E3 is fully underway! I will be adding a fairly short post each day describing major news that came from each day and any minor but more RPG relevant news that happened to be released on that day. With that said, here is a basic roundup of the first major conference day at E3 2018:
The EA Conference
The best way to describe this is probably as a typical EA showing. The major announcements revolved around the cash cows that are the sports games, most prominently FIFA 19 (which now has the official Champions League rights) and Madden 19 (which seems to have nothing of any note added). Outside of this, the largest game shown was Anthem, where they showed a reasonably generous amount of gameplay (though looking as edited and handpicked as you'd expect from E3 showcases) and spent around 20 minutes talking to some of the leading staff working on the project. My initial impressions of Anthem are very much that it looks like an MMO with some sections marked as single player. It seems like it will hit a similar note as The Division did and although we will naturally have to wait until the now confirmed release date of February 22nd 2019 to see how it fares, the conference didn't do much to excite me for Anthem.
Battlefield V was the other big game being marketed at this conference, which had the bizarre announcement of a battle royale mode. This didn't sit well and was actually booed by the live crowd when it was revealed; gamers were far from pleased when Black Ops 4 announced the same mode a few weeks back and this followed the trend. It's a clear attempt to jump on the battle royale bandwagon and is absolutely not what the gaming community is looking for in a Battlefield game based on the reaction across the internet.
A few other announcements to come from the EA conference included a mobile re-imagining of the classic Real Time Strategy series Command and Conquer, which again has seen a community backlash. A variety of Star Wars related news was announced, including a number of new characters coming to Battlefront 2 and most excitingly from my perceptive, confirmation of a single player story-based Star Wars game by the name of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. It's supposed to be releasing towards the end of 2019 but no other information is prevalent for now, except that it is confirmed to be set after the events of Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith.
The creepy indie title Sea of Solitude also had some screen time to show a new trailer which looks as terrifying as it does visually beautiful. Set for release in early 2019, this may be one to keep an eye on if horror/suspenseful games are your thing. A sequel to the puzzle-platformer Unravel was also confirmed by way of a well-presented trailer. The trailer shows co-operative play between two Yarny characters which will allow for some creative puzzles. Despite the mixed reception of the major titles, both of these indie reveals have been met with positivity and excitement.
Miscellaneous news from Day 1
We were also treated to a few extra tidbits of news throughout the day, perhaps most notably being confirmation of the release date for Kingdom Hearts 3, which is the 29th of January 2019. This is a bit later than the November release some had speculated but is not too long a wait.
The official E3 Twitter page confirmed that Warhorse Studios will be attending to show the first DLC for their recent RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance entitiled "From The Ashes". Kingdom Come had a rocky start due to a host of technical problems and a partly mixed response to the intense role-playing mechanics, but has undergone continuous development and patching since release. Many of the glaring bugs have been addressed so this looks a much more appealing offer now than closer to release. It's also always good to see a developer attend to fixing the base game before ever announcing any DLC plans, so I imagine that this announcement will go down much better after the recent large patches than it would have before.
Verdict
This was a pretty lukewarm beginning to the biggest press event in the gaming calendar. EA have struggled with PR for a long time now and did little in their conference to improve their lot in the eyes of many in the gaming world. However, even if not spectacularly wonderful, there weren't too many egregious sounding plays from EA. The mobile Command and Conquer sounds like a money grab at best, as does the Battlefield-Royale mode. Anthem strikes me as solid but uninspiring so far and that rather summed up my feelings on the conference as a whole. It did exactly what you'd expect from EA; showcase their biggest money making franchises heavily and dangle a few interesting carrots whilst sneaking in a few extra things people were less excited for.
The other news from today was certainly interesting from an RPG point of view, particularly the reveal of Kingdom Hearts 3's release date and the Kingdom Come: Deliverance DLC. Despite the heavy prevalence of kingdoms in RPG news, both have gotten my attention for the right reasons.
Disagree or think I missed something? Let me know in the comments below and get some discussion going! What has you most excited from the first day of E3?