PlayStation at E3 2018: 7 biggest and best announcements

Sony’s annual PlayStation E3 press conference has come and gone, and with it a number of new looks at highly anticipated upcoming games and a few cool announcements.

Unlike Microsoft’s Xbox conference, which ran through new game announcements and trailers like rapid fire, Sony slowed things down. The publisher primarily focused on five big titles: Spider-Man, Death Stranding, Kingdom Hearts 3, Ghost of Tsushima and The Last of Us Part 2. Fans were treated to new trailers for each title, and further teased over how the games will play with new gameplay footage.

There were a couple of interesting surprise announcements, too, including Nioh 2.

Here are the best announcements and trailers from Sony’s PlayStation conference.

The Last of Us Part 2 trailer gives Ellie some love

Sony kicked off its PlayStation conference with an in-depth look at The Last of Us Part 2, which gave us our first look at Ellie dancing with her crush.

It’s an incredibly sweet, powerful moment — a celebration of lesbian representation in a AAA game like The Last of Us Part 2. It’s also a stark contrast to an earlier Last of Us Part 2 trailer that premiered at Paris Games Week last year, which focused on the brutal, unexplained and abrupt torture of a different female character.

The scene offers a longer look at Ellie as The Last of Us Part 2’s main character. Yes, it gets gruesome. It’s a Last of Us game, after all. But that tender moment that helped set the tone for Ellie’s character development is what we’re truly celebrating.

We finally see Death Stranding gameplay, plus new characters

Norman Reedus, that strange baby and a brand new character came to E3 in a new look at Death Stranding.

It’s unclear who this new character is, but she has a strong connection to Norman Reedus’ character, whose name is Sam Bridges. She’s played by Lea Seydoux, who we see for the first time in the trailer. Lindsay Wagner is also confirmed to star in the game alongside Reedus and Seydoux, as well as Guillermo del Toro and Mads Mikkelson.

The trailer focused heavily on Bridges, who appears to be harvesting a baby in some kind of yellow liquid. We saw Bridges walk through gloomy, rainy terrain as demonic shadow creatures hanging from wires fell from the sky. A lot of it looked like live gameplay for the very first time.

Death Stranding is legendary designer Hideo Kojima’s new game that’s about ... well, we still don’t really know. The new trailer gave us a brief look at some of the environments players will get to explore, including mountaintops and wastelands. But that’s about it. We still don’t know what Death Stranding really is or when it’s coming, but it’s certainly shaping up to look like a game.

Rhino, Vulture, Mr. Negative and more villains come to Marvel’s Spider-Man

We got a brand new look at Insomniac’s upcoming Marvel’s Spider-Man, which will launch as a PlayStation exclusive on Sept. 7.

The trailer takes place during a riot at Marvel Comics’ supermax prison, the Raft. The riot was caused by a villain known a Electro, who has let all the baddies out of their cells, and poor Spider-Man is called in to calm everything down.

Also featured are villains like Scorpion, Mr. Negative, Vulture and Rhino, who Spider-Man will have to take on during the riot. Spider-Man can be seen swinging in the trailer above as he tracks down the very villains he helped put away. There’s a little bit of dialogue that can be heard, and Spider-Man fans will be happy to know that Peter Parker sounds just as goofy as ever.

Ghost of Tsushima gameplay

Ghost of Tsushima is an upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive that stars the last samurai on the Japanese island of Tsushima, who must take down enemies from a Mongol invasion.

The gameplay trailer gave us a better look at combat and the characters players will encounter throughout the game. It also helped hammer in just how stunning Ghost of Tsushima looks, even when the world is burning down.

Ghost of Tsushima is due in 2019.

Nioh 2 announced

Nioh 2 is officially in the works, Team Ninja and Sony announced tonight.

We got a brief teaser for the game — and we do mean very brief — but at least it’s something. Nioh 2 will be a direct sequel to 2017’s Nioh, an action RPG that pits players against hordes of monsters.

Remedy’s new game is called Control

Remedy, the developer behind Quantum Break and Alan Wake, is working on a new game called Control.

It’s a Remedy game, which means the brief tease of the game we saw looks promising, but there are so few details that it’s hard to know what to really make of Control yet. We know that it will star a female protagonist who shoots her enemies with a shape-shifting gun, but that’s about it.

Special-edition PlayStation 4 will include every Kingdom Hearts game

Sony brought a new Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer to its press conference tonight, but the biggest news was about a bundle.

Here’s what you can expect from that console:

There will also be a special edition Kingdom Hearts PlayStation 4 released alongside the game when it launches Jan. 29, 2019. The console will not only feature a unique detailing, but it will also include the entire Kingdom Hearts series collection. Two previously released compilations will be in the package right alongside Kingdom Hearts 3.