GC2009: EA Press Conference

Electronic Arts held its official Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany, showing off a number of new features and trailers for already announced games, and dropping more than a few release dates for their upcoming catalog. The evening started with a bang, thanks to a trailer showcasing all the titles in the current lineup. Though we'll be previewing most of these games in playable demos on the show floor and private meetings in the business center, tonight was a good opportunity to see them all in a compressed form and get a sense of what to expect from our more in-depth sessions later this week.

After a high energy trailer showcasing many of the more popular games in EA's catalog, Dr. Jens Uwe Itat, general manager of European publishing for EA, opened the conference with a few words of pride about EA's influence in Europe and the more than 200,000 people expected to attend Gamescom this week. He then handed things over to EA Sports' president Peter Moore who catered to the European crowd by introducing the latest version of FIFA, which Moore promises will be "the greatest football game in the world."

The title's producer, David Rutter, echoed those sentiments during his presentation. After giving a brief hello to the team at EA Vancouver, he dove right into the new features. After learning several lessons from the online play in FIFA 09, Rutter promises that the team has improved the overall matchmaking in the new version, and included several new filters and ranking services. The title's new Virtual Pro feature will allow players to put their face into the game and build up an RPG style character, complete with achievements, various upgradeable abilities and unlockable celebrations. There's even a career book that will show you all that you have accomplished with your character.

Moving beyond the individual players, FIFA 10 will also include lots of tools for league and club creation, even allowing for players to create and host their own local leagues and scout for talent in other clubs. Rutter promised that more details for Live Season 2.0 would be coming next month.

The improvements aren't simply limited to the list of new features. FIFA 10 will also include greater ball control and improved AI across the board. 360-degree ball control is even being implemented on Wii and PC this time around. Your teammates will now make smarter support runs and will follow new patterns that allow them to build greater urgency during specific moments of play. The positional play promises to be stronger as well, and the defenders showed some fantastic clearances and blocks during the demo. Of course, the one thing they didn't show was 40 minutes of back and forth dribbling, but we assume that's in the game as well.

To get a handle on the new features, players can make use of a new practice arena, setting up scoring positions and other set-pieces like free kicks, penalty shots and throw-ins. There's also a brand new set piece creator that allows you to run and record routes for all your players and then practice those modes and trigger them during actual matches. We saw one of these play out in the trailer and it seemed like a very versatile tool for the hardcore football fan.

Moving from the most popular sport in the world to the most popular fitness game on the Wii, EA announced the latest in its Sports Active line, the spectacularly named EA Sports Active: More Workouts. Due out in November, the game will include 35 new exercises, including new stretches, ab exercises and cardio routines. There's even a new six-week challenge that's customized to your fitness level. The real attraction of this demo was the ridiculously attractive Katarina Witt, two-time Olympic figure skating gold medal winner, who came onto the stage to coach a ridiculously attired Peter Moore through a number of running, squat and jumping exercises. Towards the end of the demo, Peter joked about needing mouth to mouth, but Katarina asked him to get in line. He then offered to buy her a beer, so who knows how that ended up.
The conference then turned to the PC with The Sims 3: World Adventures, due out on November 16. Sims senior director Julie Turner, from Redwood Shores, also won points by welcoming the attendees in German (and not rocking a slightly embarrassing workout suit). More than half of The Sims copies have been sold in Europe, so the crowd was very excited to hear more about the new expansion. World Adventures gives players a chance to take their Sims to Egypt, France or China with loads of new adventure-oriented gameplay.

The brand new trailer, debuted here at Gamescom, showed an Indiana Jones-type adventurer wandering through the Al Simhara desert. The scene shifts to an Eastern-style outdoor market where men are arguing, ladies are gossiping and kids are chasing butterflies. Our adventurer walks out of the city but catches the eye of a rather capable-looking lady adventurer. She follows him into an ancient crypt where he's attempting to steal a sparkling gem. They begin to argue and a mummy comes lumbering out of a nearby crypt. The man jumps into the woman's arms and everyone has a good laugh at the way the game turns our traditional gender expectations on their heads.

Julie also showed a few behind the scenes bits from a recent recording session that showed popular artists like Pixie Lott, Stefanie Heinzmann, Matt and Kim, Young Punx and (the one we've heard of) Nellie Furtado. Each of the artists contributes a bit of Simlish to the game, and it was quite interesting to hear the German version, which we're guessing should be called Simman rather than Simlish.

DICE wants to reinvent multiplayer gaming.

Things heated up again with the trailer for Battlefield Bad Company 2. Due for release on March 2 in the US and March 5 in Europe, the new game promises to redefine the multiplayer game around three core elements -- vehicles, squads and destructible environments. EA's European senior VP of games Patrick Soderlund and the game's executive producer Karl-Magnus Troedsson outlined the importance of each of the changes to their goal of making Bad Company 2 the best first person shooter around.

The significance of vehicle combat won't be lost on anyone who's played Battlefield in the past. It's part of the history of DICE's franchise since the days of Codename Eagle. But the squad tools are a relatively new concept. They encourage players to work together in four-person teams by giving new levels of awareness and new spawn opportunities within each discreet squad. Destruction, which is now being called destruction 2.0, has also improved and should give players a few more options when confronting a particularly well hidden sniper.

Most of these improvements were shown in an in-game cinematic that showed a squad of four taking out an entire enemy installation. The sniper took up a position in the rear, while one soldier used a laser designator on an enemy vehicle, giving the RPG-equipped soldier a chance to hit the target without exposing himself to enemy fire. Once the plan was put into motion, you could really see how the four players were able to accomplish more as a connected squad than they could have as separate individuals. When the camera pulled back to show them as part of a much larger battlefield, you got a sense of just how much fun the game should be.

Tim Schafer, president of Double Fine Productions, was up next to display his upcoming heavy metal action game, Brutal Legends. With the recent legal problems of the game now behind him, Tim was free to discuss the game and show off a new trailer. Described by Tim as a trip through a heavy metal album cover, Brutal Legend reveals what would happen if you mixed World of Warcraft with Ozzy Osbourne.

Jack Black plays as Eddie, a roadie sucked into a war against demonic foes. Using two mighty axes (one the chopping kind, and one the shredding kind) Eddie will have the opportunity to upgrade his abilities as he wanders through an insane world, gaining allies, buying new guitar strings and escorting a tour bus with his custom built druid plow, the Duece. Loads of combos, custom effects for your guitar and plenty of roadkills, Brutal Legend includes just about everything a heavy metal fan could want. It even includes allies who will shoot flaming crossbow bolts while perched atop your shoulders.

The game is due out on Rocktober 16 with demos planned for Xbox Live and PlayStation Network on September 17.

Before moving to the next game in the line-up, Jens took a moment to recognize the members of Crytek Studios in the audience, who, he promised, would have a big announcement for us on Thursday. Given the studio's recent uncertainty over a bill in the German Bundestadt to outlaw developers of violent video games, we were expecting to hear something specific from them at the conference.
Things were handed over to senior producer Justin Lambros to talk about Dante's Inferno, EA's action-game inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy. The team is showing off two new things at Gamescom this year -- the Sixth Circle of Hell, Heresy, and the new Righteousness mechanic. The Righteousness mechanic is a nod to Dante's focus on free will and gives the players a chance to decide whether to dispatch their enemies with righteous or unholy moves. For instance, while battling heretics among the fiery tombs of the Sixth Circle, the player will have the opportunity to confront Emperor Frederick II and decide whether to punish him by shoving a gigantic sword in his face and exploding him into a million bits, or absolve him by sending up to heaven in a shaft of light.

You can also make these decisions in real time during combat. We saw a fight against a Throne Demon with two different outcomes. In the unholy version, the player punishes him by cutting him in half. In the righteous version, the player absolves him by punching him in the face with glowing light and making him explode. Going farther down one path or the other will give players access to better moves. Players can check it out for themselves on February 9 in the US or February 12 in Europe.

Dr. Ray Muzyka of BioWare then took the stage to show off his company's three games. First up was Dragon Age, BioWare's attempt to bring to the traditional RPG all the things the company has learned over the last ten years. Ray emphasized some by-now familiar points about the game, covering the origin stories, the dark nature of the Grey Wardens and the sense of consequence that the player's choices will have in the game. The big news, of course, was that the game is playable on both the PC and the consoles here at the show.

After leaving traditional fantasy behind, BioWare is finally coming back.

A few months after Dragon Age is released, BioWare will deliver the dark second act of the Mass Effect trilogy, Mass Effect 2. Focused on Shepherd's suicide mission to save humanity, the sequel will push the boundaries even further with weightier consequences, better digital acting and more fluid combat action. Gamescom attendees will have the chance to check out the new control scheme for themselves on the show floor this year.

The new gameplay trailer displayed at EA's conference revealed a number of new things. First was a new location, Space Station Omega, a mining facility near an asteroid field. This lawless station is run by mercernaries, so Shepherd needs a new bodyguard to watch his back when he goes in. The new guard, who can be equipped as part of your squad is Grunt, a Krogan soldier who doesn't care where he fights as long as he gets to hurt someone. Violent and reckless, Grunt charges straight into battle with little regard for the odds. In other words, the perfect guy for a suicide mission.

BioWare then shared more on the amazingly ambitious MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. We already knew that the entire game, more than forty novel's worth of content, would be fully voiced by actors, but BioWare wowed us at the conference by revealing that the entire game would be offered in German and French translations, which makes the enormity of the project even more unbelievable. They even launched websites at the .de and .fr domains for the game, so fans here in Europe can keep up with the game in their own native language. Ray then showed off the impressive E3 trailer, this time in German.

The game just got three times as expensive.

The final game in EA's lineup was Need for Speed Shift. Due out on September 15 in the US and September 17 in Europe, the new game was demoed by producer Jesse Abney and Slightly Mad Studios COO Stephen Viljoen. Immersion is the main goal of the game and is achieved through a more robust cockpit view, visible g-force effects on the screen and, of course, ridiculous crashes that crumple the cockpit around you. Stephen raced around a Belgian track during the demo, showing how the game rewards drivers on two criteria: precision and aggression. Hold the race line and you'll earn precision points for your drive. Pull massive corner slides and you'll gain aggression points. The points are accumulated and tracked on a driver profile screen that makes your own driving habits, not the car itself, the star of the game. Of course, the career mode will also feature loads of achievements and unlockable cars and tracks.

In the end, though the EA conference didn't have much in the way of earth-shattering premieres or new announcements, it did have a large number of smaller announcements that, taken as a whole, add up to an impressive showing here at Gamescom. We'll be stopping by the booths to check out the playable demos, chat with developers, and, yes, even visit a gigantic Jedi temple. Be sure to check back throughout the week for our continued coverage.