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I know you're here at the Caves of Narshe because you play RPGs, specifically Square Enix RPGs, specifically Final Fantasy games. Well, if you've not been following E3 this week, I've got news for you: there's precious little of that to be had here today. With E3 wrapped, here's what Square Enix hit heavy.

The biggest coverage to come out of the conference had everything to do with Eidos. The Tomb Raider reboot, which really did look very nice, got a lot of press (including a long-form controlled demo early in Microsoft's keynote). That game is still scheduled to come out next year, but the progress so far looked pretty impressive for a game that far out. Later in E3, the Hitman series took center stage, with a big crowd for the debut trailer. Absolution, the new title, is also due out in 2012. Deus Ex was also everywhere - a third title that a couple years ago would have been part of Eidos' booth, but fortuitously has fallen under Square Enix' umbrella due to smart corporate buyouts.

For the core RPG/Final Fantasy output of E3 2011, you really can't look much further than Final Fantasy XIII-2. We reported earlier in the week that a new, longer trailer debuted during E3, and while I admit that I haven't watched it (as I'm afraid of spoilers, since I still have yet to beat the first one!), it seems to have at least generated buzz, though of course it's not universally positive. One thing that surprised me, though, is that the game was actually playable at E3, as evidenced by these videos posted by Kotaku earlier in the week. RPGSite managed to get an interview with the director and producer of the game, as well, during the tumult of E3.

There was no news about Type-0 or the new Kingdom Hearts that I've seen come from E3, which is very disappointing. I can't speak for whether they simply had no presence at E3, or if the presence they did have was merely news old enough that it wasn't worth reporting, but there was almost certainly nothing new at all to appear. However, the official Type-0 site updated as E3 was closing, with some new screenshots and character reveals, so all is not lost there.

In other happy news emerging from E3, Square Enix announced a big, round number from the Final Fantasy series, and you have to admit it's impressive: the Final Fantasy series as a whole has now shipped over one hundred million copies worldwide. That's more than four million copies of the games every single year - maybe that's not a huge feat given the many remakes over the years, but you have to think back to the eighties and early nineties, when there just weren't that many from which to choose. The company, wisely, didn't talk about whether that includes just the core numbered series or also sideline series like Tactics, the Final Fantasy VII Compilation, or games that were called "Final Fantasy" in some regions but not others.

Even knowing that milestone, you'd be forgiven for being generally disappointed in Square Enix at E3 this year. I would have expected a stronger showing myself, if I'm perfectly honest. But, if you're unhappy with the company's performance, you're not the only one. Even at least one Square Enix executive shares concern over the company's core game franchises, going so far as to call the lack of Japanese output from the company at E3 "humiliating." Is there a way to bounce back from this? Koji Taguchi, the aforementioned executive, is clearly worried about it. Got any advice for him that doesn't start and end with "remake Final Fantasy VII?"

That does it for E3 this year, as far as CoN is concerned. Hope you enjoyed our recaps and editorials, and we'll be back with more of the same when it's time for the Tokyo Game Show in a couple months, where one hopes Squenix will be back with more gusto. If I missed anything good, make sure to respond and set me straight!

Why would one stay after hours to watch Sony's E3 2011 presser? Probably to either a) try to get a look at Kevin Butler or b) see if Sony apologizes for losing control of their security. You didn't get a), and you got b) out of the way just as fast as they possibly could do it. Blink and it's gone.

For me, I just sat through it and I'm not quite sure if there is a c), myself. I thought the overall presentation was pretty bland, though Sony will clearly score a lot of points with some gamers for not marrying their information to the Move the way Microsoft did Kinect. However, they might well lose points with a variety of other gamers for sticking so close to the handheld.

Some of Sony's games looked pretty great. I've never played an Uncharted, but Uncharted 3 does look solid in a crowded third-person, over-the-shoulder adventure genre. Resistance 3 looks like a perfectly adequate FPS. Everything is starting to look the same, though, and that wasn't helped by following Microsoft. You can show lots of adventure games and lots of FPSes, but after a while the brief time that each game has to show its uniqueness just fails, and I really didn't see anything during the PlayStation 3 portion of the presentation that really lept out as surprising or groundbreaking.

Once the Vita emerged, though, it got pretty interesting as long as you like handhelds. The tech behind the Vita looked pretty great in the live demos, though I for one have never been fully convinced by backside touchpads (fnar). The new handheld looks very much like a PSP, with the crosspad, four buttons, and two shoulders of the current PSP. After that, they added a second analog stick and made both sticks look more like DualShock sticks, made the screen multitouch-capable, and even added a back multitouch panel without a screen and front and back cameras.

The games shown live looked fanastic, nearly like PlayStation 3 games, and it seems like the time the devs have had with the development devices and SDK has paid off. I think the AT&T offering will not help the device; I would guess that the data plans will not be reasonably priced, and with no 4G availability, there will almost surely be a new version in just a couple years. PlayStation Suite, also on the mobile front, seems like a neat idea, but how many Android phones will really have the ability to control games that originated on PlayStation platforms?

Two things to point out here: one, there was pretty much no Square Enix here at all. That's two out of three down and barely any mention of Squenix - not a great sign, in my opinion. Two, please, please, don't let devs give presentations. God bless them, they make good games. They're not public speakers.

Microsoft finished up their press conference about an hour and a half ago, leaving CoNchat generally underwhelmed. Of course, for the people in there who remain avid RPG gamers, the Microsoft speech tends to be a bit of a famine, so maybe we're not all the target market for such things.

It was second in the show, but since it's the closest to Square Enix they had, we'll lead with Tomb Raider. It was a very pretty game, and looked very much like what you'd want in a Tomb Raider made fifteen years after the original, with an added little dash of bondage at the beginning. If you ever wanted to see Lara be trussed upside down, have to light herself on fire to escape, and then fall and break a rib, then, Eidos is bringing you just what you want.

Microsoft and their partners covered quite a few games, and among them were the ones you fully expected to see, starting with a full ten minutes of Modern Warfare 3, which looked pretty much like Modern Warfare 2, if you ask me. The post-Bungie Halo era moved on with both a remake of the very first game and an announcement for Halo 4. Every one of these games got a huge reaction from the crowd - call me a complainer, but I didn't see any of that stuff do anything so interesting that it demanded screams of joy. Someone thinks it's truly groundbreaking, though, or the excitement of being in the room with such a big screen really added to the impact.

Microsoft showed off their new dashboard, with an emphasis on the new non-gaming or gaming-related content to be on offer. They made a very big deal out of the addition of YouTube, and a Kinected Bing application to find games and media available for the Xbox. They also did a lot of talk about live television over Xbox, but honestly, I'm not going to get very excited about that; they still can't even give me live ESPN3 due to an ongoing dispute with Time Warner Cable that has been going on for almost a year now.

The rest was a big push to get Kinect more on the minds of not only kids and casual gamers, but the "hardcore" set as well. Games like Ghost Recon, Fable, Ryse, Star Wars (which, by the way, looked just awful, to me) and even Minecraft are looking to really make people take Kinect seriously, while a new sports game, a Sesame Street game, and a Disneyland exploration application/game will appeal to the casual and younger sets. I have to say, the last two excited me the most, but that might just be because I have baby on the brain.

What'd you guys think? Does Microsoft have anything that excites you for the next year?

Quote of the Microsoft conference came in from CoNChat, not surprisingly. It was Kappa the Imp, responding to the Sesame Street Kinect game:

[12:39] Kappa: Who else can imagine all their pothead friends going CRAZY over this

Square Enix are preparing for E3, of course; it officially starts next Tuesday. For us, they're mainly doing it with a microsite that, as of this writing, doesn't work. If you care to find a metaphor in that for your faith in the company, well, I won't stop you. Hopefully it comes back online soon, though, as the site last year was really pretty nice, as I recall.

Square Enix are only talking about a few of the games that they'll be showing, and I haven't yet found any mention of a standalone presser that will be aired anywhere public. I don't believe they did one last year, either, so we'll have to feast on scraps that we get second-hand. For now, though, we do know of several games that will appear; of most interest to RPG fans will be Final Fantasy XIII-2 and WAKFU. However, Tomb Raider, the new Hitman, Deus Ex, Dead Island, and the new 3DS game Heroes of Ruin also headline the offering. There's no mention of Type-0 or Dream Drop Distance in the press release, but there's little doubt that they'll be in the booth in some fashion, surely, along with some other big-ticket games that escape my mind at the moment.

As for CoN, we're going to cover E3 the way we did last year, I think, as much as possible. That means that we'll be watching the big three press conferences in chat, as well as posting live thoughts about the offerings to Twitter and Facebook. After each of the big pressers, one of us will write up a kinda-bloggy recap for CoN news as well. If you want to participate, all you have to do is follow us on Twitter (@cavesofnarshe) or on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/cavesofnarshe), come to chat to make snide comments about the games you're seeing, or watch this space for the wrap-up news.

If you're on Facebook or Twitter, we'd love it if you'd reference us in your own tweets or posts about E3, or if you'd retweet or share our comments to your own network. Help us keep our following growing by making sure all seven of your friends know about us!

Source: Square Enix, Kotaku

Slowly but surely, Distant Worlds is becoming less distant to more and more Final Fantasy fans, as the tour adds more dates that cover more geographical areas in North America. Sorry, overseas fans, but no new dates for you in this update; however, as consolation, the DVDs I mentioned in my last Distant Worlds post are now available from AmaCoN US and AmaCoN UK.

A brief rundown of the new dates:

• Houston, 16 July 2011
• Vancouver, 27 July 2011 (with Uematsu)
• Baltimore, 9 and 10 September 2011 (with Uematsu)
• Los Angeles, 5 November 2011
• Kitchener, Ontario, 28 February 2012
• St. Louis, Missouri, 23 and 24 March, 2012
• Toronto, 31 March 2012 (with Uematsu)

For presale dates and all other information, hit the Distant Worlds site below.

Source: Distant Worlds

As an apology for the recent hacking and outage of the PlayStation Network, Sony is offering free games to PS3 and PSP owners who lost service during the outage. In addition, users will receive 30 days of free PlayStation Plus service and free rentals from their online video rental service.

To claim your free games, just log onto the PSN Store anytime the first 30 days after it's restored (which it should be soon) and download the games. Two game downloads from the list of available games are allowed for each system - 2 for PS3 and 2 for PSP. Five games are available for each platform, including the critically acclaimed inFamous on PS3 and LittleBigPlanet on both the PSP and PS3. Check the listed source for the full menu of free games and other stipulations of the deal.

This is for the North American PSN Store only; other regions will likely have their own "customer appreciation packages" announced later on. I dunno about you guys, but I'll be getting my Wipeout on at the first opportunity.

Source: North American PlayStation Blog