of BJ Blazkowicz, the Nazi-slaying protagonist of the Wolfenstein series, who will be a playable character class in Quake: Champions.
There’s also the Quake World Championships, which will take place at Quakecon this summer. Teams will compete in the new game for a $1 million prize pool. Still no word on an official release date, but with a huge tournament on the line, Bethesda will want to officially release sooner than later.
Well dang, this game looks scary. We got to see the recently-rumored reveal for the sequel to 2014’s heavily haunted psychological thriller. This time around, our protagonist Sebastian Castellanos must once again suffer a horrific, unnatural world, this time to save his daughter by diving into the world of STEM. This particularly spooky game will be available on October 13 of this year.
Last but not least, Bethesda officially announced Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, a sequel to the popular Nazi-slaying games that was teased last year in the company’s press conference intro. BJ Blazkowicz is back, waking up in a hospital having apparently lost the use of his legs. Eventually, we see him donning a futuristic, bulletproof suit and meeting up with a resistance team planning a revolution against the fascist state. That game will be available starting October 27th.
For years, Call of Duty’s campaign mode has used big, scripted set pieces to tell the overarching story amid all the adrenaline-pumping action. The 2023 Modern Warfare 3 tried to shake up the established formula by introducing a handful of short open combat missions, and I genuinely liked the idea, but the game's overall negative reception seeped into how those missions were received.
I feared the next iteration might abandon the idea because of the backlash, but I am glad it didn't. MW4’s “Stranded” mission uses the same approach, but instead of fragmenting it across the campaign, it puts it all in a single large-scale open-world mission.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.