Sony PlayStation at E3 2017: all of the latest news, trailers, and announcements

Rejoice, for E3 is over for another year, and we can all take a breath. The world’s biggest video games trade show brings such a flurry of news that it’s hard to stop and take it in before you’re whisked to the next keynote, the next conference, or the next big reveal.

It’s only now, with E3 over, that we can really take time to look back at some of the most impressive, intriguing, or downright bizarre games to get announced or outlined further at the show. Below you’ll find some of the trailers that are worth rewatching — or that you might have missed — from the last week.

Last E3, Cory Barlog revealed a wildly ambitious plan for his update on God of War: the game would take place in a single, uninterrupted shot. This year, the director shared that, in the early days of production, some members of the development team were hesitant to take on the ambitious plan. So, to show the power of the film technique when done well, he screened the hospital scene from John Woo’s action movie masterpiece, Hard Boiled.

“There’s that great one shot [in Hard Boiled],” Barlog said, “where Tequila and, I can never remember the other guy’s name, are shooting there way into the hospital. They end up having a conversation as they’re moving through. They go by an elevator and then the other guy accidentally shoots a cop.

Sony’s new God of War on PS4 will be the first game in the series to ditch quick time events, according to its director Cory Barlog. The franchise is arguably most responsible for popularizing the quick time event design, which allows players to have minimal input into elaborate and cinematic action sequences.

Typically referred to as QTEs, the design requires players to obey an on-screen button prompt with precise timing (e.g., tapping the triangle button as it flashes on screen). Failing a QTE typically triggers a fail state, beginning the sequence all over again.

An extended demonstration of Days Gone came a few announcements into PlayStation’s E3 press event, surrounded by the rest of the console’s upcoming releases. This is fitting placement for a game that, as it’s being presented in behind-closed-doors sessions, feels buried beneath the features of its contemporaries, never elucidating how or if it will be ready to break loose and establish its own identity.

An open-world zombie game, Days Gone follows the members of a motorcycle-club-cum-survivalist-group stationed in the Pacific Northwest, raising the question: is there a tax incentive to set video games in Oregon? In the big public demo, available on YouTube, the burly protagonist hops on his motorcycle and ambushes a collective of shabbily dressed people we are to assume play the villains. In the attack, we get a hint at the game’s potential differentiator: a horde of zombies approaches the compound, systemically, and is manipulated to feed on the protagonists enemies like a litter of very bad kittens fighting for a single saucer of milk.

If you paid close attention to the 9-minute Spider-Man demo at Sony’s E3 2017 event, you might have noticed the superhero knocking a goon off a skyscraper — only to sling him safely back onto the building. Bryan Intihar, creative director of Insomniac Games, explained that the game won’t allow players to use Spidey’s abilities to kill villains, or anybody else for that matter.

“We wouldn’t not allow that,” said Intihar. “Marvel would not allow that, the world would not allow that.”

Expectations were high for Sony’s E3 showcase this week. Last year, Sony arguably stole the show with games like Detroit: Become Human, Days Gone, God of War, Spider-Man, Horizon Zero Dawn, a new Call of Duty, The Last Guardian, and a VR thing for Final Fantasy XV, to name a few. 

So what did Sony show as the future of PlayStation this year? Detroit: Become Human, Days Gone, God of War, Spider-Man, a new Call of Duty (this time in World War II), a remaster of The Last Guardian predecessor Shadow of the Colossus, and another VR thing for Final Fantasy XV.

Far Cry 5’s announcement rode in on a wave of controversy. Where past games took players to far-off lands where the player murdered the locals, Far Cry 5 is set in a small Montana county. The enemy is a group of largely white Americans. Its heroes are a ragtag group of resistance fighters, fighting against a cult — a group whose imagery is drenched in patriotic Americana and Christian symbols.

But its first demo, for all of the conversations around the change to the game, felt largely like the Far Cry games that preceded it — its Montana location serving less as a statement than as a playground.

Sony’s E3 keynote wasn’t too big on major reveals, largely focusing on known quantities like God of War and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. There was one announcement, however, that really did shock me despite not even making it into our roundup of the event: Monster Hunter World, a new game coming next year for PS4, Xbox One, and later PC.

I don’t blame my colleague Chaim for omitting it — Monster Hunter has never quite broken through in the West, and its presence in Sony’s keynote probably left a lot of viewers nonplussed. But trust me, Monster Hunter World is huge news. Here’s why.

One of my favorite PS4 games is Until Dawn, Supermassive’s cinematic horror adventure from 2015. The game took Heavy Rain’s branching story structure and applied it to a self-aware slasher tale, which felt like a much more natural fit — even if you made the wrong call and let a character die in an gory instant, the story would just keep going. And though it was a single-player game by design, it turned out to work really well with a bunch of people on a sofa yelling frantic instructions to the player.

Sony’s E3 presentation may not have had a lot in the form of new announcements, with most of the trailers and news offering new clips and extended looks on already revealed games.

That said, there were some interesting notes and a few surprises. We’ve rounded up the most important ones here.

Bungie will release Destiny 2 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 6th, two days before the official launch date Bungie announced at the game’s reveal event last month. The new release date was slipped into the very end of the newest cinematic trailer for Destiny 2, which Sony showed off here at its E3 press conference. Soon after, publisher Activision also confirmed the PC release date — almost two months later, on October 24th.

It was originally assumed that this new release date was a PlayStation exclusive, part of Sony’s ongoing deal with Bungie and publisher Activision that’s lasted since the original game’s launch in September of 2014. As part of the deal, PS4 players will get access to exclusive strikes, weapons, and armor for up to one year after Destiny 2’s release. However, game director Luke Smith was quick to clarify on Twitter that the release date is for both consoles.

At Sony’s E3 presentation, Bungie revealed more information on the PlayStation exclusive DLC that will be coming to Destiny 2.

Specifically, PlayStation 4 players will get a timed exclusive until at least fall 2018 — or roughly . That content includes the Lake of Shadows strike, exclusive armor sets, the City Apex ship, a PvP map called Retribution, and, perhaps most disappointingly to those on other platforms, a new exotic sniper rifle called Borealis.

Bungie held a big lavish reveal event for its upcoming Destiny sequel last month, but the developer teamed up with Sony here at E3 to bring yet another trailer during the PlayStation maker’s press conference. The never-before-seen footage didn’t focus on gameplay, but it did give us our first look at Dominus Ghaul, the leader of the Red Legion and the Destiny 2’s initial primary antagonist.

All the gameplay and cinematic footage Bungie released back at the reveal event referred to Ghaul as an all-powerful Cabal leader, but did not show his face or any full-body shots of the hostile alien. It’s his Red Legion that takes the near-omnipotent planet-sized Traveler hostage, robbing all Guardians of their powers and forcing you to start anew. (This is also the game’s canonized explanation for not being able to transfer all your loot and gear from the original Destiny.)

Sony showcased all-new gameplay footage for the upcoming God of War reboot, which is bringing back protagonist and antihero Kratos and the franchise’s signature brutal hack-and-slash combat to a new Norse mythology setting. This God of War reboot, from Sony’s Santa Monica Studio, was first announced at the company’s E3 press conference last year. We knew then that the franchise would be transitioning from Greek mythology to ancient Norse myths, with a renewed focus on Kratos’ relationship with his apparent son Atreus.

In an exciting potential hint at the nature of the game’s narrative, the new trailer ended with Kratos and Atreus meeting a giant sea serpent that could very well be Jörmungandr, one of Loki’s three children and an instrumental player in the bringing about of Ragnarök, Norse mythology’s apocalyptic event. This bodes well for theories that Atreus is secretly an enemy of thunder god Thor, possibly the living embodiment of Ragnarök. In other words, despite his new softer demeanor, Kratos might continue to serve as an antihero who’s working against the protectors of the known universe as he did in the original trilogy.

The Final Fantasy XV virtual reality spinoff has a new look. At its E3 keynote today, Sony showed off a new PlayStation VR experience called Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV. It appears to be a game entirely based around fishing, the favorite hobby of protagonist Prince Noctis. Fans might notice that the game is also quite different from the VR experience shown as last year’s E3, which was an arcade-style shooter starring Prompto. Then again, that demo didn’t feel much like a Final Fantasy game during our demo — so the change could be for the best. It’s launching on PSVR in September.

Sony will release a remake of SCE Japan Studio’s action-adventure game Shadow of the Colossus in 2018. The news was announced on-stage today at Sony’s E3 press conference with a brief trailer.

Shadow of the Colossus originally launched for PlayStation 2 in 2005 as a spiritual successor to Ico. It was directed by Fumito Ueda, the developer behind The Last Guardian. Shadow of the Colossus is an epic, yet minimalist game that has no dungeons, characters to engage with, or real dialogue. Instead, it plays out through a series of grand battles against giant beasts known as colossi. It’s part adventure, part puzzle as players hunt down colossi and figure out how to best slay these monumental beasts.

The latest trailer for Call of Duty: WWII is like a tour of World War II action movie scenes: charges through battlefield, close quarters combat, attacks on gun nests, and bomber runs. Focusing on multiplayer, it’s noticeably more serious in tone than Call of Duty trailers of recent years.

For those new to this entry, Call of Duty is going back in time after last year’s sci-fi installment, Infinite Warfare, to the war that served as the setting for the first three games in the series. In the game, you’ll land in Normand on D-Day as part of the 1st Infantry Division and fight through a series of iconic locations, the developer says.

Capcom is bringing a brand new game in its huge-in-Japan Monster Hunter series to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Monster Hunter World is coming out in early 2018, and while we don’t know too much about it we can say it’s by far the most visually impressive Monster Hunter game yet. All other games in the series have been designed around the technical limitations of systems like the PS2, Wii, and 3DS, so the leap to modern hardware marks a huge upgrade.

Capcom is also bringing Monster Hunter XX to Nintendo Switch later this year, making Monster Hunter World somewhat of a surprise. The new game appears to play very differently to others, however, with a more fluid and open approach to hunting. It’s possible that Capcom will keep the traditional games on Switch to make use of local co-op while developing World for more powerful home systems.

Sony showed off brand new gameplay footage of its survival horror zombie game Days Gone to kick off its E3 showcase today. We’ve seen a healthy chunk of the title in the past, but the new trailer gives us a good glimpse of how the game plans on blending personal, high-stakes narrative with larger-scale terrifying zombie set pieces — plus, motorcycle travel.

A early and apparent signature of the game is hordes of 30 to 40 zombies that mob you in dynamic ways and at anxiety-inducing speeds. The new footage shows off the ways in which players will have to maneuver those survival settings and with more intense human encounters.