Another year, another Gamescom gone by… We were much more experienced and prepared this year. At first, we were supposed to go altogether as the main contributors to Lorekeeper but due to some unfortunate issues, only I and Burcu ended up participating. Nevertheless we saw new stuff, attended many meetings & presentations, and generally had so much fun. And here we are, conveying our thoughts to you. Without further ado, let’s get to what we experienced during Gamescom this year…
Last year, our stay in Germany was a bit too short; and this year’s was a bit too long. So if you are wondering, 2 days are not enough and 5 days are more than enough. Hopefully we’ll hit that sweet spot with 3 or 4 days next year and our stay will be just right.
As before, our article will focus more on our trip and fun stuff. So if you are expecting a more serious tone and detailed games news, there are none here. But you probably read about them somewhere else, so I don’t think it will be a problem. We will do something different this year, and Burcu and I will each write about the things we saw and experienced. To make things easier for you to follow, we will use different colors for ourselves. My parts will be the usual black and her parts will be blue. Well, if we covered that part, let’s get to what we did this year…
This time we made a change and instead of running to Blizzard’s booth, we went straight to play Gwent. Because… You know. Even if you are in the middle of an important quest to save your adopted daughter, you have to take a break and play a round of Gwent. So we asked ourselves “What would Geralt do?” and did just that! As a self-claimed expert on the subject, I must say this Gwent is nothing like the one in The Witcher 3. It is much more advanced, a ton more complicated and deep. I loved it! My usual tactic of “gather as many cards as you can on the first round with the use of spies” is not that easy to manage anymore. Burcu had a graveyard deck on her hand and nearly destroyed me with the cards she kept pulling from her graveyard. Nearly. Although I was the victorious one on the first match, she totally beat me on the second one. It will take some time to getting used to, but this new form and depth of Gwent is totally amazing. (DIY: Re-purpose your old warriors as more powerful zombies! -Burcu)
Blizzard was as usual. They welcomed us through the press entrance repeatedly. They even insisted that we should take a seat while waiting. Nice people. They had an awesomely decorated Diablo booth with a fireplace and comfy leather seats; but no new content. It was mostly the same for Hearthstone and World of Warcraft too. Starcraft 2 managed to get by with it’s new Commander for Co-Op. But the real stars of the show were Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm.
New Overwatch map was Eichenwald. It’s a huge castle on the outskirts of Germany with lots of tall walls to ambush the enemy from above. It was a blast to play, I didn’t even noticed how quickly time passed until the bottom of my screen flashed. Then of course, I noticed it was “high-noon” and unleashed my revolver on the enemy team. It’s always nice to get a team kill. Even if it’s in German. (Was it a Mittag then? -B)
On the other hand, Heroes of the Storm had 2 new maps and 2 new heroes –which were lots of new content. So we tried them all. Maps are great; they really captured the essence and feel of Starcraft perfectly. But that’s hardly a surprise since it’s the same team that created Starcraft. Zarya is great as a new ranged warrior. Whenever she has her shield on, getting attacked charges her energy and with more energy, her damage increases. When used right, she can be a dangerous foe. But the one I enjoyed much more was Alarak. He is a ruthless assassin with some great control abilities. You can push and pull enemies (and yourself) to choke points, wreak mayhem and even benefit from your reckless teammates that keep dying over and over. (Yes, there really is a talent for that: Whenever your teammates dies, you gain increased damage.) Although as much as I enjoyed playing Alarak, I wasn’t able to enjoy my team’s cooperation. There was a Raynor with 3K Hero Damage in a 20 minutes long match. Can you imagine? So yeah, we mostly lost. But it was still fun.
Oh, before finishing up the Blizzard portion, I must say the new statue of Varian was really phenomenal. We saluted him and mumbled Canticle of Sacrifice while wiping away the tears from our eyes. He will be missed… (Long live the ki… oh. 🙁 -B) (Well, we still have Anduin, right? –C) (Give my Varian back, Blizzard. Or give me that statue… Actually give them both, will you? –Ezgi) (Oh boy, it’s getting crowded in here! -C)
While Can was stopping by Turkey area (which was also a partner country this year!) to chat with some familiar faces, I had an appointment with Focus Interactive for Life is Strange’s developer Dontnod’s new game “Vampyr”. The name “Vampyr” may not thrill you at first. 2010’s adolescent sparkly vampires alienated most of us from the genre lately. But Vampyr is taking place in 20th century London and with a more Bram Stoker’s Dracula inspired atmosphere –which quickly picked up my interest. As you probably know, you’re playing a doctor who came back from the war recently and you find your town suffering from the Spanish plague. Best part is, you choose what kind of a doctor or vampire you want to be. It’s possible to finish the game without taking a single life, or going on a killing spree. No immortal NPC’s there to keep you from whatever it is that you want to do. But whatever you do, you will face the consequences: Every life you take gives you experience, so you get stronger by each life you take. On the other hand it takes you one step closer to hell, and it won’t be possible to change what you will have done up to that point by choosing the right dialog options at the end of the game. At least that’s what we have been promised; we’ll see if they are able to keep it.
We tried Sea of Pirates. It looks like “social” games will be on the rise in the near future. Even if you are the shy type, in order to control the ship properly, you have to communicate. If you don’t communicate, you won’t be going anywhere, so the game kind of “forces” you to interact with other players. And it works like a charm. We sailed and sank another ship. And then we caught them again and sank them before they even left the harbor. Just to do that, we shouted orders at each other, climbed rope ladders to scout, raised the sails, manned the guns etc… If you have 3 other friends to play with you, this will be immensely fun; you can take my word for it.
After Sea of Pirates, we kept wandering around for a bit, and then went straight to the Blizzard VIP area for our appointment. You can read the interview we had with Tom Chilton soon. (I’ll add a link here!)
Last year, one of our biggest regrets was not being able to play For Honor. We were determined to make it not the case this year. I am happy to say that we played For Honor not once, but twice! And it was really good. I was already hyped for the game and seeing it first hand, I’m hyped even more. Controls are fluid and gameplay is fun. You can feel the hits connect with enemy and should think through your attacks with care to win a battle. So both skills and tactics come into play. We’ve played a map that you need to control points and it was great. If the rest of the game and maps are like this, this game will definitely be a hit. (It actually conquered most of the rewards for Gamescom 2016 already.)
Well, For Honor was great and fun; but Ubisoft had some other plans for me appearently. I tried South Park’s new game “The Fractured But Whole”. That much is okay, I enjoyed the first game anyway; and I was sure that I was going to like the second one as well. Actually I did like the game from what I saw. But that Nosulus Rift machine… Ugh. That was both horrible and hilarious at the same time. You put that “thing” on your nose and everytime your character “farts” in-game, it sprays a terrible odor directly in front of your nose. And you have to fart a lot -even for a South Park game. The worse thing is that the smell clings to your nose for awhile and doesn’t go anywhere. Be thankful that they are not actually planing to sell that device and it’s just for shows like Gamescom.
At least after my terribly smelling torture, I got to reward myself by playing Watch_Dogs 2. I admit that first one wasn’t near perfect, but I enjoyed it while it lasted anyway. The new one: Definitely much, much better. It seems that Ubisoft was taking lessons from past mistakes and really determined to fix them. Watch_Dogs 2 looks improved on almost every aspect. You can fly drones to scout around instead of hacking immobile cameras, set traps, quick hack… It even comes with a smooth multiplayer co-op system: If you are playing in the same area as is your friend, it will blend your games together without you even noticing it. From there on, you can join forces together if you wish so, or probably try to harass each other’s game if you want to. While I was playing, we decided to join forces with one of the developers and took on a mission. It really felt great to do it together; we covered each other’s backs, hacked the enemies together and when it came to guns blazing, we really came through together. If that formula spreads through the entirety of the game, Watch_Dogs 2 will easily do the same kind of jump from Assassin’s Creed 1 to 2.
Unaware of Can’s suffering at Ubisoft, I roamed the halls and went to check on Pokemon booth -which didn’t look like a booth at all. Nobody was there, so I asked how to get this Shiny Pokémons they were talking about. (Shiny Xerneas and Yveltal that is, if you are curious –Can) And they told me to come back in an hour, that’s when they were going to start distributing the codes. So I returned half an hour later and there was like a queue of 200 people over there. No games, no activities, nothing. Just waiting in a boring line. They should provide a real life Pikachu to convince me into joining this.
We tried to find Larian’s booth to take a look at Divinity: Original Sin 2. It was challenging –since even the information desk didn’t knew where they were located. (Actually, they thought they did, but it was the wrong place.) So we circled the area for quite a few times and when we found them, they awarded us with the Divinity: Original Sin 2 presentation. Totally worth it. We enjoyed it a lot! (You can read more about it here!)
At this point we were already done with most of our appointments. Actually there was only one scheduled presentation I was still excited about, and that was the Civilization VI, of course. After showing a brief video about Germany’s new leader in the game, they took us into a different room and let us play the game… for a whole 15 minutes. Well, it was a bit disappointing. Not that the game isn’t great or anything; but as you can imagine, 15 minutes is nowhere near enough to test a new Civ game. Nevertheless we still tried our best. There is a new “Religious Victory” condition in the game, so we tried to establish our own pantheon. Of course, our pantheon were going to be based on our cats; so naturally, Egypt seemed to be the right choice. We weren’t able to come up with a single deity in that time, but we were able to test the new Builder mechanics (which is much more meaningful than before) and district system. Personally, I love the district system, it makes the cities look more organized and more “city-like”. Depending on how you build districts, it gives different bonuses too. Some of the press were really salty about the game’s new art style but it didn’t bother me really.
One of our favourites, Red Thread Games, announced that they would be in the Gamescom; but unlike Larian, they had no booth and appearently they just came to visit the expo in person. So, we couldn’t ask Ragnar to sign our Dreamfall Limited Edition. But Martin photoshopped himself to a photo Burcu and her friends took. So we have at least that…
Then, our ineptitude struck again. We didn’t know that they were to close up the whole business section at the weekend. So when we tried to get new interviews with some of the companies, we encountered pulled-down shutters in front of us. Despite that, we tried our hand in the Torment booth at the visitors side to see if they were still doing any presentations. They said that there were *some* developers available and asked us to wait. I had no idea I was about to have a chat with the likes of Colin McComb and George Ziets. But it happened. Mostly like:
“Hello, my name is Colin McComb.”
*still in shock* “I… I know. Planescape: Torment is my all time favourite game.”
“And I’m George Ziets. You may know me from Neverwinter Nights’s expansion: Mask of the…”
“…Betrayer. Yes! I know! That’s also in my top three!”
“Oh, thank you.”
It was unexpected, but amazing. We pulled some chairs and had a very friendly, fun conversation with them. I asked them if the recently announced console version was going to affect the PC version of the game. Colin said “Even we didn’t knew there was a console version in the works until a few weeks ago. So, no.” That was more than enough for me. We talked a bit about the Early Access and Torment. They were definitely very passionate about the game and Colin said that “they were hoping this one to be the second best RPG of all-time; first one being the original Torment.” As a boundless Torment fan, hearing that made me glad. We chatted a bit more and then they had to make another presentation. I asked if we can watch and they gladly accepted. Colin said “I hope you will enjoy the game when you buy it.” I said, “Oh, we already backed it in Kickstarter.” He told me to get up, hugged me and thanked me for helping make Torment: Tides of Numenera possible. Meanwhile I was saying “Dude, I should be the one thanking you. I was waiting to play another game like Planescape: Torment for years!” So, there it goes: Most sincere and awesome developer of the show award: Definitely InXile.
And that mostly concluded all the events we were in during this year’s Gamescom. Oh, wait. There was something outside of Gamescom we should tell you about: Legion Café. We spent most of our off-Gamescom time in the Blizzard’s thematic café. It was both good and bad at the same time. Food was great, decorations were fantastic. Most of the cosplays were really well-done. But the drinks… Oh, the drinks! They were simply some watered down, extremely sweet, near to non-alcoholic thematic drinks and they were horrible. (Don’t make me start with the drinks! If you don’t have any awesome recipes on the side, just go with the classics, right? Mojito for Legion, Sangria for the Horde… I wouldn’t complain at all. But what was that tasteless sugar bomb? The food was decent at least. -B) Internet connection was sometimes good, sometimes bad. We tried to watch Video Games Live’s first day stream but stream got frozen during the performance several times. Everyone laughed nervously… And although there were lots of great activities in the place, they were hours apart; and if you weren’t dead set on waiting for those, it was sure you would get bored during those down-times.
Speaking of Video Games Live… The last think we did in this year’s Gamescom was watching it from the first row. Despite all the technical hiccups, it was definitely otherwordly. I got goosebumps for just standing awestruck over there, listening to all those phenomenal pieces.
Well, that’s all of our adventures from Gamescom 2016. We definitely gained more experience this year; even enough to level up and prepare for next year’s expo much more better. So, see you next year in Cologne!