Titanfall 2, Battlefield 1, Mass Effect Andromeda, and other exciting games were released at E3’s press conference this past week. Here are the top 5 most exciting we learned from EA’s E3 press conference.
8) EA Didn’t Technically Hold an E3 Press Conference
One interesting development is that EA didn’t specifically hold a press conference at E3 this year. Instead, they made their own event called EA Play, where they didn’t participate in E3 but held a fan and press event at the nearby Novo Theater (and simultaneously livestreamed an event in London).
So if you were in the Novo Theater in Los Angeles, you only saw half the event. The other half was livestreamed in from the UK. That’s different.
Anyways, let’s get to the exciting gamine news.
7) Titanfall 2 Announced
Titanfall 2’s release was leaked a few hours before EA’s press conference, when the trailer went live. This may have been intentional by EA. Who knows?
In any case, Titanfall 2 looks impressive. It comes with the same wall-running, sliding, and enhanced mobility we saw in the first Titanfall. Key improvements include six new Titans to command as well as new grappling hooks.
Another major change is the addition of a singleplayer mode. Yes, it’s a real singleplayer campaign and not just a collection of multiplayer maps with weird voiceovers.
Titanfall was famous for generating a huge splash and then having its user base largely disappear. Will Titanfall 2 encourage people to stick around? We’ll have to wait until October 28 to find out.
6) New Sports Games and E-Sports News
The biggest EA Sports news is that FIFA 17 is adding the Frostbite engine in the form of a new mode called The Journey. Just like similar modes in other sports titles, you get to play a dude who’s making his way up to the major leagues. You start off as the Premier League’s next rising star, Alex Hunter, while playing for any Premier League Club.
Madden NFL 2017 was announced for PS4 and Xbox One. So yeah, it’s probably not coming to PC.
NHL 17, meanwhile, will release on the Xbox One and PS4 this fall. The trailer for that game, however, will not be released until June 22 at the NHL Awards (EA recently answered questions about the game here).
Contact sports weren’t the only sports making a splash at EA’s conference. EA is also making a big push into e-sports, focusing on tournaments for its flagship titles. The new tournament system includes Challenger tourneys (hosted and run by fans), Premier tourneys (higher-profile, EA and partner-hosted tourneys), and EA Major tourneys (marquee events featuring competitors from around the world). It’s a bold approach to one of the fastest growing competitions in the world.
5) Mass Effect Andromeda
Andromeda has been teased to us with behind-the-scenes trailers for years. At E3, everyone expected to see some real Mass Effect Andromeda in-game footage. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, as we got a lot of peeks at Maya windows and motion capture setups.
Yes, we saw a few teasers of the game between all the non in-game footage. We also get a shot of what may be the protagonist at the end.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the announcement, however, was BioWare stating that they’re going to give players “more freedom than we’ve ever given players in a BioWare game.”
Andromeda is under a year away: it’s scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2017. So you should be able to see more footage very soon.
4) EA Play to Give
EA doesn’t have the best reputation as a company. Play to Give is one way they’re trying to change that. EA has placed new achievements into certain multiplayer titles (like Battlefield 4 and Star Wars Battlefront, among others) that reward players for helping teammates.
In return for earning these achievements, EA will donate a million dollars to various charities at the end of the week.
3) EA Originals
EA Originals is EA’s platform that seeks to encourage small indie game developers to continue making great titles. EA helps indie developers with funding and marketing – just like it has always done in some form or another. The main difference is that this relationship is now codified in the EA Originals program, and all profit goes back to the developers.
EA showed off the potential of this program by showcasing a platformer, open-world style game involving a fox:
2) New Star Wars Games
EA owns the license for Star Wars games, and they’re not going to let that license go to waste. EA confirmed that a new Battlefront game would be coming in 2017 – something we all pretty much expected.
What we didn’t expect was that Respawn and Visceral are also working on their own Star Wars titles. We received scant details about these projects, but it appears that Respawn’s game will operate in a different part of the Star Wars canon – which opens up some exciting, KOTOR-like possibilities.
1) Battlefield 1
Battlefield 1 is EA’s most-hyped game of the year. EA ended their press conference with a bang, showing off Battlefield 1 in some of its glory. Although EA claimed the footage was recorded in-game, it was definitely a CG-heavy trailer similar to what we saw in the first announcement trailer.
The most exciting thing in the above trailer is that we saw you can fly and shoot down airships / zeppelins in the game. Your teammates need to band together to take down these behemoths. It looks cool.
