Xbox’s Phil Spencer has finally arrived to finish things up and quickly mention all the games we didn’t actually see (from Fable to The Elder Scrolls 6 to, um, Perfect Dark). Of course, though, there’s one more thing...

Forza Horizon 5 looks astonishing. Love the fact that they’re incorporating the work of real-life street artists into the urban scenery – a nod perhaps to Insomniac’s work with the Spider-Man games. The road surfaces are incredibly detailed, with rocks picked up and thrown along the track by speeding vehicles. Once again, the team has grabbed lots of telemetry and weather data to really capture the essence of the environment.

Ah it’s Flight Simulator now, one of the surprise hits of the year. We’re seeing lots of lovely aerial shots and swooping aircraft – and at last, a release date for Xbox Series X/S: July 27

“Suddenly, and for no reason, people running! These pointless slow-motion shots make everything seem cool.” A tongue-in-cheek trailer here for The Outer Worlds 2 - the sequel to 2019’s comedy science-fiction RPG.

“If history were in your hands, what would you build?” It could only be Age of Empires, the fondly-remembered historical strategy games. Honestly it doesn’t look that much better than it did decades ago but hey, Age of Empires IV is finally coming out on October 28.

A rather nice-looking tactical Japanese role-playing game is next: Eiuden Chronicle (actually two games, out 2022 and 2023). Remember the whole of the 00s, when Xbox was always taking flak for the total absence of Japanese games on its platform? Feels like another century now.

Fun news for arachnophobes: giant spiders are coming to Grounded, the honey-I-shrunk-the-kids multiplayer game that’s not technically out yet (it’s still in Xbox Preview). Last year’s spacestation paranoia game Among Us is also coming to Xbox.

Another bleak cyberpunky post-apocalyptic looking action game here but this art style is fascinating - pixel-art meets 3D backgrounds with deep perspective. It’s called Replaced, out 2022.

I have no idea what’s going on now. Death Stranding meets Bioshock with robots and European pop? It’s called Atomic Heart, whatever it is. Have a look:

Ooh, a snowboarding game. Ubisoft announced an extreme-sports multiplayer game called Republic of Riders last night, a kind of wacky successor to Ride (its mountain sports game), but this looks a bit more focused. It’s called Shredders. and it’ll be out in December.

A bit of a palate cleanser now, in the form of Slime Rancher 2, a cute game about hoovering up blobby creatures... this reminds me of an ancient Wii game called Elebits, which nobody will remember but me.

It’s Far Cry 6 now, which was shown extensively at Ubisoft’s event last night. The teaser is mostly focused on weapons, with flame thrower tanks, buildings exploding and... a deadly punk rooster, which you can set on enemies. Then more flamethrowers and explosions. This is very much Far Cry business as usual – subtlety is just something that happens to other games.

Ah, we saw Far Cry 6 at Ubisoft’s event last night but it was an extended cutscene set on a boat. This looks rather more representative: explosions, guns, helicopters, killer roosters, a go-kart that flies, a backpack that shoots rockets.

A plague of rats flows like a wave through a medieval-ish town! how reassuring. This is A Plague Tale: Requiem, presumably the sequel to Innocence, a flawed but interesting adventure game from a couple of years ago. That’s out in 2022.

Blizzard is up next with the remake of Diablo 2, which is out 23rd September. I played so very much if this game in the middle of the night when I was a teenager - it was one of the violent games I wasn’t supposed to have on the PC, so I had to only play it after my parents had gone to bed. ANYWAY it looks bloody excellent, and of course has 8-player co-op.

I kept sending Keith one-line summaries of the Wholesome Games announcements yesterday. “Help a shy frog find the ingredients she needs for her tea party.” “A game about helping your nan recover from a fall.” “A sitcom game about birds with social anxiety.”

After a while he thought I’d started hallucinating.

Well, Party Animals is my joint favourite E3 game announcement so far, alongside Woodo from yesterday’s Wholesome Games event.

A moody interlude next, as we watch a car trundle down a lonely highway at night and a family snooze in a derelict-looking farmhouse. Immense LIMBO/Outside vibes here, as we see a couple fleeing what appears to be an ongoing alien invasion with a toddler in tow. Oh gawd, children in peril. I’m not going to be able to play this one. It’s called Somerville, out 2022.

It’s Greek underworld action-game Hades now, one of last year’s standouts, winner of 5 BAFTAs, etc etc. That’ll be out on Xbox on August 13, if you haven’t already sampled its delights.

Now it’s... is this Gang Beasts with fuzzy animals? A multiplayer brawler with entertaining physics and adorable vacant-looking creatures, Party Animals is coming in 2022

Tidbit: The Elder Scrolls Online apparently has 18 million players now. Maybe that’s why there hasn’t been a new single-player Elder Scrolls game since Skyrim, ten years ago...

Ah, here’s Bethesda’s Pete Hines, announcing that another 10 Bethesda games are now available to play on Game Pass, including Doom Eternal with a next-gen upgrade (60fps with ray-tracing). And now we get to see what’s next for Fallout 76, a game that is apparently quite good now.

I’ve been looking forward to Psychonauts 2 for what seems like half my life. A surreal platformer about invading people’s minds from the comedy geniuses at Double Fine, it looks as fun as it is bizarre. That’s out August 25th on Xbox (yay!)

Battlefield looks incredibly intense from that trailer, and there seems to be a huge emphasis on vehicles. I was wondering if they’d go for the slower pace of the classic Battlefield titles, but maybe not...

12 Minutes now, the thriller set inside an apartment room in an infinite 12-minute time loop, published by Annapurna. I played this the other week and it’s one to watch. Out 19th August.

Now time for a look at Battlefield 2042, the evolution of war games from Sweden’s DICE. 128-player battles in a ravaged, post climate-crisis world in which everyone has to periodically run away from tornadoes and sandstorms. I saw this last week and it looked absolutely awesome, to be fair - chaotic, technically unbelievable, tremendously exciting. It’ll also let you play with AI combatants so that you don’t just get shot every 12 seconds by teenagers.

My son has just run into our kitchen, yelled “Jack Sparrow is in Sea of Thieves” and ran out again. That doesn’t happen when I’m actually at E3...

Sega’s Japanese gangster role-playing game Yakuza: Like a Dragon is coming to Xbox - available today, in fact, on Xbox Game Pass.

Oh it’s Sea of Thieves, the increasingly beloved Pirates-of-the-Caribbean inspired swashbuckling multiplayer game by Rare in the UK. And as I typed that, Captain Jack Sparrow literally appeared on-screen. Looks like the game’s getting a Disney collaboration. It’s called A Pirate’s Life, and it’s coming June 22nd.

Something perhaps a bit chiller now, as a stylus descends onto a turntable and we pan out to a workshop that appears to be used for... planning heists? It’s a co-op, open-world game called Contraband and that’s apparently all we’re going to know about it. No release date there.

Now it’s Warner Bros and Turtle Rock’s new zombie survival 4-player co-op shooter Back 4 Blood, which unsurprisingly gives off some real Left 4 Dead energy. It’s got a human vs zombie mode as well, where one player can control the hordes whilst the others try to hold them off. That’s out October 12 this year.

There’s already a LOT of reaction on Twitter to the “Xbox Exclusive” messaging after the Starfield announcement. This was always likely after Microsoft’s purchase of Bethesda. It’s not clear yet whether it’s a timed exclusive though.

We’re seeing some extremely technically impressive scenes from STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl now. Post-apocalyptic shooters now have so many more reflections. An ominously ticking Geiger counter, dimensional anomalies, horrible creatures, harrowed-looking Russian men - all present and correct. That’s out 28 April 2022.

I spent four hours watching various E3 streams last night without much to write home about, to be honest, so I would be very grateful for some fireworks from Microsoft’s show. Given that Sony bowed out of E3 some time ago now, there’s not going to be much competition

Hello and welcome to our live blog of the Microsoft and Bethesda showcase, which should be one of the highlights of this year’s all-virtual E3 video game expo. We’re expecting more footage of Halo Infinite, which will perhaps have had a graphical makeover since 343 Industries debuted in-game footage last June. Forza Horizon 5 might also pop up to confirm or explode rumours that the setting this time is Mexico. Bethesda’s long-awaited RPG Starfield is also high on our wishlist.

After yesterday’s rather muted Ubiforward event, the only way is up?