Ubisoft E3 2019 Recap: THE DIVISION Heads to Netflix, WATCH DOGS: LEGION Leads the Way

By Dominick Ferrara V, Editor in Chief

Ubisoft’s E3 presentation showcased several upcoming games from the studio, but for the first time, the company dove headfirst into the waters of film and television in today’s panel.

In the biggest announcement from today’s briefing, Ubisoft announced that the film adaptation of popular loot shooter The Division, based on the works of Tom Clancy, will be distributed by Netflix. Jake Gyllenhaal and Academy Award nominee Jessica Chastain are attached to star and produce. David Leitch (John Wick, Deadpool 2, Hobbs & Shaw) is set to helm the project based on a screenplay by Rafe Judkins. No release date has been set.

The Division takes place in the near future where a pandemic virus is spread via paper money on Black Friday, decimating New York City and killing millions. By Christmas, the remains of society has descended into chaos. A group of civilians, trained to operate in catastrophic times, are activated in an attempt to save humanity, or what remains of it.

Ubisoft also trotted out It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Rob McElhenney to debut a trailer for his new comedy series for Apple TV+, Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet. The series follows Ian Grimm (McElhenney), the creative director of a popular online role-playing game as he and his team attempt to develop the first major expansion for their game. The trailer can be found below.

From a gaming perspective, Ubisoft focused on Watch Dogs: Legion, the third game in the popular Watch Dogs franchise. This installment takes place in London, and will feature players attempting to assemble a group of revolutionaries to take on an authoritarian regime. Nearly every NPC in the game is a playable character, making Legion one of the most expansive games set to come out in the near future. Ubisoft also showed off more than 10 minutes of gameplay. The game is set for a March 6, 2020 release.

While Ubisoft did have some smaller announcements, such as the characters of Adventure Time joining the cast of Brawlhalla, the rest of the panel mostly centered on the company’s vast empire of Tom Clancy franchises.

Most notably, a new trailer for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint revealed that The Punisher‘s Jon Bernthal is set to star in the game. Bernthal’s dog joined him on stage, which was the showcase’s biggest viral moment. Breakpoint hits major consoles and PC on October 4.

Other announcements throughout the panel included new content for The Division 2, with new missions taking place just outside of Washington D.C. coming to the game later this year.

Roller Champions, a roller derby game, unveiled its first gameplay trailer. A demo is available on Ubisoft’s Uplay service from June 10-14.

The company then announced a new service called Uplay+, which will cost $14.99 per month and will be similar to PlayStation Now and Xbox Game Pass, with more than 100 games available to play at launch.

The presentation ended with a trailer for Gods and Monsters, a new fantasy game from the creators of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. The game is set for a February 25, 2020 release. Despite the release being mere months away, Ubisoft elected not to show any gameplay. More details could be released in a PlayStation State of Play live stream in the future.

Overall, this was a stereotypical Ubisoft E3 showcase, featuring absurd spectacles (the Assassin’s Creed Symphony and the annual Just Dance presentation, which always leaves me asking, “What is happening?”) and lackluster games. Watch Dogs: Legion was a strong start to the panel, but the panel slowed considerably during the Tom Clancy Power Hour. In a non-Assassin’s Creed year, Ubisoft just did not have the games to make an interesting presentation.

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E3 2019 Recap: Bethesda is Really, Really Sorry

By Dominick Ferrara V, Editor in Chief

Sunday night, Bethesda Game Studios took the stage at E3 to preview their upcoming slate of games and address the harsh criticism the studio took for the early failure of Fallout 76.

That failure quickly became the focal point of Bethesda’s presentation, with nearly every presenter discussing how much the company’s fans mean to the studio and how the fans’ feedback informs everything the studio does. Studio president Todd Howard came on stage to discuss the “well-deserved criticism” the studio received for Fallout 76 before formally beginning the showcase.

First, the developers of the popular mobile game The Elder Scrolls: Blades announced new content additions to the game as well as a free-to-play port for the Nintendo Switch, which will be available Fall 2019.

Next, the developers of Fallout 76 entered to attempt to make amends with the crowd, as well as announce new content for the game. Among the new additions to the game are a Battle Royale mode and human NPCs, essentially attempting to make Fallout 76 more like a standard Fallout game. Bethesda also announced a free trial week for the game, running from June 10-17, in an effort to draw players back to the game.

Perhaps the most interesting game announcement to come out of Bethesda’s showcase was the latest game from Tango Gameworks, Ghostwire: Tokyo. The game, which does not have a release date, is an action-adventure game in which players will encounter the occult after much of Tokyo’s population vanishes into thin air.

Bethesda followed up this reveal by announcing a new expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online.

Following that, Bethesda announced a new mobile game that revives the studio’s Commander Keen franchise. The newly-released Rage 2 then took the stage with new weapons and DLC coming to the game later this year.

Bethesda then turned the show over to their legendary Wolfenstein franchise with two new games coming in 2019. The first game, Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot, brings the franchise into virtual reality. That’s right, you can now kill Nazis in VR. Cyberpilot will be available to play in July 2019. The studio also confirmed that Wolfenstein: Youngblood will be the first co-op game in the series, though there will also be a single-player campaign. Youngblood will launch on July 26, 2019.

Developers from Arkane Lyon then took the stage to reveal their latest game, Deathloop, which is a first-person action game that follows an “eternal struggle between two extraordinary assassins” who are stuck in a time loop that resets every time they die. Players must fight their way through the streets in order to break the cycle. No release date was announced for the Edge of Tomorrow-like game, but the studio did unveil the first footage from the game.

Lastly, Bethesda unveiled nearly five minutes of gameplay from their biggest 2019 release, Doom: Eternal, the sequel to 2016’s reboot of the legendary first-person shooter. Eternal appears to include more weapons and gory demon deaths than any other entry in the Doom franchise. A November 22, 2019 release date was announced for the game, joining a crowded November field that also includes Star Wars: Jedi – Fallen Order and Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding (PS4 exclusive).

Bethesda may have gone a tad overboard with their “killing with kindness” strategy in the wake of Fallout 76, but the studio brought an interesting selection of console games that shows that there is a lot to be excited for in the studio’s future, even without appearances from Starfield and The Elder Scrolls 6. Ghostwire: Tokyo and Deathloop both look like fun new single-player games, while the latest installments in the Wolfenstein and Doom franchises appear to be up to par with what gamers have come to know and love. Overall, Bethesda delivered a solid presentation, one that may have been a little too focused on mobile gaming but also presented options for console gamers.

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Xbox E3 2019 Recap: Keanu Reeves Steals the Show

By Dominick Ferrara V, Editor in Chief

This year, I have decided to write up recaps for this year’s big E3 presentations, including Xbox, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Square Enix and Nintendo. PlayStation elected not to attend this year’s conference, instead opting for several Nintendo Direct-like “State of Play” live streams.

Going into Microsoft’s conference, I was most looking forward to hearing about the next generation of Xbox consoles, and the company somewhat delivered on that promise. Microsoft announced a holiday 2020 release date for its latest console, currently known as Project Scarlett. A team of developers touted Project Scarlett as the most powerful console ever, but only discussed the console in language that was both vague and loaded with technical jargon. Most disappointingly, Microsoft elected not to showcase any gameplay on Project Scarlett, which would have added more legitimacy to the claim that games will run better on Scarlett than any other console.

Microsoft’s other big Scarlett-related announcement was that Halo: Infinite will be one of Scarlett’s launch titles. Developer 343 Industries showed off some footage from the game, most likely pre-rendered on Scarlett.

Xbox also unveiled footage from its biggest exclusive title of 2019, Gears 5, the fifth installment in the iconic Gears of War franchise. Developer The Coalition also unveiled Escape, a new game mode in Gears 5. The game will hit Xbox 1 on September 10.

Despite announcing a release date for a new console and showcasing footage from new additions to two legendary Xbox-exclusive franchises, it was third-party studio CD Projekt Red that stole the show Sunday with a new trailer for the highly-anticipated shooter Cyberpunk 2077.

CD Projekt Red had two other Cyberpunk-related bombs to drop in Los Angeles today. Firstly, the studio announced that the game is set for an April 16, 2020 release on Xbox 1, PS4 and PC. Perhaps an even bigger announcement is that John Wick himself, Keanu Reeves, is set to star in the game. Reeves then came on stage to address the fans in attendance and announce the aforementioned release date. You can watch the entire Cyberpunk 2077 presentation, including Reeves’ appearance, below, courtesy of Gamespot.

As part of their ongoing partnership with EA, Microsoft unveiled more footage from Respawn’s Star Wars: Jedi – Fallen Order, one of 2019’s most anticipated games. The game goes against EA’s reputation by virtue of being a single-player action-adventure game, rather than the online shooters that the company has been known for in recent years. The new footage, along with yesterday’s gameplay reveal, can be found below. Fallen Order is set for a November 15 release.

The briefing’s biggest game announcement came in the form of the first footage from the latest FromSoftware title, Elden Ring. The game is an original fantasy IP from the minds of Dark Souls mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki and A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. No release date for the game was announced, but more footage will likely debut at E3 in 2020.

Some other highlights from Microsoft’s briefing include the announcement of games such as LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and Blair Witch and new footage from highly-anticipated titles such as Battletoads (Xbox exclusive), Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds.

Microsoft also spent a significant amount of time discussing its Game Pass service, announcing the additions of games such as Batman: Arkham Knight, Hollow Knight and Borderlands: The Handsome Collection. The beta is now open for Xbox Game Pass for PC, with subscriptions starting at $9.99 per month. Most interestingly for consumers, the company announced the launch of Game Pass Ultimate, which packages Game Pass, Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass for PC for $14.99 per month. Temporarily, the Ultimate Pass is available for just $1.

While some of the trailers above are titled as gameplay trailers, Microsoft did not feature live gameplay demos from any of the 60 games showcased at Sunday’s briefing, normally a standard of E3 briefings. Watching a trailer that is advertised as gameplay is not the same as watching someone actually play a game live to see how it runs on console.

Microsoft may have made the biggest announcement of E3 with the release date for its next generation of consoles, but per usual, they found a way to underwhelm even without Sony attending the conference. The company once again rolled out another lackluster slate of exclusives, with the only true Xbox exclusives being new additions in iconic, but tired franchises. In a press conference in which Microsoft teased the possibilities of the next generation of consoles, a third-party developer, with the help of a Hollywood icon, managed to upstage both the new hardware and first-party exclusives with a game that will also be available to play on the PlayStation 4. When a cross-platform game steals the show at your E3 showcase, it’s probably time to return to the drawing board.

Stay tuned for more E3 recaps, including more details on games such as Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Watch Dogs: Legion and Animal Crossing, as well as Square Enix’s debut of Marvel’s Avengers.

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