Ubisoft has always had a touch of little brother syndrome. Sure, they’ve got their big franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell, but they’ve never quite been on the same level as the big three console makers or Activision and EA. That may change over the coming year. Ubisoft brought a packed line-up to E3 2016, and a lot of it was refreshingly original. This wasn’t that company that’s caught flak for pumping out Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry on a yearly basis.
If you’ve got two hours to spare (yes, two hours) you can watch the entire press conference, below.
You can also check out the full posts we did for South Park: The Fractured but Whole, Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Watch Dogs 2. Since we already covered those games in a fair amount of detail, I won’t repeat myself. Here’s all the other important stuff to come out of Ubisoft’s E3 2016 presser…
Ghost Recon Wildlands
Ghost Recon Wildlands takes place in an alternate reality where Mexican drug cartels have completely taken over Bolivia. The game, which Ubisofts says boasts the biggest open-world they’ve ever made, is basically Tom Clancy meets Far Cry. Coordinate with teammates to stealthily execute missions Tom Clancy style within a giant, go anywhere, do anything open world. Ghost Recon Wildlands certainly looks ambitious, so let’s just hope the usual Ubisoft open world issues (glitches, online problems and so on) don’t crop up. Wildlands hits stores March 7, 2017.
Eagle Flight VR
Eagle Flight VR looked like a pretty neat concept when Ubisoft unveiled it at this year’s Game Developers Conference, but it’s changed quite a bit in just a few months. Now it appears to be a competitive multiplayer game rather than a straight flight sim, and, frankly, looks like a Wii game visually. Still could be fun though. Eagle Flight hits all three major VR platforms (Oculus, HTC Vive and Playstation VR) sometime this year.
For Honor
Ubisoft’s Knights vs. Vikings vs. Samurai brawler is still in the works, and continues to strike an oddly serious tone for such a goofy concept. That said, the game does look pleasingly brutal. The face-smashing action is scheduled for Valentines Day 2017.
Grow Up
Ubisoft’s cute, experimental platformer Grow Home is getting a full-fledged sequel. This time, instead of scaling a single giant beanstalk-like plant, you have an entire planet worth of stuff to scale. You won’t have to wait long for another does of robo-platforming cuteness, as Grow Up arrives in August.
Trials of the Blood Dragon
Trials of the Blood Dragon, the mashup between Ubisoft’s motocross series Trials and the wacky 80s Far Cry spin-off Blood Dragon, was confirmed to be real. Not only that, but it’s available right now.
Steep
Surprisingly, Ubisoft’s show ended not with Watch Dogs of Assassin’s Creed, but an all-new IP called Steep. Basically, Steep is 1080 Snowboarding for the current generation. Take to a huge, beautiful open-world version of the Alps, and engage in all manner of extreme winter sports like snowboarding, skiing, paraglinding and wingsuit flying. The game keeps track of all your runs, allowing you to edit your own highlight reels, and, of course, you can compete against your friends online.
A new snowboarding game may not sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but Steep looks pretty ambitious. Steep slides into stores this December.
And that’s the Ubisoft! What did you think of the French publisher’s showing this year? I’ll admit, not all of it connected with me personally, but I give them props for trying some new stuff.