Here’s a Rundown of Everything Shown at Ubisoft Forward [12/06/2021]

Before we get into the show, we yet again must address the elephant in the room regarding Ubisoft. Last month an investigation by french paper Le Télégramme reported that there had been minimal changes at the company a year after a slew of reports and allegations came out pertaining to a culture mismanagement, harassment and even sexual assault. Worst still, there are reports that harassment incidents have actually increased in the meantime. These are issues that must be addressed directly and addressed publicly. We should demand a stronger response than Yves Guillemot’s mealymouthed blog post claiming, “Considerable progress has been made, and we will continue to work hard with the ambition of becoming an exemplary workplace in the tech industry”,  three weeks before E3.

With all that said, what video games were shown? Did any of the long MIA games, like Skull & Bones or Beyond Good and Evil 2 make a reappearance? Did the Just Dance panda return?

It’s like that guy in the jacket on the beach says, “And it was all yellow.”

Rainbow Six: Extraction

The first trailer of the show was for Rainbow Six: Quarantine Rainbow Six: Extraction (it is going to take a while for that name change to stick). The game carries on the story from Rainbow Six: Siege’s limited-time event during the Operation Chimera update in March of 2018. The alien infection, parasite, goo-stuff, called Archæan, has spread from New Mexico and has infected large parts of New York, San Francisco and Alaska. A very Ubisoft-esque cinematic was shown off first followed by a developer walkthrough of a mission.

Extraction seems to leaning into Siege’s more slow-paced methodical gameplay rather than simply being another zombie hoard shooter. In fact, the focus on stealth followed by the chaos that erupted after the team went loud was extremely reminiscent of the popular (if somewhat niche) early access hit GTFO. The game is launching on September 16th on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X and PC, the game will also launch with crossplay. 

Rocksmith Plus

Rocksmith is a ten-year-old franchise at this point and the last game in the series released in 2014. So it has been a while and the popular music teaching tool has been balanced upon ageing technology all that time. That made the announcement of Rocksmith Plus and its ability to work solely with a mobile phone to track (listen to) your music playing a welcome update. The trailer itself featured plenty of hip-looking indie youths, confirmed the addition of support for bass guitars, the addition of new songs every week and announced a workshop mode for players to customise songs and learn new riffs. A long time was spent on this, however, there was no release date. Rocksmith Plus is taking beta sign ups now.

Riders Republic

Riders Republic was the surprise of the show, mainly because the actual surprise of the show was leaked hours beforehand (we’ll get to that). What many expected to be Steep with mountain bikes after its CGI teaser last year, has suddenly sparked many’s interests, why?

So, we’re all agreed? No bumping.

HEY I SAID NO BUMPING!

Well because Riders Republic looks like absolute chaos. By our count, we spotted at least seven different traversal methods that your mother most certainly wouldn’t approve of. There was; jetpack gliders, snowboarders, BMX-ers, people wing diving, people parachuting with giant propellers on their backs, what we only made a note of as “weird bikes” and bicycles with rockets on the sides (different from the weird bikes). That paired with the announcement that the game will feature hectic 64-player races, team-based Tony-Hawk-style stunt competitions and free-roaming and all of a sudden this seems like the sort of extreme sports game many thought would be impossible to make nowadays. To top it all off the game is launching soon, September 2nd, on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Google Stadia and PC.

Rainbow Six: Siege

It seems like a long time since the open beta of Rainbow Six: Siege launched and was an absolute mess. That’s because it has been a long time, six years in fact! There was no new named expansion to be announced this year, instead, we got a Year 6 sizzle reel and detailing of a bunch of upcoming quality of life updates. These included crossplay for PC, Google Stadia and Amazon Luna players, (separate) crossplay for console players and cross-progression for all platforms. 

There was also a short animated trailer for Thunderbird, one of the new characters, being added as part of Operation North Star. Also - quick side note - did anyone else miss Ubisoft changing the Siege logo design? How long has it been like that?

Name a better crossover, I’ll wai— Oh you already named four? Oh, ok…

Sizzle Reel of Live Service Updates

In case you somehow forget, Ubisoft now treats all of its games live services. That means we got a montage of a bunch of games most people have kind of forgotten about, including; The Crew 2, For Honor, Trackmania, Brawhalla and Watch Dogs: Legion. Legion, in particular, was noteworthy because of the new Bloodline update, which will see the return of the extremely bland Aiden Pearce, from the Watch Dogs 1, and the much more likeable Wrench, from the much better second game. All this really left us just wonder, “Can we please have Marcus Holloway back? Sorry Wrench, but he was much more likeable.”

“I am… INEVITABLE.”

Just Dance 2022

We all knew it was coming. Dread it. Run from it. Just Dance will be shown at Ubisoft’s E3 showcase just the same.

This year's segment sadly didn’t have a dancing panda but it did have a release date of November 4th and way fewer platforms than we’d expect from the franchise. The game is coming to Nintendo Switch, PC, Google Stadia, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S… Damn no Wii or Wii U? What are we even doing at this point Ubisoft?

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

AC: Valhalla is already a 900-hour long game so why not add more content? This segment was a bit strange because it presented this singleplayer narrative-driven game as a live service which Ubisoft announced they will be supporting with new content for another year. It was especially weird when a promo was run celebrating how many players completed different in-game events, you know, fun still like Number of Villages Pillaged and Towns Raided. Yeah, fun murder and destruction of culture! It was announced that more fan-requested updates are coming as part of this “game as a service” model including the rather un-viking like addition of one-handed sword and shield combat option… What are you some sort of knight?

Lads calm down. It just a Euros qualifier.

A trailer for the next big DLC was shown too. After Eivor visited their cousin in Ireland earlier this month the next major paid expansion will take players to France, with the Siege of Paris. This new DLC is boasting that it will feature the largest battle ever in an Assassin’s Creed game.

The final announcement for Valhalla was that the game will be receiving a Discovery Tour similar to those in AC: Origins and Odyssey. The new tour will launch in Autumn and will be more fully featured than any of the previous games, allowing the player to roleplay as ordinary people in 878 AD.

There it was also a fiery teaser of a portal covered in Nordic runes that fans think were written by Loki, hinting at more mythological mischief coming to the game soon.

Ubisoft Film & TV

Only a short segment was dedicated to Ubisoft’s Film & Television division. There was a trailer for the season finale for the better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be Mythic Quest and a clip for the upcoming Werewolves With film (which is based on the Ubisoft owned Werewolves Within VR and not the tabletop game or even the game people sometimes play at house parties… Totally).

There were some notable absences too. There was no mention of Ari Shankar’s Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Vibe or the Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell animated show being written by John Wicks Derek Kolstad, both of which were announced at Netflix Geeked Week last week. Also nowhere to be seen was the long in pre-production The Division movie, Michael Bay’s Ghost Recon or the Tom Hardy and Doug Liman produced Splinter Cell film.

Far Cry 6

All three of these asshole’s favourite movie is Inception.

Yet another Far Cry 6 trailer was shown at an E3 livestream, this time with much more gameplay. We saw what looks to the cold open, that all the Far Cry games do, where the player meets the charismatic villain. This game seems to be taking a more cinematic approach to previous games with the camera leaving the protagonist’s first-person perspective. But if we are being honest, for as much as we all love a good Giancarlo Esposito baddie, the every-Far-Cry-villain-is-a-larger-than-life-monologuing-neerdowell-schtick wore thin two and a bit games ago. SO GOOD NEWS! The Season Pass for Far Cry 6 will focus on the villains of the previous three mainline games (Vaas, Pagan Min and Joseph) being brought back to life and facing the heroes of those games in some upside-down twisted reality…

In less exhausting news, the really good, if pretty outdated nowadays, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is getting a remaster on modern consoles as part of the Season Pass too when the game releases on October 7th.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope

In what must have been a heartbreaking situation for the developers, less than a day before Ubisoft’s showcase, a page went live on the Nintendo Switch web browser eShop for Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, revealing it to the public just hours before it was said to surprise us all. One might think that would take the wind out of the sails of the official reveal but honestly, we came away from the first trailer and developer interview way more excited than we were going in. The continuation of the Switch-only hit no one expected will see Mario, the gang and Rabbids head out into space to further their comedy infused adventure. 

Rabbid Rosalina doing her best impression of a games journalist on day 3 of E3.

The game is yet again being directed by the very likeable (and clearly still very excited to be making a Mario game), Davide Soliani and his team in Ubisoft Milan and appears to be quite the impressive follow-up and evolution to Kingdom Battle. Paying homage to the Super Mario Galaxy games, the Sparks of Hope is confirmed to feature Rabbid Rosalina and Sparks - a nightmare hybrid of Lumas and Rabbids. The biggest change for this game is that it will leave behind the rigid XCOM-style grid-based combat, in favour of a more open and free following strategy experience. No release date was given beyond 2022, but after how good that first game was, we are more than happy to wait.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

I’m going to be honest. I am incredibly ashamed of how much Avatar lore I have retained.

Massive Entertainment has skyrocketed to the top of Ubisoft portfolio ever since the huge success of the first Tom Clancy’s: The Division, to the point that they now seem to be the publisher’s golden child. All you need to do to see to bac this up is look to the in-development games they currently have on the books. They were confirmed to be working on a game within James Cameron’s Avatar franchise (even though there has still only been one movie) way back in 2017 and only a few months ago were announced as the first non-EA studios in almost a decade to be working on a console Star Wars game.

Now four years on from the first announcement with the new Avatar film on the horizon next year (it’s been delayed so many times we’ll believe it when we see it), we finally got our first look at this long-gestating game. The game looks breathtaking (even if the world of Pandora doesn’t seem nearly as exciting as it did in 2009), which makes sense since it is slated to only be coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Stadia and Luna and not the last-gen consoles.

Details are sparse but we do know it will be a first-person game played from the perspective of the Navi traversing “unseen areas of Pandora” and fighting both wildlife and the and RDA forces (the human military guys). Somewhat surprisingly for a Massive Entertainment game, there was no mention of multiplayer element with the game is only being referred to as a “standalone story” in the Avatar universe. There is still much to learn about this game and whether anyone still cares about those big blue fellas but we’re sure to see plenty more before it arrives sometime in 2022.

Which comes first; BG&E2 releases or Ubisoft fires its abusers?

And that was Ubisoft Forward for E3 2021. There was some really great looking game like Riders Republic and Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, but as a show, it was defined by its absences. There was no Beyond and Evil 2 or Skull & Bones, there were no dabbing pandas and there was still no accountability for the abusers that still work at Ubisoft.