T w e n t y S i d e d
Josh, Jarenth, Ross, and I are going to be livesteaming / commentating / heckling the EA press conference. What we expect: EA is going to shove their balls in our face for most of the show with Madden / FIFA, but then they’ll end with Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Let’s see what happens!
EDIT: As expected, most of the show was dedicated to stuff outside our area of interest. We learned basically nothing about Mass Effect, we saw a lot of sports games, and there was one really gorgeous “indie” game that excited us. We’ll be back at 7pm west coast time for the Bethesda show.
The Best of 2012
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2012.
Quakecon Keynote 2013 Annotated
An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
Game at the Bottom
Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
TitleWhat’s Inside Skinner’s Box?
What is a skinner box, how does it interact with neurotransmitters, and what does it have to do with shooting people in the face for rare loot?
This Scene Breaks a Character
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
Question regarding streaming, since this seems to happen to everyone who does it:
Can you leave your equipment set at exactly the same settings as a previous stream and yet have the volume levels still not come out the way they’re supposed to? Someone could get rich creating some kind of mixing app that at least lets you know if certain audio sources aren’t averaging the same as they did in a previous session.
Aw, I missed it. I’ll catch the Bethesda conference, though.
That Mass Effect trailer was basically nothing, but I guess that means they still have a long way to go? At least they’re not rushing it.
Given that it’s due Q1 2017 (where it was pushed in March, originally Q4 2016), It’s not a great sign that they have nothing to show yet. I’d say I’m worried, but for that to be true I’d need to have higher expectations of EA-Bioware.
The premise and execution kind of bug me already. Do they finally settle on a canonical ending for ME3? Have the Reapers completely messed up the Milky Way so badly that we have to go to another galaxy to find a homeworld? And don’t get me started on them encountering more races that are humanoid and (apparently) have at least one gender sporting vacuum-sealed boobs.
I think the idea will be that this ark is sent out before the reapers arrive, or at least before they’re beaten, as a kind of last hope in case the reapers win. You’ll be so far removed from the milky way that the particular ending of ME3 you chose won’t matter. It’s kind of a nice way to wipe the slate clean without it feeling like a cop out, in my opinion.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think they showed any aliens other than an asari and a krogan.
Could the ark actually BE the Normandy? Could it have ended up in the Andromeda galaxy because of the surge in the relays? That might actually be cool, and give that ending with your crewmates meaning, and explain why they could tell stories of Shepard.
Doubtful. It sounds like they’re making a somewhat clean break from the original trilogy, and that basically requires them to leave the Normandy behind.
Plus they probably would be happy to come up with the design for a new ship.
The ship in the trailer has “Tempest” written on it. Who knows how final any of that footage is though…
Shamus: I just noticed that your “From the archives” links contain a link titled “Best of 2015” that links to “Denoument 2014”.
Completely unrelated to the stream, but can I admit to having seen the “Four comments. Fantastic.” note a nearly uncountable number of times over the years and I just now got it?
Well, you’ve got one up from me, because I just got it now reading that twice.
Same here, only getting it now that someone has pointed out there was something to get.
It took me less time than that (I caught it before this) and it elicited a groan … which means that it fulfilled its purpose [grin].
I’m confused. Did they actually say Battlefront 2 was being planned for a 2017 release? It feels like Battlefront (2015). It wasn’t released until November of that year, so the new one would be, at most, two years. That feels like a short life cycle for a multiplayer shooter. Sure, you can point to CoD and Battlefield, but they probably attract a somewhat different group of players, and the people who love those games probably are going to keep playing them and not hop onto Battlefront.
I stayed up late to watch this conference. My thoughts are crystallised thusly:
– Peter Moore is a pretty good showman compared to whoever the other guy was.
– Mass Effect Andromeda looks completely devoid of creativity.
– Fifa now has a single player story mode! It’s basically like one of those TV series football soap operas.
Now the first and last one is an open and shut case but, although I wasn’t really interested in Andromeda I will be actively avoiding until I see something more encouraging.
Let me put it this way: the teaser trailer had all the hallmarks of a team that has no science background and no solid new ideas. What did we see? If I remember correctly (I only watched it once ):
– Pretty green space chick (instead of blue)
– They put spurs on a Mass Effect relay to make it more powerful
– A new ship has the same design as the Normandy (a ship not designed to be self sufficient ) with wings/fins on the front
– This new Normandy style ship is black… because 1) black and red is cool (see the a-team van) and dangerous and 2) black is the ideal colour to paint ships in space!
Ugh!
If it has the Normandy’s stealth abilities, remember that about the only way to detect it was by looking out a window. If you paint it black, then even THAT might not work.
It still has white stripes! :)
Because the marketing department would have murdered the art department if it had been all black all the time. I learned that when painting wargaming miniatures: black needs something to contrast, or the end result looks unpainted at best, invisible against dark background at worst.
And white and red are two of the best colours to complement black.
Has it been recorded somewhere that we can watch after the event? (Can’t see any links at the mo for past, current, or future streams.)
http://www.e3insider.com/press-conferences
If you go onto each exhibitors page and scroll down there’s a link to the archived show. Not sure if it’s live yet.
[Edit] scratch that. I thought you meant the press conference. Nothe Shamus and Co. I’ll leave that link there in case anyone else wants it though.
Wait, how does the term “indie” get used in any possible way connected to EA? Even in quotes, that just doesn’t make sense. EA is the very antithesis of indie.