Bethesda’s conferences over the years have left fans feeling either really excited or kind of let down, but for me, I’ve always thought their conferences have ranged from great to at least a really good time. Even when they’re showing off games that I’m personally not interested in, I still feel like the people on stage are having a good time.

The Good:

Bethesda knew what fans were expecting and they absolutely delivered. Did you want to see Fallout 76, you got it. Did you want to know what’s coming after Fallout, you got it. What about sequels and DLC, you got it too. Everything that Bethesda fans wanted to see, they literally saw. Like I said, I’m not always the audience for these press conferences but here’s what got me most excited.

The Bad:

I love Andrew WK as much as the next person but when he and his band came out on stage I really assumed we’d get a mash-up of the band playing while also seeing gameplay of Rage 2. That strangely didn’t happen though. Instead, we just got a mini-concert Mr. WK. While it didn’t kill the momentum of the press conference because it was literally the first thing that happened, it did drag on though which was a bit of a bummer. My personal rule for live music is it either needs to mashed up with an actual game or it needs to end the show. Maybe I’m in the minority with this, but that’s my thoughts.

The Ugly:

There were several games talked about but not show. I’ve been hearing about Starfield, Bethesda’s next game after Fallout 76, for a while now and the fact that they only had a 30-second trailer was a disappointment.

And then that was followed by another 30-second trailer of their next Elder Scrolls game.

Yes, in the moment, it’s exciting to see games like this get announced, but ultimately we know they’re working on an Elder Scrolls game. With Bethesda’s track record at E3 of showing what’s coming soon rather than later, I personally would have been okay with the 30 second Elder Scrolls trailer had Starfield been a 2-minute cinematic trailer that at least showed fans what the game is. And even ignoring these two trailers, there was a multiplayer mode announced for Prey that wasn’t shown off, as well as two VR modes for both Prey and Wolfenstein that were only mentioned and not shown. While it’s understandable that they didn’t show these two off because VR is hard to showcase on stage, I still would have liked to have seen something for it.

Conclusion:

If you’re a Bethesda fan, you have to feel good knowing that Bethesda is determined to continue supporting games that you’ve already purchased while still interested in putting out interesting and great content. It seems like every year people have questioned if Bethesda will have a conference at the next E3 and as far as I’m concerned this is Bethesda putting their foot down and saying, “we’re not going anywhere.”