EA E3 2013 11 Jun

This year Electronic Arts opened their presser with a bang via a game trailer that began by parodying Battlefield’s visual aesthetics before dropping the black and white to reveal some goofy over the top carnage in the form of PopCap’s new third-person shooter, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare.  PopCap’s founder John Vechey then came out to show some gameplay before announcing Peggle 2 in a rather dramatic fashion.  It no doubt left the audience speechless.

Vince Zampella of Respawn Entertainment now took the stage out to show a quick documentary style trailer that included various clips of dev team members sharing thoughts about their game, Titanfall.  The majority of footage related to the game took place during the Microsoft press conference.

The biggest cheers of the night came in the form of an extremely quick CGI trailer introduced to us by EA Lables President, Frank Gibaeu.  It starts out very vague, with what appears to be a person traversing a frozen wasteland.   A few laser fires, a crashing speeder and an AT-AT foot later, the arena had lost it.  Powered by Frostbite 3 and being developed by DICE,  it’s safe to say that Star Wars: Battlefront is going to have some lofty expectations coupled with a lot of hype.

Next we were treated to some gameplay footage from the up and coming Need for Speed: Rivals.  It appeared to be your standard NFS experience, with hot cars, police chases and beautiful scenery.  The video showed a multitude of water and weather effects that definitely added to the presentation.  After this was a plug for the NFS film.  You’re here for games though, so we’ll ignore it.

What followed was EA Sport’s standard yearly updates for the sports games.  NBA Live 14, Madden 25, FIFA 14, and the newcomer UFC were all given some time in the spotlight.  The focus with their sports games this year was largely around added physics and faster computations for creating a more visually realistic experience.  They also made it clear that they want to try and update their sports games on a steady basis so that it feels constant just like in the real sports world.

Now it was DICE’s turn to reveal LIVE multiplayer gameplay for the upcoming Battlefield 4.  They did so with the help of 64 people partaking in a specially choreographed presentation of the Siege of Shanghai map.  It appears the focus on tactical destruction is being taken up a notch and with the inclusion of a fully destructible building, one has to wonder the experiences we’ll be looking forward to come release.

EA ended their presser by showing off one of the worst kept secrets in the Sweden deve scene…Mirror’s Edge 2.  DICE made it clear to note that the game had no official release date and would come out when it was “ready.” To our benefit though, all the footage shown was done via the game’s engine.  Definitely eye candy!