Disney at E3 2021

E3 2021 has officially come and gone (though there are still plenty of upcoming events to show off upcoming games in the next couple of months such as EA Play in late July) and there were a bunch of games to look forward to for just about everybody. Disney certainly made their presence felt with something significant in most of the major showcases, some in some very unexpected ways. I’ll break down each major thing and my thoughts on it here:

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

This is arguably the biggest question mark for me personally. It was definitely unexpected, but I think it’s safe to say people are pretty lukewarm on Avatar as a franchise and Ubisoft, well while they can certainly put out some quality stuff, they are generally known for a handful of reliable formulas and if this is just one of those with blue-skinned aliens, I don’t know that this is something that will really catch people’s attention.

The trailer at least makes me think this will basically be Far Cry with the Avatar license, which honestly is a series I have tried to get into but has never really stuck with me. I will certainly buy this and give it a fair shake, heck I kind of have to if I’m keeping with the spirit of this project, however, the Avatar franchise as a whole is going to have an incredibly interesting 2022, both in terms of the next movie and this game, we’ll see if the world still cares about either.

Marvel’s Avengers: War for Wakanda

So, I really haven’t touched Marvel’s Avengers since completing the Hawkeye Future Imperfect story content, but that’s not necessarily a reflection of me getting bored with the game or anything, I just have had plenty of other games to distract me lately but it seems like when this big expansion drops in August that will actually be a great time for me to jump back in so I’m pretty interested to see if this DLC really fixes some of the long term issues Avengers has had and still hasn’t really addressed.

A new level cap will certainly give me some incentive as well as a new area to explore in Wakanda, which is not something we’ve seen all that often in Marvel video games. But one of Avengers' biggest problems is the lack of interesting boss fights, the campaign has only a few variations and the post-game has been pretty much fighting Taskmaster and Abomination over and over (and over) again. Hopefully, this expansion will change things up and set the stage for some more compelling stuff in the future.

It’s a good and probably necessary move that the War for Wakanda expansion is just a free add-on but I really believe if Square Enix wants to pump those player numbers up this needs to either go free-to-play or at least be on Gamepass and possibly PS+ for an extended period of time. I’ll be at least checking back in with the game for every major content drop but I’m not sure who else will.

Sea of Thieves: A Pirates Life

Sea of Thieves is one of those games that’s not huge but has a dedicated base and just keeps chugging along doing its own thing and that’s awesome. I know a couple of people who absolutely love it. Pirates of The Caribbean is an extremely natural tie-in since Sea of Thieves is biting off a lot of that style to begin with, but it’s also probably the most exciting thing involving that Disney franchise since the first movie? I honestly generally thought I did not care about Jack Sparrow anymore but this was such a pleasant surprise yet again a natural fit that it has me seriously thinking about getting into Sea of Thieves.

The only issue for me is I definitely do not have the kind of schedule where I could get together with a crew on any kind of regular basis but there are also lots of incentives, especially after this year’s E3, to just sign up for Gamepass and then I just have the game anyways so maybe give it a go. Either way, this is super exciting not just for Sea of Thieves players but for a lot of other reasons I’ll get into further on in this post.

Marvel’s Guardians of The Galaxy

So I mostly had a positive reaction to the reveal of the long-rumored Square Enix Guardians of the Galaxy game. I think it looks fun and has a sense of humor that really fits. I will probably enjoy this game and it’s great that it’s already out in October. However, I can also easily see the issues raised by this showing. We’ve got yet another game where instead of going for a distinct style that still captures the essence of the characters, looks like a mostly off-brand version of their MCU counterparts. It’s not as bad as Avengers but yeah it still looks like you just hired the stunt doubles.

And the bigger issue, why are we only playing as Star Lord, arguably the least interesting Guardian to play as while the other characters mostly seem to act like special attacks? It will probably still be fun and I’m glad this is a single-player contained story that they aren’t trying to make another forever game but it already seems like some potential was just not utilized. Still, I’m genuinely excited, it looks fun and I’ll be happy to check out Guardians of the Galaxy in October.

Disney working with indie developers?

While not technically something that came up during any of the E3 2021 presentations, Disney has shown a willingness to be pretty open to licensing various IP out to a wide range of publishers and developers, and as they showed this year already, it’s not just limited to Marvel and Star Wars.

But how open are they? Well obviously they wouldn’t let Team Meatboy make a violent game starring Mickey Mouse but a story this week came out where they plainly stated that they are very open to(and may already be working with) smaller developers along with the usual big names like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Square Enix. We’ll definitely have to wait and see what, if anything actually comes of this but it would be incredibly cool to see some talented indie devs take a crack at some Disney IP. Personally, I’d love to see WayForward do something with pretty much any of the animated shows Disney has put out over the last few years like Ducktales, Amphibia, Big City Greens, or Owl House. The possibilities are endlessly tantalizing so let’s hope at least a couple of really cool things come out of this willingness to work with developers big and small.

That’s all for today, but I might be squeezing in one more entry this weekend, certainly something next week, so see ya real soon!