EA’s E3 Conference: My Reaction

by Illusivebroker on Jun 9th, 2014

Electronic Arts are a very well known company, maybe their well established status among the gaming community isn’t on the best of terms considering their past few years. Yet EA seem to be eager to imply they’re changing the way they roll for the better; although I personally haven’t seen enough to believe that.

So if you are a gamer then you will know today (9/6/2014) was the beginning of E3, The Electronic Entertainment Expo’s first day is where all the major companies go to make their conferences and reveal their plans for the following years. I’m here to give my general reaction and opinion on EA’s conference itself.

The conference started off strong with a small look at the work that the developers at DICE were doing on the highly anticipated Star Wars: Battlefront. The footage was promising, it showcased the developers as they narrated their ambition and gratitude for the Star Wars license. The footage showed the devs examining the past films props and settings as well as showing some pre-alpha footage of the game itself. It then finished with a reveal of a Spring 2015 release. All in all from what little was shown it’s quelled any fears I had about an EA developer taking hold of a very renown franchise.

After we got a extended look at the settings and environments of Dragon Age: Inquisition with a rather excellent violinist playing the theme of the game on the stage. It was rather impressive on any account, it’s well known Bioware are brilliant storytellers and if the locations and settings shown in the preview are anything to go by then the game is bound to be beautiful to play on next-gen consoles. There was a showcase of the different types of gameplay you can work with on the game, one being a full action based interaction and the other where you can play top down strategic viewpoint. Dragon Age: Inquisition has me rather excited and if the footage shows anything then the scope for this game is going to be big.

After Dragon Age was finished being shown we got another developer look at Bioware and the IP’s they’re working on. Unfortunately not much footage was shown on the next Mass Effect title that they were working on, but for what was said about taking on a much different direction with the series as well as showing some pre-alpha footage of the game during the video. As well as that they showed a few bits from an unknown IP they were working on too. It looks promising indeed but there’s just not enough to comment on at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VahXsFfidEw

Sims 4 looked good, although it’s not something I’m overly excited for. The footage showed the ambition the developers had for making Sims a lot more interesting with their personalities and interactions with the environments and other Sims and with a huge online library in which users can share Sims and other stuff between each other it’s looking to be a very connected experience.

The rest of the conference was hit or miss really, with EA having a heavy focus on creating sports related games the rest of the conference went on to revealing all the annual sports games that EA was required to release in the year. It was good if your into those sorts of games but unfortunately I wasn’t so it didn’t appeal to me.

The conference ended with both Mirrors Edge 2 being shown and a gameplay demo for Battlefield Hardline with a surprise reveal that the beta was online straight away but it was first come first serve. If there’s any issue I had to imply with the games EA had on show, it was that most of the footage they had on show, was rather….unfinished. These games are mostly in pre-alpha and prototype stages and it’s unfortunatly underwhelming as it shows that these games are far from done and we’ll be waiting till next E3 to at least get a cinematic trailer for them.

It was good, not bad nor was it excellent but it was average for what it offered us.

 

Categories: Features