E3 2017 - EA

14 June 2017

It seems to be a reoccurring trend with E3 starting earlier every year. In 2017, EA was first once again but with its own separate event called "EA Play", held on the Saturday before E3 week at midday Pacific Time. They started by reminiscing about Battlefield 1 with a bunch of highlight clips from various streamers, and eventually revealed new DLC for the game.

Next was the annual sports game announcements. Christiano Ronaldo is rightfully alone on the cover of FIFA 18, and there was plenty of footage of him in a mocap suit, with EA boldly claiming "Fuelled by the data of Ronaldo". The story of Alex Hunter also continues for a second season after his single player story "The Journey" was well received in FIFA 17.

Then it was time for the biggest fail of the show, and in fact all of E3 - just like last year - making it three years in a row at EA! Some famous YouTuber was announcing the gameplay reveal for Need for Speed Payback. Except his autoprompter was clearly not working. Resulting in the biggest pause ever after every two words. Remarkably, he was receiving some sympathy from Twitter, but I must disagree. If you were excited and passionate about this new Need for Speed, I think you could remember the few sentences you are given to introduce the game. Plus he no doubt livestreams to thousands of subscribers, so is used to being live on camera. It was so awkward and in the end someone from EA had to help him out.

Anyway, Need for Speed Payback itself looks like a blast. The gameplay trailer was very cool, clearly inspired by the Fast & Furious movies with Burnout-style takedowns. I do wonder just how much of the action will be handled by cutscenes though, plus I'd like to see how damage is implemented, and how/if it affects your driving. The good news is developer Ghost Games have already learnt from the previous game, by adding a day/night cycle and removing the 'always online' component.

Next up was a surprise from EA. They've featured an indie title for the past two years, and this year was no different. A Way Out is a splitscreen co-op only prison break game by the same team who developed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Brothers was an excellent unique single player game where you control two characters with individual thumbsticks. A Way Out is proving to introduce a new unique mechanic due to its co-op only gameplay.

As you and your partner will not be together throughout the game, there are moments when one player will trigger a cutscene and the other player continues playing in a slightly less than half share of the screen. I was immediately impressed when seeing this feature. It will be intriguing to see if this game takes any cues from Shawshank Redemption or Prison Break. The two protagonists also reminded me of Nathan and Sam Drake from Uncharted 4, who funnily enough were also escaping a prison.

Then we saw a teaser trailer for the new IP from BioWare called Anthem. It only showed a glimpse into a hostile world with a shot of some cool looking armour. But the key takeaway here was that more would be revealed at the Xbox conference. It seems Microsoft have finally managed to convince a third party triple-A game to sign with their console first.

Lastly, what most people were waiting for, Star Wars Battlefront II. And before a trailer was shown, a horde of stormtroopers entered the stage, along with Janina Gavankar. She looked amazing in a badass empire-styled dress and turns out to be a great presenter too. She is playing the lead role of Inferno Squad Commander Iden Versio in the new single player story, and introduced the multiplayer gameplay trailer below.

As with all EA DICE games, the destruction and chaos in their multiplayer is pretty much unrivalled at this point. I love the vast range of playable characters and droids in this game, including the iconic heroes and villains from all three eras of Star Wars. Janina also announced on stage that all additional content (heroes, maps, weapons and vehicles) will be free to everyone that owns Battlefront II. This is a fantastic move from EA with no season pass for the game, and follows the super successful model of Overwatch.