E3 from my couch: EA

EA started off promising, a video with DICE talking about Star Wars. But then you realized all they were doing was talking about the process of working on a Star Wars game and only had some conceptual artwork to show. You were left hoping that they would actually have something to show in Spring 2015 when they are promising to get more info out there. A Dragon Age Inquisition trailer came with a live cello performance. A man stood on stage and talked about the two different types of combat, a small amount of gameplay was shown for the 3^rd person action version of gameplay, while there was just a static shot of what the overhead paused combat where you can order your team around and set up attacks. Overall it was a much more underwhelming presence than the demo at the Microsoft conference. You wonder why they wouldn’t have come up with more for their own press conference, especially with what came after it.

Next was a storytelling trailer with Bioware. They mentioned Mass Effect 4 and a new IP, no name given, with only some concept art to go along with each. The Sims 4 had a fairly sizeable chunk of time which they devoted to Sims now having real personalities that will have more interesting interactions with each other. The Sims are smarter and will have a greater impact on the world. You will be able to share your Sims characters, houses, and other things you have designed online with others.

The EA Sports began with a trailer and gameplay video of EA Sports UFC very focused on Bruce Lee and how he has inspired the UFC and some of the fighters. Kinda weird that Lee is in the game, seeing as he was dead a long time before the UFC was created. NHL 15 is coming to Xbox One and PS4. They did the standard ‘everything is better this year than last year, and we think it will change the game entirely’. PGA Tour 15 is using FrostBite 3 engine this year. In addition to bringing you the normal golf experience they are introducing extreme fantasy courses. In the trailer there was a battleship crashing into the beach while a golfer drove the ball over it onto the green. It kinda seemed desperate and like they were trying to expand their audience to the more arcade style golf fans, but I assume the game plays the same on either type of course so the extreme courses would seem out of place. Madden 15 is focusing on… you guessed it, defense this year. They have once again overhauled the defensive system to allow you to feel like you are making a bigger difference on defense. It seems like they say the same thing every year, if you’re really into Madden I’m sure this year’s version will be just what you are looking for. In Fifa 15 they said “the players now have memories.” That seemed like a weird point to make, but I guess it means that what happens in a game will have an impact until the end in the sense that players will be effected when they mess up and it really effects their team.

Criterion came out and showed some very very early conceptual footage about their next game. They are going to focus on more than cars this time around, including helicopters, atvs, boats, and more. They mentioned something about being inspired by the gopro videos of people doing extreme sports on youtube. I’m interested to see what they have to say later on. The MOBA Dawngate was shown, it’s made by MOBA players for MOBA players. I wonder if there is any space for any real MOBA aside from DOTA and League of Legends at this point. Mirror’s Edge 2 didn’t show much, but looks like it is more Mirror’s Edge. They finished with talk about Battlefield Hardline, the game pitting cops against robbers as opposed to terrorist vs the US military. A brief mention was made about Visceral (the Dead Space guys) working on a single player story while the main attraction was obviously the multiplayer. A 32 player match was played where the robbers were trying to steal the contents of an armored truck.

Overall I thought this conference was very underwhelming, boring, and pretty much unnecessary. Most big things were very conceptual with not much to be shown or talked about and just seemed like filler because there was nothing else to show since almost everything comes out next year. Even the stuff they did show didn’t do anything for me. I’m sure Dragon Age is going to be good, but the showing at Microsoft was much better, I’m not really interested in any of the EA Sports stuff, and I think Battlefield looked boring and not like a $60 game.