Anthem

Electronic Arts started out by showing off Anthem, the game that is thought to be a make or break situation for the games developer, Bioware. As I mentioned in January this game has already seen a delay, and after the “Mass Effect: Andromeda” debacle, and the great loot box wars of 2017-2018 fought by the consumers vs Bioware’s parent company Electronic Arts, Bioware has a lot to prove here. Right off the bat I feel compelled to let you guys know, Bioware has promised that there will be no loot boxes in Anthem. I also feel compelled to tell you, that with EA involved, I actually laughed when I typed that. If Bioware can keep this promise, I think it will be a huge feather in their cap, and may go a long way to build up some of the damaged trust with their fan base. The release date of February 22nd was announced during their presentation. The game looks very to have elements from games like Halo, Titan Fall, and Destiny. You run around as free lancers, in exo-suits called “Javelins” that you can customize with a bunch of different weapons and upgrades. You are tasked, as usual, with saving humanity from an alien threat. But rather than drone on and on about it, I think the guys behind it can explain it much, much better.

Battlefield V

Next up was one of the worst kept secrets of E3, but another entry in a well loved franchise, Battlefield V. Keeping true to the current trends of the gaming industry, on the back of the massive success of PUBG, and even bigger success of Fortnite Battle Royale,EA announced that Battlefield V will have a Battle Royale adjacent mode. While there isn’t a ton of information yet on how the mode will be similar, or different from the current games in the genre, it was confirmed that it will stay true to the 100 person format. One small piece of info that is pretty cool though, apparently there may be some destructible environmental pieces in their version on it, possibly leading to the option of collapsing a building on a team? We’ll see. They also debuted a new gameplay trailer, here ya go.

Friggin Sports!

As per usual, EA dropped some information about their big sports titles, Fifa 19, Madden NFL 19, and NBA Live 19. One of the biggest announcements this year was regarding Fifa. For the first time in a decade, EA was able to the license to the champions league, causing Konami, and rival soccer series PES, to lose out, as they’ve lost the license. Other than the addition of the Champions League, and also the Europa League, there weren’t any other mind blowing features announced for this long running franchise. There weren’t any super big announcements for this years Madden, other than the fact that they will be releasing it on PC as well as consoles, for the first since 2007. As far as NBA Live, other than a trailer showing off some new features, nothing crazy was thrown down. As usual, this years sports games see some minor tweaks, but no major overhauls.

Star Wars

EA also announced some new interesting Star War news, that will hopefully do better business than Solo did at the box office, heyoooooo!! First we’re talking about some new content for Star Wars Battlefront 2. You remember how dope Clone Wars was? Well, some of those stories, places, and characters will end up in your peanut butter SWBF2 soon. They’re also improving the squad system to make it easier to link up with ya boys…or girls, and adding a dogfight mode that will focus more on ship battles with hero ships specifically.

On top of that news, a new game was announced in conjunction with Respawn Entertainment, the guys who made what I consider to be one of the most fun single player experiences I’ve had in the last few years, Titanfall 2. Despite the fact that there was literally no gameplay footage shown, Vince Zampella from Respawn was on hand to give an underwhelming announcement that they will be release a game called Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order during the Holiday season…….next year. Regardless, SWJFO is going to be a third person action adventure game that take place during the dark times in the history of the Jedi order, when they were being hunted. There weren’t a ton of other details thrown around, other than the fact that you will be playing a padawan who has managed to survive. I feel it’s safe to assume there will be some RPG elements to upgrading your abilities and such, as playing a padawan the entire game, without learning new abilities would most likely be underwhelming.

Other Stuff

A few other announcements were made by EA during their presentation. EA is finally throwing us another us a new Command and Conquer game, that is to say, for mobile devices. This game will be focused on PVP. I can’t wait to play a tactics style game on a phone screen, it’s going to be dope. Did you detect the sarcasm? Yay, I guess. EA also announced that they will introduce a premium version of their “Origin” service, basically opening up access to even more of the EA games library. Finally, Unravel 2 is out now for Xbox, PS4 and PC, if you’ve got a YARNING to play it. If you have a Nintendo Switch, they mind blowingly did not release it for the Switch, sorry fam.

Final Thoughts

Despite EA shedding some more light on Anthem and Battle Royale Cash in #233 Field V, this was a somewhat underwhelming presentation. It’s great that the sports games are getting the usual updates with some minor changes, sans Fifa that actually added a huge asset to their game, but with a horrendously lackluster announcement that could have been totally awesome for a new Star Wars game, and the announcement of a non PC oriented C&C game, it feels like their presentation was severely lacking some umph. Nothing about this presentation screamed “I NEED TO TELL MY FRIENDS!”

5/10