Promising titles from the people who made them - and a surprise launch too.
However, the end results are rarely satisfying.
What we tend to get is a procession of in-game imagery with no context that quickly becomes a blur.
That’s if you get in-game imagery (or ‘gameplay’) at all.
The scourge of press events - CG trailers - are essentially gone.
Each title featured also had time to shine.
We actually found outRedfallis actually about!
We understood why the next Forza Motorsport should be something special.
Where would a title like that have sat within a traditional E3 media briefing?
We’ll be looking at the game next week on Digital Foundry.
This is an area of honesty and disclosure where to its credit, Sony has led the way.
Whenever game visuals are on-screen, there’s a caption telling you what you’re actually seeing.
Is it running on console or isn’t it?
Is it a real-time sequence or is it pre-rendered?
Will you actually see these visuals in the game or won’t you?
For the most part, Sony has even moved beyond the catch-all ‘in-engine’ label that essentially means nothing.
However, for Developer Direct, there was no disclosure at all.
Was Forza Motorsport running on Xbox Series X?
Probably not, based on the mouse pointer seen in one shot.
What was Redfall running on?
Were those spectacular vista shots actually in-game and representative of the experience we’ll be playing in May?
It’s the final tick box in making Developer Direct the best it could possibly be.
