LOS ANGELES—Hundreds of people crowded into the Galen Center in Los Angeles to see Microsoft's E3 2012 presentation here today, with a Halo 4 trailer kicking things off.
The trailer showed Master Chief navigating through a jungle to go after a crashed battleship. Covenant forces appeared, but they quickly vaporized from a new threat. Red light swept across the crowd as a giant orb-shaped ship loomed over Master Chief. The new enemies are "definitely not Covenant," and definitely not part of the Flood.
It looks like the new Halo game will focus on artificial enemies directly connected to the Forerunners, the creators of the Halos. New weapons include Forerunner assault rifles and shotguns that have a distinctly high-tech and sinister glowing red design.
The video ended with Master Chief getting ambushed by invisible enemies who knock him to the ground. The tagline of the trailer is the mysterious "An Ancient Evil Awakens," with a sinister voice saying, "I have long awaited for this day, Reclaimer."
The second game was a surprise: a new Splinter Cell. Splinter Cell: Blacklist showed Sam Fischer brutalizing terrorists trying to find out information about a mysterious blacklist, a series of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests. The gameplay video showed Sam at the Iran-Iraq border trying to capture a terrorist leader in order to prevent the next attack. Besides the game's signature stealth, Sam brutalized guards via "killing in motion," or rapidly tagging guards and killing them with gunshots and brutal melee attacks while navigating through the area. He used classic distraction maneuvers and high-tech attacks including air strikes, called through Kinect voice control. The game seems to be a strong contrast from the last game, Splinter Cell: Conviction, because Sam has taken his place as the head of Third Echelon, which provides him with many more tools.
Ubisoft plans to release Splinter Cell: Blacklist in Spring 2013.
Sports was the next subject: EA Sports showed off Madden NFL 13 and FIFA 13, both of which have Kinect voice control. A soccer game was shown in FIFA 13, where the demonstrator controlled the formations and tactics of the game through voice commands. The referee even gave a yellow flag when the player cursed at it, an amusing touch that will likely ruin many, many loud players' games.
Joe Montana came onstage to show off Madden NFL 13. He commanded the game with voice commands, calling plays by talking. The play even began with him saying "Set, hut!" Montana noted during the demonstration, "Oh, this is actually pretty sweet."
Madden NFL 13 comes out August 28.
Fable: The Journey was the first fantasy game shown at the press conference, and it also showed off Kinect controls. Instead of a straight Fable sequel with the same gameplay as before, it's more of a magical shooter where the player can cast spells and throw lighting and fireballs with gestures. Lionhead Studios plans to ship the game by the holiday season.
Gears of War: Judgment followed, with the premiere of a new trailer. It didn't show any gameplay, but it demonstrated the game's signature violence and chainsaw rifles, with a younger Marcus Fenix, indicating a prequel.
After that, Microsoft showed a trailer for Forza Horizon, the newest racing game in the Forza Motorsport series. It seemed to be less of a racing simulator like Gran Turismo and more an arcade racer like Need for Speed, with plenty of car crashes.
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone made a surprise appearance with a preview of South Park: The Stick of Truth. The trailer was expletive-laden and the action seems RPG-like. The game is being developed by Obsidian Entertainment, the developers of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. The game will focus around a player-generated custom character who will interact with the characters from the show while getting into various obscene hijinks.
Usher also appeared during the press conference, showing off his dance moves for Dance Central 3 for Kinect. He performed his newest single, "Scream," while backup dancers surrounded him on the stage inhabited by the creators off BASEketball just minutes before.
Besides franchise games, Microsoft showed off several new games not based on popular series. Ascent: New Gods comes from Signal Studios, the creators of the Toy Soldiers games. It's a bloody fantasy hack-and-slash game with strategy elements. LocoCycle is the newest game from TwistedPixel, featuring a high-tech assassin motorcycle.
Finally, Gore Verbiski, director of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, is working on a surprising new sci-fi puzzle game, Matter. Unfortunately, none of the trailers for the games had any gameplay footage to hint at what the games' mechanics will be like. But all three titles are planned for release in 2013.
