EA E3 2015 conference reaction

Like the Microsoft conference before it, my plan was to watch the EA presser, write a few gags, and thread the details in between. One thing that stood out for MS was how slick the whole thing was - no major mistakes, no real blunders. It hit its beats well.

EA's show, on the other hand, descended into farce about twenty minutes in. It's one of the most bizarre conferences I've seen in a long time, filled with leaks, odd interviews, and inappropriate Kenny Loggins. Things started well, with a nice Need For Speed trailer. Then Andrew Wilson introduced Unravel, a new game from Swedish developer Coldwood. He promised that we'd never seen anything like it before. He was right.

Martin Sahlin of Coldwood, a small Swedish developer, came out on stage and introduced his game. It's a platformer where you play as Yarny, a - yes - tiny yarn creature that uses thread to navigate stages and real-world hazards, such as birds and cars. Visually interesting with a potentially intriguing central mechanic - how many ways can you use the yarn to get through a stage? - it went over well enough.

Sahlin was awed by the crowd but enthusiastic, although the section when he pulled a real Yarny out from his jacket and nervously manipulated it was a little odd. What followed was a lot odd. It was ultra odd. It was apocalyptically odd.

The Unravel demo on the jumbotron finished, leaving us to consider an interesting game about emotions. Then - BANG - DANGER ZONE starts playing. Not a cover of Danger Zone, one of those twee things that Microsoft like to do when they're trying to make Gears seem like it's not a game about being on the test in the future. Worse: there was no gap between Unravel ending and Kenny blaring. None. A superhero zombie from PvZ 2 promptly strutted out on stage like a WWE character, giving it the big one to a crowd of people too stunned to really consider what was happening. Thematically, it would be like Hulk Hogan coming out from behind the coffin curtain at your nan's cremation, giving you the earcup and telling you to eat your vitamins.

It got more bizarre. Pele came out to endorse FIFA, sitting on the stage and telling David Rutter about his glittering career, like a special E3 episode of This Is Your Life. After the forty-fifth hour of telling everyone about how he was the best footballer ever, it started to drag a little bit. And this was before we'd even got to the actual game yet.

Worse was to come, however, as the Star Wars Battlefront footage - which looks genuinely brilliant and you should all check out right bloody now if you haven't seen it - was published on starwarsbattlefront.com about half an hour before it was due to be shown on stage. There was something particularly awful about watching various EA executives and producers give the footage the big build-up when it was already everywhere. Peter Moore found time to change his suit before introducing Battlefront, presumably because he got the blood of the idiot who published the footage early on it.

Then there was Hoop Gawd. I won't even explain this, as it's far too stupid, except to say that he attempted to scan his face into NBA Live 16 via GameFace HD and it looked a little like that bit in Robocop 2 where they give Cain a CGI face.

It was a disaster, in other words. Or, at least, it would have been, if it wasn't for the Battlefront footage looking absolutely superb. The fact that it was strong enough to make you overlook all that came before it says something about how good it looked.