E3 2021: Ubisoft kicks off event with Avatar and Mario + Rabbids reveals

E3 2021 Day 1 news: Ubisoft reveals Avatar first look, new Mario + Rabbids game
The virtual version of the Electronic Entertainment Exhibition, better known as E3, is underway, with some of the world’s largest video game and console creators set to unveil new game tiles and other updates. This is the first E3 since 2019 after the coronavirus pandemic canceled last year’s conference, usually held at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

This year’s event will be held via live-streamed videos, coordinated by the Entertainment Software Association, which has overseen the event since its debut in 1995.

Launcher, The Washington Post’s video game coverage team, will be breaking down the biggest announcements from the E3 stream, with news updates and analysis from all of the major showcases from Saturday, to Tuesday.

With Day 1 in the books, you can see what you missed via the official E3 stream above. Below, Launcher breaks down the biggest moments from the first wave of game-related news from the virtual conference.

Gene Park: Gearbox Publishing is a publishing powerhouse, so it’s pretty disappointing that the person who seemed to have the most fun during its E3 showcase was its CEO, Randy Pitchford. Pitchford roamed the set of the “Borderlands” film, and the footage featured him joking around with director Eli Roth and Roland actor Kevin Hart. It’s notable that “Godfall” has fallen from its perch as the rare “next-gen exclusive game” by announcing a version for the PlayStation 4. “Godfall” was sold as a “looter slasher” basically taking the “Diablo” or “Borderlands” premise of gaining new weapons through repetitive action play. But since then, games like “Outriders” as well as the ongoing popularity of “Destiny 2,” have kept the top of the looter pile crowded. “Godfall” probably needs to release to the more popular platforms for a chance to get more sales. It’s not a bad game, but it does little to distinguish itself from many others like it. Really the most exciting announcement was that “Homeworld 3,” part of the popular real-time strategy series, is being made. All we saw was a logo, so Gearbox left us very little to chew on.
If Gearbox fans were hoping to hear about new games during the company’s E3 showcase, they likely came away largely disappointed.

Studio co-founder Randy Pitchford spent much of the company’s time on stream walking a camera crew around the set of the upcoming “Borderlands” move, currently in production in Budapest. Pitchford chatted up the film’s director, Eli Roth, as well as actors Kevin Hart and Edgar Ramirez. The film, which features a star-studded cast, is scheduled for a 2022 release.

Aside from that there was little of note. The stream showcased the Borderlands spinoff game “Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands,” which was revealed earlier this week during Summer Games Fest. Like the movie, this game features some familiar Hollywood names: Will Arnett, Ashly Burch, Andy Samberg and Wanda Sykes will be lending their voices.

The only other item of note was the announcement that there would be more content coming to melee-looter “Godfall.”

Shannon Liao: The Ubisoft Forward show injected just enough excitement to hold interest until the surprising final reveal of its upcoming Avatar video game. The “Avatar” sequel film had an initial release date of 2014, but it’s still not out yet. It’s quite possible we’ll get an Avatar video game, “Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora,” before “Avatar 2” hits theaters. No gameplay of Avatar was shown. Ubisoft also kicked it up a notch with “Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope,” a game that combines characters from Nintendo’s Mario franchise with the rabbit-like “Rabbids” from Ubisoft, showing us very cute and endearing gameplay. The show also made no mention of the widespread sexual misconduct reports Ubisoft faced last year and the departure of several executives. CEO Yves Guillemot appeared on-screen to talk about the trust gamers place in Ubisoft but didn’t mention the company’s missteps. He apologized for them in September and made no mention of it again in today’s event.
Seemingly mirroring the space-faring evolution of “Call of Duty” several years ago, the long-running tactical shooter franchise “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six” is now being invaded by aliens.

A computer-graphics cinematic trailer showcased black goo, a common trope in video games to showcase “otherworldly” beings taking over everyday venues in San Francisco. The trailer showed remote-controlled drones, a staple of the Rainbow Six series, but now they’re being used to scope out aliens, called Archaeons.

“Extraction” is a cooperative shooting experience with up to three players versus the alien threat, as opposed to the recent “Rainbow Six: Siege,” a popular player-vs-player shooting game that’s evolved into a successful esport. Players of both games will have unlocks for the respective titles.

While the CG trailer showed bombastic action, gameplay footage featured more stealth-oriented gameplay, which is more in line with the tactical roots of the series. It also showed some destructible environments.

Ubisoft then showcased Rocksmith Plus, a new subscription service for its gamified music instruction title. The studio calls it the “next evolution in music learning,” allowing you to plug in your guitars as the game tracks your progress.

The game is offering a closed beta today asking users to help test out the program.

“Riders Republic” sees extreme sports back in the AAA realm, featuring a wide-open world. It almost seems like a mix of “Tony Hawk” and “Forza Horizon Motorsport,” allowing players to roam around a huge park filled with various biomes for bikers, gliders, snowboards, skaters and more.

The game holds promise, especially if you’re the kind of player that enjoys the competitive racing modes in “Grand Theft Auto: Online.” As you participate in new races or events, you unlock more gear.

It’s another year, another “Just Dance” title, Ubisoft’s popular, ongoing series that is constantly updated with modern pop songs. “Just Dance 2022” will release August 2021.

“Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” is headed to Paris and finally announced the return of “black box missions,” which means a return to the traditional “Assassin’s Creed” formula of casing areas and planning before taking action. The “Siege of Paris” summer expansion will also have new weapons and stories, continuing the story of Eivor and their Viking clan as they siege across Europe.

Ubisoft also promised continued free updates through 2021, giving the single-player game a second year of life before the studio likely moves on to the next entry.

The publishing powerhouse then gave us an extended look at its upcoming big title, “Far Cry 6,” showing more of the protagonist interacting with their resistance group in the game’s Cuba-based setting.

The cutscenes underscore that much of the story in “Far Cry 6” will be told in third-person, despite being a first-person shooter. Giancarlo Esposito’s character Anton Castillo also makes a menacing, scene-chewing appearance, grabbing his son Diego from a fishing boat.

More surprising was the announcement of a season pass for the game, which teased all the villains of the last three “Far Cry” games as playable protagonists in some sort of dreamlike state.

The stream next revealed a sequel to “Mario + Rabbids,” the wacky Nintendo and Ubisofto mash-up strategy game for the Switch, was announced. Nintendo accidentally leaked information confirming the existence of the new game, dubbed “Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope,” earlier Saturday.

The first game was a unique blending of the Minion-like Rabbids creatures and Mario’s illogical fantasy kingdom worlds. Also, it gave Mario a gun to shoot. This time, Mario will have two guns.

Ubisoft ended its broadcast with a computer-graphics trailer of “Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.” It’s hard to glean what the game will be like, but it showcased the blue characters (I’m writing off memory about “Avatar” here) riding their dragonfly mounts, while the soldier people climbed into their mech suits to fight the blue people.

This is the first peep about, and glimpse of, the “Avatar” game since it was mysteriously announced in 2017.

Ubisoft’s show begins at 3 p.m. Eastern time, and the producers of the E3 show made the strange decision to showcase long stretches of Ubisoft characters slowly navigating terrain in their respective games.

A short video about how Ubisoft thinks about accessibility when producing games was preceded by several minutes of a character from “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” slowly walking through the game’s map. After the accessibility short, we saw a construction worker from “Watch Dogs Legion” slowly fly over London.

The viewer chat on YouTube is famously impatient, and this seems to be their ultimate test. Since E3′s scheduled stream start time at 1 p.m. Eastern time, countdowns will have taken up about 90 minutes of airtime, with the pre-show broadcast logging about a half-hour of airtime so far.

Whatever the case, Ubisoft’s pre-show stream seems dead set on reminding us that the company creates really big worlds for players to navigate.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo kicked off with high energy from its hosts as some attendees (including The Post) reported difficulty in accessing the portal site setup. The Entertainment Software Association said it was experiencing issues “with the portal and app platform service provider” 11 minutes after the pre-stream show was scheduled to start.

The show’s first major news came from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti who promoted his city as a hub for the gaming industry and welcomed those watching the stream to visit L.A. for E3 2022, which will be held in person.

ESA chief executive Stanley Pierre-Louis then continued with remarks in memoriam to Robert A. Altman, the founder of ZeniMax Media who died in February.

With the annual video game conference kicking off today, we’re expecting a lot of big news, from new games to potential new console announcements. Before the big show even started, we got a closer look at one of the most anticipated games, “Elden Ring,” from “Dark Souls” developer FromSoftware and “A Song of Ice and Fire” author George R.R. Martin. We also now know its release date is Jan. 21, 2022.

Last year’s E3 was canceled thanks to the pandemic, so companies put out their gaming news via live streams and social media posts. This year’s E3 is all digital for the first time, with a similar lineup of streamed announcements, but this time it has been condensed into one jam-packed weekend. Without the physical booths and chances for gamers to try out games in person, as they would during a normal E3, fans will have to get their fix through game demos made available early on Steam and tune into our live coverage from streams to articles.

We’ll be reacting to Ubisoft’s event later today, Microsoft/Bethesda and Square Enix on Sunday, and Nintendo on Tuesday.

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Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope has been showcased through a cinematic trailer. It's coming in 2022! As in Super Mario Galaxy, Lumas will provide powers to Mario and his allies. Their developers promise "big ambitions" within the development of the game which means we will probably see new mechanics

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope has been showcased through a cinematic trailer. It's coming in 2022! As in Super Mario Galaxy, Lumas will provide powers to Mario and his allies. Their