Kingdom Hearts III, Fallout 4, and the rest of the games we were surprised not to see at E3

This year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show seemed to have quite a few games that should’ve been there but were nowhere to be seen. Some were at the conference last year and were MIA this year while others have yet to be announced but are long overdue for a debut.

The GamesBeat staff discusses some of the more notable voids. Feel free to add any that we missed in the comments.

Let’s get right to it.

Mad Max

This one is strange. Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive is having a pretty impressive E3. Developer Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Knight is looking as impressive as everyone had hoped. Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a nice surprise that shows the company understands how to take advantage of its massive properties without forcing movie-licensed games.

But where is Mad Max?

Warner and developer Avalanche Studios showed off the game for new-gen systems and PC at last year’s show, but it’s vanished for this year’s event.

So, what’s up?

We’ve reached out to Warner Bros. to ask about the game, and we’ll update if we get a response. For now, all we know is the game is still supposedly coming in 2015 … . We’ll see. — Jeff Grubb, reporter

Final Fantasy XV

Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Bloodborne, and … nothing else. The landscape for role-playing games, one of the major genres in gaming, was rather sad and sparse at E3 2014. Especially for Japanese RPGs.

We didn’t see one major announcement or even demos of a JRPG at E3 2014 (Bloodborne is an action-RPG, so it doesn’t count.) “But this isn’t the Tokyo Game Show,” you say. Phooey, I retort. E3 is the most important show in the industry, and for Japanese publishers to leave their games at home — games that can still do well here, considering the many millions more consumers America has than Japan — is just silly.

Final Fantasy XV was here last year, and it makes no sense for it not to have appeared at the big press conferences this week. Bad move, Square Enix.

So, what’s up?

I’m sure Square Enix is saving Final Fantasy XV for TGS in September. Maybe it’ll even let us in America check it out there! — Jason Wilson, managing editor

Beyond Good & Evil 2

Beyond Good & Evil 2 was originally hinted at being in production in 2008, which according to my hype stopwatch puts this game ticking in at … oh … just about six years now.

In 2012, just four years and one leaked gameplay video later, Michael Ancel, the designer of Beyond Good & Evil, mentioned that the sequel was in an “active creation stage,” yet it was not present at that year’s E3. Then just before E3 2013, Ubisoft hinted at a potential Beyond Good & Evil 2 announcement when it featured a message on its Facebook page featuring Pey’j, one of the main characters from the original game. In a disappointing yet predictable twist of events, the game no-showed at that year’s conference as well.

I want to give Ubisoft, Ancel, and his team the benefit of the doubt — what with this still being fairly early in the current generation of hardware and the finicky nature of game development — but two years is a lot of time to be in an “active creation stage,” and six years may as well equal a decade in game industry PR.

Above: Art from Beyond Good & Evil 2 from a few years ago.

Image Credit: Ubisoft

So, what’s up?

If the game is being worked on by the original Beyond Good & Evil developers, which all small and infrequent indications point to, then my gut instinct says the project is being sidelined by other titles. Ancel himself was working on 2013’s Rayman Legends, and Ubisoft Montpellier has Valiant Hearts and Assassin’s Creed: Unity in the pipeline. Then again, my gut is not a credible source for such things. — Stephen Kleckner, writer

Quantum Break

I more or less yawned my way through the Microsoft press briefing last year. Ryse looked amazing, but its combat didn’t look very fun. Dead Rising 3 had the misfortune of catching me at the apex of my one-man “Stop with the f***ing zombies” campaign (which has still failed to catch on, by the way). And I don’t really remember most of what else happened because I may or may not have stepped away from watching it to play with my roommate’s dog.

He’s fun.

One game got me excited: Quantum Break, the latest from Max Payne and Alan Wake developer Remedy. Honestly, all they had to do was tell me that that team was working on a new title, and I would have been onboard. But the trailer introduced crazy new science and conspiracies and wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, and as soon as it was over, I said, “I can’t wait to see gameplay next year.”

Poor, foolish Past Evan. You were so wide-eyed and ready to believe.

So, what’s up?

Remedy announced before the show that it was going to skip E3 and take Quantum Break to the Gamescom trade fair in August. So I guess I can’t claim to be shocked here, but my disappointment is very real. — Evan Killham, writer

Kingdom Hearts III

Kingdom Hearts III was one of the games I wanted to see the most this E3, so I was pretty bummed when all we got was a small tease at the end of a trailer that was actually for an HD remake of Kingdom Hearts II. We actually saw more of it at last year’s event!

Considering that Kingdom Hearts II came out all the way back in 2006, fans are getting restless. Yes, we’re happy that the game was announced, but assure us that development is going well. Could Square Enix really not put together a 30-second trailer for E3?

Above: A boss fight with The Little Mermaid’s Ursula in Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix.

Image Credit: Square Enix

So, what’s up?

Just like with Final Fantasy XV, it’s likely Square Enix is saving Kingdom Hearts III for TGS. — Mike Minotti, staff writer and community manager

Persona 5

Atlus made a major Persona push at this year’s E3. The publisher built the largest contest of the show around Persona 4’s Teddie character, offering photographs and a chance to win a Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth limited edition 3DS. Three spin-off titles of the popular PlayStation 2/PS Vita RPG — Persona 4: Dance All Night, the aforementioned Persona Q, and Persona 4 Arena Ultimax — were on hand and playable on the show floor. But in between dancing, dungeon-diving, and beating the crap out of characters we already know, there seemed to be no time left to introduce us to the new cast from Persona 5.

So, what’s up?

We’ve only gotten an announcement teaser trailer so far with nary a screenshot or gameplay clip in sight, so it’s likely the game isn’t ready to be shown at length just yet. Tokyo Game Show is next highly possible venue for the title, but even then, don’t be surprised if our glimpse into this new world is limited to flashy character model shots and cryptic text. — Gavin Greene, writer

Fallout 4

Publisher Bethesda has never actually confirmed the existence of Fallout 4 (all we have are a bunch of rumors and supposed leaks), but that still didn’t stop me from hoping for a surprise reveal during one of the major press conferences. E3 2014 felt like the right place to do it: With The Elder Scrolls Online already out, Skyrim turning three this year, and both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One selling well since their debut, it makes sense to at least tease the next entry in the Fallout series.

In lieu of Fallout 4, Bethesda showed up with two new games: The Evil Within and Battlecry.

So, what’s up?

The most definitive answer we have about Bethesda’s next project — not necessarily Fallout 4 — appeared weeks before the show. On Twitter, Bethesda’s vice president of marketing, Pete Hines, said that we wouldn’t hear about the company’s next game “for a long time.” A lot of the big games that were at E3, like The Witcher 3 and Tom Clancy’s The Division, aren’t even coming out until next year, so it’s not surprising to see that whatever Bethesda has cooking might need some more development time.

Also of note: The studio revealed its last open-world game, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, at Spike TV’s annual video game award show, now known as VGX. Normally held in December, the show is known for its exclusive game trailers, so if we’re being optimistic, Bethesda might choose to debut Fallout 4 on live TV later this year. — Giancarlo Valdes, writer

The Last Guardian

Sony developer Team Ico hasn’t released a new game since 2005’s Shadow of the Colossus. In 2007, the studio started working on The Last Guardian, which is a puzzler that has players controlling a boy who works together with a giant dog-bird creature. At E3 in 2009, Sony revealed the game for PlayStation 3. Since then, we haven’t heard much more. Now, five years later, Sony has gone through another E3 without showing off anything new from The Last Guardian.

If The Last Guardian (by some miracle) comes out next year, it will mark 10 years between Team Ico releases.

Above: The Last Guardian.

So, what’s up?

Oh, who the hell knows? Just prior to E3, IGN reported the game is cancelled. The site eventually retracted the story after Sony came out to say it’s still in development. This led many to expect a re-reveal of The Last Guardian at the publisher’s press conference, but that did not happen.

Previous rumors claim the game was on hold for months while Sony worked out what to do with it. While maybe it isn’t cancelled, it also seems like a real possibility that it will never come out. For its part, Sony says it will tell fans if it ever does fully pull the plug on the project. — Jeffrey Grubb, reporter