A Nintendo E3 Direct is always a pleasure to see since you never really know what to expect from it. Of course, this year was a bit different since the company already shared most of its heavy hitters releasing this year, or at least, that’s what we thought. Nintendo managed to surprise with tons of surprises and promising new games all coming to Nintendo Switch.
Gameplay above all
When it comes to the already announced big hitters, we knew what to expect and Nintendo delivered, gameplay above all. During most of the Direct, we didn’t really see any big new surprising Nintendo Switch games, instead, we saw anticipated gameplay of the already announced titles. Unlike most other companies, Nintendo clearly focused on actual gameplay instead of mere CGI trailers to get the hype going. We saw big hitters like Luigi’s Mansion 3, the Dragon Quest 11 DLC for Smash Bros, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and more. Now, of course, this isn’t a problem at all since fans were waiting to see more of those anticipated games. All of those looked sharp and fun to play, creating fun games is clearly Nintendo’s take on video games and they wanted to share as many details as possible in their given time.
Having a presentation like this certainly offered a welcomed change to what we’ve seen from the other companies this far. Nintendo truly took its time to showcase their upcoming big games in the best way possible, showing us anticipated release dates, new mechanics, and actual in-game footage. It’s a smart way to demonstrate the big hitters, varied with some surprise announcements along the way. Thanks to this, we now have a lot of extra information on games we already wanted the play based on their initial reveal. It’s an interesting strategy, especially when they mixed it up with new reveals too.
Surprise announcements
Now, we already knew most of what was coming in this Nintendo Direct, or at least, that’s what we thought. Nintendo clearly proved otherwise by revealing surprise game after surprise game. We won’t go into full details here but it seems like the company truly wants to keep the momentum of the Nintendo Switch as high as possible. With collaborations between Nintendo and Netflix, The Witcher III and some more honorable mentions, the Switch is really coming at full force hard.
Going through all these surprise announcements won’t make sense for an opinion piece since those announcements are kept for the summary article but we must say that the line-up was truly impressive. Including some long-awaited fan-favorite projects coming to the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo gave you reason after reason why to get the console as fast as possible. This Nintendo Direct quickly took another direction, from showcasing games we already knew existed to games we never dreamed of coming to the console. Compared to the other briefings, Nintendo had the most amount of surprises, making it the most memorable showcase with ease, and they still had that really big reveals up their sleeves.
The big reveals
The big reveal everybody was waiting for was, of course, the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Fans have been waiting on it for the last couple of months and we finally saw the first glimpse of it in action. Although not much is known of the game just yet, it already looks amazing and it’s even promising to have some kind of multiplayer judging on the first gameplay. The only downside was the release, which has been pushed back to 2020 in order to deliver the best game possible.
But, Nintendo clearly knew how to make up for this disappointment, it had two major surprises at the end of the show. Banjo Kazooie is coming to Smash and the sequel of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is in production as we speak. Now, again, we won’t go into full details here but those two reveals clearly made this the best E3 presentation we’ve seen to date. To be honest, some of the reveals were anticipated by the fans but I’m guessing Nintendo did surprise a lot of gamers with the last reveal of a new Zelda.
Conclusion:
This Nintendo E3 Direct was the perfect example of an E3 showcase done right. It had everything to please the fans, ranging from much anticipated new gameplay to new reveals and even some extremely exciting new surprises in the form of games nobody saw coming. Nintendo is clearly on a roll and combines the power of amazing third party support with the company’s own in-house franchises. By far the best Nintendo Direct in months and without a doubt the best E3 showcase.
