Readers Respond: Mass Effect, Fallout 4, And EA Lead E3 Anticipation

Our readers are getting excited for E3, and they aren’t shy about letting us know what has them most hyped. We already tallied the results from a poll about press conference anticipation. Now we look at games and publishers.

With so many games mentioned by our readers, we split things into two different categories. We also aggregated the mentions to identify which publishers are responsible for the most pre-E3 excitement.

Unsurprisingly, the announced but yet to be detailed Mass Effect game is leading the first list. With Dragon Age: Inquisition out in the wild (and responsible for an enormous amount of player and critical praise), fans are excited for what BioWare can bring to its space-based RPG franchise.

The top 20 list for announced titles includes a variety of games, publishers, genres, and release windows. We’re sorry to tell the Final Fantasy XV fans that the game’s director, Hajime Tabata, has already announced you’ll have to wait until Gamescom in August for more information.

1. Mass Effect
2. The Last Guardian
3. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
4. No Man's Sky
5. Scalebound
6. The Division
7. Halo 5: Guardians
8. Persona 5
9. Star Wars: Battlefront
10. Star Fox
11. Star Wars (Visceral, Other)
12. Gears of War (New)
13. Rise of the Tomb Raider
14. Final Fantasy XV
15. Kingdom Hearts 3
16. Mirror's Edge
17. Street Fighter V
18. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
19. Xenoblade Chronicles X
20. Batman: Arkham Knight

While there were more than 40 unannounced games mentioned, only 12 received more than one nod. Leading the list by a wide margin is Fallout 4, with Metroid firmly established in second place. Had we aggregated the Rockstar games called out by readers (Bully 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, and "anything from Rockstar") it would have inched up the list into the third spot.

Our readers already told us they are excited for Bethesda's press conference, but it's not just Fallout 4 that has them interested. The potential of an announcement for the next game in The Elder Scrolls series, another Dishonored game, and even Rage 2 has our readers buzzing.

1. Fallout 4
2. Metroid
3. The Elder Scrolls VI
4. Red Dead Redemption 2
5. Splinter Cell
6. God of War
7. Half-Life 3
8. Guerrilla Games (New IP)
9. F-Zero
10. Pokemon
11. Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
12. Soul Calibur VI

And if you thought that everyone is exhausted with remasters, you'd be incorrect. Readers called out a number of older titles they'd like to see get the current-gen treatment. Here's the full list (in alphabetical order):

• Batman: Arkham Asylum/City
• Gears of War
• Halo: The Master Chief Collection (PC)
• The Legend of Zelda (Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword)
• Mass Effect Trilogy
• Uncharted Trilogy

Finally, we aggregated the list of publishers by number of titles mentioned. EA has received a lot of heat from gamers, including "winning" a number of "worst company" awards. Things are changing though, with EA topping the list of mentions. Nintendo and Sony share the second-place spot with Square-Enix and Microsoft rounding out the top five.

Click to enlarge.

We also noted some interesting phenomenon amongst the responses:

• Assassin's Creed only received a single mention.
• There were no mentions of Call of Duty or Battlefield.
• Had we combined all the Star Wars mentions, that franchise would have landed at number two on the announced list. Between Star Wars and Mass Effect, readers are ready to return to space.
• Readers are still holding out hope for long-absent games, including The Last Guardian (only beat out by Mass Effect) and Tekken x Street Fighter. Keep the faith, folks.
• No Man's Sky, an indie game, sits at number four on our list.
• Fallout 4 hasn't been announced, but it received more mentions than any other game.

E3 is only a few weeks away. Mysteries will be revealed and games will be announced. Here's hoping your dreams come to true.