E3 2016 live shows: Bethesda preview

Corvo's comeback: Dishonored 2 sees the return of supernaturally enhanced bodyguard Corvo.

Home of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises, Bethesda delivered its first ever Electronic Entertainment Expo keynote in 2015. This year, it's back, but with what?

Two titles suggest themselves as certainties thanks to Bethesda's own news blog activity and release calendar schedule, ahead of a live show which starts 7pm PDT on June 12 (2am UTC the next morning) – youtube.com/BethesdaSoftworks and twitch.tv/bethesda will carry official streams.

Parent company ZeniMax Media houses not only Bethesda of Fallout 4 and Skyrim fame, but also Arkane Studios (Dishonored) BattleCry Studios (BattleCry), Id Software (Doom) MachineGames (Wolfenstein: The New Order) Tango Gameworks (The Evil Within) and ZeniMax Online Studios (The Elder Scrolls Online.)

Of those, Arkane has Dishonored 2 (Nov 2016) set to follow up on an acclaimed predecessor; it sees the return of supernaturally enhanced bodyguard Corvo and his charge Empress Emily Kaldwin from the first game, but this time both are available as playable characters, leaping about within a sumptuously stylised quasi-Edwardian realm.

And Bethesda Softworks itself is publishing digital card game The Elder Scrolls: Legends (TBA 2016) entering the same genre that Blizzard's Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft currently occupies, with the project increasingly present among the Bethblog's news posts.

Elsewhere, free action game BattleCry has also been announced for release in 2016, though the significant and recent success of Overwatch, another Blizzard launch, might have prompted adjustments.

MachineGames released solid shooter Wolfenstein: The New Order and its standalone prequel Wolfenstein: The Old Blood in 2014 and 2015 respectively, while Tango Gameworks had survival horror The Evil Within in 2014 and two expansions that took it into 2015; both have kept quiet about their current project since and are likely to pop up during Bethesda's presentation.

As for Id Software, though the new Doom is already in the wild, three expansion packs have been slated and, during Bethesda's pre-E3 conference, could help sustain interest in the May release.

Similarly, there's an opportunity to flesh out the continuing DLC and user-made mod programs for Fallout 4 and, if Bethesda holds off announcing a next Elder Scrolls game after 2013's Skyrim proved so definitive (and considering how 2015's salvo of relatively late Fallout 4 announcements went down so well), there's always Dark Brotherhood, the latest expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online. —  AFP Relaxnews