This year’s E3 kicked off with EA Studios at the Nova conference center in Los Angeles, California with a full line up of reveals and details. Here’s our opinions on everything, along with a quick recap of all that was shown.
Much like previous EA conferences, too much time was spent on the EA Sports segments. We like sports as much as the next person, but very little changes from title to title, and they come out yearly like clockwork. Why not spend more time on titles the vast majority of your fans a passionate about? That being said the trailer depicting Alex Hunter’s rise to fame does seem interesting. I don’t think this is a hook that will bring new gamers into the genre, but its nice that the studio is giving its fans more value.
EA‘s AAA titles did not get as much of a limelight as we were hoping. I for one, was champing at the bit for any more Mass Effect Andromeda details, but all we got was some vague space footage, a few familiar species and a potential female protagonist. All the Star Wars titles were no better off, only showing interview clips of developers of various studios saying they have mystery projects in the works.
The stand out for the EA conference was a small game developer initiative called EA Originals. As far as we can tell its an initiative to invest in small developers to bring us new experiences outside AAA titles. They then brought out a representative for Zoink Studios from Sweden, showing their project called Fe. Fe is hard to describe. Its an interactive adventure where essentially, the entire forest is your ally. They went on to say that they will only set the stage, and you will be completely on your own for the remainder of the experience. EA gave a big portion of their time to talk about Fe and I really respect that. I am excited to see what else comes out from this EA Originals initiative.
Now, to recap everything shown off today…
- Vince Zampella of Respawn Entertainment debuted a new Titanfall 2 multiplayer trailer as well as a Titanfall 2 Campaign trailer depicting a semi sentient Titan A.I. Launches October 28th 2016
- NFL 2017 trailer was shown featuring new in game contest leagues called, Challenger, Premier and EA Major.
- Aryn Flynn of Bioware debuted a Mass Effect Andromeda trailer depicting a potential female protagonist. Mass Effect Andromeda will be powered by the frostbite engine.
- EA is offering 20 plus games free to try for one week only.
- EA is partnering with 5 other companies for a charity challenge with a total 1 million dollar donation
- Fifa recap montage was shown leading up to the Alex Hunter Story trailer.
- Jose Marino of the Manchester United club was there for reasons…
- Aaron Mchardy shows one more Fifa 2017 trailer showing new improvements in game mechanics.
- EA Originals initiative was revealed. This is an initiative to invest in small game developers.
- A new game called Fe from Zoink Studios out of Sweden was revealed. Multiple screen shots and a gameplay trailer was shown.
- Jade Raymond of Motive Studios stated all 3 current Star Wars games are to get fresh new content including some from the new films.
- We are to get an a Star Wars action game from Visceral some time in 2018.
- Respawn Entertainment is exploring a 3rd person action title.
- A short video of various studios currently working on future Star Wars titles.
- Finally, we were teased with a short Battlefield 1 trailer then taken back stage to Jamie Fox and Zack Efron who are going to be playing a live session of Battlefield 1’s multiplayer with community members after the conference has concluded.
All in all, it was a fairly underwhelming conference from one of the titans of the industry. Only one release date was given, too much time was spent on sports, not nearly enough details were given to titles we were needing details for and random celebrities were there for unnecessary reasons. The only stand out was the Alex Hunter Story and the new title, Fe.
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