COVERING E3 2018 DAY 1 EA

The conference starts with a teaser of all the featured game to be talked about in the next hour and a half, the last part of the teaser featured a 3d clip of one of the most anticipated new IP Anthem. We cut to our main host Andrea Rene, Co-Founder of What's Good Games (look her up) as she transitions us to our first big reveal.

Battlefield V bring the series back to World War II and reveals some of its features in both multiplayer and its story mode. Battlefield 5 is entering battle royale mode a game genre popularize by games like PUBG and Fortnite. Nothing was shown for the mode though, which is kinda disappointing. A quick teaser for Battlefield 5's single-player "war stories," was also featured and a full reveal will be featured tomorrow during Microsoft's press conference.

Next stop is for our sports fan, FIFA 19 is revealed with Cristiano Ronaldo once again being the primary cover athlete for this years FIFA game. The game will be featured across all major console platforms Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One, it was also later revealed that the game would also be available for XBox and PlayStation 3. The game is said to be released on September 28th this year.

Andrew Wilson CEO of EA enters and announces that they will be launching its own PC video game subscription service called Origin Access Premier. The subscription will allow members to play new game releases earlier than anyone else. They will also get access to over 100 older games, from Need For Speed to any of the Batman: Arkham games with a 10 percent discount.

We set off on the right foot as Dennis Brannvall Design Director for Battlefront II enters the stage and acknowledges its mistake over the loot boxes controversy last November. Moving forward they have indeed at the very least updated the game and overhaul its progression system along with the addition of the very popular Ewok Hunt mode. As for the actual future of the game, several other additions were announced. Players will be able to play during the Clone Wars era, and several new playable characters are available, the list includes Anakin Skywalker, Count Dooku, General Grievous, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. A Han Solo mode was also announced that includes a new squad system, a new starfighter mode and the return of extraction game mode, updates are supposed to be released on 06/12/2018.

Developed by Swedish indie game studio, Coldwood Interactive Unravel 2 is the sequel to Unravel. Though not much was actually discuss about the game during the conference aside from it being a co-op game that features two Yarnys instead of one, the actual gameplay was actually featured. It’s basically a platformer, with lots of wall jumps, swinging moves and carefully timed actions. There are enemies to avoid, and puzzles to be solved along the way. Perhaps the best thing about this game is that it has been officially released and is available today.

Not much is known about the gameplay of the game but it does feature a very intriguing story. Developed by Jo-Mei, a small game studio in Berlin the story revolves around a girl who has been turned into a monster, and the goal is to find out why and how she got transformed and if she can turn back into a human. According to the speaker Cornelia Geppert the creative art director of the game, the game was created based on her own experiences with loneliness and self-doubt, that in conjecture of the game boasting a very beautiful visual style full of dark, dampened and shaded colors, this might actually be the indie game to look forward to in the next coming year. A trailer was featured and the game would be released early 2019.

A trailer was shown for the game but that's pretty much it.

The stage featured Young Kiv, Madden NFL 18 Champion and Juju Smith-Schuster wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Nothing was much discussed about the game, the two just did a quick banter and prompted to show a trailer of the game.

Command and Conquer is back... as a mobile game. Though that may turn off some of the hardcore Command and Conquer players, the good news is based on the gameplay showcase during the conference, It actually looks fun. The game is definitely still an RTS managing units and resources with a rich yet simple gameplay mechanics. It looks completely different than all the past Command and Conquer games, whether its actually any good we're going to have to play to find out.

It's finally time to introduce EA's featured IP Anthem and on the helm are Casey Hudson- General Manager for BioWare, Mark Darrah - Executive Producer for BioWare and Cathleen Rootsaert - Lead writer for Bioware. BioWare went into more detail about how you can customize your mech suits called Javelin. According to Hudson loot boxes, won't be an option for the game which is a definite plus, cosmetic items are going to be featured though if you want to err... "beautify" your suits. The customization options will let you change the color and details of your suits. There are 4 different jobs or types: Ranger, Colossus, Interceptor, and Storm. None of which were actually discussed in detail but based on the name we can make the speculation that Colossus would most likely be the tank character, ranger would most likely be an assassin type and the other two are most likely mage types. Anthem puts players in the role of Freelancers, who are tasked with exploring uncharted worlds and protecting humanity. A 4-minute gameplay demo was shown at the end and Bioware confirmes Anthem will be released on 02/22/2019.

All in all a decent conference, a couple of interesting games were featured, but disappointingly no Dragon Age 4 announcement. Its clear EA is Focussing on Anthem, and base on what I saw, It's definitely a game I would really love to play. Battlefield V seems interesting too, though I don't really fancy myself an FPS player. I am very curious about the two indie games features especially with Sea of Solitude. Its a very nice start to e3 and I am excited for day 2 as we look at what Microsoft has to offer.