E3 2013!

I got to go to E3!

E3 is a videogame trade show in Los Angeles.  It is (to quote Wikipedia) "an exclusive, industry-only event" that is not open to the public.  Attendance is 40,000+, so it's not Comic-Con sized, but it draws a large crowd nonetheless.

E3 has two major floors in the Los Angeles Convention Center - one that has game software developers, and the other one with hardware console companies.  In the middle are the smaller game designers in these glass offices.

 [Sidenote: Looking for a videogame convention that IS open to the public? Try PAX.  They have two conventions, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast.]

As I am a fluffy pink bunny, I am not "industry" per se.  This meant I'd be going per peram (e.g. via handbag).  Also, in our family we are all pretty casual gamers, so if you're looking for hardcore in-depth news & scoops, you'd be better off with IGN or GameSpot.  Peter Paras did a good E3 preview for E! As such, our E3 interests were dictated by our regular interests: Disney, Fable(s), Telltale Games and, of course, anything rabbit related.

First off, we found an office with a rabbit.  This piqued our interest, as there aren't nearly enough rabbit-themed video games.  This one is by a company called Daedalic and is called Night of the Rabbit.

Hello fellow gaming rabbit

Then we headed to the Disney Interactive booth.  They were promoting Disney Infinity which comes out on August 18.

We were more interested in the Castle:

and the Motorcoach:

and their giveaway: custom screen-printed T-shirts, which, in our opinion was not nearly as cool as last year's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit ears.

The Oswald Ear Hat booth from E3 in 2012

Then we found Perry!

We wanted very much to visit the Telltale Games booth. Telltale Games is an outstanding game development company - their game for The Walking Dead was by all accounts one of the best games last year. We discovered that they didn't have a booth so much as a glass office, and you couldn't just walk up and chat with the employees so much as you needed an appointment.  That said, we spoke with the very friendly Laura, who gave us info on two titles we are super excited about:
The Walking Dead 400 Days, which is a new DLC for The Walking Dead that will take place in between season 1 of the game and the upcoming season 2, and
the Fables game from the comic book Fables, The Wolf Among Us, due out this summer.

Then we visited the Lionhead Studios guys at the Xbox booth to talk with them about the Fable Anniversary release coming up this year.  Fable is one of our most favorite video game franchises.

[Note: if you're a longtime follower of my blog you may be confused because Fables is is also our most favorite comic book that's being turned into a videogame (see above), so you should be fairly mixed up by now.
Just to clarify, the two are unrelated:
Fable (singular) is a videogame RPG Franchise by Lionhead Studios;
Fables (plural) is a comic book series by DC/Vertigo, written by Bill Willingham that will soon be a videogame by Telltale games.
...basically, if it's the word "Fable" we are a fan of it.]

Lionhead just announced that they were going to re-master the very first Fable game from 2004 in HD, to be called Fable Anniversary.  They claimed this was because fans had been clamoring desperately for such a thing, but just why people would be demanding a remake of a game nearly 10 years old instead of a new Fable game (Fable 4, presumably the next game in the series), is such a mystery that we think that story itself may be a fable. Either way, the development team at the Fable Anniversary section of Xbox were very patient and nice as they walked us through a demo of Fable Anniversary, which does look incredible from a graphic perspective.

That was our E3 trip - we were so lucky to go!