You're reading Reaction Time, a weekly column that claims to examine recent events, games and trends in the industry, but is really just looking for an excuse to use the word "zeitgeist." It debuts on Fridays in Engadget's digital magazine, Distro.
E3 is always on the verge of devolving into a chaotic, inescapable din of competing mega-screens and marketing megaphones yelling over each other. Everyone is selling their own piece of the future. That's why, whether intentional or not, this year's show felt weirdly and stubbornly on message, as if a tacit agreement between every manufacturer and publisher ensured that nobody would step out of the here-and-now. If a gnawing absence of surprise and excitement pervaded the show, it's because everything we saw and discussed is expected to come out within the next twelve months.

Ubisoft was willing to venture much further into the future, surprising attendees of its own press conference with a snippet of Watch Dogs, a game that seemed too good to be true amongst E3's barrage of solid sequels. Here was a new intellectual property, with a serious and topical premise, and graphics too sophisticated to be running on a console from 2005. It's okay to talk about the next generation, apparently, as long as you don't explicitly call it that.