Square Enix’s long-lost spin-off franchise made something of a splash at this year’s E3 coming out of nowhere to reveal itself as the next big entry in the long-running series, and what a lovely surprise that was.

It’s an interesting move for a number of reasons, not least because it brings Versus’ free-form (non-turn-based) combat kicking and screaming into the main franchise and from the looks of things, Square Enix is bang on the money.

Originally part of the proposed Fabula Nova Crystallis series, which never really came to pass, Square favouring instead to focus on XIII-2 and Lighting Returns.

The decision to shift development to next-gen consoles has paid off with the newly renamed Final Fantasy XV one of the visual highlights of year so far.

Not only does it look good, with huge expanses of city rendered in stunning detail, but the shift to realtime combat gives XV a cinematic edge that brings the game one step closer to action depicted in Advent Children.

Main controllable character Noctis leaps about the enormous levels with acrobatic grace. Shoving his sword into walls and ceilings to reach new locations while taking on two-storey monsters with wicked cool Mohawks.

Check out the gameplay footage and prepare to be suitably impressed..

Click here to view the embedded video.

Though the concept of a ‘shared world shooter’ or MMO might not be entirely foreign to many PC gamers out there, console players have been restricted by the technology of the day.

And making an MMO work on a console hasn’t really been possible. With the added processing power and insane numbers of servers of the Xbox One, Bungie’s vision for Destiny can finally been realized.

But that comes at a cost. What if console players, those used to jumping straight into the action with Call Of Duty or Halo, misunderstand exactly what Destiny is and what it’s trying to do?

Speaking in an exclusive interview at E3, we spoke to Bungie’s President Harold Ryan to ask if that’s something the studio considered while developing Destiny…

Do you think it’s going to be difficult for people who have played more console games to get used to this kind of MMO PC game style?

“We’re definitely very sensitive to the average, let’s call them, Halo player, COD player, even players of Oblivion and games like that.”

“We know they’re not very patient and they want an action game, and the first thing Destiny is is an action game. And so everything on top of it is a rich and deep plus, but if you want a great action game experience, you can pick up Destiny and play through a great action game.”

“You’re going to be presented with so many opportunities to progress your character, to care about how you look and how you customise yourself, and who you play with and how you play with them, but ultimately it’s a game we’re very focused on designing for people who just love to play the current generation of online shooters.”

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The Xbox 360 may have only recently caught onto this fact with the release of Minecraft and a few other indie titles exploring the concept, but the Xbox One is embracing the innovative market whole-heartedly.

And it’s about time, too.

PlayStation fans have been enjoying the collaboration and creative thrills of LittleBigPlanet for years and there’s a lot to be said for putting the paint brush in the hands of gamers and giving them a blank canvas on which to create.

And that’s exactly what Project Spark is attempting and it wants to give creators, of all abilities, the chance to get online, build something of their own and share it among their friends.

From a first glance, though, there is a style of creation within Project Spark that’s somewhat binary. Mix this with this and you get this, but as is usually the case with these things the complexity is there for those who want it.

At least that’s what we’re being told and shown as Microsoft was keen to point out early creations ranging from Geometry Wars rip-offs to Limbo-looking games.

It sounds great on paper, but Project Spark has been announced as free-to-play, which could mean that certain creative elements are locked behind a pay-wall.

It could hold all the most useful stuff ransom, which would really neuter those players hoping for LittleBigPlanet levels of creative freedom.

Until we get a clearer picture how exactly Project Spark will work, the free-to-play set-up could help the game either sink or swim.

Paying for creativity wouldn’t be great, but Project Spark is at least one of the few games at E3 this year that shows the Xbox One is at least trying something (a bit) new.

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That’s no easy task, especially in this day and age when every game seems like it wants to hold your hand, but Thief, it could be said, has made this something of its unofficial motto.

Understanding what made the original game so great, and reinterpreting that for the next-gen, must have been a very tricky process and when you combine that with attempting to build a world that reacts and allows players to forge their own paths, Thief has its work cut cut for it.

Eidos Montreal’s Stephane Roy is more than aware that Thief has a dedicated following of fans, but at the same time, this new game has to evolve the formula while retaining the core tenets of the past.

Finding a balance between modern game design, modern storytelling and ensuring everything isn’t signposted and really obvious is incredible tricky…

“For a game like [Thief], it’s the key, because it’s a game, not a movie,” explains Roy. “And for this game especially, we want to give you a lot of opportunities. In this demo [on the E3 show floor], you go into the mansion.”

“Very clear, no frustration there. How you do it; there are guards, patrol – there’s a main entrance, it would make no sense to go there, you have to sneak around, you have to find your path, so this is where it’s really important.”

“The level designer has multiple ingredients to make this progress – if it’s not subtle, you won’t enjoy it. I want to make sure you will feel smart.”

Making the player feel like they discovered their path, they own it and they are Garret.

With the Xbox One powering the next-gen visuals, this level of detail and choice will give players the chance to immerse themselves in the world like nothing on the current consoles.

Using the Xbox One’s powerful internal architecture and processing power (which, although everyone is banging on about DRM, is still seriously powerful) , everything from the shape of the plastic on the dashboard to the scuffs of dirt on the wheels is being rendered in absolutely insane detail.

It really is shocking just how much Turn 10 has been able to get out of the Xbox One this early into its life, but what’s really impressive is that Forza 5 will utilise this level on detail on literally ‘hundreds’ of the game’s vehicles.

Speaking to Turn 10 studio manager, Alan Hartman, we asked just how many cars in Forza 5 were built to the standard of those being shown off on the E3 so far, fearing some sort of Gran Turismo 5 scaling would be going on, but his answer was ‘hundreds’. That’s scary.

Hundreds of cars with attention to detail so minute the fabric of the stitching has been rendered accurately. Just take a look. No wonder Microsoft decided to include a Blu-ray drive in the Xbox One. If launch games like Forza 5 are already going into this much detail, what on earth is it going to be like in a few years?

A genuinely intelligent evolution of the 360’s controller the Xbox One’s pad adds a number of changes that should see it in good stead in the years to come. But what’s it actually like to hold in your hands?

We’re currently at E3, and after getting some hands-on with a range of Xbox One games, we can finally give you some hands-on impressions…

• The Triggers are thinner and offer a little more resistance than the current Xbox controller. They have a more convex shape, making them grippier to the touch and an interesting change from the current set-up.

• Overall, the controller fells smaller and lighter than the current Xbox controller. This is no doubt due to its light-integrated battery. We’re not sure if we’re in favour of this as the weight on the original pad gave it a presence in your hand. Lighter is not necessarily better. We liked the Xbox 360 wireless controller precisely because of its chunky weight and this change will take some getting used to.

• The analogue sticks are a gamer’s wet dream. Microsoft has done the impossible and improved the sticks themselves.They are now tighter, more even and grippier than before.

• Face buttons; these are less obtrusive than before but with muscle memory being a factor, for us at least, we had trouble finding the right ones even when prompted what to press on-screen (we were playing Ryse at the time). It’s. trick of the mind, sure, but initially, it’s likely that this aspect is going to be the one most people struggle with. They’re also flatter and that means  there’s not quite as much sensory feedback.

• The reverse of the controller has a more tightly curved grip. You can get your fingers almost all the way around the grips each side, making it strangely reminiscent of a PlayStation controller.

• The analogue stick placement doesn’t feel as natural, in fact it feels a little awkward. This may simply be because it’s different, and our hands are used to the 360 controller, or it might genuinely feel a bit wrong. Hard to tell at this stage.

• Overall: The Xbox One’s controller is smaller, lighter, tighter and wholly different. Put it in your hand blindfolded and you won’t be thinking Xbox.

[mpu]

More than many of the next-gen games present at this year’s E3, Turn 10’s exclusive Xbox One racer raises the question ‘is that really in-game?’

And the answer, universally, is yes.

What’s impressive, though, is that Turn 10 actually had a hand in designing the internal hardware of the Xbox One meaning that Forza 5 is already taking full advantage of the incredible processing power.

“Here’s a little secret for you,” explains Forza 5’s studio manager, Alan Hartman, “we were working on [Forza 5] before we shipped Forza 4. Chris Tector, who is our chief architect, he has been working with the [Xbox One] hardware team for the last four years. He was involved with the early chip discussions and there’s actually chips on the motherboard that are there because of Chris Tector’s involvement.”

We’re sure Microsoft would have turned to all its top studios while developing the Xbox One to find out what they wanted, but it’s always interesting to discover that a studio could have a hand in developing the hardware itself. And in the case of Forza 5, this influence is already visible in the game itself.

“Before we shipped Forza 4 we had the game architected by Chris,” continued Hartman. “Literally the month before our game released to the public, our dev team was already off building the foundations of Forza 5. It’s a whole new engine, from the ground up, re-architected for the Xbox One and I mean truly re-architected.”

*Edit* Apologise to Turn 10′s studio manager, we had previously credited this quote to Ian Hartman. His name is in fact Alan Hartman.

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You do only what you can do, you tell the truth about how you feel.

Microsoft’s plan for Xbox One is contemptible. You won’t find any disagreement on that from me. And arriving at Microsoft’s post-conference party last night, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. Embarrassment? Awkwardness? Oddly, there was none to be found beyond the few journalists who couldn’t seem to meet Microsoft’s eye and shambled instead, eyes-to-floor.

It was a happier mood than I was expecting following the open goal Sony hoofed that DRM-ball repeatedly into just an hour or two before. I tried to work out why. Why was it that Microsoft and its developers were here carrying on as if there was nothing wrong, as if the whole world hadn’t mere moments earlier jumped aboard the hate boat and were sailing at them four sheets to the wind.

Because they’re proud. Turn 10 smiling emphatically about its latest automotive masterpiece, Crytek pontificating over its superior tech. These guys live in their own world. A world shielded from Microsoft’s grand-scale corporate machinations. They have nothing to do but be here, proud of the amazing things they’ve created.

And I want you to spare a thought for them, as hard as that might be for some of you to swallow. Be angry at Microsoft, it deserves your anger. But remember, the casualty here is not the future of videogames.

Microsoft’s attempt at control of your purchased property will no doubt go down as one of those giant foot-in-mouth moments in the history of videogames. Like when Sony announced the price of the PS3, or when Nintendo decided the Wii U was a good idea (trollolloll).

If people don’t buy the Xbox One, Microsoft will have to do a U-turn. It’s that simple.

No, the casualty here is the literally stunning games I got to play on Xbox One last night. The amazing technology in Kinect 2.0, which even had this withered old hack clapping like a lobotomised gibbon. The casualty is that the excitement for these games fizzles out before they get the limelight they deserve. Before they have a chance to breathe. Tweet about it. Vent about it. Be angry, but just be sure who it is you’re angry at.

Remember: the developers are just trying to make brilliant games.

Despite Call Of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4 championing the modern warfare shooter, the Xbox One and the next-gen is all about the sci-fi or near-future FPS.

Or at least that’s what it looks like from the many games currently doing the rounds at E3.

With Destiny, Halo (yes, again), The Division and Titanfall all focusing on their futuristic settings, it appears like the modern warfare era is coming to a close.

Does that mean CoD and Battlefield won’t sell? Of course not, but it does mean that developers are looking to sci-fi to help fuel their next-gen projects in a hope of providing gamers with something that they’ve never seen before.

Was Titanfall something we’ve never seen before?

Ummm, sort of. Respawn’s game certainly had something in common with the PC’s Hawken, but its combination of mech and infantry combat should provide gamers with a diverse battlefield on which to fight. And it’s yet another Xbox One exclusive that will be going a long way to convincing players that Microsoft’s new machine is worth investing in.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Does Titanfall’s (and the many other sci-fi shooters) focus on future tech mean we’re entering into a transitional period; one a bit like the last-gen’s shift from WWII shooters to modern warfare? It certainly seems that way and Titanfall is walking (and stomping) proof that there’s a lot more potential for shooters when they factor in the wild imaginations of sci-fi’s finest.

Of course, Call Of Duty recognised this shift with last year’s Black Ops 2, setting it in the near future, but Titanfall’s mech combat is taking things in a whole new direction. It’s only with the power of the Xbox One that Respawn has been able to take FPS action and ramp it up with mechs and soldiers of all shapes and sizes taking each other on in incredibly detailed environments. Are there enough players to populate the servers, though?

From the looks of the response Titanfall has been getting, that’s a given.

So, does this mean modern day shooters like Battlefield and Ghosts are about to disappear? Probably not, but it does mean that games like Titanfall are ready to give them a serious run for their money.

Dead Rising 3 was undoubtedly a highlight of Microsoft’s E3 presentation, but just how important is it that Capcom’s open world zombie basher is exclusive to the Xbox One?

Well, more important than ever, if we’re honest. The Xbox One, more than any Xbox before it, has more competition and winning over gamers should now be at the top of Microsoft’s to do list (right after ‘to stop talking about TV’).

Competition from rival consoles, competition from tablets, competition from PC; literally everything that can play games is encroaching on the console space.

It’s always been easy to get a clear picture of the console war space if all you have is a couple of machines and a bunch of exclusives. With Sony breathing down Microsoft’s neck (winning gamers over with its no-nonsense attitude) a game like Dead Rising 3 could make the difference between winning and losing.

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Others may point to exclusives like Titanfall, but the wide appeal of zombies combined with an open world, truly stunning visuals and a ‘go anywhere, do anything’ mentality, Capcom’s series could be about to take off like never before.

And it’s hard to underestimate the appeal of the undead, especially when you now factor in that Dead Rising 3 is basically a next-gen version of DayZ with a full-on dedication for depicting the walking dead as they should be; in huge, writhing hordes.

That Capcom has also announced that the Xbox One allows for Dead Rising 3 to do away with load times and present a persistent and terrifyingly realised world is one of the main reasons upgrading to Microsoft’s new console really is a must.

Whether you agree with Microsoft’s DRM and always-on service doesn’t matter, the chance to explore a fully streaming world is just too big a draw.

We’re not going to resort to schoolyard tactics and list the exclusives currently doing the rounds at E3 for both the Xbox One and the PS4 and compare and contrast them. Ultimately, it comes down to personal taste, but it’ll be games like Dead Rising 3 that will prove instrumental at winning gamers over and keep them playing on a single console.

The battle for the hearts and minds of gamers is most definitely on and it’s games like Dead Rising 3 that should hopefully keep the Xbox One a step ahead of the PS4 and everything else that’s now vying for our time and money.

Where else can you get a beautifully realised open world and more zombies on-screen than you’ll have ever seen before?

Nowhere… at least not yet.