This year’s Bandai Namco E3 2021 showcase was a little lacklustre, featuring only a single game followed by a developer interview and journalist panels.
House of Ashes
House of Ashes brings us another entry from The Dark Pictures Anthology, developed by Supermassive Games. It’s an interactive narrative horror game by the creators of Until Dawn. The latest entry is set in the 2003 Iraq War, with much of the horror elements inspired from 2200 BCE Akkadian Empire.
The Executive Producer of the game, Dan McDonald, announced that some classic mechanics are making a return. This includes player’s decisions influencing relationships between characters, 60 different unique deaths and multiple endings. However, some new mechanics are introduced in this game, namely 360-degree camera control, difficulty settings that will influence Quick-Time Events (QTE) and the extensive use of firearms as it is a military-themed game. The release date is set to October 22nd, 2021 on PS4, PS5, XBOX Series S/X. XBOX One and PC.
The rest of the showcase consisted of journalist and influencer panels. The most interesting panel was the IGN journalist panel, with numerous editors from several major gaming publications present, including IGN’s Tina Amini herself. These journalists offered a different perspective by commenting on the coverage of gaming rather than gaming itself and how much gaming journalism has changed both the gaming and journalism industries.
What do you think?
From the original Pac-Man to The Idolmaster and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, Bandai Namco has made and still makes a lot of amazing games. Developers usually lean into their more successful franchises to market their novelties. However, Namco presented neither The Idolmaster: Starlit Season nor Digimon Survive, set to be released in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Instead, they opted to only present one game, which wasn’t followed by other games, but instead by journalist panels. How would you rate this performance by Bandai Namco? Let us know below!