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I leave for E3 this weekend! This is my fourth or fifth time going, and I think I always get a little more excited about it than perhaps I should. There are going to be a lot of games to play on the show floor and a lot of stuff to see behind closed doors, and I'll be writing about it pretty much non-stop for the next few weeks.

This year's show is going to be special for me. It'll be the first time I got to set my own schedule! I'll have my eye on RPGs, too, even though RPGs fare a bit more poorly on the show floor than flashier types of games. I've decided to try and vent a little of the internal hype that's building up, 'cause I won't be in L.A. until Monday.

Here's the seven RPGs I want to see and/or play and/or learn more about at this year's E3. Note that these aren't the only seven games I'm hyped for, but if I listed everything I'd be here until it was time for my plane to leave. These are just the seven I'm most hyped for, myself. If you're hyped for something else, drop a comment about it-- I may be able to go out of my way to try and have a look at it at the show.

7. Fire Emblem DS

I'm kind of bummed out that the only Fire Emblem games to hit the US, besides the okay GBA titles, have been the GameCube and Wii games. Something about Fire Enblem on a console feels a little off to me, like looking at a kid wearing clothes two sizes too big. What I really want to play is Fire Emblem DS, which takes the graphical style that originally made Fire Emblem a cult hit with RPG fans in Japan and enhances it up to modern sprite animation standards. Yes, a lot of people are complaining that Fire Emblem DS is somehow "ugly", but personally I think it looks exactly the way it should.

Fire Emblem DS would also give us all a chance to finally play one of the games Smash Bros. Brawl's Marth starred in, and everything I've read about that game's plot has me all kinds of psyched to play it with the benefit of some modern interface and minor visual enhancements. Come on, Nintendo, don't have one of the random fits of spite that kept Mother 3 out of the US. Announce English language Fire Emblem DS at E3 so we all know that we can finally get to know Marth.

6. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

Yeah, I know. A lot of you reading this are probably already preparing to get your flame on in some comments thread, somewhere, because I'm daring to consider a Castlevania game a "mere" RPG. Sorry, guys, but there's pretty much nothing you can say to convince me otherwise. Yes, the post-Symphony of the Night "Metrovania" games do still have spike pit traps, jumping puzzles, and pattern bosses who may require some quick reflexes to defeat. Yet there's usually powers you can use to easily subvert the danger of the pits and puzzles, not least of which is usually turning into a bat or some other flying beastie, and modern Castlevania's pattern bosses are just as easy to tame by leveling up, getting great equipment, and exploiting the right damage type as fancy jumping around.

That to me is the genre-standard definition of an action RPG. If you seriously want to argue modern Castlevania isn't an RPG, you're also stuck arguing that basically-identical games like Ys and Kingdom Hearts aren't really RPGs, and that'll just make you look like a goober. No, I say Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia is a total action RPG, and I'm gonna write about it here, and there's nothing you can do to alter reality such that it is in any way a pure action game. Yes, it blows that IGA has forsaken the old-school Castlevania fans who want a stage-based action game, but playing make-believe that a game that prominently features stats and experience levels somehow isn't an RPG is just sad, guys.

I've already marked out pretty hard over Order of Ecclesia's original announcement, but I desperately want to say I got to go hands-on with a demo level for this one before E3 is over. I got to play a demo of Portrait of Ruin at an E3 years ago before that game was released, and it completely sold me on every little feature of the game that sounded pretty weird back then. Order of Ecclesia already sounds and looks about five times better than Portrait, so I'm really jonesing hard for Shanoa and her magic weapon undead killifying powers. Even fifteen minutes of playing it with probably no sound on at the show floor would make it easier to wait for the US release, and make me feel almost as gleeful as I did the first time I powered up Dawn of Sorrow in my DS. Don't disappoint me, Konami (not that I think you will).

5. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2

 

Boy I can't wait to go see a demo of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 at the Activision booth--OH WAIT.

Yes, the rumor on the grapevine is that a bunch of people think the current president of the ESA is a shameful dootyhead, and because of that one of the biggest game publishers in the US isn't actually going to bother to represent at E3. This situation is an absolute travesty that makes the ESA look bad, diminishes E3 even more than the goofy format changes of the past few years, and also personally inconveniences me (the most unforgivable sin of all). I might be a little less angry if this had all come out before I'd booked the rooms and bought the plane tickets.

Anyway, Marvel Ulitmate Alliance 2 looks awesome, and if Activision was at E3 I would be all about going and seeing it. When Activision was supposed to be at the show, this was one of their big rumored titles. The early word on the plot is that it's going to be an adaptation of Marvel's recent blockbuster Civil War mini-series, about what happened when some irresponsible superheroes manage to get an elementary school full of kids blown up during a battle that gets way out of hand. Iron Man decides it's time that heroes took responsibility for this and registered themselves with the government, while Captain America believes that compromising their identities and putting too much faith in the government hurts everybody. The end result of this philosophical difference is a lot of super-heroes punching the snot out of each other, which is the part that could make a killer action RPG. Give us more powers, better balance, and some heroes from Nextwave, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 would be pretty much the perfect party RPG.

4. Infinite Undiscovery

 

I've posted about this game before on omgRPG, and it'll be out in early September, but I can still barely contain my excitement. I am psyched as hell about the prospect of another tri-Ace RPG for the 360. Eternal Sonata was gorgeous and mad and original in a way that proves the Japanese RPG isn't dead, just waiting to catch up with the next generation. The real-time battles for up to four characters, somehow achieved without even as much menu-flogging as FFXII, sound absolutely great if they're even half of what the dev team is promising.

Real-time day/night changes that you can use to affect quests and the storyline? Ten years worth of tri-Ace ideas no system before the 360 had the power to handle? Seamless battles with no load times and no enemies popping out of thin air? I need to play this so bad it hurts. Please have a copy playable in English on the show floor, Square-Enix. I need to know if this will just be weird and interesting, or weird and freaking amazing. You never quite know with tri-Ace.

3. Fallout 3

 

This game would be way higher on the list if I didn't actually have an appointment to see it, and therefore knew my insatiable curiosity would be& well, sated. Regardless, Fallout 3 is a game I am feeling seriously love for on a lot of levels. While the generic fantasy setting of Oblivion left me cold, Fallout 3's demented post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting catches my interest. I always thought the first two Fallouts sounded great but never got to play them when they were new 'cause my parents were too cheap to keep a gaming PC in the house. Hell, I missed out on a lot of great classic PC RPGs over that.

With Fallout 3, though, I've got both a Xbox 360 and a properly potent PC for enjoying it, and this time I'm ready to do the Western RPG thing totally hardcore. I want mods and absurd customization and my every little action affecting the outcome of the story. Please don't disappoint, Bethesda, my little heart couldn't take it.

2. Final Fantasy XIII

 

Most of the games on this list are here because I am, on some level, dying to own or at least play them. FFXIII is here because I simply want to know this game is okay. Square-Enix announced the Fabula Nova Crystalis project to big pomp at E3 two years ago, but now I'm hearing that mobile MMO Agito is canceled and that the FF Versus XIII team have been pulled from their own game and put to work on finishing XIII, with Versus left in a weird development limbo.

Square, honey, is everything okay? I mean FFXIII isn't even on your list of games on display this year. I know you committed to the PS3 just in time to see it horribly underperform, even now that MGS4 is out, and that's gotta be hard. But we're still getting FFXIII in one piece, right? I mean, you've gotten me seriously hyped for a game about Espers turning into weird mecha and vehicles, the first female protagonist in way too long, and a battle system that looks significantly more bleeding edge than anything Final Fantasy in awhile.

I'd really like to pop this game into my PS3, even if it's just so I do something with it besides watch Blu-Ray movies. I'm gonna get to do that, right? FFXIII's not sick and gonna be awesome and huge and I'll get my weird Kingdom Hearts-esque side game, too& right?

1. Diablo 3

Well, it goes without saying that a title as soon-to-be-seminal as Diablo 3 is going to be the highlight of the show. I can only imagine how reporters will pack themselves into appointments, and eager gamers desperate to see but a glimpse of the Next Big Thing in PC gaming will crowd the Activision Booth, and--OH SORRY DID IT AGAIN.

Look, Diablo 2 was an epoch-making game. People still rip it off, constantly and often poorly, on both sides of the Pacific and Atlantic. We probably wouldn't have MMO gaming as we know it if not for Diablo 2; hell, I don't even want to think about what we'd be playing in a world without Diablo 2.

Diablo 3 should be the 800 pound gorilla of this year's E3. It should be so big it eats the show, it should be the only thing people are talking about, it should be the floor demo that gets you ready to buy a whole new PC to play it if need be. Instead, petty internal politics is going to keep Diablo 3 out of the spotlight where it belongs.

Now, I'm sure this won't hurt Diablo 3's inevitable sales or prestige much in the long run. This is a Blizzard game, and that means it's going to be a fine-tuned money-printing machine the likes of which could make Nintendo green with envy. It makes E3 a small and sad event when one of the biggest announced titles of the year, maybe the biggest thing that isn't Spore, is going to be a total no-show. People are talking about 2008 being the make-or-break year for the show, and right now things are looking kind of broken.

Get it together, ESA, and do whatever it takes to make Activision and Blizzard happy. I'm sure Diablo 3 won't be on store shelves before next year's show, and I might be just as excited to see it then as I would be now.

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