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Ubisoft Forward - Impressions and Highlights

At the door of The Magic Box in Los Angeles, Ben Lyons and David Caballero share their thoughts on what was a more traditional, more human show when everyone else goes too digital. Here they discuss games such as Assassin's Creed Mirage, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Star Wars Outlaws, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, The Crew Motorfest, and more.

Audio transcription

"Hello everyone, and welcome back to Gamereactor.
As you can see from the banner behind us, we're standing outside of Ubisoft's venue for this thing in LA.
I say this thing in LA because it's not E3, it's not Summer Game Fest, really."

"It's like, yeah, I guess it is kind of Summer Game Fest-ish, but anyway, that's a different rabbit hole in itself.
But the point is, we're standing outside of Ubisoft's thing because we've just come from seeing the forward and doing a few other little things here and there about Ubisoft that we may or may not be able to tell you about right now.
But anyway, let's talk about the show instead, because that is very, very public at this point."

"It was a rather interesting one, I think.
Again, when you have these showcases that are made by the publisher, you kind of know what you're getting on the way in.
It's not like a Geoff Keighley show where it's more about his impression of it.
It's very Ubisoft, and yeah, I think it was a well-paced show."

"I think it had some good reveals in there, some good gameplay footage.
And I think the reason that really sold it for me was the fact that it had a lot of dates on it, right?
A lot of things we know, and things are coming exactly when they're coming, and a lot of them are coming within the next sort of six months' time as well."

"So, Dav, what was the highlight for you?
I think this show had a keyword to it, and it's tangible.
As you just said, not only did we have a bunch of dates for these games that are releasing in the near future, but also some of the games we saw, we got to play them, or we got to have a standard presentation of them, or we got to talk to the developers."

"And that's something really, really different compared to what we got yesterday at Microsoft's Xbox showcase.
So, to me, that's fantastic.
And they kept these two secrets really nicely until the very end, Prince of Persia for Summer Game Fest show, and now Star Wars was unveiled, revealed yesterday, and now we got this standard gameplay demonstration, which is really, really nice for a game that's supposed to release."

"I think it's going to be a bit tight, but it's supposed to release in 2024, and you get to see gameplay, whereas other games that are releasing this year, yesterday or the other day, we didn't see any real gameplay of them.
So that is, as I said, it felt really tangible.
And then you got your Ubisoft stuff, right?
You got your jazz dance, which was really, really good."

"And you got the developers on stage presenting the games themselves.
And that makes a huge difference when you're here.
Of course, you guys enjoyed this in a streamlined way, but we are here, and we really get to meet them, get to talk with them, and get to feel the real human thing behind games on stage."

"So I would pick Star Wars as my game of the show here.
Perhaps the whole show.
Close one with Mortal Kombat, but of course Mortal Kombat is around the corner, and this is in terms of announcements and surprises."

"I wasn't expecting Star Wars to be that ready to show a portion of gameplay and to talk to the developers.
Look forward to our interview with them, because we talk many more things.
How you approach combat, how you explore the world, how limited it is in terms of scale.
Well, they wouldn't give away too much."

"It's not a Starfield, spoiler alert.
But they don't need to do that, because it's the story of this scoundrel, you know, bounty hunter, this outlaw.
Yeah, willing to share much more with my preview and interview, but the show was really, really, really good.
What was your highlight?
Well, I think my highlight would have been Avatar, for the simple reason..."

"Two massive games.
Two massive, massive games.
Exactly.
No, yeah, I think I'd say Avatar for the simple reason that it's somehow coming later this year."

"Now, we heard about Avatar years ago.
Yes.
But we haven't really been seeing any gameplay, anything like that.
And yet, it's come to this show, and we get to see loads of gameplay."

"I mean, the gameplay is, I will say a little bit at times, questionable.
You know, it kind of looks like a Far Cry game, very distinctly at times.
I mentioned it in my preview, with kind of like Mirror's Edge sort of movement systems.
Far Cry games are very fun."

"So I'm not exactly bashing on the game by saying that.
I'm just saying that there's a lot of things that we don't really know exactly about the game yet.
But the point is, it's coming out in December somehow.
Somehow."

"We haven't heard anything about this game in ages.
And all of a sudden, it's like, it's coming later this year.
So I'm really excited to see more about Avatar.
I love the world, and I hope it just captures it."

"You know, just captures that fantastical planet that people can explore in the movies, and I can do in a more interactive sense.
So that's definitely my highlight.
But yeah, no, there were some great things there."

"You know, on the Assassin's Creed front, there was some, you know, Mirage looks great, if you like your Assassin's Creed things.
Codename Jade, it's more if you like your mobile things more so than anything I'd say there.
Nexus, a little bit more questionable."

"So, you know, I spoke to the developer yesterday, maybe the day before, one of the leading members of the development team there, and we were told that it's coming later this year.
In the actual showcase, it was mentioned winter, so that could technically mean 2024, early 2024."

"But the point is it's coming relatively soon, and we don't really know a whole lot about it, because there wasn't any gameplay shown.
Just a CGI thing."

"And people were getting really, really excited about it in the showcase.
You know, there was people screaming and shouting when they were showing that stuff.
Like, it was just a cinematic, man.
Like, let's just wait until we see it. Run to the MetaQuest."

"Well, to be fair, they also got pretty excited with Prince of Persia, and that had been unveiled at the Summer Game Fest, so the director, who you, by the way, interviewed, was on the stage.
And he really added the personality, as I was saying, the flavor and the color to it."

"And the other video that was shown here was the other way around.
This was CGI.
And to me, I wasn't sold on the art style, but this CGI demonstration of the art style was really, really good."

"And then we went with the time power, which was like...
It also caused a lot of applause and excitement in the audience.
So I think just hats off to Ubisoft for doing the things the way they used to be when E3 was a thing."

"And they, as you said, are a publisher.
They are not a hardware manufacturer that we expect this huge, sort of full of announcements and reveals show.
And they are not a mix of things from partners."

"So I really, lots of respect to how they arranged this, and it was really nice.
And it worked for us as press, so I think that's also good for viewers and readers."

"Yeah, for sure.
And I think it's about time we wrap up because there's a bunch of traffic in front of us and we're standing in the middle of the road.
So, yeah, that's Ubisoft."

"That's what's done for LA now, actually, isn't it?
There's no badge to drop, so that tradition goes away.
But this is a badge drop officially.
We're done."

"We go back.
We fly.
We travel for many hours.
We go back to Europe.
So, yeah, for that, expect more previews and interviews coming up soon."

"But otherwise, yeah, we're back in LA.
Hopefully we're back next year as well.
We'll see if we are.
Take care, guys.
Bye."

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