6. EA
EA might be the biggest third-party publisher in the world, but it isn’t very good at press conferences. We’ve become painfully used to seeing some horrendously awkward E3 moments courtesy of EA over the years. Last year’s conference, if you remember, was full of them (poor old Jesse Wellens). E3 2018 was a slightly different sort of mediocre, though – less dramatic cock up and more dreary and boring. For once, it was actually presented rather well, but there just wasn’t anything notable to announce.
Anthem, of course, was the hotly anticipated title that everyone was looking forward to seeing, and we did get a fairly deep dive into gameplay. I can’t say that it really blew me away, though. Despite my every confidence in Bioware’s ability to deliver a sound narrative and compelling gameplay, Anthem felt a little hollow and generic for something that totally stunned us at last year’s Microsoft presser.
Battlefield V looked as one would imagine Battlefield V would look – every bit the solid FPS mutliplayer experience that we’ve come to appreciate over the past decade. Despite the silly controversy around its reveal trailer the other month, our hands-on session at this year’s EA Play suggested it’s well on its way to defining itself as one of the series’ best. Still, though, it’s presence at the conference wasn’t surprising or particularly engaging.
It says something about the quality of the conference that arguably the most compelling announcements were the reveals of its EA Original titles, Unravel 2 and Sea of Solitude.
