Commander Keen is a classic side-scrolling adventure series that began nearly three decades ago, first as an episodic series, then as a full release in 1990 on PC from developer id Software. Now, it's coming back as yet another free-to-play mobile game from Bethesda which killed any potential hype for it.
Bethesda made a few odd choices during their E3 2019 presentation, the first being having employees (or someone on their side) scream-cheering every possible game title and bit of news, including the awkward stuff surrounding Fallout 76 and the weirdly large amount of focus spent on mobile titles. They weren't reading the room or online reaction.
The Elder Scrolls: Blades for instance has been lambasted for basically being pay-to-win and everything that's wrong with free-to-play games, so what does Bethesda do? More of that. They announced another mobile Elder Scrolls title in The Elder Scrolls: Legends, a mobile digital card game which we can place bets on being pay-to-win. And then there's Commander Keen, which has equally disastrous like-to-dislike ratio on YouTube, and negativity flooding social media.
Commander Keen Gameplay Trailer
Even Tom Hall, one of the original creators of Commander Keen, was disappointed.
This focus on the free-to-play dilution of Bethesda brands into disappointing mobile games is not helping the company's reputation, especially in the wake of Fallout 76 which they tried to play off by continually thanking fans and begging them to come back. They do make money though on mobile though, so expect more of this from Bethesda. It's just a weird thing to see at E3, and to see everyone dancing around the issues and reactions to these titles.
RIP Commander Keen.
Sources: Bethesda