Ubisoft Debuts The Crew, Tom Clancy’s The Division At E3 Conference
Just like last year, Ubisoft got Aisha Tyler to host their E3 press conference. Wearing a shirt with the hashtag #girlwood on it, Ubisoft didn’t have much to show, but there were a few major new reveals. Click through to see what was said about hot games like Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Rayman Legends, and Watch Dogs, as well as all the new games.
Anyone who still wants a music game to teach them guitar will be interested to know about Rocksmith 2014. Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell played some music, and a new Session Mode was introduced, which allows you to mess with instrument settings to play along with the band how you want to.
They moved on to Splinter Cell: Blacklist, with a trailer showing off all the various features. I have a feeling many people just wanted to see the returning Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer mode, but much of the trailer was devoted to the high-octane story. Blacklist is coming out this August.
Next up was Rayman Legends, which had a CGI trailer, followed by an actual gameplay trailer. There’s not much to say about the game — which would have been out now on the Wii U if not for a delay to also put it out on 360 and PS3 — other than the fact that it still looks gorgeous and should be great when it releases on September 3.
The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is a free-to-play persistant world game lets you build a castle, fill it with loot, protect it from other players (by using traps and monsters), and then picking a hero to go raid other players’ castles. A CGI trailer showed the game’s humorous tone. Players can sign up for the beta at www.themightyquest.com right now.
Ubisoft had purchased the right to publish Obsidian Entertainment’s South Park: The Stick of Truth after THQ went out of business. A new trailer showed Stan teaching a kid a secret technique called “the Nagasaki fart.” The game is finally coming this holiday season — or some holiday season, as Cartman points out: “You know how videogames are.” It will release on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.
Moving on to next-gen games, Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot introduced a CGI trailer for The Crew, an intense driving game with customizable cars. It’s an MMO racer being made by Reflections Interactive, who made the Driver games. The setting is the US, all across the country with lots of mountain roads, deserts, and other areas. The cars your racing could be AI racers or other players, and everything seems really integrated and snappy, taking inspiration and expanding the social elements of games like Burnout Paradise. You can also prepare you own car on your iPad.
Watch Dogs was up next with a new trailer. It was very cool CGI, well worth watching, but sadly, there’s no gameplay whatsoever, so we’ll have to wait and see if Sony has some footage of it again as in the past.
As expected, Ubisoft has a new dancing game, Just Dance 2014. Not much to say about that one!
In non-game news, Ubisoft Motion Pictures is making Rabbids Invasion, an interactive CGI TV show that will air on Nickelodeon. The interactive bits are an Xbox One thing. For example, you can dance along with the Rabbids while they dance using Kinect. Also using Kinect, you can help a Rabbid shoot eggs at another Rabbid, or just scream along with them. This is definitely something for little kids, with interaction in the most superficial manner possible.
Next up was Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, which had a new CGI trailer of Edward Kenway assassinating a target in the middle of a bar brawl. After escaping to his ship, he is chased by some sort of official and a battle ensues, leading to the official’s death. A second trailer showed some in-engine footage, and the graphics are a definite step-up from the previous games. The game will release on Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, so the graphical improvement does seem plausible, at least for some of those platforms. There still isn’t a gameplay demo though, which is disappointing.
For their penultimate reveal, Ubisoft has two new Trials games: Trials Fusion and Trials Frontier. Fusion has you bike-platforming with a futuristic look and will be on next-gen systems (and PC and 360), while Frontier is more dirt-bikey and will be on mobile systems. Both games will be out later this year, with some connectivity between the two.
The final announcement was Tom Clancy’s The Division, an open-world online RPG by Massive Entertainment for PS4 and Xbox One. A concept trailer explains how easy it would be for a pandemic to take out the USA on Black Friday, thanks to how global supply chains are connected. The gameplay demo featured some online players walking through a ruined Brooklyn street during the winter. There was a shootout at the police station, with third-person cover-based shooting. They finally secured the premises and entered the station, which was pretty trashed, then got through and started firing on another group.
Ubisoft’s press conference wasn’t too bad, but there were little in the way of surprises. There was a huge emphasis on prerendered trailers and very little gameplay on display. Granted, with many of these games revealed last year and with gameplay demos already out there, they could just be gearing up for their release this fall, building hype with cool trailers. However, gamer skepticism dictates that if a developer is not showing gameplay, they’re not confident in their product and you should be wary of what the finished product actually is. At least The Crew and The Division look great, so keep an eye on those two (as well as Watch Dogs).
[Pictures courtesy of Destructoid]