I have always been a fan of E3’s theatricality. We all know from trial and error that E3 press conferences aren’t necessarily judged by the finished products of their many promises; rather they are judged by the finesse in which the promises themselves are made, and the momentum they’re able to generate or maintain. With this in mind, Sony delivered one of the best conferences in recent years at the Shrine Auditorium last night.

Unlike Microsoft’s conference, which was an exercise in making exactly the right statement, Sony’s conference was a nearly wordless affair. The publisher chose to let the games themselves do the talking, and the games themselves were all it concentrated on. Even the nod to its PlayStation VR hardware felt brief - it’s $399 USD, it’s coming October 13 - but more importantly, here are the games you’ll be able to play on it.

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The conference kicked off with confidence in a five-punch combo of exclusives. A gameplay demo of the next God of War game opened against the background of a live orchestra (theatrical, right?), and delivered a rather touching, The Last of Us-esque dynamic between Kratos and his son. Days Gone from Bend Studios - an original game - offered introspection via zombie apocalypse. “Are your wings broken?” the boy asked Trico in a new The Last Guardian trailer, delivering the requisite realness of this previously elusive game before a release date appeared on screen.Horizon: Zero Dawn had what was perhaps the most robust demo of the night. Like all E3 vertical slices it’s hard to get a sound grasp on exactly how it will play and how much freedom we’ll have - will we be able to attack those robo-brachiosaurus? - but from the outside this was gorgeous, involving stuff. It was followed by Quantic Dream’s Detroit: Become Human , which hammered home the studio’s idiosyncratic choice and consequence systems and introduced a secondary protagonist.After the series of demos it was somewhat easy to forget that we’ve actually seen most of this stuff before, but in a conference known for blustering and stiff-shouldered jokes, it was the slickness of delivery that was so impressive. This is Sony not giving a damn, Sony showing off; it was like watching Steph Curry casually strutting in a high school game.The aforementioned series of VR demos followed. While VR doesn’t demo that well to a headset-free audience, these were incredibly strong announcements, and tapped into gaming and geek culture perfectly. Rocksteady’s Arkham game showed essentially nothing, but didn’t have to; it thrilled by focusing entirely on Mark Hamil’s wonderful vocal performance as Joker. Resident Evil 7 was a true sucker-punch. Not only does it look like it's returning to its grimy roots, it appears to have grown from The Kitchen, one of PlayStation VR’s most impressive - and terrifying - demos.Final Fantasy XV VR and an overlong demo of Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare made for an ever so slight drop in the pace, but it was quickly picked up by the bouncy tones of the Crash Bandicoot soundtrack and the revelation that Crash will be back in remasters of all three original games. It’s not the original game fans are craving, but instead sees Sony and Activision testing the waters for a proper return at a later date. Plus, he’ll be making an appearance in this year’s Skylanders, so there’s that.The big reveal of the night, however, the knockout-blow, was Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding , starring a bare-butted Norman Reedus. Although the trailer was as elusive as the sand in its landscape, the presence of Kojima on-stage and the mere existence of a collaboration that we thought dead was enough to make it the high point of Sony’s conference. For one so theatrical, who better to top it off than the video game industry’s most ostentatious auteur?A Spider-Man game from Insomniac was the next unexpected and hugely exciting surprise. It feels as though the excellent Sunset Overdrive has set the studio up to deliver a superb gaming reboot for the web-slinger, and he was in fine form here: hurtling through a gleaming cityscape in typically acrobatic fashion.In the absence of a Neo announcement - one gets the feeling it would have sat nicely here - a gameplay demonstration from Days Gone wrapped up the conference. While this felt like an anticlimax, it’s only because what had come before it was on such a powerful trajectory it couldn’t have ended with anything less than a cannon firing out copies of The Last Guardian into our sweaty grasping hands to satisfy. Well done, Sony, that was a helluva show.

Lucy O'Brien is an editor at IGN’s Sydney office. Follow her ramblings on Twitter.