Nightmarish surroundings. Those looking for the “pure” Dead Rising experience will have the option of tackling Nightmare Mode, which instates the familiar time constraints and limits saving to inside the game’s bathrooms. The city is still filled with all manner of quests, sidequests, and other distractions to keep Nick busy, though Capcom confirms that time is not the factor that it was in previous games. New city, new survivor. The new protagonist in Dead Rising 3 is Nick Ramos, a pre-outbreak mechanic who must bludgeon, carve, and shoot his way through the city of Los Perdidos – “the lost,” translated from Spanish – for reasons that are currently unclear. We spent some time staring at a different section of the game behind closed doors at Microsoft’s show booth, and while the stylistic changes might not please every fan, it quickly becomes clear that the soul of Dead Rising is still very much intact. The debut revealed a grittier take on the once-cartoony series, with many of the core ideas carried into a world that feels more desperate and more dangerous.

Microsoft let loose with a big surprise at its E3 2013 press conference: Capcom Vancouver’s freshly announced Dead Rising 3 is an Xbox One exclusive.