OPINION – Ah EA is back for another fun conference that the general public can enjoy, and maybe even see some games along the way. My expectations were high, as last year Snoop dog was also incredibly high… on Battlefield 1 of course. Now we are back to see what EA has gotten cooked up for us and the rest of 2017.

By the looks of it, and by me suffering through one and a half hours not much will be set loose by EA for this year.

Prince Valium and sports

The show begins with evil mega CEO taking the stage Andrew Wilson, hyping up Battlefield 1’s latest expansion In The Name of the Tsar, which looked fantastic on the big screen. It will have six new maps, and many updates to its Operations mode, plus by the looks of it, you’ll get to Pike soldiers while doing cavalry charges, which should be fun and gratuitous. Sadly after Mr. Wilson left the stage, Mr. Patrick Söderlund took the stage, and he was so excited that he almost fell asleep.

From this point on sadly, I consider most of the presentation to be all talk about competition, Esports, and a bunch of YouTubers cheering on about how awesome all the yearly releases of the different franchises will be (at least until a certain indie game appeared). I don’t mind sports games, but nearly half of the presentation went on with the different ways EA will allow players to compete, and their various tournaments and this was done already last year, so it is a retread of that conference. Also, we’re getting the usual Madden, NBA, and FIFA, plus all of them will have their usual singleplayer contents: FIFA has a sequel to Alex Hunter’s Storyline, Madden has a new personalized story, and NBA has The One in which you get to make your own career. There was also a small Scorpio mention during the Madden reveal, and at the same time, I found a few marketing shots for PlayStation to be just pulled real quickly as if EA was a bit gun-shy on the whole PlayStation marketing deals.

Speed, and the Force

Next up was A Way Out which is a new game from the creators of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and boy it looked fun. A mix of Prison Break, and The Fugitive only in co-op. The developers stated this game would bring unique experiences since the game needs to be played exclusively in co-op either in couch co-op mode or online. While the initial announcement questioned their sanity, seeing the game in action cleared my doubts about, and should be a fun experience for everyone who loves an escape story.

After this lovely indie tale, we got to see the new Need For Speed in action called Need For Speed: Payback. It looked gorgeous, but once again EA seems to try and chase a trend, this time going full in on mimicking The Fast and the Furious franchise. The concept looks great, the cars look stunning, and my god the environments look photorealistic. Though I’m still not sure of the whole revenge tale and trying to escape cops angle once again thrown into the mix, and I feel like we’ve been through this before with Most Wanted and even Need for Speed Carbon. Although this time we’ll actually see who we are driving it, so that is a new twist on the formula.

Bioware showed off its new Science-Fiction IP called Anthem with a brief trailer, and a full reveal at Microsoft’s show.

Finally, we had Star Wars Battlefront 2 as the closer of the conference. A full thirty minute part of the show was dedicated to detailing the new changes, and how the community helped tweak the multiplayer of the game. Also, the sequel will now have a full blown campaign, which will be an official part of the Star Wars Lore. The graphics looked amazing once again, plus it seems that both the weapons and the vehicle system has been revamped and it will not be a pickup system, but rather something similar to Halo 5’s requisite system, where you spend points for vehicles and weapons.

In the end though while Battlefront 2 was great, I was expecting Amy Henning’s, and Respawn Entertainment’s Star Wars game to be shown or at least teased. Instead, though we got one of the most boring, albeit cringe-worthy EA conferences ever, and it was worse than last years show.

I wish there were Snoop Dog back again playing Battlefront 2

-Dante-