Bethesda at E3 2017: the 4 most important announcements

Bethesda made a series of questionable choices at its E3 press conference, like holding the event at 9PM local time (midnight, for those of you on the East Coast), constructing an entire miniature theme park called “Bethesdaland,” and featuring the Chainsmokers. And it didn’t deliver a few of the most anticipated announcements, like the rumored sci-fi game Starfield.

That said, some exciting stuff came out of Bethesda’s various studios. We’ve got the most important parts of it collected here.

The first Dishonored game had excellent expansions, putting players in the shoes of antagonist Daud and his protege Billie Lurk. Now, there’s a new standalone story set in the universe, apparently after the events of Dishonored 2. Lurk and Daud are back, and they’re teaming up to kill the Outsider, an emo folk deity who has driven the events of the series so far. It’s launching on September 15th.

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is a sequel to Wolfenstein: The New Order, set in 1961 America and featuring a cast of pulp movie archetypes. If you want to shoot Nazis in a video game this year, maybe this will be a good way to do it! Also, somebody takes LSD. The New Colossus will come out on October 27th.

Yep, that’s still happening, and it could turn out pretty well. Doom VFR is an apparently standalone virtual reality shooter for the HTC Vive and PlayStation VR; it looks similar to the early experience we tried at E3 2016, but more polished. Meanwhile, a VR version of Fallout 4 — as in, the full open-world game in a VR headset — got an official release date of October on the HTC Vive.

What is The Evil Within 2 — a sequel to Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami’s 2014 game — about? In broad strokes, original protagonist Sebastian Castellanos is searching for his daughter in a surreal nightmarescape. But you need to watch the trailer to get the full force of its weirdness, including a milk-themed visual motif straight out of Westworld.