E3 2016 - Ubisoft

If you thought that maybe E3 conferences were getting more sane and sensible over the years, you would be spectacularly wrong. Ubisoft is picking up the slack and catapulting it into orbit against everyone's wishes.

I don't think there are adequate human words to describe what transpires at the opening of this conference. I don't think I will ever be able to forget what I have seen and was woefully unprepared for upon clicking play. The descriptors buzzing around my head range from hallucinogenic, horrifying, unnecessary to CBeebies and downright distasteful.

It is one thing to butcher the Queen classic "Don't Stop Me Now" it is quite another to do it in Giraffe and Lion costumes with butterfly guitars and unsynchronised backing dancers with psychopathic theatre grins.

It's unfair to compare this to an acid trip because they sometimes result in the mercy of a coma.

Were it just this, I might have moved on. Were the circus clowns all still not on stage I might have dismissed it, but amidst this cheese-stuffed twee, this pompous literal song and dance, Aisha Tyler steps out and tries to express sympathies on behalf of Ubisoft for the victims of the Orlando shootings...

Sony's Shawn Layden mentioned this at the start of their conference too but it was respectfully done because there wasn't a fucking lollipop girl and barbershop quartets doing shit cartwheels five seconds before. Both Shawn Layden and Aisha Tyler point out the unsmooth incongruity in mentioning something so serious and terrible and then having to talk about and celebrate the comparatively trivial world of video games.

The difference however is that Sony, had to move on to talking about video games, it's E3 and their press conference. Ubisoft did not have to start their show with that baffling musical number completely unrelated to video games. Sure it's their 30th birthday and a Just Dance hashtag appears but that performance was not the game and even if it were you could have picked something better to open with. If you wanted to focus that much on the 30th birthday celebrations, just don't mention Orlando. Everyone's wearing the badges anyway, that's all Bethesda and Microsoft did, you could have just thought for more than a second about how it would look and avoided...that.

So finally moving on to the now seemingly foreign object of video games and a CG trailer for Ghost Recon: Wildlands plays where I feel myself being dragged back into politics as the Trumptastic new title sees a bunch of American military fighting a corrupt dictatorship in Mexico.

After this trailer the lead designer starts a pretentious talk about Coca leaves whilst irritating banners of "live" tweets from spectators pop up on screen. I already don't like this guy but finishing his talk with "let's go get that intel" in a tone like Barney the fucking dinosaur talking to a bunch of children cements his name on the shithead-list.

If Barney was somehow in charge of a military operation of course...

A gameplay demo for Wildlands starts and the player immediately shoots two guards in the head as his character's dialogue says "let's try to keep it stealthy." before he switches to an AK47 and blasts another guy standing out in the open.

Our generic American grunt character guns down some more guards before diddling on a laptop to "get that intel." Him and his partner need to proceed to "The Stewmaker's" hideout which is quite a distance away. Player man asks "do you have a car?" to which his partner responds "no, something better." as though this is supposed to be an impressive reveal when his small helicopter lands and the force from the roters doesn't even affect the nearby trees.

A third soldier joins the squad and I suddenly realise that all the characters have the exact same voice with the slight exception to the fourth member, who's a black guy. Despite boasting 4 player co-op throughout the entire campaign it's rather meaningless in this demo as we're not shown the players or any splitscreen view to have any idea how many are actual people  Sony's set up showing the actual players in small video windows at the side was more insightful in this regard.

The soldiers find their target, shoot more dudes, a car chase ensues and they escape by helicopter with the characters talking constantly throughout it. The only impressive feature is the amount of context-specific dialogue they seem to have recorded. You can join the wall builders on March 7th 2017.

There's hundreds of games this screenshot could be from.

Another unsettling trailer talks about the rise of crime in the U.S and plays clips from real-life incidents. It turns out this is a mock-trailer for the next South Park game so I guess it doesn't matter, since rampant insensitivity is kind of their thing.

Jason Schrodinger steps out and simultaneously doesn't, followed by ageing Trey Parker and Matt Stone to talk about South Park: The Fractured But Whole. They all sit down on a big sofa to discuss it like old friendly chummy chums.

In the new game the characters are no longer satirising western RPG's and have moved onto Superhero's and Marvel's movies in particular. We see some cutscenes and gameplay but as with Stick Of Truth, you can't really praise the graphics or the writing except in relation to its authenticity to the show. It looks like the show and seems pretty funny like the show so that's all good I guess.

Next up the creative director of The Division appears with Aisha to talk about the new Underground expansion. "We love this world, you love this world and we're going to keep on making it better for you" Well that's pretty presumptuous of you for a start and also you forgot to add "for a price" to the end of that sentence.

You can get free Splinter Cell, Goose Raccoon and Rainbow Six alternate costumes if you're part of "Ubisoft Club" so tough luck there everyone. They then announce another expansion before the first one is even out. After Underground, a snowy one called Survival is coming but no one knows any difference besides the snow because all we're shown is another CG trailer.

A VR game due in autumn called Eagle Flight is demoed. Where you surprisingly enough play as Eagles who can somehow shoot something at each other, presumably either their shit or giant gobs of spit. The teams play a capture the flag match over Paris where the flag is a rabbit.

The game looks fun in a very simplistic Wii Sports kind of way up until the cameras cut back to the players all swivelling their heads around in their Oculus headsets looking like a row of blindfolded hostages trying to break their own necks.

Next comes the smuggest guy of this E3 (which is saying something) to introduce a Star Trek VR game that they even roped some cast members from prior series (and one from the upcoming movie of course) into playing for a trailer. Most of the trailer is showing the players looking dumb in their headsets sitting on chairs because the title itself looks like a PS2 game.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew comes out in Autumn this year. They all claim it's so much fun but the trailer really isn't convincing. Ubisoft brings Levar Burton back out from the trailer to hype up the game more, talking about teamwork and immersion but I'm honestly not feeling it. 

Instead of sitting in a chair and pressing buttons whilst looking at the interior of a spaceship on your TV, Star Trek VR allows you to sit in a chair and press buttons whilst looking at the interior of a spaceship on some goggles strapped to your face.

Make it so...much better than this please.

A cinematic trailer shows story details of For Honor. The Medieval combat game that combines warriors from Europe, Scandinavia and Asia. It seems in the plot, the world is post-apocalyptic and suffered some natural disaster which halted technology and diminished vital resources, bringing about the scenario where Vikings, Knights and Samurai are all fighting each other.

On top of this there seems to be a supernatural element as a Goddess of War called Apollyon orchestrates the conflict from behind the scenes. Initial historical Googles only show an angel from the New Testament Book of Revelation by that name, who commanded an army of locusts. That doesn't seem to fit what we see here so perhaps it's just the developer's own creation.

Unless we're talking metaphors for expendable human life in war and arty farty hohohohoh.

That's way more story than I expected for this game but the surprise is a pleasant one. For Honor's frightening creative director then steps straight out of the game world and onto the stage to give cheesy patronising Braveheart speeches (again) for 90% of everything he says. He actually drops out of this into normal talk briefly so it's clear he's not physically unable and is actually from our current era in time but he's just doing it as poor choice of...presentation I guess.

A live gameplay demo begins for the Viking's campaign in the single player which sounds like Jason Vandenberghe himself did the voiceover just emphasising how unnecessary his dramatic readings are in the actual conference.

Weirdly, there seems to be a very different crowd at this conference to the dickweeds from all the prior shows who would have heckled and screamed their own stupidity aplenty by now in the frequent awkward silences throughout Ubisoft's show.

As for the gameplay itself the combat looks varied, polished, visceral and fun. With combos, sneak attacks, running tackles, throws, drop attacks and unique environmental kills all amongst impressively realised historical settings like a Japanese fortress seen in this demo. Weirdly For Honor releases on Valentine's day 2017 so you can at least satisfy your murder boner if nothing else...

From Geordi La Forge to Geordie La Forced, a northern chap announces a sequel to indie game Grow Home called Grow Up and I can't help wishing he'd take his own advice instead of talking like the worst condescending cringey advertisement. 

Things had settled down into merely annoying for a while there until two bearded chubby men in pink tracksuits strut through the room and reveal a combination of Trials and Blood Dragon inventively called Trials Of The Blood Dragon.

More like Trials of My Fucking Sanity...

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood at this point but the 80's goof and nostalgic charm Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon had, seems to be soured by thoughtless overuse in this new game or at least its tryhard action figure-based trailer.

Going from the least professional thing this conference to the most, film producer Frank Marshall arrives on stage to talk about the Assassin's Creed movie with Aisha. Frank claims it will be faithful to the games and then shows some "never beseen before footage" that you've probably already seen because it's probably everywhere by now so even mentioning it was rather pointless. Let's pray the Assassin's Creed movie does the impossible of becoming a good video game to film adaptation for once and while we're at it, world peace, cures for cancer and chocolate sex for everyone.

An edited gameplay demo for Watchdogs 2 introduces our main character and his allies on a mission to steal information from a corrupt politician or businessman or something. Breaking into his house involves typical behind cover stealth gameplay with a few neat hacking capabilities like remote controlled spy drones and hacking a parked car to start and crash through the building.

That promising lukewarm start is soaked back to cold indifference when the protagonist pulls a gun and starts shooting guys and melee attacking guards twice his age and size, cementing fears that the developers haven't learnt from the first game. Is it so hard to imagine that people might want creative hacking ways of dealing with guards rather than the same cover-shooting mechanics we see in every other everything these days?

I mean that's just straight up an assault rifle. Do you really need bloody assault rifles in your hacking game?

As for the plot and characters, it feels like it's trying too hard to be modern and cool in places but other goofy parts I have to admit to liking, such as your masked ally who uses electronic keyboard symbols where his eyes would be. Maybe the guns are more optional than they seem but right now I'm mainly sceptical of and concerned for Watchdogs 2.

Following this conference's trend for jarring contrasts two old identically dressed businessmen take turns on stage to talk about this supposedly cool, youthful "fuck the system" streetwise game series. Their business drivel ranges from meaningless "we're excited about a Watchdogs movie" to trivial "PS4 owners get Watchdogs 2 DLC a month earlier than anyone else."

That first old man also runs Ubisoft and Yves Guillmot returns on stage to slowly announce a brand new IP in "a new genre" which as usual is a complete lie. "Steep" is an open world sports racing game located in The Alps because the studio making it is situated at the base of the alps and creativity is now just looking out your window and saying "fuck it, do that."

You can snowboard, ski, paraglide or wingsuit down the mountains in solo or multiplayer as well as rewatch replays, wear goofy costumes and share all that stuff with friends...and that's kind of it really. Everything will really depend on how functional and fun the mechanics are because that's basically all there is to the game.

Looks nice though.

An odd finale to the conference but at this point I'm just glad the two hour long shitshow is finally over. Excluding the opening, as hard as that is to do, Ubisoft's conference had too many CG trailers, mostly mediocre gameplay demos and an infuriating, patronising, cringeworthy attitude throughout that made me want to grit my teeth into dust and then grind my gums together until they wore down to the fucking bone.

Aside from Aisha herself, none of the speakers had any rapport with the audience or any clue how to not be insufferable babblebollocks on stage. For Honor was the only title to actually impress me, whilst a couple of other games felt mainly lacking or misguided and the rest of the conference was quite frankly dreck.