#209: Forward, back and side to side
Ubisoft sets out to recapture the glory days with a spray-and-pray not-E3 showcase.
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What an odd thing Ubisoft Forward was. After pining for a live crowd at the Xbox briefing I should have been delighted to see the rows of seats laid out in front of the stage at Ubi’s not-E3 shindig. But it felt weirdly small, the room dark and narrow, more like a sticky nightclub basement than the gleaming arenas of E3s past. The crowd, such as it was, was also very quiet, which I found surprising given that it seemed to be largely comprised of Ubisoft employees; in fairness to them, it can’t be easy whooping or hollering through a rictus smile. At the front, wearing the biggest grin of them all, was Yves Guillemot, goblin prince of the Ubisoft dynasty, gleefully surveying his kingdom and all its new map icons.
The result was that this felt less like an E3 showcase and more like an investor presentation, perhaps an annual company conference. The format was a sort of autoplaying succession of the behind-closed-doors appointments I used to attend at E3 proper: a trailer, in many cases that we’ve already seen elsewhere; an intro speech from a game director or executive producer, in which you can almost hear the bullet points; a tightly scripted gameplay showcase with an equally rehearsed live voiceover. Then onto the next. It was all a bit dry, really, but I sort of enjoyed it. It’s about as close as I’ve got to an authentic E3 experience all week.
Calling it Ubisoft Forward was a bit of a stretch, mind you. Ten years ago you could absolutely have made a case for Ubisoft being one of the more forward-thinking big publishers — back when it was creating new IP on the regular, and supporting unfancied or unproven hardware like Wii U or Oculus Rift because it saw something creatively exciting in it. But in the years since, all that has faded away. Ubi has spent the past few years riding its ever-dwindling stable of established IP for all it is worth, with far too few exceptions.
For the most part, I thought Ubisoft spent this not-E3 looking everywhere but forward. It is looking over its shoulder at the good old days with its Prince Of Persia revival and the first-principles Assassin’s Creed Mirage. In its duo of mobile games, Assassin’s Creed: Codename Jade and The Division: Resurgence, it is looking outwards in a seemingly belated play for a share of the untold riches available on the app stores. (This isn’t the worst idea; in a post-IDFA world the mobile cognoscenti reckon established IP is the fastest route to success.) The Netflix Blood Dragon tie-in is a similar attempt to find new audiences for pre-existing things; new money for old rope, if you will.
In Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora, meanwhile, we have a first glimpse of a world in which Ubisoft, mindful of the fact that consumers are weary of its repetitive slate of open-world IP, shops its template around other industries to keep things feeling fresh. I had quite high hopes for the game, given Massive’s involvement, but it really is just Far Cry: Your Arms Are Blue Now. Is this Ubisoft’s first step on the road to being, effectively, the Telltale Games of icon-hoovering open-world violence? I suppose that will depend in large part on how Avatar does, but I can certainly see the sense in it.
And if it delivers us things of the same quality and spectacle as Star Wars Outlaws, I suppose I am all for it. The presentation got off to a rocky start when Guillemot, craning his neck to read a teleprompter that had been seemingly placed in the rafters, mispronounced it as Star Wars Outlook — hats off to the Hit Points Discord member who said it was fitting for a showcase that, until that point, could have been an email — but after that it was all good news. It looks cracking, this thing, big and ambitious and forward-thinking in a way Ubi’s games haven’t been for years, and it would have been the highlight of the day were it not for Shu Takumi’s fit at the Capcom showcase later on. Almost physically bowed down to that one, my word.
We should probably temper our expectations for Outlaws, of course — we all remember how Watch Dogs and The Division looked when they were announced, and how much their various dials had been turned down come release — but there was nothing on show here that seemed that outlandish. Massive is the jewel in Ubisoft’s crown, particularly from a technical perspective, and in Julian Gerighty the project has one of the games biz’s most reliable closers. I rather like it when Ubisoft shows us something that looks so good it makes us suspicious. It’s been too long. I hope the fine folks at Massive pull it off.
Man, I’m excited for a Ubisoft game and a Star Wars one? Most odd. Must be the heat.
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