OK, so maybe a lot of games were leaked - or just plain shown - before E3 proper this year. And hey, E3 itself isn’t as crucial as it used to be. That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of great-looking stuff at the show! Here’s what stood out to me most, in no particular order:

Pyre

Pyre is an identifiably Supergiant game from a mile away: the overhead perspective, Jen Zee’s striking artwork, the exotic overtones of Darren Korb's score. But what really intrigues me about it are the ways it seems to veer completely from Bastion and Transistor. The group dynamic they’ve established so far seems great. I love the idea of Greg Kasavin having a cast of characters to inhabit and draw out for us. Mystery has and almost certainly will keep playing a key role in Supergiant’s work, but Pyre feels bigger and more involved than the player-narrator relationship established in their past work.

The game itself looks real good too. I already feel like I want to pick apart the cool, fantasy sport battle system and see what sorts of strategies I can pull out of it. It looks like it’ll be tricky to learn but satisfying to improve at. The adaptive AI sounds like an interesting way to surface your particular strengths and weaknesses in battle. Can’t wait to absorb this one early next year.

Paper Mario: Color Splash

Nintendo games sure do look nice with an HD presentation, and I think Color Splash may be one of the most dramatic examples of that. Paper Mario has always had a vibrant look, but its E3 showing impressed me with its paper craft world, where every object looks like something you could reach out and feel. Here’s hoping it’s not at backtrack-y as Sticker Star and trims some of the well-written but long-winded dialogue that have hampered recent entries.

Monster Hunter Generations

After many years of heavy resistance, last year’s Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate finally made an MH fan out of me. Monster Hunter Tri - my closest-but-no-cigar attempt to get in on MH - was followed up by games like Dark Souls. In that interim between Tri and 4U, I was acclimatized to the kind of patience and forward thinking necessary to enjoy a game like MH.

Some refreshed areas and monsters of note from all the way back to the original will make appearances in Generations, which sounds like a great way for a recent convert like me to get a little history lesson. Underneath that substantial homage to Monster Hunter’s past lie some major, exciting changes. Weapon styles seem like one of the biggest ones, including one that turns your dodge into a jump among other concessions to help handle those bastard flying monsters. Maybe the best change of all: many crafting recipes now ask for a certain number of any part of a monster. No more - well, way less - butting your head against a particular foe until it drops precisely what you need.

That last one alone has got me real excited for Generations.

Persona 5

I probably don’t need to make much of a case for this one here on GB. It seems like exactly what I would want from a Persona sequel. Breaking the game up into bite-sized days, getting called on to give an answer in class, wandering through your high school halls (and now those halls, as well as city streets, are filled with people and even more cultural minutia to spot and appreciate). All-out attacks! Being able to talk to demons like in mainline SMT sounds like a bit of game changer. I can’t wait to get to know these characters and grind out the crew. I can’t wait to play Persona 5.

Ultimately, the date was all I need to know.

I’m glad we got quite a bit more than that, though.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild

After Nintendo’s Treehouse presentation, I have a strong confidence that it’s upcoming open world Zelda will retain all of the crucial elements that make the series an all-time favourite for me. Although we’ve been assured that traditional dungeons will be in the game, it seems like the world map is a lead character of a kind, a sort of meta-dungeon you’ll constantly be prodding at and manipulating everywhere you go. Link’s new tools seem smartly designed to be used and combined in all sorts of ways, with less of an emphasis on looking for a particular colour or formation to signal a tool’s use. There’s a jump button! Things feel different in the best possible way.

I feel like I want Breath of the Wild right now, damn it. It feels like it’s going to be the rare open world game that truly sucks me in. It even has me a little excited to actually use an amiibo in a game.

NieR: Automata

I don’t have a fucking clue about NieR. I was one of the apparent many fans of both JRPGs and Square that completely missed the cult hit original, but if the basic mood and flavour is anything like Automata…maybe I should rectify that.

Everything about this boss speaks to me. The cool goth robot design, the nimble movement, the crazy bullet-hell projectiles all over the screen. If the game ends up being this married to some RPG progression and an involving story, well…damn. I’ll be there.

Final Fantasy XV

Awkward fist-smooching demo at the Microsoft conference aside, I feel pretty damn good about Final Fantasy XV. The road trip vibe speaks to me, and feel pretty damn sold on the cool-looking expanses and 1940s-meets-far-future look of a lot of the cars. And after a strange and disappointing Platinum Demo, it’s nice to not only just see the real combat again, but to see that it’s evolved a lot from Episode Duscae. Divorced from the QTE-heavy model from Duscae, combat now seems much more concerned with clever buffing, debuffing and positioning.

Again, it’s too bad the demo at Microsoft chose to ignore pretty much all those things in favour of…a huge but uneventful canned boss sequence with a bunch of QTEs. If you’ve been following the copious preview footage already, that one demo isn’t that big a deal. If you haven’t been doing that though, I couldn’t see how it would entice you otherwise. But hey. The bright side of the new E3 footage? Flying that car around like an airship seems pretty fucking cool.