E3 officially starts on Tuesday, but that won’t stop press conferences over the weekend! EA is kicking off the first conference today, Saturday June 9th, at 11am PST.
EA’s announcements include info on the new Battlefield, EA Sports, Sims 4, and mobile games, as well as Bioware’s new open world exploration multiplayer game, Anthem, where you get to run around kicking ass in a customizable exosuit (find more info on Anthem here).
Here we go!
EA Play’s Preshow had a lot of great information for what was coming up:
Madden Mobile becomes Madden Overdrive. Next gen graphics engine, new physics, and a
Head to Head mode. Score more fantasy points from just about everything that you would normally do (rushing, passing, running, kicking, etc). Lots of action in this Madden game. Captains are a thing now. There’s a strategy element to the game. You can get rewards for doing certain things based on who you choose for your Captain. If you choose a Running Back, rushing yards earn you more points. If you choose a QB, you’ll see more points from passing yards. Each captain opens up a new way to play, so there are lots of ways to run your team. You’ll also see a meter at the bottom of the screen which allows you to fuel things in the game, and you can adjust some game mechanics to slow down the opponent’s point collection for a short while.
In FIFA news, roughly 20M players have been narrowed down to only 32 players. They come from all over the world, and will be coming together this August to compete in the FIFA gaming championship. Winner takes the trophy!
EA announced EA Origins Access streaming service, which is available RIGHT NOW. 100 streamers, 100 games for 100 hours for the fans who couldn’t make it to LA for the E3 event. Head to Twitch.tv/EA and use the hashtag #unlockplay to find the streams. You’ll see some old classics in addition to huge games like Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age.
Sims 4 is releasing a new expansion: Seasons. You’ll get to run from a rain shower, make snow angels, lounge in a kiddy pool under the summer sun while children play in the sprinklers, engage in some spring gardening, and much more out of this new addition to the creative (and destructive, depending on how you game) world of Sims, making things feel more real. Insert overdone “winter is coming” joke. In a life simulation game, weather helps create a more real experience. This also plays really well with the holidays in the game. You can see this rolling out on June 22 of this year.
At the end of the pre-show, an EA recruiter announced that EA is looking for new talent, and even play testers. You’ll find the links below the article.
During the actual conference, we get into a lot of cool trailers and long-awaited nitty gritty details. We started with some pretty cool special effects from Anthem. A monster coming out of the screen and some exosuited players combating it. We then move straight into Battlefield V!
Battlefield 5 will be a multiplayer WWII experience, with the ability to customize your soldiers and weapons, and boasts better destruction mechanics, for those of us who just love to level the playing field — literally. There will be a focus on untold war stories in this game, where you get to see moments of human heroism through the eyes of the people who helped to shape the outcome of the war. There will be more info about it at the XBOX briefing tomorrow. Probably the most exciting news is that there will be no loot boxes, and no premium pass! Less exciting is the addition of a BATTLE ROYALE mode, which was reimagined for Battlefield. It’s a team play experience that you haven’t seen before, and while I’m sick of seemingly every game having a Battle Royale mode, I’m interested to see what they did to tweak it for this game.
Next, they touched on FIFA 19. Champion’s League was showcased as the world’s biggest league joins the world’s game. The trailer captures the epic vision for how the champions league comes to life. Devs used input from community; hands on tests from gamers and FIFA pros giving detailed feedback to create an even more lifelike and engaging experience. As always, there will be big name players, and Champion’s League is an exciting addition, allowing you to take part in the molding the future of your players. It’s the place where champions rise. You’ll also see Tournament mode, and more Ultimate Team features will be announced later in the summer. You’ll get to take your team all the way, this Sept 28.
More awesomeness, before we move on: They just updated the game with a free World Cup experience on all consoles, and released a limited time FIFA 18 World Cup experience FREE TRIAL, available on PC, PS, XBOX. Download and play entire game right now for free!
A new team from Israel joined EA to extend experiences in the Cloud Gaming world. Streaming and subscriptions make it possible to play games anywhere anytime.
The EA Origin Access Tech demo is currently running, streaming games through the cloud straight to your home. Subscriptions started several years ago, and gives full access to a great catalogue of games. Origin Access Premier brings all new PC games, starting with Madden NFL (finally back on PC!), FIFA 19, Battlefield V, Anthem, and many more in the years to come. Members will also have access to the vault’s library of 100 games. This awesome service will be launching later this summer.
A new Star Wars game was announced by Respawn’s Vince Zampella. It will be called Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. You’ll be playing a jedi during the dark times when the jedi being hunted. Between the 3rd and 4th movies. Holiday 2019.
In other Star Wars news, Battlefront II now has a completely overhauled progression system and added character cosmetics. There’s also a Hunt mode, which allows players to play as their favorite indigenous characters. It started with Ewoks on Endor, which was a very popular update to the game (because everyone loves those little furry cannibals). It’s Han Solo season currently, where you play Han Solo as he pilots the Millenium Falcon through missions and various game modes, which are meant to test your piloting skills. There will also be new content coming next week from new movie. You’ll see planet Kessel, the new Extraction mission (available June 12th) and an intro to a new squad system, which makes team ups easier. You’ll also see a new star fighter mode, which focuses dog fighting. Devs are delivering new large scale multiplayer sandbox capture command posts, where you can take out capital ships! Additionally, there will be new heroes, villains, and planets, and they confirmed that the game will be going into Clone Wars during the new update! You’ll be going to Geonosis, which features multiple levels, including largest level ever built for BFII. You’ll also get four new playable characters: General Grievous, Obi-Wan Kenobi (finally making debut in BF!), Count Dooku, and Anakin Skywalker.
A couple indie games were also announced, today!
Unravel Two. Love forms bonds, like strands of yarn. Like yarn, those bonds can be fragile or get all tangled. But when they’re kept and cared for, they can bridge any distance. Yarn symbolizes love and the bonds between two people. In the game, they kinda tear it up at the beginning, making this game seem a little darker, but when things are at their darkest, you find hope. This game is made to be played with two characters. It can be played either solo or co-op, but no matter which version you choose, two characters always sharing one yarn to get through the adventure together.
This game claims to be both friendlier and more challenging than the first, but above all it’ll be more playful. You can pick up and carry other character to get through areas faster, and then split apart, switching back and forth between the two characters for puzzle sections. It looks like a like jump-in-jump-out co-op game, and looks like a lot of fun to play with friends. Even better, it’s available today on XBOX One, PS4, and PC.
Sea of Solitude was the second game, coming from a small developer out of Germany, Jo-Mei.
The concept seems both simple and complicated, as human emotions can be. When humans get lonely, they turn into monsters.
You will see hear and feel this while playing SOS. Nearly every human relates to this feeling. A young woman name Kay suffering from such strong loneliness that the darkness anger hopelessness turns to outside and she becomes a monster. Your goal is to find out why this happened to her and how to turn her human again. It’s a journey into human emotion and looks like it’s going to try and hit us right in the feels. Based on the trailer, it seems to be a puzzle platformer, with an exploration element to it, and will be released early 2019 for XBOX One, PS4, and PC.
Madden 19 will be released for XBOX One, PS4, and PC August 10th, and the graphics are just amazing, thanks to their new engine.
The new Command and Conquer mobile game looks like an absolute blast for fans of strategy games on the go.
This game features very quick, very dramatic, very intense gameplay, where the goal is to destroy the opponent’s base to win. The missile in the middle of the field is charged by taking ownership of the platform in the middle of the two bases. When you have control of the platform, the missile charges up. It takes 2 missiles to destroy enemy base.
Android play goes pre-alpha today, and it’ll be available on ios later this year.
Finally, we finished off with the meat and potatoes of this conference: the long-anticipated Anthem!
A world left unfinished by gods, but the gods left behind massive tools. Tools left in conflict with anthem of creation. Chaos of those things being pressed against each other leaves the world reacting in volatile ways like the huge, world-changing shaper storms. The game that would change every time you came back and played it isn’t an MMO, but is instead something new and different. It looks to be an incredible hybrid of single player story and multiplayer online gaming. In this, the devs refer to it as “our world, my story.” It’s a living, shared world. There’s weather, night time, etc, and it’s all experienced together. Everyone playing sees the same thing. Once you finish your mission, you come back to a base and this is a single player experience. Turn in rewards, talk to characters, deal with consequences of actions. This is where the game lives and breathes.
Anthem tries to solve the community’s requests with games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, where they want to continue playing the world after the game ends. Devs can keep adding content. Along with the several options for Javelin exosuits, you can customizE gear, weapons, get paint jobs, or even change geometry of suit itself. As far as in-game microtransactions, there will be vanity items that you purchase, but they’re not a loot box or paying for power. You know what it is when you buy it, and it’s purely cosmetic. This game focuses on immersive experiences, and even though it seems very team-based, it claims to be solo-friendly as well. I’m just hoping it doesn’t go the way of Destiny, where you’re forced to play with a team or die.
You can try it out Feb 22nd 2019 XBOX One, PS4, and PC.
All-in-all, this seemed to be a very enlightening, very exciting EA announcement, and I’m excited to see how they turn out!
EA’s recruitment links:
EA.com/careers
EA.com/playtesting
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