EA PLAY 2020

With the cancellation of E3 came the influx of conferences like Ubisoft Forward, PS5 Future of Gaming, IGN’s Summer of Gaming, Geoff Keighlys Summer Game Fest and EA Play. Granted EA has been a part of E3 for years with EA Play being branded for some years now as it has recently become E3 adjacent. This week, EA held their annual conference with details about the rest of 2020 and beyond from the publisher.

There were some expected announcements and some great surprises at the very end but for the most part it was pretty conventional for EA. They showed a few smaller titles including the next one from Josef Fares of Brothers and A Way Out called It Takes Two which is another co-op action adventure platformer. Gameplay was shown for the dogfighting game from a galaxy far, far away; Star Wars Squadrons, which is due out in October. As expected there was a sizzle reel for the future of EA sports titles.

Near the end of the presentation there was also a montage that displayed what a bunch of EA studios were working on for next gen. A few months ago it was announced that Criterion was taking over as the head studio behind the Need For Speed franchise after a long hiatus from the series with their last release being the well received Need For Speed: Most Wanted. We didn’t see much other than a couple of cars which is usually a great way to display next gen graphics, but they also displayed how the series will take advantage of the SSD and how quickly you will be able to get into the action. Depending on where the studio takes the story for the series, we might see a return to form for the series.

The montage also featured a few small clips from Dice and their next instalment in the Battlefield series and as we know from a late 2019 earnings report, we wont be seeing a entry until fall 2021, which will probably be a good thing for the series that had somewhat lost its way over the years. The clip showed some extremely realistic facial animations alongside some early rendering of lots of people on the actual battlefield. Although a lot of the visuals that were shown looked very early in the process which means we are not likely to see anything from this series for a while.

As for what Dice can do to bring the series back to greatness they will need to do something more than just a lot of people on the battlefield as Call of Duty is already bringing large scale maps and battles with 150 players on current gen tech. With the hiatus the series has taken combined with the power of next-gen consoles gamers should expect a lot from this team and this series. There is a lot of goodwill with the Bad Company name and doing a more intimate story focused on a tight knit group would be good. The facial animations shown in the trailer could really help with the emotional weight of the game.

One of the big things that fans have been wondering about is what is BioWare doing and why haven’t we seen more of it. We know that they are working on Dragon Age, we know they are working on fixing Anthem with the rebirth which they are calling Anthem 2.0 and according to Venture Beat, one of EA’s games that will be released this fiscal year will be the re-master of the Mass Effect trilogy. Although the remaster is highly unlikely to be handled by BioWare, as they are probably hands full at the moment with fixing Anthem and Dragon Age. EA has not confirmed it’s existence, so its worth taking that with a grain of salt at the moment.

Although it looked great, all we saw was a few samples of art from Dragon Age, which left you wanting to see more but not in a good way. At The Game Awards in 2018, Dragon Age 4 was announced, and while the series is still early in development it would have been nice to see more than just art even though this title is not likely to be seen until 2022 at the earliest based on the comments from EA during a financial briefing.

In a perfect example of how to close out your presentation with “one more thing”, EA announced the revival of Skate with the next game in the series is in the works. Everything that’s old is new again as you wonder why EA has decided to revive this dormant franchise. Is it because the skateboard genre seems to be having a renaissance with games like Tony Hawk getting remasters this fall, Skatebird, Session, and Skater XL all recently or soon to be released. The other option could be that the constant hounding from some fans but probably a lot of non fans might have finally tipped the scales. Every post that EA made on social media was commented with Skate 4 and it didn’t matter what it was.

I don’t think EA truly is affected by the comments on their social media as the people that manage those accounts likely have many buffers in between the people at the top making the decisions that the message never makes it to the intended destination but you never know. As for when we might see the game, I would assume 2022 at the earliest as we are currently in the middle of a pandemic which has slowed down gaming development and it also seemed like the project was in the initial stages.

Overall the show was put together well and felt professional considering the circumstances but then again this is a company who had a net income of over 3 Billion dollars in FY20. The show did feel a little long with a lot of sizzle reel and not a lot of actual meat, and their smaller titles unfortunately didn’t connect with me. On the bright side, If Skate can be brought back then there is hope for Dead Space.