I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Bethesda’s first ever, E3 Showcase at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, California. Upon its announcement, many speculated as to what they could be showing that demanded their own show. While most saw it as a coming out party for Fallout 4, there were some that doubted or had trepidations in order to brace for any disappointment of Fallout 4 not being announced. After the announcement earlier in the month that Fallout 4 was indeed happening, the speculation moved on to a release date. A few, myself included, maintained it would be released this year. Others, again, feared it wouldn’t and with the recent epidemic of games being announced way too early, leading to delays, who could blame them. Many also wondered what else would Bethesda be bringing to the table for the big show. Would they be able to maintain the excitement throughout the show? The answer is a lot of “yes” and a little “no.”

Bethesda’s PR man, Pete Hines took the stage as host of the show and for my money, is one of the best in the business. Professional but never stiff, he’s a great talker and has smooth, affable charm that really welcomes an audience. He made it look easy. First up, Doom.

I’m not going to belabor the point and get right to it: Doom, aesthetically, looked great. The textures, the lighting, the framerate, all top notch and not a hint of the self-seriousness of Doom 3. Doom is basically going to do what it was always meant to. Put a gun in your hand and give you demons to kill. The campaign portion of the Doom segment looked good but felt entirely scripted (understandably so) and prerecorded (less understandably so) and as such it was hard to get real sense of how intense the game would get. The multilayer montage honestly didn’t do much for me (I’m not a fan of death match multiplayer at all) and nothing really stood out. What did impress me, probably the most, was Doom SnapMap. The presentation made it look like creating and sharing levels would be robust and incredibly simple. I know only a fraction of the audience with use this, but this might be the first map/mode creation suite that I wind up using. Good stuff.

Up next was a video about Battlecry, the new free to play third person competitive brawler. Unfortunately not a single thing about this game looked good or interesting to me so I’m not going to go into much detail here.

Dishonored 2 was up next. Unfortunately, the wind was removed from the sails with this announcement leaking the day before due to an unfortunate Twitch stream mishap. That said, I’m happy this is happening as I enjoyed the previous game, and I like that you can choose to play as either a male or female protagonist. Not much else to say about this since it was only a CG trailer and those don’t really excite me in the slightest. So, for now, I just need to be happy that it exists. Bethesda is also getting on the remastered train with Dishonored Definitive Edition complete with all the DLC for Xbox One and PS4 only.

Next was some Elder Scrolls, er, stuff, with some teases for upcoming content for the just released Elder Scrolls Online. Looked OK, I guess. I don’t do MMOs so nothing here was particularly interesting for me.

Same cane be said for the Elder Scrolls: Legends strategy card game. Meh.

Finally, the thing everyone really wanted to see: Fallout 4.

Man, oh man. Fallout 4! Game director Todd Howard took the stage and showed off a ton of stuff. From character customization, to crafting weapons, to building encampments to a combat sizzle reel, it was almost too much information. I’m curious as to how much pre-war content there is because it looked incredibly interesting. True role playing. I imagine doing the day to day mundane things for at least a little bit in order to have a stark contrast for suburbia pre and post war. The intriguing thing to me is that your character emerges from Vault 111 two hundred years after he entered. Same character. Time travel anyone?

Aesthetically, the game looks gorgeous and realized, but character animations remain stiff. Having your character be fully voiced does in fact make the dialogue portions feel much more natural and the confirmed ability to walk around and talk is a much needed change from the locked in place mechanic from Bethesda’s previous RPG games.

I’m happy to see VATS is returning as well as what looks like capable shooting. I’m a huge fan of the VATS system as it feels like a true RPG mechanic so having it here again pleases me greatly.

As someone who isn’t at all into mobile games, Fallout Shelter does nothing for me, but it was cool that it was released right after the show for anyone who is into that sort of thing. It does look pretty robust and looks to be a fun, on-the-go type of game.

Last but not least, the release date. Let me just start by saying “I told you so.” Fallout 4 releases on November 10, 2015. To say that I am hyped about this game is the understatement of the year. I sank over 100 hours into Fallout 3, doing every single quest and side quest available to me based on the choices I made and I’m looking forward to doing it again, and then some, in Fallout 4.

I would also like to add that Todd Howard is a great speaker. Witty, charming and intelligent, the man knows how to show off a game by being himself and letting the game do the hype talking.

At the end of the show, I was left elated with Fallout 4, interested in Doom and looking forward to learning more about Dishonored 2. Nothing else shown really interested me but I felt like those sections were relatively brief. With a killer presentation, a solid host and Todd Howards Fallout 4 presentation, I felt like Bethesda’s first ever E3 Showcase was a solid effort if not an amazing one. Looking forward to seeing if they can pull one off again next year or if we have to wait 4 years when the inevitably announced The Elder Scrolls VI.

Score: B