Every year, E3 sells us a future. Last year, that future felt both predictable and oddly intangible; a result of brand-new hardware that had yet to be firmly established. This year, the future felt exciting, wonderfully varied, and vitally within reach. Announcements of games both new and presumed dead, further proof of the weird power of virtual and augmented reality, and a refreshing focus on diversity - in many senses of that word - made E3 2015 the best in years.

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The Conferences

Two of the three major platform owners had assured media briefings this year, though a string of mic-drops made Sony’s the most memorable. During the first hour, three ‘mythical project’ announcements - The Last Guardian, a Shenmue 3 Kickstarter, and a Final Fantasy 7 remake - left the audience reeling with collectively indulged nostalgia, while Guerrilla Games’ Horizon: Zero Dawn and Media Molecule’s Dreams continued Sony’s trend of letting its first-party developers spread their wings into interesting new territory. It was testament to Sony’s success that a false start by Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4: A Thief's End demo brought the best out of the audience at the LA Memorial Sports Arena: when the demo started working on the second try, everyone roared in triumph.

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Finding its feet again after a rough console launch, Microsoft also had a great show this year . Its press conference was an explosion of creativity and fan-friendly announcements; Xbox One’s upcoming backward compatibility was a particularly big win. A steady-eyed focus on its stable of exclusives, indie games, and new, colorful games like the MOBA-style shooter Gigantic and Rare’s new pirate-themed MMO Sea of Thieves showed a new confidence in the Xbox’s creative identity. The publisher also showed it was not backing down from crazy new tech; its demonstration of Minecraft viewed through a HoloLens headset felt like we were reaching into the sci-fi future we dreamed of as children.Though it was presented in a typically fun and eccentric fashion, Nintendo had a less successful - but by no means disastrous - briefing this year. The digital event still avoided the big topics: its mobile future, its next console, Zelda Wii U - and by the end felt like it was grasping at things to announce. First looks at minor spinoffs such as The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes, Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam and Metroid Prime: Federation Force will have to sate us until Nintendo’s next Direct.Third-parties also managed to save some announcements for themselves, and two publishers who’d previously been relegated to sharing the first-party stages kicked off successful inaugural conferences alongside the usual suspects. Bethesda gave us a first look at Dishonored 2 from Arkane, our first footage of id’s new Doom , and a surprisingly deep-dive into Fallout 4 (along with the surprise announcement of the immediately available and free Fallout Shelter mobile game), while Square Enix announced a new Nier and satisfied (some) of our Kingdom Hearts 3 cravings with a gameplay trailer.

Elsewhere, at the more familiar third-party shows, Ubisoft introduced us to a trio of all-new games in South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and melee-only medieval combat game For Honor, which alleviated the sense of deja vu from its annual Assassin’s Creed trailer (Syndicate), the second E3 for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege, and the third for Tom Clancy’s The Division. EA, not to be outdone, gave us our first look at the new and long-anticipated return to Mass Effect with Andromeda, a more fleshed-out look at Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, plus an introduction to adorable new platformer Unravel which remained a talking point throughout the show. And of course, the game that would go on to win IGN’s Game of Show for E3 2015: Star Wars: Battlefront.

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It can be difficult to grab onto common themes throughout these conferences, but this E3 really brought home the hope that marginalization in video games is gasping its last breaths; not only because of the heartening number of women we saw on stage and in game (relatively a lot), but because of the sheer variety of games that were presented to us. While the safe-bet shooter, RPG, and racer staples still rung out loud and true, this was a year when Sony’s big new franchise features a woman who hunts robot dinosaurs; when Microsoft followed up its Halo 5: Guardians demo with Keiji Inafune’s new sci-fi game Recore , about a woman who hangs out with robot dogs. (Okay, there’s a theme.)There was a pirate MMO, a big-budget first-person game featuring zero guns, colourful shooter MOBAs, nostalgia collections, and Beyond Eyes , a game about a blind girl who can feel the world around her. There was Cuphead Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture , which sees you wandering through a British country town during the apocalypse.

Perhaps such diversity is a natural result of publishers finding their creative footing after the uncertain console launch period, or just the natural momentum of the industry as it continues to search for new ways to tell stories, but being presented with such an embarrassment of riches in the wake of monotonous years past was a terrific way to begin the show. Looking at the year ahead, there is a feeling that there’s something for everybody in this medium - which, of course, is how it should be.