BurtonReviews EA’s 2017 E3 Conference: STAAAR WAAAARS, NOTHING BUT STAAAR WAAAARSSSSattheendanywaaay!!!

(Image sourced from https://www.ea.com/eaplay2017)

Oh what a wonderful time of year! No it’s not Christmas, well technically it’s not for the masses, but for those who hold the heart pounding, eye widening, finger training past time of videogames near and dear to their heart, it’s kinda like Christmas, but a lot better. This is Ultra Mega Christmas Ultimate 2017 Edition…also known as E3 2017.

(Image sourced from http://gaming.gentside.com/nintendo/)

But, unlike Christmas, E3 doesn’t have its own holiday time enforced by every work place across the globe. So getting all the juicy and nerdgasm inducing information from the various, long, and sometimes very awkward conferences from E3 can feel nigh impossible, unless you really do not value your work and just skive to get every update as and when it happens. So what can you do, it looks like it’s either getting fired and knowing every new development of the gaming industry, or keeping your job and feeling like an E3 noob.

Or atleast that’s what it was like, before you met you’re good pal BurtonReviews, who over the next couple of days is going to be distilling all the conferences down to their essential components in easy, fun, and hopefully informative articles for you to quickly digest on your work breaks so you can be a fully functioning adult, and have every morsel of E3 info still locked safely away in your overly excited head.

So without further ado, let’s get into the first conference of E3 2017, EA’s annual showcase of everything new, shiny and explosive to come out of their infamous studio as I run down the top 3 games of the show that had be staring at my phone mouth ajar and eyes wider than the plot-holes in the Flash Season 2.

[**Disclaimer – I’m really not into any of the sports offerings from E3 so if you want any updates on Fifa, Madden, Etc, this is not the place for you. Sorry**]

(Image sourced from http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2017/06/10/ea-e3-2017-live-stream/)

 

1.    Star Wars Battlefront 2: Roger Roger

As the title for this article suggests, EA’s conference was crammed full of Star Warsy goodness in the form of Battlefront 2. And if you’re wanting to watch all of what EA showed, you’d be best off skipping to about the last quarter of the conference as EA chose to go out on this galactic show stopper.

It seems that EA is determined to turn over a new leaf with this Battlefield sequel, as they make it abundantly clear that they have taken in allll of the feedback they received from passionate fans of the franchise, and are striving to improve on almost everything for the explosive sequel.

Well how are they actually implementing those improvements you may ask. For starters they are adding a whole bunch more content to the game. The first Battlefront felt abit empty in the way of content, being squarely focused on the original trilogy and treading on a lot of old and well established ground. But in Battlefront 2, we’ll be getting to kick ass through all three eras of the long and blaster scorched Star Wars, with the conference highlighting a beautifully recreated Naboo level that not only visually looked stunning, but the intricacy of the map, being able to fight as droids and the badass clone troopers, and the era specific vehicles such as the V-wing, made it look like a hell of a lot of fun to play.

(Image sourced from https://www.cnet.com/news/ea-e3-2017-press-conference-star-wars-battlefront-ii-madden-nfl-18/)

Secondly, all the upcoming maps and characters to be added to the game post-launch will be absolutely FREE. Starting with Finn and Captain Phasma on a The Last Jedi map. This means no more having to buy an extortionate season pass to actually get the full experience, instead just getting the game is all you need to do to be able to play all of the game, just like the simple good-old days, but way prettier this time around.

And finally, what all fans of the game had been screaming for, even a star of the movies, John Boyega (Finn), Battlefront 2 will be getting a story mode. While this was announced before time and it was only featured a little bit in the actual conference, it is still great to hear that we will be getting a fully-fledged cinematic experience in the impeccable Frostbite engine, as well as some light shed on a part of Star Wars cannon that is still shrouded in obscurity.  We will be getting to see the uncharted era between Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens through the eyes of Imperial Squad Commander Iden Versio, played by Janina Gavankar. The actress dawned the stage for most of the Star Wars Battlefront 2 presentation, and her natural charisma and untether excitement for this game gave me high hopes for both the story and her performance in its narrative.

Outside of all of these big improvements, the game just looks like a big step up from the last, and a shed ton of fun to play. With now having specific classes to choose from you can feel more like you are apart of the various military factions of the long history of Star Wars, filling out and becoming a skilled member of a specific section of its army, instead of the hodgepodge creation your character in Battlefield 1 could feel like. Not only that but power-ups have been adjusted for the sequel too, no longer being races to the finish line events where you race against team mates to pick up a coin to become a Tie Fighter, or Lord Vader himself, instead you will earn battle points through the course of the game and be able to buy the power-ups mid-game. This not only makes the power-ups feel more fair, but also earned, making your rampage through a hallway of crying clone troopers as the formidable Darth Maul, or any other new hero being added to the games roster, feel that much more satisfying.

(Image sourced from https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/10/15776588/e3-2017-ea-announcements-star-wars-need-for-speed)

2.    Need for Speed Payback: I’m Fast and Frustrated

Need for Speed used to be one of those franchises that would just always be on your game-shopping list of the year, but at one point it just seemed to disappear into monotony, with each iteration looking like the same old Need for Speed with nothing new to really garner another £50 purchase. And with last year’s cringy reboot simply called Need for Speed, I was ready to completely right this franchise off. But when Payback exploded onto EA’s stage, it got me, and as the gameplay teaser went on and the simply grab and run mission turned into one of screeching tires and fire, this game slowly worked its hooks into me to a point where I'm genuinely excited to see more from this game. With a level of customisation where you can make every car in your virtual garage truly your own, incredibly realistic graphics, and cinematic take downs to look forward to pulling off, this game has all the ingredients to be a great racing game that can stand out from the bland crowd of stern faced driving simulators. And if it can land a great action movie story where you swap between the three main protagonists in such a sleek fashion as the one shown in this trailer, then this might be a time to dust off my old driving game skills.

(Image sourced from http://next.gazeta.pl/next/7,151243,21943917,e3-2017-ea-pokazuje-fife-18-star-wars-battlefront-2-i-cos.html)

3.    A Way Out: A Buddy-Perp Adventure

A new IP from the indie developers of the interesting Hit ‘Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons’ back in 2013, Starbreeze Studios. Here they continue their streak of innovative co-op gameplay that they began in Brothers, but instead of you controlling two characters at once with the two analogue sticks, here Starbreeze is creating a completely co-op game that cannot be played without a player 2, whether it be online or the recommended method of couch co-op.

A Way Out follows two prisoners as they try to escape prison and reassemble their fractured and strained lives. Never unclipping from split screen, the game looks to be a fresh and interesting use of cinematics, gameplay, and multiple viewpoints as the actions of the two characters are always on screen, one could be in a cutscene while the other is rifling through the prisons laundry, but it will be seamlessly shown in what’s looking to be an expertly directed and engrossing story that I can’t wait to play through with a friend.

(Image sourced from https://www.nerdmuch.com/games/22445/ea-will-need-change-strategy-e3-2017/)

So that was the EA E3 press conference. Of course I didn’t mention everything, there were a lot of sports announcements that I slept through, and the quick unveiling of a new Bioware game – Anthem - that really didn’t show anything at all but that it was a weird kind of sci-fi and that it will be shown more tomorrow at the Xbox conference. But overall this was a solid conference, nothing too mind blowing, but what was shown was damn good and got me excited about projects I didn’t really think I’d care for, and in the end, isn’t that what E3’s all about?

Thanks for reading, and hey while you’re here why not check out my YouTube channel, BurtonReviews, where I upload awesome gaming montages put to badass songs or scores every Sunday. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbUfnyezvQsVsDgN3TGRh1Q