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E3 Journal – Catching Up On Ubisoft

I think I love Los Angeles and may have to set up an office here. Stepping into the Los Angeles Theater was a treat even with the epic confusion that took place. Basically I needed to squeeze a path through the crowds waiting outside the building as well as within the lobby – at which point I stood in a broken line to receive my pass, thereby gaining the right to stand outside again with everyone else. At this point I learned that there are an awful lot of sites I’ve never heard of, which is balanced by the fact that they’ve never heard of us. When we were finally ushered through the cattle gates, I got lost in the architecture. There’s this perfect state of being when you step into an ornate bathroom that also has broken taps. I felt very Blade Runner today until I spotted Michael Pachter and remembered I was at E3.

Ubisoft paid for the comic relief, but even that couldn’t alleviate how incredibly dry the event felt. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the ideas, but there were moments when I felt like I was back in a lecture hall. The buzz word was confluence as the evolution of conversion – a means of bringing together creative streams in an integrated sense rather than complimentary.

Where we’ve become begrudgingly used to media crossovers between films and games, the goal was clearly to merge the process in a deeper way. And when James Cameron walked out on stage, there was every attempt to emphasize an idea of games and films in production simultaneously. Ubisoft claimed that assets could be taken from their game engines and used in HD video projects. Problem was, I couldn’t help noticing that the screen above Cameron’s head showed no footage at all. During his entire talk there was only a still image of the Avatar title. And as Nick pointed out to me tonight, looking at screenshots for the Avatar game doesn’t seem to back up the boasting. They also mentioned projects with Peter Jackson and Stephen Spielberg, but again it was more talk than show. The proof will apparently come with a series of short films expanding the narrative of Assassin’s Creed 2 later this year. Bottom line – Avatar has to make a tidy sum of money back.

Pele came out on stage to talk about how pleased he was with the upcoming Academy of Champions. Naturally he had great things to say about the game and Ubisoft, and I was left wondering why it looked like Harry Potter soccer.

Side note – the trailer for RUSE is fantastic, if only because of the table.
Side note – Imagine games have apparently sold an awful lot of copies.

I’d already seen Splinter Cell Conviction earlier in the morning, but I was just as transfixed the second time around. This was the title I had expected to be the least interested in, and yet it seems to do everything right for once. Watching Sam Fisher viciously interrogate people, and the layering of mission objectives over buildings – or when Fisher scales a wall that leads to his daughter’s killer while images of her grave overlap the wall in question… it finally felt like Ubisoft had merged their artistic ambitions with real, compelling gameplay.

And then there was Red Steel 2. I’m more than a little torn right now. Some sequences, like being dragged behind a motorcycle, were fantastic. The enemy design left a lot to be desired. So final verdict? You’ll have to give me another day to get some hands on time with the game, because it’s all going to come down to how those new controls feel.

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