{"id":39092,"date":"2017-06-10T13:43:08","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T17:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=39092"},"modified":"2018-06-29T03:04:59","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T07:04:59","slug":"e3-2017-day-1-electronic-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=39092","title":{"rendered":"E3 2017 Day 1: Electronic Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like I said <a href=\"?p=39055\">yesterday<\/a>, I&#8217;ll be watching the E3 stream and writing about it. I&#8217;m not sure which <em>particular<\/em> stream I&#8217;ll be watching, though. A half dozen different outfits are running their own stream, and I&#8217;m not sure which one will be the least annoying. I&#8217;ll figure it out once the show starts. For now I&#8217;ll be keeping an eye on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=P9BB0ambDQw\">the YouTube stream<\/a> in one window and and playing Starbound in the other. (The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iX3Mvvm5vRI\">Spacefarer Update<\/a> just came out.) <\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/P9BB0ambDQw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=P9BB0ambDQw'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t expect to have a lot to say about this particular presentation. EA seems to have killed off or mutated all of the games I might care about. But we&#8217;ll see if they have any surprises. <\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Ugh. I&#8217;m glad I&#8217;m not at the show. This pre-show room is bathed in redlight, and has been for almost half an hour. I&#8217;d be feeling ill by now if I was there in person.<\/p>\n<p><div class='imagefull'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/e32017_ea_show1.jpg' width=100% alt='' title=''\/><\/div><div class='mouseover-alt'><\/div><\/p>\n<p><strong>Madden: Long Shot<\/strong> looks like they&#8217;re trying to do for Madden what <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tony_Hawk%27s_Underground\">Tony Hawk Underground<\/a> did for skateboarding. Which is adding on a cutscene-driven story mode to a previously mechanics-focused game. Is that a wise move? I don&#8217;t know. They&#8217;re really selling the &#8220;story&#8221; angle this year. <\/p>\n<p>Battlefield 1: Nothing to say about this game. I have no interest in playing it, although highlight clips are fun to watch.<\/p>\n<p><strong>FIFA:<\/strong> And there it is, another story mode added to en EA sports game. This seems to be the new strategy. <\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know enough about sports games to say much about this. My only point of reference for this is my brother Patrick, who follows all non-FIFA sports and plays the related games. About six years ago he was really unhappy with what EA was doing with the games. He hated the &#8220;innovations&#8221; they were adding to the games, while at the same time the developers seemed to neglecting long-standing problems with AI, balance, and team management. <\/p>\n<p>Any EA Sports fans want to weigh in on this?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Need for Speed: Payback:<\/strong> A story mode in a driving game. This seems to be how EA thinks.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s add multiplayer to ALL OUR GAMES. (Mixed success.) <\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s add DLC to ALL OUR GAMES. (Mixed success.)<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s add a story to ALL OUR GAMES. (I predict mixed success.)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not against stories, multiplayer, or DLC. But I am against this homogenized, single-minded approach that ignores the differences between games.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Way Out:<\/strong> A co-op prison escape game from the guy who developed Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. I actually hated Brothers. It wasn&#8217;t a bad game. The developer made exactly the game he wanted to make. I just hated the ending and the whole thing felt like a <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/ShootTheShaggyDog\">Shoot The Shaggy Dog<\/a> story.<\/p>\n<p>A Way Out is a game designed for 2 player co-op. There is NO single-player mode, because the two characters must work together to escape jail. This is a really interesting idea. <\/p>\n<p>Yes, this is another game where they&#8217;re really talking up the story. Although it makes sense this time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anthem:<\/strong> The new game from &#8220;BioWare&#8221;. (Whatever that means these days.) This teaser is too light on details to tell us much. <\/p>\n<p><strong>NBA Live:<\/strong> Huh. No cutscenes. I was really expecting them to continue with the individual story thing they&#8217;ve been doing. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Star Wars: Battlefront 2:<\/strong> This is the big finale. And right away they&#8217;re talking about the offline single-player story. &#8220;An authentic, un-told story&#8221;. That&#8217;s cool.<\/p>\n<p>This game is amazing at recreating the look and feel of the various Star Wars environments. <\/p>\n<p>Whelp, that&#8217;s the show. It wasn&#8217;t quite as stiff and awkward as years past, which I really appreciate. I&#8217;ll be back tomorrow for Microsoft and Bethesda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like I said yesterday, I&#8217;ll be watching the E3 stream and writing about it. I&#8217;m not sure which particular stream I&#8217;ll be watching, though. A half dozen different outfits are running their own stream, and I&#8217;m not sure which one will be the least annoying. I&#8217;ll figure it out once the show starts. For now [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[613],"tags":[181],"class_list":["post-39092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-events","tag-e3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43133,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39092\/revisions\/43133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}