Ubisoft normally has a cringe-worthy moment or two, usually when Aisha Tyler tells a gross joke and I can’t decide whether I should laugh or be turned on, but this year was actually pretty genuine. The first title they announced was their Mario-Rabbids collaboration that everyone knew about, yet no one knew about. With Yves and Miyamoto on stage it was a pretty happy moment for all, and if I’m not mistaken, it was the creative director in the audience they showed trying not to break down and cry in front of millions of people. It’s okay, dude, if you have the most influential creative mind in gaming history pimping YOUR game, you go ahead and cry. Life mission accomplished.
Aside from that, Ubi showed off The Crew 2, which seems much, much more ambitious than the first game, with multiple means of transportation being included this time. I’m okay with this. I was a fan of the first game, but after playing through the single player campaign all we were left with was a gigantic open map that was mostly useless, unless you wanted to do busy work trying to beat challenges to upgrade your ride. If they can populate the world with post-game content, I can see this one having serious legs. Oh, and fix the handling. It was wonky as shit.
Just Dance gave us their annual “I wish this would fucking end already” segment, with a singer and dancers that maybe a handful of people know or care about. What’s to say? It’s Just Dance.
Perhaps the biggest revelation was Far Cry 5. Not because we didn’t know about it, but because that initial concept art had some people really questioning whether Ubisoft was off their rocker. I withheld my judgement until I saw some footage, because I had a feeling that in traditional Far Cry fashion, the villain would be so far over the top that no one could possibly think it was modeled after a real group of people. And it was, with the footage opening on a religious cult basically going Negan on some “unbelievers” out in the street. The resistance fighters are your typical, politically correct racial variety, though I was unable to tell from the preview if your antagonists are equally as varied. For the first time we’ll be able to create our own character, which is fine, I guess. Honestly we rarely ever see the character we portray in Far Cry games, so I’m not sure how much time I would put into editing this person.
Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the biggest revelation. That would have to go to the reveal of Beyond Good and Evil 2, which called on stage a very emotional Michael Ancel. And for good reason, he’s been trying to make that game for 15 damn years. We only had a CG trailer, and it was announced as a prequel, but I couldn’t help but wonder why (and the IGN peeps mentioned this as well) they didn’t just make it a reboot. Anyone who didn’t game during the Xbox/PS2/Gamecube era probably has no nostalgic ties to the game, and it’s been long enough where they could basically make it a fresh start. Conceptually, it sounds like a very different game than the original BG&E, but I hope they keep some of the original gameplay elements intact, otherwise where’s the common thread?
We already knew about Assassin’s Creed: Origins, but what I didn’t know (and what they didn’t explain during the conference) was that it’s going to be exploration driven with a completely open narrative. Sound familiar? Yep, that’s because Ghost Recon Wildlands was set up the same way. You could tackle objectives in any order you chose, and could find tons of weapons and gun parts along the way. Is it wrong that this actually makes AssCreed more appealing to me?
Speaking of Assassin’s Creed, it seems as though they took the pirate ship sailing concept from Black Flag and made an entire game out of it. Skull and Bones has all the swashbuckling adventure and jaunty sea tunes you could ask for. Does it look a bit like a less fun Sea of Thieves? Yeah, it actually does. But if you like this kind of stuff, I suppose it’s right up your galley.
Alas, still no mention of a new Splinter Cell. C’mon Ubisoft. While I’m sure they’d be ridiculously dense not to be working on another sequel after the fucking excellent Blacklist, stranger things have happened. As a huge Splinter Cell fan, this would’ve made my E3. For now though, I get to anxiously pray that they keep the Splinter Cell formula the same, and not change to fit into this shared open world template that most of their popular games are gravitating towards.
