Here's a Rundown of Everything at The EA Play Event [18/06/2020]

With indies dominating the inexorably long PC Gaming Show and a week after Sony’s conference, EA was back with their usual not-E3-affiliated EA Play event. Whilst EA has spent the last few years coming under fire for some of their practices, particularly on the loot box front, this event was a chance for an EA display to distance themselves from their own toxic image going into the next-gen of consoles.

First up, the event was kicked off by EA CEO Andrew Wilson, delivering a statement in support of the Black Lives Matter event and the essential workers who have tackled the global pandemic and bushfires in Australia. He then handed over to Greg Miller, who seems to be in literally every event this year. The man is busy.

Apex Legends

First up on the docket was Respawn’s excellent free-to-play shooter Apex Legends. Chad Grenier, the game director at Respawn, discussed the success of the latest season, Fortune’s Favor. Then all of a sudden, Apex Legends news came flying at us, including:

• A new limited time event called ‘Lost Treasures’ in which there will be new cosmetics, a new limited time sniper and shotguns only mode called Armed and Dangerous  and one use mobile respawn beacons instead of set reusable  ones. These are arriving on the 23rd of June.

• An additional room will be added to King’s Canyon, Crypto’s map room, which apparently will shed light on the tech wizard’s motives.

• Apex Legends will be coming to Steam and with it, cross-play between all platforms this fall.

• The game will also be arriving on the Nintendo Switch, hopefully also this fall.

As you’ll notice, cross-play and Steam was a regular feature of this conference.

Mirage gets boops!

The Sims

After a video of various players talking about what The Sims means to them and why inclusion matters, we got a quick announcement that The Sims 4 is now available on Steam. Told you Steam would pop up a lot.

Hey, hey you! Play Titanfall 2.

Steam and Switch

In addition to The Sims 4 we had further announcements of games being brought to Steam including Titanfall 2, A Way Out and Command & Conquer Remastered Collection. On the Switch front, EA announced that seven games would be coming to Switch in the next 12 months, including the classic Burnout Paradise. A lot of these games will incorporate cross-play, although which ones were not specified.

It Takes Two

The next order of business was EA Original studios, starting with Beirut-born Josef Fares’ studio Hazelight. He was on hand with his brilliantly blunt style to announce the third game from the studio following up A Way Out is a co-op action-platformer in It Takes Two. In the game, you’ll play as two dolls that come to life when created by a child called Rose, whose parents are in the process of separating. This idea certainly seems emotionally rich and full of potential for a heart-breaking story. The game has a release window of 2021.

Lost In Random

I don’t think we’re in… luck anymore Toto?

Zoink Games took to the stream to announce a different adventure game, Lost In Random, set in the world of… well, Random. As Olov Redmalm explained, the game is “something out of a beautiful twisted dream”. You’ll play as Even, a girl exploring the creepy kingdom that looks like a cross of the visual style of Psychonauts mixed with the darkness and gothic nature of the film Coraline. Certainly a striking mix, not to mention Even’s companion, a sentient 6-sided dice. Whilst the game is extremely early in development, the potential is clearly there.

Rocket Arena

A title similar to games like Bleeding Edge and Paladins in its heavily animated style was next with Rocket Arena, a 3v3 action game with the only weapons being rockets, of course. The trailer shows a bright aesthetic with plenty of explosions. As Kevin Frankin, the CEO of Final Strike Games, explained, every character in the game has 100 levels of progression. After kicking around for years in different forms of Early Access it nice to see this Quake mod inspired shooter getting some big backing. The game will release on 14th of July, with cross-play support and the first season launching two weeks after release.

Star Wars: Squadrons

Time for the big one. Ian Frazier, the creative director at Motive Studios, was on hand to discuss Star Wars: Squadrons with the first gameplay trailer in tow. Aside from the distracting presence of numerous Star Wars memorabilia behind Frazier, there was plenty that caught the eye. Frazier explained the following:

• The game will have a single-player story, where you create a new republic and empire pilot and play the story from both sides, meeting both new and familiar characters.

• After completing the story, competitive online space battles will become available.

• The game will support VR across the whole game on PS4 and PC and will include cross-play at launch.

Following this, we had a gameplay trailer which showed:

• First-person piloting within the cockpit with various systems to control including shields, engines and weapons.

• Gorgeous looking space arenas for multiplayer.

• Four different types of fighter for each side; the all-rounder Fighter, a hunter-like Interceptor, healing Support ships and big Bombers.

• Fighters and pilots are customizable with plenty of parts and colours for ships. However, they said there will be no microtransactions at launch. Hopefully Motive and EA have learned their lesson from the Battlefront 2 debacle.

• Multiplayer modes include a 5v5 team deathmatch style Dogfight mode, as well as massive multi-stage conflicts known as Fleet Battles.

There is certainly a lot to be excited for, I’ll be standing by for October 2nd. Yes, that was awful.  

Red Boy, standing by!

Madden/NFL/FIFA

Our yearly sports update, introduced by Madden NFL 21 cover athlete, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. This was intercut with a vague cinematic montage, interspersed generic quotes about the thrill of sports. Not to be harsh, but there was nothing here. I will grant EA that it was a godsend to include FIFA, NHL and Madden all in one supercut rather than the usual board of executive pleasing 10 minutes each they usually get.

Final Announcements

To conclude, Laura Miele, the Chief Studios Officer of EA had a chat about the next-gen shift and how numerous EA studios including Criterion and Bioware are working on various new titles. Included in a montage of very early in-engine was a seemingly sneaky clip that looked like a Dragon Age 4. No Mass Effect clips were present, but we had our one more thing to come.

SKATE!!!

Yes, Skate is back! There was no clip, there was no trailer, there wasn’t even a logo but we have confirmation that a 4th Skate  is in development via the mouths of Cuz Parry, the creative director and Deran Chung, the game director. The franchise is back, the hall of meat is back, happy days!

With that, a succinct hour of content has shown us some decent things from EA, even if the lion’s share of games shown were Steam re-releases. Hopefully, this is a sign of a next-gen turnaround for EA who publicly have had some bad PR moments in the last generation of console gaming.