E3 2018 - EA

The E3 schedule is a strange beast as EA kicking off your video games event is much like wheeling out a third degree burns victim to start your fireworks display. What is resolute in its consistency is the masturbatory montages that bookend these conferences. This is followed by a host arriving, intentionally not from EA to minimise the chance of them being torn apart by an angry mob.

"Ohmygoshhowcoolwasthaaat?" she preens. If you have to ask you'll never know, although 0 to cringe in under 20 seconds might be a new record.

Battlefield V developers appear and repeatedly make clear that this is "their vision of WW2." not necessarily a historically accurate one. The only thing for which they've researched that is the historical accuracy of objects thrown at the stage in E3 conferences. The announcement of a Battle Royale mode is met with the kind of audience reaction usually reserved for music concerts where a fantastic explosion of pyrotechnics kills the band and it takes a while to realise its not part of the show.

Fifa 19 has a CG trailer with uncanny valley CG faces and hey look they even brought a trophy out on stage! "Standing next to this trophy is a little surreal" claims one guy. Also surreal is the marketing team's state of mind when they consistently think this shit will in any way help sell their Windows 10 update of a game.

I don't usually use screengrabs mid-transition but pretending that there's a Ronaldo ghost mechanic is the only way I can stay engaged enough not to lose consciousness during these segments.

CEO Andrew Wilson ditches the soul grey suit for a dowdy jumper because his butler told him it makes him look more humble. His mouth moves for a time accompanied by noise and a screen displays "Origin Access Premier." Seemingly some new subscription shit for old and new games that means "you get access to the vault"

Hear that kids? The king has deigned you fit to lick the bird shit from his shoes for sustenance. Oh thank you grand keeper of wealth.

Meanwhile this content-starved production talks to a man about the cool things he claims to be making but could be entirely in his head. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order or Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order is apparently a game being made. The placement of the colon is unclear but that's par for the course at an EA conference.

Set between episodes 3 and 4 and due for release at the end of next year is all the other info our irritating host can drain from the reluctant dev who may have just been accosted at random since the cringey crumb dribbling interview hardly seems worthy of being a scheduled segment.

Fuzzy Lumberjack Willem Dafoe or Dennis for short is from Stockholm, works on Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and insists he's "really happy" and not at all suffering from his hometown's syndrome. At the same time we see bits of a muted trailer showcasing new content based on the box office cough "Solo".

Not content to just steal the name of a far better game, new levels for Battlefront 2 will feature Clone Wars-era content and the "largest map they've ever built." I'm pretty sure this stopped being a selling point ten years ago and yet without fail every year someone makes this claim like it guarantees quality. He finishes by submitting "we had a rough start" as his entry for understatement of the light-year.

"Hi, it's really good to see you." whimpers our next choked up developer sounding like this is the first time he's seen daylight in months. Unravel Two gets a gameplay demo where the now pair of yarn characters escape from an angry chicken and engage in charming co op platforming. This actually looked genuine and fun so an untainted gem might be visible through the otherwise sludgy trough that is EA's game output.

Denim Uri Geller is next to blabber bollocks for a while before a writer arrives on stage apparently having ran here all the way from Berlin. It's difficult to glean much information as everyone anticipates her collapsing from hyperventilating but she explains indie title Sea Of Solitude is all about loneliness turning you into an evil person so it sounds right up my alley.

More sports trailers follow, trying way too hard to be hip and cool, much like the pro gamers who swagger out talking swag with their swaggy clothes and why the fuck am I seeing this shit? The smugger of the two gives us his autobiography that approximately negative numbers of people asked for. Whoever he is we're told is successful and so his advice is "chase the money"

It's important to be unbiased and I don't want to report anything out of context in these reviews so just to reiterate and clarify.

                       "EA: We're out here chasing money"


The next nattering nobjockey appears with introduction as a "Professional shoutcaster" which as far as I can tell translates to insufferable overacting rejected sports commentator.

Dec took to comfort-eating to deal with his lacklustre replacement Ant.

A spectacularly tedious and lengthy match of a mobile Command and Conquer game doesn't so much capture our attention as rehabilitate it and release it back into the wild. As pointless as most CG trailers are, I think a character focused one for a top down mobile strategy game might be pointless beyond pointless. Unprecedented pointlessness. EA.

"We are always trying to learn and listen and strive to be better." declares EA's CEO from within a giant lootbox in between mouthfuls of Star Wars branded premium golden Ewok truffles. "Player choice" "fairness" and "value" are all words I'm trying to memorise he continues.

"As much as we love making games and you love playing them. There's something even greater we can do together." An entire auditorium clenches simultaneously and clocks the nearest fire exit.

Andrew of course means EA's sterling record of charity donations to anti-bullying organisations and the like. Demonstrating his new gameplay feature of lying whilst equipping his giant charity shield, Andrew makes a convincing argument for being the strongest character in EA's Battle Royale...Even if his iconic ash grey suit is paid DLC.

See? We care about whatever it is the majority of you care about.

Another CG trailer that somehow manages to remix a Muse song to sound more dramatic tries to make Anthem appear as the second coming of Christ. The actual discernible content however continues to portray a generic as fuck world full of dishwater denizens.

"There's a storm coming" "it wants to destroy us all" the characters claim and sure enough Casey Hudson enters on stage with Anthem's lead writer and some guy with a beard.

Casey claims his vision for Anthem is still focused on story and characters even though it's a shared multiplayer experience. They try to spin this as unique and groundbreaking but my cynical brain just pictures a confessional with Casey tearfully admitting "EA put our story-based game on a torture rack to stretch it out and make room for more players."

We learn the mech suits called "Javelins" are limited to four different types. Ranger, Colossus, Interceptor and Storm which at a glance (because we're only told about the first two) appear to be new forms of the Technician and Biotic classes from Mass Effect. You could probably also boil them down to Knight, Archer, Mage and Hybrid.

Our gnat bite of a host supposedly goes to twitter to pitch questions at the trio. Even if these aren't entirely fabricated I've no doubt they were so rigorously narrowed and selectively selected to the point where the three questions asked are probably the only ones they found that were fit to broadcast.

There will supposedly be no "blind purchases" or those that give "gameplay advantages" but still cosmetic purchases and no doubt later story DLC and season passes, limited edition wankmagnets and cummaguffins and they might just go back on their word for all this anyway because it's EA.

Story details remain vague suggesting an overall emptiness to rival my personality. You are a freelancing mercenary against enemies called "The Dominion." There are also monsters apparently and as they seem desperate to remind us at every opportunity; real-time weapon-sorry WEATHER change.

The scripted gameplay demo shows a tropical world reminiscent of levels from Mass Effect but with more bells and whistles. The mechs shoot guns and missiles until things die, grating dialogue tells us nothing of interest and the characters enter a cave where a big testicle falls in front of them and the footage abruptly ends.

When we've still seen little beyond hyper-edited trailers and repeated concept art it's difficult to predict whether Anthem will be somewhat enjoyable or not at all enjoyable. What it won't be is the trailblazing creative diamond the industry is foolishly hyping it up to be. In fact EA's internal and external pressure on the title to be the next Mass Effect trilogy in a single game is likely the biggest detriment to its potential success.

"How cool was thaaaaaaat?" asks Gnatasha for the fifth bloody time and as I pull the trigger to hear nothing but an impotent click, I open my eyes to see the conference has ended as limply as it begun. Oh well, five chambers chances left to go.

"Look I'm wearing pleb shoes and everything."