I woke up at 4am AEST to watch the EA Play 2018 Press Conference and then again before I left to watch UFC 225. During the second watching I wrote down some notes about what interested me, what got my attention and what I am looking forward to that is coming in 2018 and in 2019. Unfortunately there does not seem to be much on that list so this post may be a little small and light on content. Before I go into that list I am going to highlight games, etc. that were announced but I am not interested in playing or I felt the announcement did little to excite me:

1. FIFA 19: I have not bought a FIFA game in a really long time. I have EA Access and am more than happy to wait for the title to come into The Vault.
2. Star Wars: Battlefront 2: I enjoy the Star Wars games that get released but with the mess that was SWBF2 at launch, I stayed away from this title. No improvements made by DICE will get me to buy this game or play it anytime soon.
3. Unravel Two: I never played Unravel and I am not really into platformer games. I can appreciate what the developers have done but it is just not up my alley.
4. Sea of Solitude: Another title that did little to excite or interest me. I hope the developers find a market for their game though, and good luck to them in finding success.
5. NBA Live 19: Basketball is not a sport that I follow so I completely ignored this title.
6. Madden 19 and Young Kiv: NFL is one of the leagues I do watch as a New York Giants fan, but like the FIFA games I don’t buy them. Also the eSports personality of Young Kiv did not do anything but get me to say “who is this and why should I care”.
7. Command and Conquer Rivals: What I would do for a C&C game that is for the PC. A mobile game is an automatic turn off. My smartphone is primarily a tool for me to be more productive and communicate with people, not play games.

With those items out of the way, the only remaining announcements are the ones that managed to interest me or were different enough that they got my attention.

Battlefield V

So there was barely anything revealed and talked about. More will be shown at the Microsoft Xbox E3 2018 Press Conference which is good. But my takeaways from what did get revealed and talked about which interest me were:

1. Superior mobility (dive and smash through windows).
2. Stationary turrets are now moveable.
3.  Even more destruction. Could we be going back to the days of Bad Company 2? I hope so.
4. Plenty of customization. From the guns to the tanks.
5. No more loot boxes and no premium pass. Thank God. Nothing worse than fracturing the community and having people buy gameplay advancements.
6. War Stories. Unfortunately will have to wait until the Microsoft Xbox E3 2018 Press Event to learn more about the first one.

Some elements that made me roll my eyes and say “really” include:

1. Battlefield Battle Royale mode. Not every game needs to copy the success of Fortnight, even if they try to put their own spin on it.
2. Again no proper in-game, live, actual footage from a real match. I don’t want to see in-engine footage trailers. I want to see how the game actually plays.

Cloud and Subscriptions

When Andrew Wilson (CEO of EA) came out I knew there would be some new business practices and plans revealed. A cloud streaming service from EA will be coming in the future and an early version of it is playable at the event. I don’t see this taking off anytime soon, especially if it uses EA servers but I can appreciate the technology behind it.

There was the mention of EA Origin Premier as well. I was really hoping that they would allow people who have EA Access and EA Origin Access to have a single subscription to play EA games on both Xbox and PC. But no, instead it is a way to play (it would seem) brand new EA published titles without purchasing the game through EA Origin Access, much like Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft published titles. I cannot see myself buying this subscription service however.

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order

This got me interested because I generally like Star Wars games and I really enjoyed Titanfall. Vince Zampella teased a new Star Wars game set between Star Wars Episodes 3 and 4, where the Jedi are hunted. Unfortunately the game will be released in 2019, if it does not get delayed or pushed out. Not much else was said about the title.

Anthem

To start the Anthem portion of the event there was a fast paced, intense trailer which did not look too bad. Some of the information that we did get from the panel of BioWare employees that were on stage include:

1. It is not an MMO. This is good for me because I can really only have one active MMO in my life and that is World of Warcraft.
2. Major focus on characters for the story and player choices. This is good because if the characters are dull and boring then everything else is dull and boring.
3. Much of the single player experience will be experienced in bases and the multiplayer experience will be in the open world portions of the game.
4. BioWare is already preparing Anthem to be DLC ready in terms of story. They did not say DLC specifically but they did say Anthem is built to have story added at any time. What better way to get people to pay for DLC than with story content.
5. Promises of ongoing and long term meaningful content. Hopefully it will be better than the original The Division content and the content that Bungie has been pumping out slowly for Destiny 2.
6. Real world purchasable items will be there but will be only cosmetic and there would be no loot boxes or randomness when buying content.
7. The game if not delayed or pushed back will coming out 22 February 2019.

So there you have it folks. I will also be doing a Microsoft and Bethesda recap so stay tuned for those.