E3 2015 – Ubisoft Press Conference – LIVE

UBISOFT E3 2015 Press Conference: #UBI3

*Live blog. Please refresh*


-Just a few minutes away from the Ubisoft press conference. Quick hopefuls: Tom Clancy’s The Division, Assassins Creed Syndicate, Rainbow Six: Siege.


-3:00PM – Time for Ubisoft.

South Park

phpacmi7t-The epic RPG returns. An all new South Park game. Announcement trailer. Not a fantasy RPG, but a super hero game, South Park, The Fractured, but Whole.

-Aisha Tyler of course, introduces Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Continues the story of Stick of Truth. Kids are playing super heroes now.


-Aisha Tyler reassures us that Ubisoft does listen to their fans. And realize that 2014 and 2015 was not the best year with bugs and launch issues. Keep sending feedback.


For Honor

-Yves  Guillemot, CEO is on stage. Ubisoft has been a company that does takes risk. Announce a new IP and a new genre: Pre-rendered trailer showing knights and vikings. Sword fighting in epic battles. Castles and Knights. Lots of bloody sword fighting. Seems to be transitioning between generations. For Honor.

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-Knights, Viking and Samurai. Creative Director Jason Vannenburg, introduced a new type of gameplay called the Art of Battle. Feel the game, feel the combat. Bring your friends.

-8 players come to the stage to show a live multiplayer demo, 2 teams of 4. Large battlefield, hundred or so enemies, knights vs samurai. Brutal sword fighting and execution kills. You can sense the weight of the weapons used. 4 v 4 multiplayer demo on the showroom floor.


The Crew Expansion and Trials Fusion Expansion

-Aisha is back to discuss two more games. The Crew up first, new expansion pack. Quick in-game footage trailer. Monster Trucks!! Drift races. Drag races. Motorcycles and dune buggies. November 17th, complete graphic overhaul with new vehicles and modes. The Crew – Wild Ride.

Trials Fusion Awesome Level Max expansion. A WTF trailer??? A cat riding a fire breathing unicorn? Whisker physics, anyone?


Tom Clancy’s The Division

-Ryan Barnard, game designer for The Division. Showing the dark zone. Can work alongside other agents, or fight against them. This is no man’s land. Trust no one.

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-Snow wasteland in New York. Small squads starts to sneak up on a group and get flanked. Unsure how they’ll react but they decide to help. Seeder mine tool is shown, and small gun turret. Heading off to the park, the other players have joined up. “Cleaners” are shown. Flamethrower enemy type, but the group has loot so they don’t want to risk the interaction. Can call in for extraction. Need to defend for 90 seconds.

-Squad turns their back on the new strangers to steal their loot before extraction. 3rd member of the main squad decides to leave the group and take out everyone. Reinforces the do-no-trust-anyone in the dark zone functionality. Dick mood, sir.

-Game looks amazing. Hands on playable on the show floor. Beta’s on Xbox One , PS4 and PC next year. Releases March 8th, 2016 on all platforms.


ANNO 2205

anno-A Blue Byte Production, We’re leaving earth to the moon. New IP. Trailer shows a big facility and colony on the Moon. Zooms out and shows the entire moon has a population. ANNO 2205.

-Game starts on Earth, where you need to raise your city, and develop resources. Sort of like a Civ game then? A race to space?


Just Dance 2016

-The biggest music video game franchise of all time. Now you can use the smart phone as a controller. Also will work with the camera for consoles. Live dance demo with Jason Derulo – Want to Want Me. Typical Ubisoft. This October on all last-gen and this-gen platforms. Something special for WiiU, PS4, and Xbox One – streaming service, Just Dance Unlimited. Dance on Demand Subscription for all new fresh content.


Rainbow Six: Siege

-New CG story trailer. Biological threat. Shows biochemists. Rainbow Six: Siege. Close quarters combat. Everything is destructible. Once you die, you stay dead. Angela Basset is introduced. Plays the role of Six, leader of the counter-terrorism unit. They discuss what it’s like to do voice acting for the video game.

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-“More to Siege than multiplayer“. Terrohunt is back. Playable solo or with friends. Features the most difficult AI to date. Live Demo. Shows the breaching and drone tools. In co-op, communication is key. Destruction is incredible – blast little holes for viewpoints. Team makes it into the room to defend. Things get real intense.

-Beta starts September 24th, 2015. On All platforms, PVP and Terrohunt available in the beta.


Trackmania Turbo

-Coming from PC to consoles with all its tracks. Trailer shows the F1 car dropped onto the track from a helicopter and shows the wacky and wild race tracks. 4 player split-screen support. Time based races in the solo campaign. Fast crazy tracks with loops and banked turns and jumps, and obstacles. Game is fast. 200 tracks across different areas, modes and difficulties.

-Random track generator. Terraforming. Track creation, and details. Jump in and play within seconds on the new track. millions of auto-generated options. Rollercoaster style tracks.


Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

ass-creed-syndicate-Trailer shows the new world based in London. Trailer shows the gangs and street life. Horse & chariot gameplay returns. Guns will be more prominent this time. Fast brutal combat a mainstay. Trailer shows bar brawls. Showcasing Jacob Frye as the main protagonist. Doesn’t show his twin sister.

“Join the Rooks”

-Game takes place in 1868, right in the middle of the Industrial Revolution. First modern Assassin’s Creed game. Two Assassins and their gangs trying to remove the crooks from the streets and bring the streets back to the people.


Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands

-Yves  Guillemot comes back on stage for one last presentation to end the show. Group in Paris working in secrecy for the next announcement:

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-New Trailer: “Death is a Saint”. Skeleton and skulls. Trailer shows money and blood, and a Golden Gun. Pre-alpha game footage. New update on last year’s extreme sports game by the looks of it?

-First mission shows a group on the mountain tracking cocaine sales, sniper takes out the leader and the trailer jumps to dune buggy off-road chase. Next mission shows a stealth option, another lab. Lab is blown up, and the heroes race off. Next mission is an ambush option. Full assault with drones and assault rifles.

“How do you fight an enemy that doesn’t fear death?”

-Massive Open World. Trailer shows all the different terrain and modes of transport. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands. Like The Crew, but essentially a better version of Mercenaries. Awesome!


Aisha Tyler and Ubisoft sign off on their conference. Play On!

Last up is Sony’s press conference at 6pm.

-iRogan

E32014 – Ubisoft Press Conference

3rd of the big 4 today, starting up. Ubisoft hosted by Aisha Tyler.

UbiPress

Far Cry 4’s first 5 minutes is on display. The game looks very similar to Far Cry 3, maybe just a next-gen boost, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s last gen and Next-gen. Assuming its going to be a very story driven FPS again. Game is based in the Himalayan mountains. Our character is on a bus with a passport, and we’re heading towards a militant checkpoint. Bus gets stopped, the papers our guide has gets rejected and all hell breaks loose. Our villain arrives via helicopter and grills the militant leader – ” I said stop the bus, not shoot the bus. Very big difference”. The villain has a similar psychotic entrance that Vaas had, he’s very calm and disturbing. Get the impression that the protagonist is related to the villain. Shout out to the villain w/ protagonist selfie. Nov 18th release.

Aisha Tyler is out, and the language censorship is turned off. Watch Dog’s success gets a brief mention, as does the fact that she’s in the game. Moving on to new stuff.

Just Dance 2015 – Yay dancing. #pee_break. This got a long presentation, 20+ people on the stage included.

The Division is up next with a long time lapse story trailer of the outbreak. Really shows the engine, day/night cycles, and city seasonal changes. Very awesome. Not an engine gameplay, as we already got that during the MS press conference.

Ubisoft’s next big project, once delayed – The Crew. Boasting gameplay that allows you drive across the entirety of the USA with no loading. We get a lengthy time lapse showcasing some cars and the different types of terrain to travel: deserts and snowy mountains, tarmac and off-road. Many different styles of cars, day/night cycles. The scope of this game is incredible, gigantic, and gorgeous. The time lapse showcases one of numerous 2+ hour missions. The game is to be released Nov 11th, 2014 on XBox1, PS4, and PC. Closed Beta available July 23rd, 2014.

Ubisoft’s biggest franchise, Assassin’s Creed is gonna be their big focus this year. the MS press conference had a brief showing on the multi-player side of Assassin’s Creed Unity, and at the Ubisoft side we get to see what single-player plays like, and how multi-player can be integrated. It seems like co-op can be drop in, as we pass some potential missions they advertise the option of “4 players”. We start of with the E3 staple – the story trailer set to lovely appropriate music. Unity focuses on the French Revolution. 4 assassins with the focus on co-operative gameplay. There are a ridiculous amount of NPC’s on the screen, hundreds, that you have to navigate through to reach your targets. Very simple, minimalistic HUD. Nothing static, just contextual. Eagle vision returns showing off the level’s focus, and enemies, and small context elements can pop up as requested so you know where to go. No maps on the HUD from what I can tell. New traversal elements, the ability to angle yourself up walls to grab ledges, instead of running straight at them. Similar combat mechanics, slow, paced. It does seem like the game is going back to the slower original assassin’s gameplay, scope the area, find info on the target, strike, or instigate a strike, and then run. To be release October 28th, 2014.

Time for a breather – another fitness game – Shape Up where your workout is a game, in a game, presented as a game. #gamer #focus

Time to pull on the heart strings, Ubisoft. Valiant Hearts – The Great War is next. Cartoon 2D side-scroller, made on the Rayman Legends engine, similar art style to Behemoth’s Castle Crashers. Focus is 4 players and a K-9 companion. The game is based on real WW1 history , 1914-1918, inspired by letters, taking place in a stylized universe. Bringing art and the past to life.

Nearing the end of the press conference now, as CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot is out to say thanks….and here our next new game:

Rainbow Six: Siege!

We’re shown a pre-alpha multi-player match of a house breach. Starts of with the Six’s drone view inside of the house as the terrorists are barricading the walls and windows, and a one minute countdown for the match to start. Six’s decide to breach from the roof and upstairs windows. 5 vs. 5 gameplay – 5 minute breach. Match/breach starts, and the level of destruction to the house is incredible. No need top go through the doors when you can shoot your way through the walls. Crazy damage model being shown. The character’s models do have a cartoonier look, not unlike Team Fortress in a way. Matches finishes with a cliff hanger as 2 Sixs breach through a wall into the room while one breaches through the ceiling. Incredible showcase. Rainbow Six Siege.

Aisha Tyler and Ubi out!

Last up will be Sony’s Press Conference to wrap the day.