Each year, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot takes the stage at the company’s media briefing to announce the last title on display, a title that is a massive surprise, perhaps set in an existing universe or one entirely brand new.
This year, however, while Guillemot still took the stage to round out the end of the conference, the game he showed off was an action sports game in what Ubisoft is calling a new genre. And it didn’t look all that great.
Steep is Ubisoft’s open-world skiing, snowboarding, paragliding, action sports title coming out later this year. It’s got some neat camera tricks, including a first-person camera mode by GoPro (no joke), the ability to rewind your run, set markers, and invite your friends to beat your jumps and tricks. The game looks to be quite large in size as it lets players attempt to conquer the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, the latter of which is the highest mountain peak in Europe.
But does Steep live up to the big Ubisoft finales of years past? Is the game as open world as last year’s Ghost Recon Wildlands? Or as interesting and eye-opening as the 2012 reveal of Watch Dogs? What about 2013’s unveiling of The Division, a massively open game with the promise of multiplayer set in a post-pandemic New York City?
Even if some of the above games didn’t end up being stellar games in the way their original announcements suggested they’d be, we can’t help but feel disappointed by Steep in its lack of scale. The game needn’t be rife with guns and violence, but something that lives up to the story-driven narratives that Ubisoft is known for would have been much more engaging for the company’s audience.
When we made our E3 2016 predictions, Ubisoft was at the very top of the list. We even thought it was a bit of a cop out because they have been so consistent year over year. We rounded out the prediction by saying we hoped Guillemot doesn’t buck the trend this year. Technically, he still came on stage to show off the latest game, but it certainly took the wind out of our parasails to see what it ended up being.
What do you think about Steep? While the game looks interesting, do you think it was deserving of Ubisoft’s top spot at the tail end of its conference?