EA Experience 2016 

Pre-E3 Pre Amble.

Not technically going with a conference this year, EA is hosting EA Play Events in Los Angeles and London, but also broadcasting their new trailers in a timed message around about the same moment.

So nothing really changed then for the majority of the audience watching at home.

We’ve been promised the first gameplay of Battlefield 1 with all of its trench rot/biplane/Harlem hell fighter goodness.

Titanfall 2 should be being properly unveiled today. And if I don’t see the mechs with swords that the teaser promised, I shall riot.

FIFA 17 has been confirmed as switching to the frostbite engine, so first gameplay of that should be on show. Hopefully Pele doesn’t have to talk about it.

After spending most of last year’s conference hyping Battlefront, I would be genuinely surprised if they don’t have more Star Wars on show here. Maybe Amy Hennig’s Game being teased?

Mass Effect Andromeda is delayed till next year I think, but maybe they’ll show us something to keep our hopes up.

And can we have some more small things please? We all know that the Unravel guy was the most charming part of E3 last year. More of that earnestness please

Anyway, stream is at 9pm UK time, so I shall watch intently and report back.

 

AND E3 2016 Begins properly.  After an 8 minute delay, we get Andrew Wilson on stage, talking about this new type of show, an hour long taste of lots of games. The point of these EA Play events is to allow content creators to provide feedback for their own games. And Peter Moore decided to join the stream from London, so we now have a stream in a stream. This is apparently new too.

Running order is as follows

Future of Star Wars

Mass Effect Andromeda

EA Sports Story/Competition

TitanFall

BF1 And then post show will be a 64 player match on livestreams.

And then we’re gonna just switch this all around and ignore that running order. Probably because of the Titanfall 2 Leaks.

Vince Zampella takes the stage, to talk about Titanfall 2, PS4 players get to play this time around, no exclusivity deal.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ISYN1AshZY&w=560&h=315]

Multiplayer, Much more open natural looking maps, Teleporting players, Gravity grenades, sensors, grappling hooks, much more brutal titan takedowns.
Movement somehow looks even more fluid, including sliding. Ends on Two pilots ejecting and one being grappling hook kicked. Neat.

AND BEAM WEAPONS. I like Beam Weapons.

6 New Titans, More Customization, and Progression systems

Technical test, Sign up at Titanfall.com

Acknowledgement of the Single Player leak, offline Singleplayer campaign, with focus on link between titan and pilot. They’re fire tested battle buddies, rather than machine and user. I LOVE THIS IDEA.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwbutTQ8Yow&w=560&h=315]

Release is Oct 28th

OOH Titans can talk, and emote, and . And appears to be voiced by OPTIMUS PRIME.

Single players gonna have those beasts from the background of the first game in it too. Titans have a list of Assimov style programmes.
“Protect the Pilot” is a great line.
YEAH SWORDS THAT CAN CUT TITANS IN HALF AND BLOCK BULLETS. That’s what I wanted. Literally that.

Yep. Singleplayer Titanfall is exactly what I think the game needed. Maybe this will actually give the multiplayer community a chance to develop. Rather than fade in under six months.

And now for Madden, for some reason being broadcast from London.

New Commentary team, and New Franchise mode

Plus three new game series.
Challenger, User hosted and created events
EA Major Live, Global Sports events

This is very much geared around ESports planning.

Now we’re gonna have two madden champions appear on steam.  And the 8 best Madden Players are now on stage, and will be competing later in the weekend

Peter Moore announces a Championship series with a 1m Dollar prize pot. Four Majors to compete in.

Bioware’s General Manager, Aaron Flynn, appears wearing an N7 Shirt.

Talking about the core of Andromeda, “How Far will we go?”

This time, Humanity is the Aliens.
Bigger Adventure, With more freedom than ever in a Bioware game.
And all built in the Frostbite Engine. Fall for actual info, time for a behind the scenes look for now.

OOH The new Ship, the tempest looks pretty, bigger and sleeker Normandy. Game looks Gorgeous, gameplay seeming very Mass Effect 3. Jet pack, Mako, all on show.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2vgHOXeps0&w=560&h=315]

Canon ship captain appears to be a woman this time. Excellent. This is positive. Not a whole lot on offer that we don’t know

And now time to talk about Content Updates. So DLC, Free trials.

Play to Give announced, new programme, in game challenges to donate to charities.
Partnered with five different charities. Battlefield games are for instance, having a challenge to help other players. EA will donate when players succeed.
This is fine. Lovely idea.

And now back to London for a bit of footy.

FIFA 17 with some football jokes about the Euros. Time for Fifa on Frostbite.

Okay, Starting with showing Fifa through the years is a good idea, along with the EA Sports, Its in the game” Guy.

And Now an Actor who is playing “Alex Hunter” is going to show us the player character in the FIFA single player campaign.  Looks kinda like NBA 2k16’s Story mode. Including the dramatic stuff going on as well. October release Date.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9LHzVEPodg&w=560&h=315]

Fifa 17 “The Journey”

Reminder flashes up that theres only five minutes till new star wars.

Premier League managers are now modelled in the game. And while Peter Moore talks up Jurgen Klopp, Jose Mourinho turns up on stage and glares. This is kinda hilarious. He seems like he barely wants to be here. Peter Moore tries to make jokes and enquires about Jose’s son, Jose wants none of this.

Fifa 17 watch continues with Aaron McHardy, producer.  All about giving more control to the player on the pitch.

Set Pieces are rewritten.

Physical Play is overhauled.

New Active Intelligence system.

New Attacking Techniques.
The above are the four pillars of how the game will be improved.

Patrick Soberlund, talking about how we were all surprised by Unravel. And how much we all loved him. So EA seems to have learned from this, and wants to announce EA Originals

About Taking first time experiences and bringing them to world

Supporting small developers and making the most of their games

Funding and offering a level of security to developers for new games. Profit goes back to the Indies

First EA Originals game is called, Fe.

Look, its year’s model of adorable nervous indie.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1tin-oga7c&w=560&h=315]

Game without words, about wanting to be connected to nature. Language of strange and beautiful music that connects all the gameplay features. Learn songs, reach new areas.
The enemies use silence. That’s charming. Game won’t tell you what to do, player defines what the game does.
Third Person Platformer, Seems open world, music allows you to work with other creatures. Like flying manta rays.
Really pleasant, crystalline design for everything here.

AND THE JOHN WILLIAMS THEME STRIKES. STAR WARS TIME.
Jade Raymond takes the stage.
Old Republic, Galaxy of Heroes, Battlefront. All of the games are getting Content all year

New Battlefront in 2017 , with Dice and Motive developing with new content from the new films

Visceral and Amy Hennig are releasing in 2018 with new characters,

More is planned beyond that, with one gfame by Respawn in a third person action adventure game in a new era. So maybe a Jedi Outcast style side story? We can hope.

EA is trying to reach all the fans, in every area. So at Dice we are seeing VR use and the Bespin sets on screens.

Motive had footage of starship interiors. So SPACE FIGHTS ARE BACK

Respawn is mocapping lightsabre fights. GREAT.

Capital games show the way they want to add literally everything to their games in story terms to Galaxy of Heroes on mobile. Prequels, Original, New trilogy characters all together.

Bioware are working on more content for Old Republic

Visceral are showing a beautiful third person game set in the new trilogy.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrIEW7woFFo&w=560&h=315]
Battlefield 1 time

Teaser for a trailer we will see shortly. WHY?

So the plan is for the community to be part of this game from the get go. Jamie Foxx and Zac Efron are leading Battlefield teams in a livestream.
Frostbite means Dynamic Destruction, Dynamic Weather, So rain and fog and sun. Adapts the audio and visuals for gameplay. And introduction of Behemoths. Like Airships, Battleships and Armoured trains. So kinda like Titans in 2142? That sounds like an awesome development.

Beta in the summer

Trailer before the livestream Shows tanks, air combat, trench fights and bayonets, Artillery emplacements.

Oh wow. The Air Ship going down on the French town is incredible. Hopefully natural and not levolution.

Trailer ends on horseriders attacking an armoured train.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pY3hlQEOc0&w=560&h=315]

And that’s us. Back to London for Peter Moore to finish. Nope, Back to Andrew House.

And now for the live stream. Which has not started as of publishing. Though I did just see Terry Crews evangelise about the merits of Mouse and Keyboard over Controllers. So that was excellent.
Right. So we have one new game announced I guess? Which is fine. We kinda knew what was coming for this one.
EA starts things kinda generically then. Nothing particularly special, but nothing particularly awful either. Good sort of baseline for the show weekend I think.