So What Did Bandai Namco Actually Show At Its E3 Showcase in 2021?

On the last day of E3, after the strong showings from Nintendo, Xbox/Bethesda and the gems tucked within Wholesome Games Showcase and Summer Games Fest, Bandai Namco had a lot to live up to in its 1 hour and 5-minute E3 slot.

Even though the developers confirmed that Pazuzu is the big bad of this game, going off the previous two games, I’m willing to bet there will be some big twist… OR NOT…. DOUBLE TWIST!

If the title of this article wasn’t enough to clue you in, I’m just going to state it here for the record: they didn’t have a whole lot to show. Specifically, they had one thing to show – the latest instalment in the Dark Pictures Anthology, House of Ashes.

Supermassive Games are the developer behind this immersive horror experience and the actual content of their showcase was a 10 minute  “Dev Talk” with the game’s executive producer Dan McDonald, some behind the scenes footage of the upcoming title alongside and a new trailer. 

The game was first teased at the end of the credits for the last instalment of the series, Little Hope, with the first full trailer 7 months ago, the gameplay reveal on the 27th of May and the game’s official story trailer on the 10th of June at the Summer Games Fest.

Ashley Tisdale turned plenty of heads at last night’s red carpet.

This session didn’t really bring much else new to the table, apart from a look at the motion capture process, news of updated lighting and accessibility options, added difficulty settings and a less constrained camera – “360° in some parts”. The game looks like a steady improvement upon the two previous titles in the anthology, which both received mixed reviews at best, but the whole Dark Pictures project is still yet to live up to Supermassive’s surprise 2016 hit, Until Dawn.

I’m sure this game will handle its 2002 Iraq War background deftly and not be insensitive in anyway… That is definitely how this is going to work out, right?

Whilst it was nice to hear about the influence of the Akkadian Empire on the game’s narrative and more about the story’s direction, it was disappointing to have so little reward at the end of it all. Uploading the dev talk (minus the 50-minute filler section) onto YouTube and social media would have been far less hassle and quite frankly would have wasted less of everyone’s time. 

Announcing the limited content of the showcase via a tweet earlier than on the day of the presentation would have also allowed viewers to manage their expectations a bit better and get over the lack of extra Elden Ring content, or news about Blue Protocol or any other Bandai projects really.

Still, this latest dose of narrative horror will be arriving from deep underground on October 22nd this year on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and  Xbox Series X|S.