E3 2019: Bethesda predictions, rumors and expectations

Bethesda promised big things in 2018 with Fallout 76 and Rage 2 but both of these games were disappointing at best and a total disaster at worst. Can the combination of a new Doom and Wolfenstein (and maybe a few surprises) turn it around for E3 2019?

Out of all the press conferences and events happening at E3 2019, Bethesda’s might be the easiest to predict. That doesn’t mean they don’t have some exciting stuff to see and even a couple surprises up their sleeve.

Seeing as how we are on the verge of the next generation of consoles and graphics cards that promise to be big game changers, Bethesda’s E3 2019 seems like it’s going to be a good show but nothing mind-blowing. It probably what you’d expect from a Bethesda E3 showcase in 2019.

There will probably be an opening celebrating the people that work at Bethesda (which is great, every company should honestly do that probably), some humor peppered in here and there (Doom for Alexa, maybe?) and probably one big mea culpa on a certain title that was the focus of last year’s show. Here’s a look a what we will, might and most likely won’t see during Bethesda’s E3 2019 presentation:

What we will see: Doom Eternal

Literally, the only game 100% confirmed to be at this year’s Bethesda E3 presentation is Doom Eternal, the follow-up to the surprisingly fantastic Doom soft reboot that came out in 2016. This time, instead of stopping demons on some far off planet, Hell has come to Earth and the only person who can stop them is the “Doom Slayer” aka Doom Guy.

Doom Eternal does look to be a bigger, more action-packed and gorier sequel, but it does have a few things working slightly against it. Doom 2016 was a complete surprise. Everyone had written off the game as yet another mediocre shooter before it was even out. Why? Because Bethesda has only shown the rather underwhelming multiplayer and not the incredible single-player campaign. Now expectations will be fairly high for Doom Eternal.

Secondly, a humongous reason Doom 2016 worked so well was that it was very aware on a meta level what it was. It wasn’t remotely serious. It was wickedly funny in some instances. It wasn’t just a bunch of jokes about evil demons and corporations not being all that dissimilar, but fun meta references and running gags about just how dumb Doom Guy is. Will they be able to keep that same level of humor without going way overboard?

Lastly, we actually saw quite a bit of footage of Doom Eternal at last year’s E3. I’m not saying don’t show it again; it’s obviously your big 2019 title, you have to. But what will they show us that we didn’t see in the over twenty minutes of footage we saw last year? Hopefully, something surprising; if your biggest game is something we saw the best of last year, with nothing truly new to show, your E3 2019 presentation is going to be rather underwhelming.