E3 2014: EA hits the high notes with a different kind of presentation

EA’s press conference was both what you’d expect and something new as they ran several behind-the-scenes type films on games that aren’t quite ready for prime time yet.

Clearly the highlights of the presentation, Battlefield Hardline, Mirror’s Edge (as yet untitled), and Star Wars Battlefront were all huge parts of what mega-publisher EA was showing off in L.A. today. There was plenty more talked about though including a new title from Criterion in the same vein as classic series Burnout.

The tittle will have players jumping from vehicle to vehicle in races and crashes will, of course, play a huge part. In the demo, we saw things form the more familiar (like cars and ATV’s) to some truly wild stuff that you just wouldn’t expect to see in a Criterion title like wing suits and helicopters. Was it cool? Oh yes.

Also shown off in some detail was Dragon Age: Inquisition, which looks as good as it ever has, and we got a sneak peek at a new Mass Effect game. What kind of title are we talking about here? Well, the video we got to see wasn’t really showing much in the way of the actual game itself (whatever it might be called eventually), but we did get an eyeful of some of the concept art and what’s presumably in-game models.

It all looked head-and-shoulders ahead of anything that we’ve seen from the series before and, aside from the fact that it was just plain nice to see the N7 insignia once again, came off really well. High hope for this one, whenever it might be finally ready for announcement.

All in all, it was a really surprising presentation and one that was filled with not only current and near future stuff, but those advance looks at games that won’t be ready for quite sometime. Oh, and it also might be worth mentioning that there was a brief shot of a Planet Cracker from Dead Space shown at the top of the Battlefield Hardline video. It was just a glimpse, just a peek, and it looked out of place and spliced.

Does it mean anything? Who knows, but we can speculate can’t we? Interesting show so far.