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Thr first of E3’s big panels for 2017 has concluded, and despite my fears, it wasn’t all mostly devoted to EA Sports and what we could expect from this year’s FIFA game.
To give a quick summary, it started off with a drumline for Madden 18 along with a trailer, but we actually started with some Battlefield 1. There were also trailers for the expected EA Sports games – FIFA, more info on Madden and NBA Live (which also accidentally made a cameo during a later part), along with the announcement of two more games. One of those, A Way Out is a co-op game that looks very interesting, and the other was Project Dylan which was finally given a name – Anthem. Unfortunately it only got a teaser of less than a minute, so we’ll have to wait until Xbox’s panel to see more. Need For Speed’s latest game Payback looks to have some interesting narrative to it as well. The most time though was taken up by Stars Wars Battlefront II.
The followup game to the first Battlefront aims to address the concerns raised during the first game through feedback that was described as “constructive” on stage. This means that this time the game will be coming with a singleplayer Story Mode, as well as seeing the return of the Skirmish game mode. There will also be ‘seasons’ of post-release additional game content, and from the sounds of it every single one of them will be free for people who own the game. There was also a big multiplayer match played live on stream, with some impressive looking vehicles and fighting going on. Obviously this was all being played on very good machines, so hopefully it will still look just as good on lower-tier machines. More details can be found on EA’s press release for the game located here.
Need for Speed Payback was also pretty good looking, with footage of part of a mission being shown off called Highway Heist. The game sets you playing as three characters as they take on ‘The House’ – a criminal group who holds all the cards. So a plucky underdog story, and from the gameplay we saw which depicted a lot of car road battling action (complete with cinematic slow-motion crashes as enemies were totalled) as well as scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in an action movie – seems Payback might be one to keep an eye on.
Battlefield 1 was announced to be getting eight new maps this year, two of the night maps with the other six being part of the upcoming expansion In The Name of the Tsar, which will take the game to World War I’s eastern front in September. The Russian army will becoming in the expansion, along with the women’s battalion of death. Lastly they teased a new small-squad competitive gamemode which they said they will give more details on at Gamescon in August.
A Way Out was one of the standouts for me this year, with the co-op experience that follows two men as they escape prison together then go on the run looking amazing. It was deliberately planned out as a splitscreen couch co-op game, and the idea of being able to see both men’s POV is cool. We also saw that one player can be in the middle of a cutscene while the other one is still playing.
As for the sports games, we got the standard fare. FIFA 18’s story mode will be following their protagonist of last year’s game Alex Hunter, as he continues his journey so that could be interesting to watch. Madden is also going to be getting a Story Mode called the Long Shot on a man who witnessed traumatic events and must recover from them through the sport. Finally NBA Live 18 will be using both tournament and street court play to round out your character’s stats, with both sets of play effecting the development of them as a player.
Of course, the big reveal everyone was watching for was the promised teaser for Bioware’s ‘Project Dylan’ and we got it. The teaser was short and only showed off what looked to be a very sci-fi game with lush jungle environments, a large wall and power armour suits. We’ll see more details in tomorrow’s panels though, so stay tuned.
Hello there! I am CyberGoblin and I have recently joined the team to cover Final Fantasy 14. In this first post I shall be covering the major changes in the impending second expansion: Stormblood.
First and foremost there are the new areas: Gyr Abania which is the region surrounding Ala Mhigo and for the first time the game will take us outside of Eorzea and into Orthard, the far eastern continent. There are six new zones, a new city, a new hamlet (basically Revenant’s Toll or Idyllshire) and a new housing district.
Each of the new zones will be fairly large – about the size of those in Heavensward but they all have two aetherytes so no repeats of the Dravanian Hinterlands which had none so you had to teleport into the extreme busy end game hub and walk out.
Another big addition is swimming and diving both on foot and with a mount. The former will also be retroactive to some of the old zones (the Costa Del Sol part of East La Noscea have been shown) but diving will not.
There will not be any underwater combat, indeed taking any damage underwater has been confirmed to be a one-hit kill. The development team has publicly mooted the idea of incorporating this into content such as dungeons where you have to evade defences however nothing has been confirmed or shown of this.
The next major new content are the dungeons and trials. At launch there will be nine new dungeons and at least two new trials. Locations seen have included a haunted ship graveyard, some sort of heavy artillery installation and a ruined temple of some sort as well as the underwater palace in the screenshot below.
The two primals in the confirmed trials are Laksmi the Lady of Bliss, a summon from Final Fantasy VI which focused on party healing and this time around is the goddess of the all female lamia beast tribe the Ananta. The other new god on the chopping block is original to Final Fantasy XIV like Ravana was in Heavensward. Susano, also known as Lord of the Revel is in fact one of many deities worshiped by the mercantile turtle beast tribe the Kojin.
To fight these new encounters players will have access to two new jobs – Samurai and the long requested Red mage – both of which are DPS. In addition there are several brand new abilities and mechanics added to the existing ones
Samurai is a lightly armoured melee DPS which will trade utility for extremely high single target damage and will focus around building up to unleash a single devastating attack.
Red Mage on the other hand is a ranged caster, using their rapier and crystal in tandem to combine the two major schools of magic: black and white magics. Red Mage gameplay will focus largely on building up black and white mana before diving into melee range to unleash a powerful burst combo and then diving back out to cast a finisher.
Additionally the cross class system has been reworked. Instead of the current system of having to level certain classes for specific abilities such as levelling Thaumaturge to level 26 to get Swiftcast you instead have a pool of abilities shared by role: Tank, Healer, melee physical DPS, ranged physical DPS and caster. As with before there are 5 slots and a number of existing abilities – some of which were not cross classes before – and some new ones can be picked depending on the instance.
In addition to the dungeons and trials we are also getting two new raid series. The eight man raid will be the Interdimensional Rift which will focus on Shinryu and Omega and will have a normal difficulty and a harder mode which like Alexander will be called Savage. The twenty four man raid series is called “Return to Ivalice” and is being guest written by Ivalice creator Yasumi Matsuno. Aside from the name very little has been confirmed however Game Director Naoki Yoshida has commented that playing Final Fantasy Tactics is probably the best way to prepare.
