E3 2017: Ubisoft Dances to a Mario Realm Beyond Good & Evil

Ah, Ubisoft. An oasis of games in the ancient Egyptian desert. A font of joy and dance in a sea of pirates and talking, anthropomorphic primates. A place where one marketing team says, "Hey, let's combine our most annoying characters with a competing publisher's most popular characters and steal the gameplay mechanics from another competitor's franchise! That'll do the trick!" while the other one laughs and whispers, "Suckers!"

Heh. Oh, Ubi. You guys crack me up.

To the recap, Robin!

Why did I just use a Batman reference? I don't know, but let's roll with it. So, Ubisoft started off the festivities by bringing out our old friend, yours and mine, Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto. As it turns out, Miyamoto-san and the good folks at Nintendo decided to collaborate with Ubi to create a Mario and Rabbids-focused experience that we've never seen before. The result is Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Yep, it's a colorful, family-friendly version of X-COM, which is pretty cool. Plus, Mario has a cool gun thingy now, so he's all street and shit.

Next up, we saw a game that Microsoft introduced to us at their own event: Assassin's Creed: Origins. I'm actually excited to play this game; it looks far more interesting than most of the installments in the series. The eagle is definitely my favorite AC character of all time, to be sure.

Following that, Ubi revealed The Crew 2, which features a variety of different vehicles to drive and racing events to conquer, as well as some kind of social media-inspired XP or ranking system. The trailer seemed to be CG-heavy and more conceptual than gameplay-based, so we'll have to see if they listened to feedback and improved the actual racing mechanics, but at least they're trying to do something different in the racing genre. There were no heavy-handed Porsche sponsorships to be seen, which was a good thing.

After that, another story teaser for Far Cry 5 was shown off, along with a brief video highlighting the cooperative elements of the campaign. You'll fight alongside guns for hire and eventually form a resistance in order to take down the leaders of a doomsday cult in Montana. It definitely looked good, as most Far Cry titles do, and the addition of a canine companion certainly adds some fun to the rather dour narrative. I'm very intrigued by this one, but I'm curious to see if the gameplay complements the heavier narrative themes at work here.

We also saw two different versions of South Park (the Fractured But Whole on console and a new mobile title), which showed off the same brand of juvenile hilarity that we've come to expect from creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, as well as developer Obsidian Entertainment.

In addition, a new edition of the Just Dance series presented us with Ubisoft's annual cringeworthy pop music performance. At least this time, the ninjas from Mortal Kombat showed up in their rave costumes and danced to the funky, funky beat.

Alright, now we can get to the good stuff... First off, we saw the announcement of a new IP, a pirate simulator called Skull & Bones. Running off the same engine as the ship battles in Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, and featuring some intense PVP ship-to-ship battles, S&B looks like a solid pirate title, and it's notable that Ubisoft Singapore seems to be going for a much darker tone than Rare's conceptually similar Sea of Thieves. Well see where it all ends up going in the coming months.

Finally, we also saw a lengthy story trailer for the long-teased sequel (which is actually a prequel) to the cult classic adventure game, Beyond Good & Evil. Yes, friends, Beyond Good & Evil 2 is a real thing, and apparently it is coming out sometime in the future. I honestly could not believe that they announced it this year, and bringing Michel Ancel back as the creative director and producer of the game was a great decision on their part. I will definitely be watching the development of this game with great interest.

And with that, the developers were brought up on stage to take a final bow and Ubisoft's event was over. It wasn't a bad presser at all, though perhaps a bit short on announcements. BG&E2 was a surprise, to be sure, and part of me still thinks we're all being trolled, but I have high hopes for that game. We'll find out, and hopefully sooner than later.

I really did miss Aisha Tyler, though. *sad panda*

Okay, we got two more to go, my friends. Bring on the Sony train!