Ubisoft had an exciting E3 showing last year, with multiple new game reveals and a bevy of titles on display. The publisher always fills its showcases to the brim, offering looks at games both near release and far from it. We expect that tradition to continue when Ubisoft takes the stage at 1 p.m. PT on Monday, June 11. Here’s what to expect from Ubisoft’s E3 2018 showcase — and stick with Digital Trends for complete coverage of E3 2018.
We weren’t sure Ubisoft would be bringing anything Assassin’s Creed-related to E3 this year, as the company had skipped a year before the released of Assassin’s Creed Origins. Following an image of a promotional keychain leaking online, however, Ubisoft officially announced that the next game, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, will make an appearance at E3 2018. We’ll undoubtedly get a good look at Odyssey, which appears to take place in ancient Greece, during Ubisoft’s press conference.
The sequel to 2016’s shared-world shooter is confirmed for E3. Although Ubisoft has revealed absolutely nothing about The Division 2 — besides that it will use the Snowdrop engine — it’s probably set in the same post-pandemic New York City as the original. Expect to see a cinematic or gameplay trailer (or both) during Ubisoft’s conference.
Ubisoft unveiled Skull and Bones, a piracy sim inspired by Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag‘s naval warfare, at E3 last year. The game sees crews of up to six players sail across the Indian Ocean in search of treasure and naval battles. The game will tell its story through its multiplayer encounters and will be always online. Although Ubisoft recently delayed the game until its next fiscal year (which starts in April 2019), the pirate adventure will be shown at E3, perhaps with a new launch window.
Ubisoft recently showed off new footage of the long-awaited and often missing in action Beyond Good & Evil 2. The most intriguing thing we have learned so far about the cult-classic adventure sequel is that players will create their own character rather than play as the original game’s protagonist, Jade. Although we still have no clue how far out Beyond Good & Evil 2 is from release, we would be surprised if it wasn’t in Ubisoft’s E3 2018 show plans.
Transference, an odd blend of virtual reality and film, was announced during Ubisoft’s 2017 press conference. Originally, the game was slated for a spring 2018 launch but has since moved to a fall 2018 window. It’s a psychological thriller that takes players through re-created memories of a man’s descent into madness. Created in collaboration with film production company Spectrevision, the Ubisoft Montreal project has a branching narrative that bridges the gap between movies and games.
If Transference is still slated for fall 2018, we expect to see it in action during Ubisoft’s showcase. Although it seems to emphasize virtual reality (PSVR, Vive, Rift), the game will be available on traditional platforms as well (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC).
Remember Starlink: Battle for Atlas, the toys-to-life spaceship battler that lets players attach toy ships to their Xbox One, PS4, and Switch controllers? Yeah, it was by far the strangest reveal at Ubisoft’s press event last year. Since then, we haven’t heard much at all about the Ubisoft Toronto-developed game. It’s slated for fall 2018, though, so we expect to learn more during the showcase.
The Crew 2 launches on June 29, just a couple of weeks after E3 ends. While we likely won’t hear anything new about the game, expect Ubisoft to remind us of the racing game sequel during the show.
In April, Sam Fisher came to Ghost Recon Wildlands for a special mission voiced by original Fisher actor Michael Ironside. That alone wouldn’t have been enough to signal the return of the stealth action series, but Amazon Canada and Walmart Canada accidentally uploaded placeholder box art for “Splinter Cell 2018” in the past couple of months. All of this is to say that it certainly sounds like Fisher will return soon and hopefully be voiced by Ironside.
If a Splinter Cell return is in fact on the horizon, it’s a safe bet that it will be shown, or at least teased, during Ubisoft’s press conference. In its most recent earnings call, Ubisoft revealed that an unannounced game in an ongoing franchise will be revealed and released in Ubisoft’s current fiscal year. That could be a Splinter Cell game… or something else.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.