One of the best things about the lead up to E3 has always been the rampant speculation and fervent (sometimes fruitless) wishes of gamers.
There’s something awesome about letting yourself get caught up in the hype, so we’ve put together something of a wishlist for E3 2016. Some of it is based on strong rumours, while others are just based on what we’d give a good few years of our lives to see.
Red Dead 3
If I were a betting man, I’d put good money on Red Dead 3 (or Red Dead Redemption 2, or Red Dead Rectum or whatever) getting announced at E3 2016.
We’ve already had leaked maps that might just have confirmed a new Red Dead, and we know that Rockstar are hard at work on a number of new projects.
It’s certainly safe to say that all Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive need to do to win E3 (and my heart) is unveil Red Dead 3. Then again, there’s one other Rockstar game that’d go down a treat…
Bully 2
Yep, 2006’s Bully was another outstanding title from Rockstar Games, and another that I think we’d all love to see a sequel for.
There’s not a shred of evidence to suggest that Rockstar are so much as thinking about this game, so an E3 reveal would be a genuinely incredible surprise, and yet another chance to steal the show.
Imagine for one glorious second if they revealed Bully 2 as well as Red Dead 3? The internet would melt.
The Elder Scrolls 6
Fallout 4 was great, but for my money, Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series remains king of the open world adventure.
While the Fallout games create fantastic, densely populated, almost claustrophobic worlds, the likes of Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind always felt more boundless to me.
That’s why I’m praying Bethesda acknowledge The Elder Scrolls 6 in their E3 press conference. Even just a quick confirmation that they’re definitely working on it would be enough for me.
A recent rumour has suggested that Bethesda will be announcing a remaster of Skyrim – but that doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility of a new Elder Scrolls game too (I hope).
Resident Evil 7/ Resident Evil 2 Remaster
Here’s what we know: Capcom aren’t fucking around when it comes to celebrating Resident Evil’s 20th anniversary this year.
Everything heard through the grapevine so far seems to suggest that Resident Evil 7 will take the franchise back to the survival horror that made it special. To be honest, anything less and I don’t wanna know. Resi 6 was downright questionable, and I’m counting on 7 to do some damage control.
And let’s not forget that Capcom are also working on a remaster of Resi 2 – possibly the greatest survival horror game of all time. I’m dying to get a look at how that’s shaping up.
Crash Bandicoot
Step one: return Crash Bandicoot to Naughty Dog. Step two: make a classic Crash platformer with all the bells and whistles afforded by the PlayStation 4. Step three: ??? Step four: Make a dirty pile of profit.
It’s not as easy as all that, obviously – but it never hurts to dream. Videogames are becoming increasingly story driven, cinematic affairs. Sometimes I just wanna kick back, jump on crates and pick up Wumpa fruit. Is that too much to ask?
As long as Activision holds Crash hostage in their strange development limbo, I wouldn’t count on seeing him for a while.
The Last of Us 2
I know Naughty Dog pretty much just finished work on the outstanding Uncharted 4, but I’m greedy for more, goddammit.
We all know that The Last of Us was a fucking outstanding game, and we know that Naughty Dog are gonna get to work on a sequel at some point – they may even have started already, according to a recent job listing from the developer.
Is an E3 reveal likely this year? Probably not, since I can’t imagine they’d have much of anything to show at this point. Still, this is a place for wild dreams, which brings me to…
Half-Life 3
Can you even imagine? I honestly suspect that if Gaben suddenly decided to reveal Half-Life 3, all the lakes in the world would boil and turn to blood, the clouds would fall from the sky, and a horde of poisonous spider demons would rise up from the underworld to murder us all.
But at least we’d finally get a proper glimpse of Half-Life 3, so swings and roundabouts, really.
Metroid
The last Metroid game was released six years ago. The last original 2D Metroid game was released nearly 15 years ago. This hurts.
I don’t care if Nintendo give us a traditional 2D Metroid for 3DS, or some shiny new beast for the NX console – I, along with every other Nintendo fan out there, just want a new fucking Metroid.
Have you seen the upcoming Metroid Prime: Federation Force for 3DS? What the hell is that? It’s no Metroid, that’s for sure. It’s literally the opposite of everything that makes a Metroid game.
Having Federation Force shoved in my face while I’m told its Metroid is like when my nan used to try and tell me ASDA ketchup was just as good as Heinz.
I’ll tell Nintendo what I told my nan: It’s not the same, and I’m having none of it on my chips.
Visceral or Motive’s Star Wars Game
EA has a number of Star Wars games planned between now and – presumably – the end of time. The most immediate of these are projects from Dead Space developer Visceral, and the relatively new studio Motive.
I’ve no clue what either of these would be like, but former Uncharted director Amy Hennig is on board for Visceral’s effort, and it’s been described as “groundbreaking”.
It’d be awesome to get a trailer or tease for one (or both) of these games, especially since certain rumours seem to suggest that Visceral’s Star Wars game will be an action adventure title starring none other than Han Solo
Grand Theft Auto 6/ GTA London
You can always count on Rockstar to deliver an absolute corker when it comes to Grand Theft Auto, but I’m hoping they do something a little different for number six.
I feel like the franchise has done all it can in terms of giving us believable virtual slices of America, so maybe it’s time to hop across the pond and tackle the UK? GTA London would certainly offer something different, and would afford Rockstar a ton of new storytelling and gameplay opportunities.
GTA 6 is probably a fair way off course, and I’d rather Rockstar focus on a game like Red Dead or Bully – but this is our wishlist and we wish for all the Rockstar games in the world to be shown at E3.
P.T/ Silent Hills
Obviously, P.T/ Silent Hills is dead and gone. Hideo Kojima is hard at work on his new mystery game with Kojima Productions, and Guillermo Del Toro is probably lamenting the fact that yet another horror videogame he tried to work on never came to pass.
But what if?
Kojima is a notoriously tricky individual. We know he met with Norman Reedus (who appeared at the end of P.T) a few months back, and we know he and Del Toro still want to do something together at some point – could Kojima have staged the entire Konami fiasco, just to surprise us with a huge E3 Silent Hills reveal?
The answer is of course a resounding “no” – but we can never rule out the possibility of sneaky Kojima surprising us all.
If you have your own personal E3 dreams, write them down on a piece of a paper and leave them at the bottom of the garden in the middle of the night. It won’t do anything at all, but at least we can feel like we’ve done something.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.