It’s that time of year again, when E3 takes centre stage for all gamers around the world. First up for their conference this year is EA. And they technically aren’t even at E3. This is a new event called EA Play which took part in two places at the same time – Los Angeles and London. But from the vantage point of my living room, this was a conference like any other year. You’d expect EA to pull out all the stops to make their first solo event massive and memorable, it’s strange then that I felt fairly underwhelmed by the end of it. There were plenty of games here, however it all seems to just add a bit more meat to things we already knew about. Good things no doubt, but something new and surprising is always welcome. Anyway, enough talking from me, let’s take a look at what they showed.
Titanfall 2
Titanfall opened the show. Showing both single player (wooo!) and multiplayer trailers. A proper campaign mode was one thing that fans clamoured for after the first Titanfall, and Respawn have answered those requests. As a militia rifleman you form a bond with a Titan as you both try to survive behind enemy lines, against overwhelming odds. It looks like this will explore the relationship between human and machine.
The multiplayer looked absolutely superb. Building on the fantastic gameplay of the first game, introducing 6 new Titan’s, along with new power ups, a grappling hook, an in depth progression system and all the usual multiplayer stuff. The fluidity of the movement from wall running, jumping, and using the new zip line type device along with an arsenal of different weapons and melee moves could see Titanfall really be a hit. It is being released on October 28th though, which is only 7 days after Battlefield 1. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how it fares.
Madden NFL 17
This is a game I have literally no knowledge or interest in. There was a surprising amount of time dedicated to it, focussing on new competitive modes that will also be introduced across other EA titles.
Mass Effect Andromeda
I was so looking forward to this reveal. I had huge expectations on what they were going to show, maybe a story trailer, or even some gameplay. What we actually got was essentially a huge tease. A sneak peek at the creation of the game, in which we saw some new characters, enemies, environments and ships but nothing of any real substance. It looks like an extremely ambitious game, and one that looks beautiful. There will be a heavy emphasis on exploration with the claim that it will allow players the most freedom of any Bioware game to date. It looks fantastic, but this was not what I wanted from this section of the show.
We had a small interlude section between games, where we were told that EA Access would be free all week on both Xbox One and PC. And that EA were bringing a new initiative called Play to Give, which involves completing challenges on games in order to help towards charitable donations. I’m not totally clear on how this works, but there are 5 different charities involved, and it’s always good to see big companies like EA show their charitable side.
FIFA 17
The Journey trailer that had been leaked earlier in the day was the main focus of this part of the conference, coupled with a cheesy actor on stage. This focusses on the new career where you will be living in the world off the pitch, with the personalities that brings with it.
Following The Journey, Jose Mourinho came onto the stage to coincide with the reveal that all 20 managed from the Premier League will be in the game this year. There was also the usual spiel about what they’ve improved upon this year. This time they’ve worked on set pieces, the physical side of the game, a new active intelligence system and attacking techniques. Without any actual gameplay footage it is difficult to know how any of this will actually work.
EA Originals
Patrick Soderland came to the stage to introduce EA Originals. A new venture where EA will be supporting small developers and helping them with the publishing of their unique games. EA Originals will be looking to release a few titles each year and will also endure that all profits go back to the developers. The first game released under this banner with be Fe, where you control a creature and explore your relationship with nature, the world and other creatures. There is no dialogue in the game, but there is communication through sound and music. Check out the trailer for this very original looking game below.
Star Wars
Yea another section of the conference that disappointed. A tease of where Star Wars is going with EA, and a list of all the studios working on games hasn’t really helped in knowing what each game is. We do know that a new Battlefront is coming in 2017, and the Visceral action adventure (which looks gorgeous based on the 3 second snippet) will be with us in 2018. It would seem that Respawn’s third person action adventure Star Wars games will include lightsabre battles, and there was a massive tease from Bioware with the comment ‘there are stories outside the Old Republic we want to tell’ (or something to that degree). So there was no new Star Wars IP properly revealed, just a confirmation that they are being working on….great.
Battlefield 1
To finish the conference, EA turned to the heavy hitter – Battlefield. Most already know what it’s all about now, set in World War 1, it still features everything you’d expect from a Battlefield game. The new story trailer looks great, and the brief clips of what is hopefully in game footage looked mind blowing. It looks like they are bringing the same techniques used to make Star Wars Battlefront look so good, over to the WW1 setting. And that is very exciting.