At its E3 press conference, Electronic Arts said it would give us not just a rundown of what games it plans to produce this year, but a look at the future. The far, far future.
Kicking off the show at the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, CEO Andrew Wilson promised “raw prototypes of what’s to come over the next few years” and “thoughtful reflections on what’s inspiring the future” of videogames.
Things began with a love letter to Star Wars fandom, courtesy of the DICE studio in Sweden. Electronic Arts has the exclusive right to create hardcore console Star Wars games, and it’s starting with Star Wars Battlefront from DICE. The studio studied the original props and models from Star Wars films and even journeyed to the locations where Star Wars films were shot to produce a highly faithful next-gen rendering of the galaxy far, far away. Only early footage of the in-game engine was shown, and we were told not to expect any more news until next spring.
BioWare, after showing its soon-to-come RPG Dragon Age: Inquisition, was the next to show “conceptual prototypes” of the new game in the Mass Effect series as well as a wholly new game franchise that it is building. But it didn’t discuss anything concrete about those games.
“We don’t typically show things this early, but let’s be clear — this is early,” said Patrick Soderlund, EVP of EA Studios, introducing a new game in development from Criterion, makers of the racing series Burnout. “And let’s be honest, there’s no way we could keep this a secret anyway.” It’ll be a first-person game with helicopters, motorcycles, skydiving — not just cars. But it’s doesn’t have a title or anything more than very early prototype footage.
Even Mirror’s Edge, the long-awaited follow-up to the first-person parkour game that came out a few years ago and that was announced at last year’s E3 show, was only shown here in the form of a bare-bones “conceptual prototype” — basic building-block type levels, miles away from a full-on game design — and therefore probably quite far away from release. Sorry to anyone who’s been hoping to play it before they die.
Why all the early looks at the future? Probably because without them, Electronic Arts’ lineup would look hopelessly mundane and predictable. The Sims! Madden! UFC! Golf! (As to that last one, in a particularly hilarious bit of Electronic Artsification, it has now added explosions and violence in the form of “extreme fantasy courses” to this year’s PGA Tour.)
Things wrapped up with Battlefield: Hardline, which leaked all over the internet a few weeks ago. It’s a cops versus criminals game made by Visceral, a studio that used to make unique creepy horror games and now makes shooters like everybody. The developers describe it as “much more like a TV crime drama than a traditional shooter.” The beta of the game is now live on PlayStation 4.
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