An armchair view of E3 2013: Ubisoft

Ubisoft Conference: June 10^th 11:00pm GMT

Ubisoft may well be the most interesting publisher conference this year. I suspect heavy focus on Watch Dogs (though they revealed the trailer they’ll be showing here a few hours early) and more on Assassin’s Creed 4.

Don’t you steal your own thunder if you release a trailer for one of your big games before your own conference?
The conference opens with darkness and an announcer. Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains comes on stage. Since he has a guitar I assume he’s famous. He plays it for a bit.
I’ve been finding the conferences fairly dull so I can’t begrudge them opening with a song.
Rocksmith using voice commands it seems. A game that does not need a sequel it just needs cheaper DLC.
How funny would it be if he messed up his own song on it?
Rocksmith an all new 2014 edition. As someone who has played a lot of the current Rockmith I suggest just getting that instead.
A woman on stage wearing a hash tag ‘girlwood’ t-shirt. Wait…I remember her. She’s the awful unfunny presenter from last year that had the geek sidekick! This is terrible!
She talks at the crowd a bit, jokes fall flat. Remembers she’s supposed to be introducing the event. Then goes back to bad jokes.
More bad jokes.
Onto Splinter Cell Blacklist – stop talking and show me something I’m actually interested in despite the lack of Ironside.
She leaves the stage and a CG trailer for Blacklist plays. Fairly typical stuff setting up the general gist of the plot regarding all troops being sent home or a weekly terrorist attack will be carried out. Punctual terrorists!
After some co-op campaign the Spy VS Merc multiplayer mode is shown a little also before going back to campaign. There doesn’t seem to be an on stage demo sadly which is a little disappointing.
The presenter is back to talk about Rayman. Not my style but popular I know.
Rayman Legends – this is already out, isn’t it? No wait this is the one that got delayed after it went multi-platform and annoyed everyone! Bit dangerous drawing attention like that.
It’s finally out December 3^rd. Which, despite what the presenter said, is not very, very soon.
Another trailer plays for the same game because one trailer is never enough.
The next game is The Mighty Quest of Epic Loot which sounds like a name marketing came up with to be cool.
This guy on to talk about it is wearing a sweat top! Not even a shirt. He looks like it’s someone they grabbed off the street a few minutes before. He challenges people to try and steal his loot (I assume a bindle filled with empty food cans).
A trailer for MQEL as no one will ever call it plays with a Zap Brannigan-esque knight showing off his castle in a less than comical fashion. Ends with him swearing a lot to bleeps for comedic effect because when you can’t be funny swearing will get you there quick.
The free beta is available to sign up to, though.
Lady is back “humour and gaming are two of my favourite things” – then why aren’t you good at either?
South Park The Stick of Truth is next, seemed like genuine cheers as the trailer began. It’s released this year, maybe.
Finally it is next gen games.
Pro-tip – don’t insult your gaming audience while trying to get them on your side.
Good lord either she is massive or Yves is a tiny man. Oh, she’s tall. Someone it seemed cuter the other way and I suspect I was surprised by it last year too.
A new game called ‘The Crew’ is being shown. It starts in a modern looking garage with a lot of tires so I hope this isn’t a race game.
It’s a race game.
Looks multiplayer focused, hence the crew bit. Preforming crimes in customizable cars available sometime in 2014. A developer working on it comes on stage to chat about it a bit.
“You’ll experience what total freedom is!” Is that with or without an always on connection?
“We’ve made the entire game a persistent online world.” Oh.
What is hanging from this guy’s back leg? Just noticed. Is that toilet roll? It isn’t his belt. I should focus on the gameplay demo but honestly now I want to know what that was.
If you put this next to that Need for Speed game from the other conference you’d struggle to tell them apart. By you I mean me, but I think even those into their car games would say they are similar. Need for Speed with a family friendly version of something like Twisted Metal.
Yup, hold that controller right in front of your crotch – it makes for a great camera view for the millions of people watching and you’ll enjoy the vibration feedback at the same time.
They are spending far too long on this game but if nothing else it shows they care about it.
Noticed that a lot of the civilians they are literally inches from as they speed through the streets don’t react at all to the near death experience.
As the presenter introduces Watch Dogs I liked to think she was instead talking about the bleak Xbox One future.
Is this person on to talk about Watch Dogs using a computer to speak? His voice sounds strangely mechanical. It’s actually quite distracting. Very strange.
A CG trailer (the one they showed before the show) airs again.
And with that he’s off – that was disappointing. I was expecting an on-stage in game demonstration or something like that!
They move onto Just Dance 2014 instead?! Wow.
Do six people really get together to play these games together in the same room? Hope they have an internet connection or Xbox One might report them.
Further insult to injury as a Raving Rabbids game is next. Does anyone honestly find them as funny as when they first appeared…seven or so years ago? It seems to be a TV show and a game at the same time. A guy on stage to talk about it.
“Interactive TV show” – if this isn’t on Xbox One I’ll eat my fictional hat.
Yup Xbox One. Can’t make this stuff up. Also his weird flower shirt is weird.
Okay, it’s aimed at children so we can’t be down on this too much no matter how bad or tedious it looks.
I was talking about the Xbox One, by the way.
This Rabbids game is terrible too, though.
“Back to core gamer goodness” by which the presenter means Assassin’s Creed 4. Not particularly into a rushed sequel based solely on the phrase “Boat sections are quite fun” seen in numerous AC3 reviews.
Regardless, a CG trailer for it plays. Pirates and stuff. Assassin pirates. That’s almost like ninja pirates. Don’t you somewhat lose the moral high ground if you aren’t assassinating people who deserve it you’re just stealing from anyone you like?
At least it wasn’t just a trailer, Jean Geussdon comes on stage to chat about it a little bit. Sadly he isn’t really saying anything that either wasn’t already known or is terribly interesting.
This is more interesting – proper in game footage. Though it is presented in a trailer style it still looks good. Nothing given away by it.
A new trailer plays, not sure what this is. A bike jumps into the sky then falls comically. Ah, a new Trials game. I’m sure people will be into this though I admit not playing them.
It seems Trials Frontier is on mobile and Trials Fusion is on the next generation of consoles. Both are out in 2014.
Yves is back on, sounded for a minute there that he was going to fire her but it seems to be some other surprise. He’s mentioning open world, online, RPGs. A Massive Entertainment game.
A trailer plays and mentions Dark Winter but shows very little so far other than we apparently don’t know how to control the world. Now it’s talking about Black Friday and then flu germs that live on bank notes and cause an epidemic. That’s…an interesting concept, I suppose.
Are they aware that looks like the Heroes logo?
A man wearing a very camp set of clothing comes on to talk about whatever we just saw.
About to see a demo where one person is playing on his tablet – presumably everyone else on their console? A city at Christmas is wrecked and in disarray but still no sign of the players yet.
Jut like that though we see one. Graphics are fairly impressive. I like the minimalistic HUD. Also a second camera confirms he’s playing on the PS4 at the moment.
Of all the bad fake team talk in these conferences so far, this is the most natural sounding.
The guy using the tablet is controlling a small flying spy bot type thing that is offering support. It’s almost like people are classes, one person used a group heal. Bit weird for a modern setting game, but interesting.
After a gunfight they free some locked up police offices and gain XP. They move on through the police station and gain access to the armoury.
Looks like the impressive gameplay demo is wrapping up, still don’t know what it’s called.
Tom Clancy’s The Division is the title and despite seemingly being online only was the most impressive thing so far. Out on both Xbox One and PS4.
The guy comes back on stage to scare the audience with some firecrackers.
The presenter is on to wrap up and thankfully only tried a couple of bad jokes. With that it is all over.