Los Angeles, US, June 13 — After a series of exciting conferences at the E3 2017, it is now up to Nintendo to announce their newest and most innovative games planned to be released this and next year.
As you can imagine, the Nintendo Switch was the darling at Nintendo’s conference. However, just as last year was all about Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, this year was ruled by Super Mario Odyssey solely. Although some exciting games were showcased alongside their release dates, it was obvious from the very beginning that Mario was meant to star this time.
So what happened in this year’s conference? Here is a summary of the key titles of this year’s conference.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Kirby
Introduced by Nintendo’s president, Reggie Fils-Aimé, the conference began with the trailers of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (to be released in the holiday season later this year) and Kirby (coming out in 2018). Xenoblade Chronicles 2 didn’t show much of its gameplay, but rather some scenes of its story and its animesque style graphics.
Kirby, on the other hand, aside of showing off its cutesy platform-based game, introduced a new co-op mechanic, in which Kirby will be now accompanied by several allies with whom he can perform new battle techniques. Kirby’s allies can be controlled either by other players or by the CPU, allowing you to co-op with your friends in what appears to be the game’s story mode.
New Pokémon and Metroid releases and dates
Game Freak producers Shinya Takahashi and Tsunekazu Ishihara announced Pokkén Tournament for Nintendo Switch, with new characters and stages, and a core RPG Pokémon game for Nintendo Switch. Hopefully, they can leverage the Pokémon GO hype and keep on developing this franchise.
This reveal, alongside Metroid Prime 4, were so far the only announcements with no more details shown (the latter just specified that was currently in development for Nintendo Switch), but I’m pretty sure that their sole mentions will cause lots of anticipation among the fans during these upcoming years. Hopefully, the next E3 will finally reveal some extra details about these two games. Samus Aran, we expect you to hurry.
Love for Yoshi
Yoshi is getting his own game for 2018 too, aptly titled Yoshi, no less. Although it doesn’t entirely differ from Yoshi’s Woolly World, this game introduced the two-plane mechanic in where you’re able to flip the paper-like world and play in the opposing planes of the same stage area.
Fire Emblem Warriors
Fire Emblem Warriors showed a glimpse of its story in this year’s conference. Its protagonists will be a pair of twin brothers who’re out to save their kingdom alongside a wide arrange of guest characters from other Fire Emblem titles (Marth and Corrin stood out, for example). This spinoff from the Fire Emblem franchise will be out in the fall of 2017.
Having guest appearances from characters of previous Fire Emblem games has worked out well in their mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes, so it makes sense to build up on that.
New Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild content
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild craze won’t be over soon, and Eiji Aonuma reminded us that with the announcement of some Zelda-related news, such as the Zelda-themed items in Skyrim and two new DLC packs for Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.
The first one, titled Master Trials, will contain some new modes: “Trial of the Sword,” “Hero’s Path Mode” and “Master Mode,” alongside some new costumes. The second one is titled The Champions’ Ballad, and although there was very few information about it, it did come with the announcement of some new amiibo figurines for the champion characters of the game. The first pack is slated to be released in June, whereas the second pack is planned for the holiday season.
Super Mario Odyssey
Super Mario Odyssey’s details were finally revealed at this year’s E3 conference. After its appealing trailer, the Nintendo Treehouse segment delved further into its gameplay and showed some nifty things.
First of all, Mario’s new companion is his…hat (…honestly, we should have been expecting this for some time now). If the promotional artwork indicates something, though, this hat is not his usual one (the ghost-like tail hints some sort of distinct entity). Mario wields it as a weapon of sorts now; he throws it towards his enemies to defeat them or to possess them so that Mario can take advantage of their abilities (for example, he can get into a Bullet Bill and fly to several places).
And also, Mario can travel to several distinct worlds or areas through rockets. Worthy of mentioning is New Donk City, a Mexican-styled world called Tostarena Town, and a land of dinosaurs. Mario can gather not only the usual golden coins but also the local currencies of each world to get some nifty exclusives from each place (unavailable in other ones). For example, the triangle-shaped coins from Tostarena Town won’t work in other worlds, but with them, you can buy, let’s say, exclusive clothing in Tostarena Town (like a sombrero or a poncho).
Super Mario Odyssey doesn’t exactly feature an open-world system, but rather the world system we saw in Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, in where you trek distinct places and access to unique areas in the same world. One distinct feature in Super Mario Odyssey, however, is that you can traverse some walls and towers through 2-D pixelated pipes. This felt kinda similar to what we previously saw in Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Doing that allows you to reach some high or far away areas, and instead of stars, you gather “moons.” Whether or not these moons function the same as stars, however, remains unknown.
As for the story, not much was shown. You can bet it’s, yet again, about Bowser kidnapping Peach. However, it’s worth to mention the abounding wedding themes in the game (the new Mario, Peach and Bowser amiibos, for example, has them wearing wedding costumes), which makes you wonder if Mario and Peach might finally get married. Still, nothing is conclusive, and so far, we only caught a glimpse of Mario’s new enemies: the Broodals, an evil gang of bunny wedding planners employed by Bowser to thwart his attempts to rescue Princess Peach (and no, I’m not making this up). During the Nintendo Treehouse segment, we saw the Mario fight against one of these lovable, yet evil, criminals, and it does take you back to Super Mario Sunshine and it’s goofy, yet fun boss battles.
The Nintendo mobile game Super Mario Run was somewhat mediocre. With Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo is likely to push our favorite plumber to the top again.
Metroid: Samus Returns
After the extensive feature of Super Mario Odyssey, we finally got to see a game for a whole different console: the Nintendo 3DS. Metroid: Samus Returns is a reimagining from Metroid II: Return of Samus with improved graphics and mechanics (the melee counter, for example), although retaining most of the features of the original game, as you could expect. The game will be out on September 15 of this year.
YouTube: Nintendo | E3 2017: Day 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM45NsEzlro
Photo credit: Nintendo
Source: Event stream
