Highlights from EA Press Conference E3 2013

Electronic Arts has had quite a bad year so far. If it wasn’t getting rated as the worst place to work, it was getting  heat for some of its titles like Star Wars: The Old Republic and Sim City. Now we are at E3 2013, the biggest gaming event of the year… Did EA jump at the chance to turn itself around? Yes it did, as some of the highlights from its press conference showed.

Bioware Game: Dragon Age- Inquisition

 

The trailer featured in this article is Fires Above. It is the first trailer for Dragon Age III: Inquisition is the next generation of RPGs, lead by BioWare. BioWare is a gaming company known for making their RPGs story-driven, with numerous choices that determine the outcome of a players game. In past games, the choices affected the story. However, in this new RPG the choices take place in an open world that could bring about things for its better good or better turmoil.  Although BioWare only teased us with a trailer of the new Dragon Age, it appears to be a game that may exceed expectations. Hopefully this will breathe life into a franchise that took a wrong turn when Dragon Age II came out.

New Game Engines

One of the things EA prided itself on during its press conference is the use game engines. Games engines build the foundation upon which games are produced. Many games made today are built from many companies game engines with a unique twist to them. This year at E3, EA unveiled two original game engines: Frostbite 3 and EA Sports Ignite.

Frostbite 3

This new game engine revealed teaser trailers and hints at a new Battlefront Game for Star Wars, and Need for Speed Rivals.

Need for Speed Rivals debued first. It is a street racing game that can be played offline, but players get the most out of it when they go online as single and multiplayer parties. It pits the racers against the cops. The players drive around and open world track racing from other cars and fleeing from the cops- who are fellow gamers.  People can start out in single player games and be joined by others who log into the open world. In the preview they demonstrated, the person playing the cop car was joined by someone on their tablet as a helicopter chasing the racer.

The graphics were very cool to see, and the game play looks like fun. However, it appeared as though as all the additions in the terrain, such as weather, clouded the game play a bit and made the screen a bit cluttered. Then again, it did improve the realism of the game, for many factors from the road conditions to the type of weather outside do impact how a person races. Overall it was a pretty impressive display of both the game and EA’s game engine.

Note, that Need for Speed is becoming a movie and is due to be released in Spring 2014.

Star Wars Games

Last year Star Wars was at E3 via LucasArts. A year later, all of Star Wars has been purchased by Disney from George Lucas, LucasArts has been disbanded, and EA now owns exclusive rights to all Star Wars games. This left up in the air many Star Wars projects that LucasArts was working on, such as Star Wars 1313 up in the air in terms of their fate. At this year’s E3, EA seems poised to announce the newest Star Wars titles, and perhaps continue projects LucasArts began…

Well, they did not exactly come out and announce that Star Wars games are coming. HOWEVER, they did give gamers a teaser look at a new Star Wars Battlefront game being created by DICE games. This teaser breathes hope and life into a gaming series that fans feared suffered the fate of the Death Stars. Quote from many fans out there: It’s about time!

 

 

EA Sports Ignite

This is the game engine driving all of EAs newest sports simulation games. These games will be released for the PS4 and Xbox One. The newest titles coming are NBA Live14, Madden NFL 25, UFC 14, and Fifa 14. Basically the new engine is designed to make sport games more real based on tracking how real NFL and NBA players play, as well as track how players play the game. This in turn will give gamers more control as well as make it feel more real when playing the game. This is all done through the EA Sports Ignite Engine. Furthermore, it is attempting to look more and more lifelike. NFL game was more successful at making players look real then the NBA or Fifa games.

Conclusions

From new game engines, to long awaited titles, EA has managed to wow the audience at E3 this years. Their new game engines are very impressive. Their building upon the sports simulation titles are something to be admired. Furthermore, they have managed to stay ahead of the game by quickly jumping onto the newest consoles to appear. Furthermore, they appear to be letting the studios that are under their wings do what they do best from Bioware’s storytelling to EA sports making the most real simulations known to sporting games. Let’s hope EA can hold the momentum as they enter the next generation of gaming.

Note: If you are in LA, you can test the new sports titles as well as Need for Speed at the EA booth.