Close to the Metal Ep. 46: A PC perspective on E3 2017

By Brad Bourque June 19, 2017

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All eyes fall on Los Angeles every summer for E3, a week of video game announcements, huge press conferences, and sprawling expo halls. We sent down a full squad of writers to cover every inch of the show — or as much as we could — including the hosts of the Close to the Metal podcast. There was plenty to see and too many games to play, but we did manage to find a few computers stashed among the Xbox Ones and Playstation 4s.

For the third year, E3 played host to the PC Gaming show, a smaller press conference exclusively for announcements from developers working on PC titles. Games like Sea of Thieves and Killing Floor 2 made an appearance, but one of the biggest announcements came from the team behind Lone Echo. Not only did the developers announce a July 20th release date for the zero gravity story game, but also announced the multiplayer side of the game, Echo Arena, would be free for a limited time. Intel sponsored the giveaway, with the hopes of it becoming a true VR esport.

We also got the chance to play Bungie’s hotly-anticipated Destiny 2, which is finally making its way over to PC in the fall. Running at a buttery smooth 60 frames per second at 4K, the game is absolutely stunning, and we’ve got the gameplay video to prove it.

Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the Xbox One X. Promising true 4K gaming at $500 is no easy feat, and it gives gaming computers a lot more room to fight back. We’ll get under the hood on Microsoft’s latest console, and ask whether people really have the resolution to support it.

Close to the Metal is a podcast from Digital Trends that takes a deep dive into computing and PC gaming topics. Each show, we’ll focus in on one topic, and leave no stone unturned as we show off the latest in hardware and software. Whether it’s the latest GPU, supercomputers, or which 2-in-1 you should buy, we break down the complicated jargon and talk about how user experience is affected in the real world. Please subscribe, share, and send your questions to podcast@digitaltrends.com. We broadcast the show live on YouTube every Tuesday at 1pm EST/10am PST.

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Brad Bourque is a native Portlander, devout nerd, and craft beer enthusiast. He studied creative writing at Willamette…

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