E3 2014: Ubisoft Press Conference
June 6 at 3:00 PM PDT
Give that battered man your passport. He's got something to give you. You don't know what it is, but he hides it in your passport. Now there's something going on at the check point. No one knows what's going on, but it's a problem. You don't know the language, and people are bailing. Now these people you've been riding with have been shot, and they're shooting back. A gun's trained on you. There's chaos.
"I distinctly remember saying stop the bus. Don't shoot the bus."
This is your introduction to "Far Cry 4." And guys? This looks amazing. It's dark. It's scary. It's captivating. It encompasses all my hopes and dreams for "Far Cry 4" in one magnificent trailer. On Nov. 18, you'll be traveling on your own bus from hell ready to blow through the Himalayas where "every single second is a story."
"Ubisoft teams across the world continue to generate insanely cool things." Aisha Tyler
After the incredibly strong introduction, Ubisoft follows the "Far Cry 4" introduction to "Just Dance 2015." "Just Dance" opens with video game play featuring everyone's favorite overplayed song, "Happy" by Pharrell Williams. The game introduces features like community remixes, adding you into the game as the dancer, performance scores, Still not convinced it can steal "DDR's" crown, nor do I feel convinced I want to see but it sure does look interesting. However, they also introduced a feature that allows you to connect to and play "Just Dance" anywhere using a connected device (e.g., smartphone of any OS).
The magic of "Just Dance Now" is that there's no limit ... We're one step closer to connecting the world through dance. Jason Altman, Executive Producer
To make their point, dancers hired by Ubisoft dance to Lady Gaga's "Applause" on stage live, completely in sync with each other using the game and the connected television behind them. While the concept is interesting, Ubisoft left out the technical explanation for how exactly "Just Dance Now" works or how your smartphone tells you how to make those dance moves. That is vital for understanding the game, and it's just not there.
"Just Dance" fades to infected, destroyed, chaotic New York City overtaken by disaster. In "Tom Clancy's: The Divison," "as an agent of the division, you're a member of the civilian elite ... to take back New York" from the infection. A woman sings "Silent Night" alone, before dissolving into throaty, painful tears. Empty houses reconstruct themselves,
Not until it's in our city, at our doors, do we realize how fragile we are.
The promo video is stunning, horrifying, scary, lonely in its depiction of a post-apocalyptic hellhole: fires, confused crowds, people escaping in cars, and unknown men wearing gas masks and wielding guns.
Up next is The Crew, starting off with a nice little montage of driving to some oddly calm music while footage goes by in fast forward. This is actually a surprisingly boring trailer, not much is happening. More fast forward footage to calm music. Nothing has changed. And.. that was it. The cars were pretty I guess? Let's have Julian Gherity try and save this. They opened up their studios to a few select members of their player base to act as play testers and got some pretty decent feedback to help shape the game. Closed beta July 23.
Assassins's Creed Unity is up for more. We've already seen a good chunk at the Microsoft conference so it should be interesting to see what they saved for this conference. So far it looks like a calm but very nicely done trailer, far more interesting than what we just saw from The Crew. Giving you an overview of Paris and where you'll presumably be spending most of your time. Buildings crumbling, angry mobs, but still calm music. A hell of a battle scene with lots of jumping and throwing out of windows and of course some good old fashioned stabbing. Showing off the main character and reinforcing the multiplayer option. Demo time, showing off a "systemic open world". That large crowd we talked about during Microsoft's conference is back and it is still impressive. Some guard stabbing on the way to complete a quest objective, combat was a little slow, but not terribly slow. May have just been because they were trying to show off the animations instead of complete things in a timely fashion. Walking through town some more trying to find his target. Getting a little bored, but visually it does look well done. Aaand there we go, we got our guy, demo over.
Uh oh, this should be interesting. Fitness time. Shape Up from Ubisoft Montreal. Looks like trying to make exercise into games, actual honest to goodness games. Demo time. He's going to fight himself. You can share previous performances and try to beat others. An interesting piano minigame where you're jumping across 4 keys with a timeline of notes very similar to Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I never thought I'd say this, but that didn't look too bad, for an exercise game. Another demo. They're doing push ups... but with tanks, statues, and giant donuts on their backs.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War. Puzzle adventure about the horror of World War I since it's coming up on the 100 year anniversary. This seems.. kind of depressing actually. A strange sort of Alien Hominid art style, which, if this were a happier looking game, would be pretty sweet, but once again, they're talking about tears, and death, and just generally being super depressing. It ends with a shot of a graveyard. June 25.
Looks like Aisha's doing a wrap up now. It's a transition to the CEO, Tves Guillemot, to say some final words. Oh man, this is a "one more thing" moment. A nice warning about this being pre-alpha footage. Looks like a helicopter and many police checking out a house, doing some sort of reconnaissance, trying to identify a hostage with a little drone. Talking with his team trying to figure out how to best infiltrate the house and save the hostage. Multiplayer teams, good guys trying to save the hostage, bad guys trying to keep their hostage. Hostage capture the flag basically. Lots of shooting , flash bangs, and grenades, lots of teamwork going on. This poor drywall, it never stood a chance. Rainbow Six | Seige. Six years since their last Rainbow Six title. Aisha's having a mini freak out about this game.
Another thank you from Aisha, and we're done!
