EA Showcase, London.

Dav

Hello all,

DeVore and I have been invited by Electronic Arts to attend their Showcase event next week (Wednesday, 12th May) in London where we're hoping to get a good look at some of what EA will be launching this year.

As a part of all this, we're hoping to get some time with some of the production teams, but we're not sure who exactly is going to be there - the Volcanic Ash is playing hell with the schedule. The event itself had to be rescheduled because of the first eruption. We are definitly getting an interview with one of the production team from The Sims 3.

Anyway, if you're not aware, both DeVore and I are serious about our gaming, so we're gonna be doing our best to sink our teeth into as much as we can. We're going to be seeing news and details about the following games:

DLC titles – hands on:

• Dragon Age: Origins
• Death Spank
• Shank
• Mass Effect 2
• Dantes Inferno
• Battlefield Bad Company 2

Presentation and demo:

• The Sims 3
• APB
• Crysis 2
• Dead Space 2
• Medal of Honor
• SWTOR – (Star Wars - The Old Republic)
• Need for Speed World

Hands on:

• Skate 3
• Rock Band Green Day

Now, some of what's here is already out and/or announced, but because the event was rescheduled as I said, but it'll still be a good opportunity to get our hands on some of this stuff. I know I'm personally looking forward to seeing Crysis 2, Medal of Honor and Skate 3. SWTOR has DeV frothing at the mouth to get a look at it and we both had a good laugh looking at the trailer for Death Spank yesterday because it's such a bonkers name for anything

So what am I asking?

If you have anything specific you'd like us to try and cover or questions you'd like asked, we'll do our best to get answers and photos/videos/audio/whatever we can manage. It's sure to be a very busy day, so we may not have time for everything.

Thanks very much folks.

Dav

Tallon

Can you take me with you?

PerrinV2

I think the medal of honour link might be wrong.

Otacon

Rock Band Green Day
- So far, there has been no indication as to whether songs from Green Day's earlier albums, 39/Smooth or Kerplunk, will be made available, either by DLC or in the game. Will any songs from these albums make an appearance?

Medal of Hono(u)r
- The latest trailer, containing a voicemail left by a soldier to his family, indicates that the story will play an important part in the game. How much emphasis is going to be put on the SP compared to the MP. Will there be some form of co-operative play, and if so, will it be offline, online or both?

Crysis 2
- Will a beta be run for MP component of this game and if so, will it be available to the public in some fashion?

That's all I have for now. Also... can I come with? :pac:

Dav

PerrinV2 wrote: »

I think the medal of honour link might be wrong.

I fixed that, thank you!

Also folks, I'm pretty sure we can't take anyone else with us

johnny_ultimate

If you could get some info on Dead Space 2 that would be great! Any info on settings and general gameplay compared to the first game, and if there have been any alterations to try and appeal to the wider audience that the first (excellent) game didn't reach.

APB: any support for Mac a possibility in the future?

Fanny Cradock

Could you ask them if I can have some free stuff? Hardware and software acceptable.

Zillah

Tallon wrote: »

Can you take me with you?

This is an important question, but slightly more important:

Can you take me with you?

super_furry

What's next for Dragon Age? Once the Darkspawn add-on is released is that it for Origins or is there anything else planned and will it be a full Awakening style expansion? Any word of a sequel?

humanji

Dav wrote: »

I fixed that, thank you!

Also folks, I'm pretty sure we can't take anyone else with us

So you're saying we have to kill you and take you place? Well ok then. If I have to.

Also, and be honest, you're really only telling us to show off, aren't you?

If you get a chance, could you ask if they have any more Sims 3 add-ons planned after the next one? I'm sure they'll only want to talk of the one coming, but there's no harm asking.

Oh and see if you can wangle some Boards exclusive beta invites for Swtor. Again, I live in hope.

tman

Where the fup is the next Burnout?

I'm pleased that Criterion are working on a NFS game (will most likely be the first one I've bought in years), but want more Burnout damnit!

super_furry

Oh and make sure to beg and grovel for a new SSX game.

calex71

super_furry wrote: »

Oh and make sure to beg and grovel for a new SSX game.

Yes!!!!!!! Badly needs to be brought back to life, loved the 1st 2 on the ps2

Try and badger them for details on Rock Band 3, the green day one is just a stop gap.

calex71

Otacon wrote: »

Rock Band Green Day
- So far, there has been no indication as to whether songs from Green Day's earlier albums, 39/Smooth or Kerplunk, will be made available, either by DLC or in the game. Will any songs from these albums make an appearance?

Not going to happen, nor will there be ANY DLC from other albums not on the game. :mad:

http://kotaku.com/5515597/no-additional-dlc-for-green-day-rock-band

Point of clarification: The tracklist for Green Day: Rock Band revealed this weekend included six songs labeled "DLC." These have always been available for Rock Band 2. A producer says there won't be any additional tracks released for this game.

The six DLC cuts are from last year's rock opera 21st Century Breakdown, the remainder of which will be included with the game. Harmonix' Chris Foster explained to Plastic Axe why there'll be no extra DLC for this game when there was for last year's Beatles counterpart.

"One of the reasons we could do open-ended DLC for The Beatles is that it's all tiny clips, and we could just reconfigure them for different songs as needed — and dreamscape backgrounds similarly had that.

With this, we're really creating sculpted experiences for every single song; there's an animation that plays all the way through, pretty much. That's something that's not really practical to do open-ended. So we decided we were going to make DLC just about finishing 21st Century Breakdown, using the DLC that was already out.

That created a great three-album game, and also let us give each of those [six DLC tracks] unique assets, more than we could easily pack into a DLC pack. Those songs have their own video-wall assets, their own [motion capture]."

Other tidbits: There's no pre-Dookie (1994) tracks because of restricted access to the band's master recordings. And there'll be no access to the main Rock Band store for other songs because - are you listening Activision? - "we want to have Green Day performing Green Day songs."

rizzla

Mirror's Edge 2, ask about it and don't leave until they say yes.

Helix

rizzla wrote: »

Mirror's Edge 2, ask about it and don't leave until they say yes.

thats not really how these things work

they'll be talking to guys involved with the development of each of the games on show, and theyre unlikely to know all that much about games theyre not involved with

rizzla

Helix wrote: »

thats not really how these things work

they'll be talking to guys involved with the development of each of the games on show, and theyre unlikely to know all that much about games theyre not involved with

Well, if there's anyone from Dice there giving away info for Bad Company 2 dlc, you could ask em that sneaky question since their the same developers.

Obviously there won't be any surprises at the thing with E3 so close.

Dav

So Tom and I are getting on a plane at some loopy hour tomorrow morning, this'll probably be the last chance to give us any questions you might have.

I see a thread about EA now charging for online play of second hand titles, I'm going to see who I can talk to about that too.

Dav

Helix

Dav wrote: »

I see a thread about EA now charging for online play of second hand titles, I'm going to see who I can talk to about that too.

Dav

most likely nobody, but ive already put in a request for comment, and ill be talking to ea sports head peter moores next week and will ask him

Burning Eclipse

Helix wrote: »

most likely nobody, but ive already put in a request for comment, and ill be talking to ea sports head peter moores next week and will ask him

Tell him I'm his #1 fan

DeVore

We're here, he's queer, there isnt nearly enough beer


So, we got up *yesterday* to get the red eye to London and I'm sitting in EA's nightclub, sorry, Showcase HQ waiting for access to the hall... running in the lobby are FMV's of the games we will get to see, play and review... and immediately SWTOR looks... and there is only one word for it: lush.
Cant wait to see the gameplay!

APB is also a bit of an eye opener as I havent heard word one about it to date and it looks... ambitious!

We're going to be updating all day so if you have questions or anything you want to tell us, stick it in here.


First up is Crysis 2 ... sometimes, just sometimes, this job rocks

DeV.

DeVore

Crysis 2, based on the all new Crytek engine is a FPS. it has some clever hooks and you can customise your suit to your play style, along with your guns, but its a FPS. I find I cant get excited about FPS these days but if are looking for a glorious FPS then this is one to check out.

Right after saying I cant get excited about a fps, I am going to get excited about a FPS. Its called BulletStorm and its mad as a bag of otters. The dev team lead told us "it doesnt take itself quite as seriously as other FPS" and he wasnt joking. It looks like a total blast and its massively silly and over powered. The game revolves around pulling off cool kills, slightly reminescent of Bayonetta and Max Payne but amped to the roof. Kick people into the air and blast them with a shotgun only to haul them back to you with a very fast grapple and kick them in the head. You get extra points for group kills, spectacular combo kills and Super Kills (special moves). This is important as you can spend these extra points on cool new kit. Everything is massively violent and looks like a good laugh. One gripe.... the main character and side kick seemed to interact with the mentality of 12 year olds. Casual sexism, overt and at times crass sexual references and unnecessary swearing jarred me and made me feel like someone needed a slap upside the head and told we arent all teenagers. The game however, looks like a mad craic and Dav and I are going to get hands on later I hope.

SWTOR looks and plays like an MMO set in the starwars milieu. We played a quest and it had everything you would expect if you have ever played EQ/2 or WoW. Its either for you or not. I think I will be playing this because it looks slick and plays well. Its nothing like the trailer though so dont be expecting The Force Unleashed in MMO form... combat is done by discrete clicks of the mouse on a target and your character will then use the equiped weapon. They could do loads of cool stuff with this platform, lets hope they do.

DeV.

DeVore

We couldnt get our hands on BulletStorm demo code to play as its a while yet from release apparently, it sounded like 2011 but the interactive demo we DID see seemed more polished then that...

We have a short interview with the developers which we'll upload.

Mass Effect 2 DLC looks very very tasty... the Mako is back in the shape of the (already released I believe) hover ship thing. The planets look so far from the stretch-a-bitmap-over-a-polygon planets of ME 1... lush vegetation, pteradactyls, waterfalls, cows (yes you can drive over them, we thought you should know). The new DLC has 5 unexplored planets... we also played around on a crashed Geth ship. Its more of the same with the exception of the outdoors areas, but hey... ME 2 rocked in my opinion so more of that suits me!

Dav is off playing Death Spank and I'm going to see if I can try Rock Band Greenday. Dav got a look at Medal of Honour - The Next Installment, which isnt my thing but IS his and I had a good long go at Need For Speed World, which i thought wouldnt work as a MMORPG but some how they seem to have made it work. If you thought about Burnout Paradise City multiplayer and added in upgrade, tune and perk systems for which you earn XP.... thats pretty much what we are looking at. They have gone heavy on the "manage your mates" side of things and while it has the dreaded Facebook integration, you neednt use it.

Any questions, toss them in!

DeV.

calex71

Lol's at the double post, So it's so good you had to say it twice eh DeVore

DeVore

Fixed now.

We've a lot more to come on these games, and interviews too... I just wanted to give my thoughts after each session. I've a few more written too, but we had to rush for the airport. I'll post them tomorrow cos I'm just in and I'm exhausted... we were up at 4am this morning to fly....

Edit: By the way, it was an awesome display of games, even the games we thought would be a bit shoite (I dont like MoH and Dav isnt really into MMORPGs) turned out to be a lot of fun. Dav took in MoH's multi player (which they are being incredibly secretive about, we are embargoed from talking about it in fact for several weeks I think) while I went to bust out some Rockband Greenday.

I was as awesome as the image that conjures...

DeV.

Dav

We were actually embargoed from saying a lot of what you've already said DeV... Some of that's been lifted as of this morning though (well, this afternoon for Bulletstorm).

Today I've got a lot of "house-keeping" to tidy up - Darragh's away on holidays so I'll be busy for the morning and I'm planning on getting some of yesterday's stuff out this afternoon. We got a quick talk with the lead from Bulletstorm as Tom mentioned and I had a good chat with one of the the team behind Sims 3 and I'll be hoping to get both of those uploaded today.

Since I'm here, I just want to give a big thanks to Aoife and Claire from O'Leary PR for bringing us over and making sure we got some of the extra interviews and for generally minding us and making sure we weren't M.I.A. when it came time to go - I think Tom would still be there sitting playing Green Day Rock Band if left to his own devices and I'd probably still be faffing about with APB.

Dav

DeVore

Yeah to be fair to EA and O'Leary they couldnt have done anything better, ok, flying at 6am sucked but they had volcanoes to deal with.

I had thought we'd be dealing with suits but mostly they were coders and producers and everyone was remarkably cool and fun to hang with... the producer of RB-Greenday was there on backing vocals and drums and was still playing with me and Steven Cooper from 98fm and a few others even when it was clear the show was over and he could have fecked off hahah...

DeV.

The Recliner

Thanks for the updates lads

Sounds like a pretty cool trip

I will no doubt pick up a few of those games when they come out and ye have helped peek my interest in a couple I might not have heard of otherwise

humanji

Out of curiosity, why were you invites in the first place?

Mr E

Thanks for the updates... sounds like a good event.

This is the part where DeV and Dav say that next year, the games mods are invited too.

Right, lads?

Helix

i THINK we got hands on time with bulletstorm multi, i forgot to ask daniel today - but pretty sure there was something we were the only irish to play, and im 99% positive it was bulletstorm

i really should know these things :S

DeVore

EA approached Boards to do some advertising and competitions and when we mentioned we came from a gaming background, they invited us over in a kind of "if you guys are around and want an inside look" sort of way. There was a near fight in the office and Dav and I ended up going.

However, what they didnt know and you guys dont know either is that Dav and I are going back to our roots and starting a gaming site soon. (EA didnt know that either, I doubt they care since its not going to rule the world or anything). So this couldnt be better timing for us
So we were particularly keen to go!

DeV.

DeVore

Helix wrote: »

i THINK we got hands on time with bulletstorm multi, i forgot to ask daniel today - but pretty sure there was something we were the only irish to play, and im 99% positive it was bulletstorm

i really should know these things :S

They are a long time from release they told us so I dont think they have code to play yet...

Helix, who is "we" ?

DeV.

DeVore

Mr E wrote: »

Thanks for the updates... sounds like a good event.

This is the part where DeV and Dav say that next year, the games mods are invited too.

Right, lads?

Actually, yes... if we had had more then 2 invites (and if there hadnt been a rugby scrum for them in the office in the first place) then the Games mods would be next in line, in some randomised fashion. We did the same with the trip to the EU commission with the Politics mods.

DeV.

Helix

DeVore wrote: »

They are a long time from release they told us so I dont think they have code to play yet...

Helix, who is "we" ?

DeV.

click magazine

we had hands on with an early multi, pretty sure it was that, but im not positive

humanji

Helix wrote: »

i THINK we got hands on time with bulletstorm multi, i forgot to ask daniel today - but pretty sure there was something we were the only irish to play, and im 99% positive it was bulletstorm

i really should know these things :S

Worst. Journalist. Ever! :P

DeVore wrote:

Actually, yes... if we had had more then 2 invites (and if there hadnt been a rugby scrum for them in the office in the first place) then the Games mods would be next in line, in some randomised fashion. We did the same with the trip to the EU commission with the Politics mods.

DeV.

Can I be a games mod? Or a politics mod? (hell, a holiday's a holiday, right?)

Helix

humanji wrote: »

Worst. Journalist. Ever! :P

ahaha yeh i know

attention span of a... OH LOOK A DOG!

The Recliner

Mr E wrote: »

Thanks for the updates... sounds like a good event.

This is the part where DeV and Dav say that next year, the games mods are invited too.

Right, lads?

Throws CV in for Games Mods job

DeVore

Humanji, when we are invited to Area 51 you are first in the queue.


DeV.

cableguy.ie

DeVore wrote: »

EA approached Boards to do some advertising and competitions ! DeV.

Please explain (if allowed or possible)

Silverfish

DeVore wrote: »

Actually, yes... if we had had more then 2 invites (and if there hadnt been a rugby scrum for them in the office in the first place) then the Games mods would be next in line, in some randomised fashion. We did the same with the trip to the EU commission with the Politics mods.

DeV.

...like, randomised after Cmods first? Or even just Cmod, that R3nu4l guy doesn't need to go, something could happen on the forums.

DeVore

um sure CableGuy.ie ... not clear on what needs explaining, if you can be more specific I can give you a better answer.

EA are a large publisher of games and they work in each country to promote them. In ireland you would have to be mad to ignore boards.ie for that target market so they contacted our ad sales people to buy ads and they wanted to put a competition on the site the way we do on the front page a fair bit lately (d4 hotels, Leviathan tix recently, that sort of thing...).

Now, the ad sales people manage the ad sales because there isnt much of a grey area. We approve any dodgy ads and that works fine. Competitions are a bit new and a bit grey and we dont always charge for them at present depending on how much we like the people. So, those get past along to the Boards.ie HQ team.

We met with them and thrashed out a way forward for them to work with Boards. This is important because big corporates just dont get social media. They just dont. So, yeah, they asked us could they brand the entire site with Assassins Creed and we politely declined. You have to understand, they arent evil, they just dont get the way we work and that the idea of the "Broadband forum, brought to you by Eircom" is utterly anathema to what Boards is. A neutral third place, not the home of any of the community, not the home of the corporates or haters or muppets or anyone. So, branding this space is not cool. You know what, they were cool with that completely.

So, we thrashed out a way we CAN work together and they were happy and so were we. They then mentioned this trip as an off the cuff remark and when they pulled their arm free, they signed us up and we went.

In case anyone hadnt noticed, I'm a games nut. Offering me first peak at new games or a franchise I like is as irresponsible as offering a junkie first hit on the needle.

DeV.

DeVore

Silverfish wrote: »

...like, randomised after Cmods first? Or even just Cmod, that R3nu4l guy doesn't need to go, something could happen on the forums.

We actually worked that out in the mod forum about a year ago, I think its something like Admins/HQ get first crack, then Cmods, then mods, then users but if there is say 3 tix, each group gets one shot at their ticket.

Thats more or less how it went with the EU commission, Sceptre Oscarbravo and I went when OB was a mod and Sceptre was either cmod or admin. But the mods were getting one even if three admins wanted to go.

Shamefully I think I may have completely overlooked that in the jubiliant celebration of beating Darragh to death with Ross's severed limb. Dav merely laid claim to his due to owning a bat'leth and the fact that he scares the rest of us.

DeV.

Silverfish

I think who's scarier out of me or Dav will have to go to a vote.

DeVore

I have to sit next to Dav in the office.... you should see what he does to Darragh and Darragh is *nice* to him.

DeV.