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Square Enix E3 2019 conference live report

Final Fantasy 7 Remake looks amazing! And Avongers is also a thing.

Square Enix closed off Monday with one of the best demos of the show as Final Fantasy 7 wowed eveyrone. And then they showed off The Avengers... Here's everything as it happened.

Our live coverage of this event has finished.

*yawn* I don't even know what time it is anymore.

Martin Robinson

And we're nearly out of whiskey in the office.

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Absolute disaster, tbh.

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Still, one more show to go today!

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Kami: This whole E3 feels like a hangover.

My whole life feels like a hangover.

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Well, this is a surprise. A real live show.

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I'm kind of excited?

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What to expect?

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Well, we know The Avengers is going to be leading the charge.

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And we can expect some more on Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

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What else? Would love to see some older RPGs return - Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana plz - and hey why not some mad ego trip of a project like The Quiet Man too.

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What I'd like - what I'd really, really like - is a new Racing Lagoon.

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Never going to happen, of course.

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I think it was always going to be a flat year, what with everyone waiting for the next gen.

Martin Robinson

The last E3 like this - was it 2012? - also felt really dreary.

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On the flipside, next year will be amazing!

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And anyway I've got a massive backlog to get through, so I'm fine with no games for a year or two.

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And away we go.

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Let's video game!

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Straight in with Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Just the good shit.

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This is the intro.

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And yes it looks amazing.

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And that's just a lovely E3 moment just there - you can feel the love in that room.

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Yoshinori Kitase comes on stage to talk us through more.

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It still feels slightly surreal to see Final Fantasy 7 Remake being shown off.

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Even more surreal that we have a release date now.

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(Also as I'm an interminable hipster even though I love Final Fantasy and count 6, 12 and Tactics amongst my favourite games ever, I've never played 7).

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Confirmed that Final Fantasy 7 Remake is coming on two discs, and Midgar is its own game.

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'Why is this stage set up like they're about to solve a pressure pad puzzle' says Donlan.

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We're seeing the action system being properly explained - it's got an action slant, but the ATB system is still in their underpinning it all.

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And you can switch to tactical mode, which is more of the traditional combat we're used to.

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Also Neal, mate. I know it's exciting. But calm down a bit.

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You can switch characters on the fly.

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I'm quite into this new action system, though as I've hardly played the original I'm not the sort to be offended by it so easily.

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MiracleNachos: This system looks like a lot of fun.

Doesn't it just.

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MiracleNachos: This system looks like a lot of fun.

Doesn't it just.

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Nicely observed - and they're two fine games. I'm very much into this.

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Against my own expectations, and as someone without the nostalgia for the original, this has become one of my most hotly anticipated games of the next 12 months.

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Beautifully handled from Square Enix.

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It's a low bar to pass, but this Final Fantasy 7 gameplay is the best thing I've seen all E3.

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Still some questions surrounding how they'll deal with the mad tone of FF7 - but I have faith.

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*All* Final Fantasy games, even the more recent ones, are tonally all over the place.

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Here's Nomura!

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HerrProduk: I thought you were stanning for Watchdogs Murder Granny this year Martin?

I have like 40 opinions an hour, most of them conflicting. Right now I'm all about this. Tomorrow I'll probably hate it.

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So lovely to see the Nomura love in the comments here. I thought it was just me!

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I like the tonal inconsistency! Maybe I should say tonal variety...

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Anyway, Final Fantasy 7 Remake is playable at E3 this year. That's quite the thing.

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And here's something special.

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Well okay it's just a longer trailer for FF7 Remake but I'm up for that.

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Our first look at Tifa. She looks good!

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This really looks very, very good.

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March 3rd 2020. That really isn't too far away.

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Oddly, there's no menton of that being episodic.

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It's just called Final Fantasy 7 Remake on the box.

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Would love to know what's going on with that - whether the rest of the game will come as free updates, or it's all coming out on the one day.

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Questions for later, I guess - now we're onto Life is Strange 2.

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Nothing new there, really. Just confirming that Life is Strange 2 is a thing - a quite lovely thing - that people like.

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Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles gets a tailer next.

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And now Octopath Traveler for Steam.

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All these are things we knew already - but hey Square Enix are allowed to remind us given what they delivered with that FF7 demo.

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Last Remnant Remastered for Switch now. That *is* new.

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Not that anyone was looking forward to that so much, but still! You can play it now if you really want to.

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Dragon Quest Builders 2 now.

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INSOMANiAC: Lost Odyssey was better than them both

You speak the truth.

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The original Dragon Quest Builders was absolutely delightful (if a little glacial in its pacing, but isn't that true of all Dragon Quest games).

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This looks like a bigger, refined version of all that, so I'm in.

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It's out July 12th - as we already knew - with a demo coming to PS4 on June 24th.

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Release date for Dragon Quest 11 Switch now.

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Not quite a release date, then - just that it's coming out this autumn.

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INSOMANiAC: God the new dragons quest is so shit. It's as basic as it gets. Vastly overrated by reviewers

I thought it was okay, but also didn't get the love for it shown elsewhere - it didn't quite have the spark or reason to be that classic Dragon Quest has.

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INSOMANiAC: Have I missed avengers?

They'll be closing with that, I'm sure.

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This is an all-new game.

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It's about Alpine?

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Coming in 2020, it's a chibi racer called Circuit Superstar and I am *in*.

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HerrProduk: Will we ever get another cell-shaded racing game? I loved the look of Auto Modelista

Auto Modelista was great! Well, it looked great at least.

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Battalion 1944 now, which is lovely but kind of had its chips pissed on by the likes of CoD: WW2 and BF5.

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It's a fun shooter, mind.

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An advert for Square Enix Music now, which is - music, from Square Enix. On Spotify and whatnot. Which we knew, but now there's a nice trailer to confirm all that.

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Kingdom Hearts 3... DLC I guess.

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INSOMANiAC: Give us DQ9 remake on switch...

I like you. You have the right opinions on things. (This would be so good).

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A little slice of FF14: Shadowbringers now, with Naoki Yoshida taking to one of the onstage pressure plates to show us more.

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I doubt any of this will be new info, given the proximity of the release - it's out early next month.

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Still, I'm just buzzing off that FF7 demo so I'm fine to take a minute to have a breather.

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INSOMANiAC: Have you come down from the dying fox hallucinations yet Martin?

I hear foxes rutting in my garden most nights. Most of my life is a fox hallucination.

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I sometimes tell myself that Square Enix hasn't done all that much in recent years, but really this is all a reminder that, for all its faults, they've done some great stuff.

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FF14 is much-loved and shows how they can see through their stumbles.

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INSOMANiAC: Keep on being Square Enix, one of the few non-evil big game publishers left.

Let's not go too far - they're still kind of evil. But also they've done some great stuff!

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A Techland game?

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Ah, I'm told that Square Enix is distributing Dyinlg Light 2 in North America.

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Romancing Saga 3 is coming west y'all.

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As is SaGa: Scarlet Grace.

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That's nice.

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A new Brave Exvius - a mobile game, I know, but a good one - is coming. It's called War of the Visions.

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People Can Fly's new game - The Outsiders? - is next up.

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Sorry, Outriders.

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Sebastien - I'm not typing that surname this late tonight - is here to show us more.

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Outriggers!

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OUTRIGGERS!

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What a goddamn video game. I was talking about it earlier as we were killing time in the office by playing Virtua Tennis 2 on our Dreamcast.

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I think Outriggers is a forgotten great.

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Okay, it wasn't great.

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It was interesting though.

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Still can't believe AM2 made a first-person shooter, and it was pretty wild.

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Anyway that was Outrider which we really didn't see too much of.

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Outrigger tho!

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This is Oninaki.

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I'm afraid on the RPG Factory's past form I will not be getting excited for this.

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And now.

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Final Fantasy 8.

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A remaster - coming later this year.

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And now here is Avengers. At last!

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This is the big one.

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Well, it isn't really - FF7 was the big one. But I think people have alos been looking forward to.

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Oh. They haven't got the rights to the actors of the films.

Martin Robinson

So... It all looks really weird. And sounds weird.

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It's a bit Lidl.

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They've taken the aesthetic of the Marvel films but couldn't go the whole way.

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When you put it like that it's not so bad.

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Well, the proof is in the pudding.

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And the pudding, Alan, is GAMEPLAY.

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These two pressure pads the presenters are on will hopefully unlock gameplay.

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I kind of hope so.

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Well, we're getting a look at the cast to make us feel less hostile about them lifting the movies aesthetic but stopping short and having weird faces on all the characters.

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But really it'll always look like Poundland Avengers. That's a bad choice someone made there.

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I'd like to see the game now please, because interviews with voice actors won't salvage this.

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They didn't look that happy.

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Here's some content though! It's a weird cutscene!

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Oh this has gone so badly.

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So, to the game - you can play online, there are custom abilities, it's all a bit Destiny.

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A string of free updates, and it is games as a service. Or GAAS.

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Or GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSS

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Or whatever can you just show the game rather than saying there aren't lootboxes in it what even is this.

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It's coming to Xbox One, PS4, Stadia and PC.

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PS4 players will get early beta access and unique benefits can we see the game please.

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It's Ontmon!

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No, we're not seeing anything of the game. It's out next May.

Martin Robinson

That was an absolute disaster. I loved it.

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A shitshow for the E3 annals there.

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Still! Final Fantasy 7 Remake looks great.

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I'm honestly heartened by how bad that Avengers showing was - a good old-fashioned E3 shitshow.

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A lovely way to sign off today's E3ing.

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Noel Edmond's Iron Man is one to remember though.

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Thank you for joining us - it's been fun, as ever. And I'm kind of excited to do it all again tomorrow.

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Kami: We doing it for Nintendo tomorrow?

Hell yes.

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Now get some sleep everyone!

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