Ubisoft Conference Recap - E3 2014

We enter the second half of press conferences for day 0 of E3 with Ubisoft. And opening the show for the company is Far Cry 4. We’re in a bus heading up a mountain around the Himalayan border with a bunch of impoverished looking people and a monkey. However, things get very violent very quickly. It all culminates with the introduction of an eccentric antagonist, it seems like Ubisoft realized people loved the hell out of Vaas in the last game.

After that, Aisha Tyler makes the return as Ubisoft’s host for the third year, along with lots of jargon and lots of %^&*ing swearing. This one isn’t being televised, by the way.

Just Dance 2015 was the next demo, but first we had a trailer featuring plenty of popular artists, and lots of people dancing to Happy by Pharrell Williams. We’ll be seeing that in October. But that’s not all, there will be a free Just Dance app, allowing you to follow what’s happening on your big screen, and use the phone as the controller. Suddenly there were dozens of people on stage, in the stalls, and in the aisles all dancing along to Lady Gaga with their phones out.

All the fun jumping around didn’t last long though, as next was The Division. We were treated to a very heavy cinematic trailer exploring the beginning of the pandemic. Looks like there’s bandits, and official looking people who want to eliminate anyone who might be carrying the disease. No more gameplay in this conference though, that was limited to Microsoft’s.

The Crew was next, with a trailer showing a time lapse of multiple cars driving across all sorts of environments, including off road segments. It looks great and the map looks massive, but there wasn’t a lot of gameplay shown. Closed beta is open for registration right now, and the game will be out November 11.

Assassin’s Creed Unity followed. The cinematic trailer is looking very Les Miserables. Again we see a lot of rioting crowds, and just like in the Microsoft demo, the end sees no assassination, just giving the target up to the angry people. It’ll be out on October 28, but we weren’t finished there. Another gameplay demo ensued, this time single player (until the end). The crowd looks great despite its massive size. There also appears to be lots of stuff to do in the world, and the introduction of a sort of stealthy crouch behind cover style mechanic. This time we get a good old fashioned blade to the throat to finish things off though.

Next it was time to Shape Up, in a new type of fitness game. There’s plenty of rhythm based minigames in here to help you get fit. Think Dance Dance Revolution mixed with Guitar Hero. It recalls your performance and shows your previous self on screen, so you can beat yourself or send it to your friends to see if they’re as fit as you are.

Valiant Hearts, the Great War was up next. It’s all about four characters and their dog in the trenches of the western front. It features lovely stylised cartoon visuals, but don’t be fooled, the subject matter is deep. Not many details on what exactly that game will be yet.

Yves Guillemot was out last to debut one more game. Rainbow Six Patriots has been scrapped, but the series is making a return with Rainbow Six Siege. We’re shown a competitive multiplayer demo pre alpha. Although if this is pre-alpha footage I can barely imagine what the final game will look like. One team is saving a hostage from the bad guys. There are multiple routes into the house, and the team decide to break in via the roof. The entire house gets completely trashed, with unbelievably destructible environments. This is definitely some way off, but it looks like it could be very impressive.

So that was it for Ubisoft. Three down, one to go for day zero. Only Sony remains.