Everything EA Announced At E3 2. Electronic Arts just kicked off E3 2. Saturday press conference. BEYOND THE LIGHT BARRIER. The autobiography of Elizabeth Klarer. ELIZABETH KLARER. Zero Escape Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, also simply known as 999, is the first entry. EA showed some Star Wars, some sports, some car chases, and a brand new game from Bio. Ware called Anthem. There was also a live drumline, in case you thought E3 needed more drumlines. EA didnt announce muchthe only two new games were Anthem and a prison break game called A Way Outand most of the conference was dedicated to sports and Battlefront II. Lets run it all down. Star Wars Battlefront II Aims To Fix The First Games Problems. EA dedicated the entire back half of its show to Star Wars Battlefront II, focusing mostly on multiplayer, which will span all eras of Star Wars. All post release multiplayer add ons will be free this time around, meaning that everyone will be able to keep playing the game for years to come, according to presenter Janina Gavankar. Gavankar, who plays the main character in Battlefront IIs single player, stared down the audience in character as she took the stage. It was a fun, if slightly awkward moment in an otherwise sleepy press conference. They then showed a bunch of live multiplayer gameplay set on a map on Naboo. There was a ton going on, and it was hard to tell how itll actually feel to play. EA says the game will have more vehicles, more customization, more abilities, more classes, and more options in general. They also say theyve fine tuned the gunplay so that everything feels better than it did in the first game. At the very least, itll be cathartic to hop in a tank and blow the shit out of Naboo. You can find more info on the Battlefront II announcements, including EAs press release, here. Bio. Wares New Game Is Called Anthem. The Hollywood Reporter is your source for breaking news about Hollywood and entertainment, including movies, TV, reviews and industry blogs. District 9 is a 2009 science fiction film directed by Neill Blomkamp, written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, and produced by Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham. Latest environmental news, features and updates. Pictures, video and more. We also got a teaser for Anthem, a brand new series from Bio. Ware. It looks like a sci fi game with lush environments, big monsters and characters who wear suits of power armor. The teaser was scant on details, but EA says itll share more at the Microsoft press conference tomorrow. A Way Out A Promising Co Op Prison Break Game. EA will also be publishing a new game called A Way Out, which is being made by the people behind the fantastic Brothers A Tale of Two Sons. Its a cinematic prison break game where you control one of two unlikely partners thrown together in a common cause. The game is built entirely as a co op experience, meaning you cant play it solo, though Im sure some intrepid gamers will make it work. It can be played in splitscreen or online. Brothers was a really good game if you havent played it, play it, and A Way Out looks like a promising evolution of a lot of the ideas that game explored. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time Movie Full Hd' title='The Girl Who Leapt Through Time Movie Full Hd' />Science fiction has produced some amazing alien creatures, moving beyond the restrictions of reality to stretch our imaginations into the improbable and impossible. Need For Speed Payback Looks Fast, Furious. EA shared some new information about Need For Speed Payback, which sure looks like a Fast And The Furious game. Which I am totally in favor of. Gameplay wise, it looks like some kinda combination of SplitSecond and Burnout, which, also, sounds good. Battlefield 1 Will Get Night Maps And A Russian Expansion. The already wildly popular shooter Battlefield 1 is getting two night maps, which debut this summer. Because Battlefield 1 wasnt chaotic enough. They also announced In The Name of the Tsar, an expansion that will add new maps from World War 1s eastern front. The expansion will add six new maps featuring the Russian army along with the iconic womens battalion of death. That expansion hits in September. Lastly, they teased a new small squad competitive mode, saying theyll share more details at Gamescom in August. Madden 1. 8 Gets A Story Mode. Madden 1. 8 kicked off the show as EA announced a new Long. Shot game type, which adds a sports movie like narrative to the game. It looks melodramatic as hell. Fifa 1. 8 is Fueled By RonaldoFifa 1. I also very much enjoyed their use of the phrase FUELED BY RONALDO. Like Madden 1. Fifa 1. NBA Live 1. 8 will combine street ball with NBA tournament play. We also got a quick look at NBA Live 1. And that about does it for EA. Well be covering E3 for the next week, with news, liveblogs, podcasts, videos, and more. Why Bringing Back a Wooly Mammoth Is No Longer Science Fiction. Dr. George Church is a real life Dr. Frankenstein. The inventor of CRISPR and one of the minds behind the Human Genome Project is no longer content just reading and editing DNAnow he wants to make new life. In Ben Mezrichs latest book, Wooly The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of Historys Most Iconic Extinct Creatures, Church and his Harvard lab try to do the impossible, and clone an extinct Woolly mammoth back into existence. Mezrich, author of the books that would become the feature films 2. Free Downloads Pokemon Ranger And The Temple Of The Sea. The Social Network, seems to have graduated from college to a bioengineering Ph. D with his latest work, which is chock full of scientific explanation detailing every aspect of the Church labs efforts to rewrite the DNA of an elephant to look like a wooly mammoth. But Mezrich is even more interested in telling the stories of the people trying to make the mammoth a reality, dramatizing the lives of Church, his wife, Harvard Professor Dr. Ting Wu, their fellow scientists, researchers working for a competing cloning lab in Korea, and the conservationists at the Siberian preserve where the mammoths will finally reside. While at times his predictions feel too good to be true, Mezrichs prose rarely fails to engage. Gizmodo sat down with Mezrich to talk about a few of the themes present in his book, as well as the future of de extinction and scientific breakthroughs in general. Below is a lightly edited and condensed version of the interview. Gizmodo What brought you to extinct species revival in particular Mezrich Ive been interested in mammoths since I was a kid, basically, and Ive always been a fan of Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park, so its always been on my mind to tell a story like that. Then a couple years ago, I started hearing about Dr. George Church and the Mammoth Revival project, and I decided I just needed to tell this story. So I basically reached out to him blindly. He let me embed myself in his lab, so I spent a while just living there seeing what was going on, and just getting really into it. Gizmodo An early chapter of the book opens four years in the future, when humans have succeeded in bringing mammoths back to life. What makes you think the project will succeed so soon Mezrich Even at this moment, right now, there are three prehistoric woolly mammoth genomes alive, living in elephant cells, so were on the verge of it. I was talking to George the previous night. Even though he doesnt put a date on it, I put the four year date, but he sees that as totally possible. The slowest part of the process right now is the gestation period of an elephant. Whether well have a woolly mammoth in three years or just be very close in three years, I dont know, but a lot depends on the money and on the elephant. The initiative is how they work on it, but it is feasible. Gizmodo Lets talk about the money. Thats a huge motivating factor behind the project, but it seems like the wealthy are the ones funding scientific efforts a lot of the time Editors Note The Church Labs Genome Sequencing project is funded mainly by private computing and biotechnology companies. Is this a good thing How do you feel about science funded on the whims of oligarchs Mezrich Well its interesting, you look at this marriage between incredibly wealthy people and science, and in some ways its a very good thing. You know, in some ways it pushes science forward. Youre not gonna see and I wish you would Donald Trump pouring money into the woolly mammoth revival project, youre not seeing the government doing these things. Scientists do often have to turn to outside sources, and if someone like Peter Thiel wants to live forever, he needs to fund the things in George Churchs lab. So whatever his personal goal, its good for everybody. I look at it as a positive thing, I think big money has always influenced outside the box science, look at what Elon Musk does or whats going on at Amazon, Facebook or Google. Its very very wealthy people throwing money at crazy ideas, and hopefully we all benefit from it. Peter Thiel put in 1. Gizmodo This book and The Accidental Billionaires both had the protagonists receive additional funding from Peter Thiel. How do you feel about his involvement in particular in such immediately relevant workMezrich Yeah, Ive written about him twice. Editors Note Mezrich also covered Peter Thiel in his book Accidental Billionaires In this case the way George tells the story, he basically ran into Peter Thiel, and told him about a couple of projects. Thiel said tell me your craziest projects, and he listed a couple of them, and Thiel said, the woolly mammoth, thats the one I want to do. Gizmodo Speaking of other projects, is Church working on anything half as crazy as a mammoth Mezrich Yeah, absolutely, Church and his lab are doing the anti malaria mosquitos, working with the Gates foundation, theyre building domes over villages in Africa and releasing mosquitoes that cant carry malaria, to test them out. Also, his student Ken Esfeld at MIT is working on transgenic mice to beat lyme disease. The goal is to release 1. Lyme disease onto the island of Nantucket, which is kind of a wild story. In his lab, theyre also working on the pigs with human compatible livers. Theyve a couple of pig embryos with livers that can be used in humans. Youre looking at the future of transplantation, which is incredible. Theyre working on projects to extend lifespans but the mammoth project and the ones with the transgenic species are the craziest. Gizmodo Do you think meddling with ecosystems and reviving lost species could have negative effects on living ones Mezrich You have to be very ethical and responsible because youre working with technology that is very powerful. The same technology that allows you to create a woolly mammoth or an extinct species allows you to eliminate a species if you want. You could eliminate mosquitos Editors Note Scientists are discussing the possibility of doing this with a controversial and speculative technology called gene drive, but that brings up enormous issues in ecology. I think bringing back an extinct species like the mammoth is generally a good thing, I think that the people who dont want Church to do that are usually thinking what does it mean for the Asian elephant population, which is endangered. But its not a zero sum gamewere not giving up on these endangered species. We now have the technology to bring back a species we mostly ate out of existence. Its like a karmic righting of a wrong, and theres been a lot of talk about the sixth extinction, species are going extinct all over the place, but the fact that we can bring one back is a huge moment, I think, in human history and our ability fix the things we were breaking. We have to live with our environment, but we also have to figure out ways to make it better, and if bringing back a woolly mammoth to help the environment is something we can do, its something we should do. We have to live with our environment, but we also have to figure out ways to make it better, and if bringing back a woolly mammoth to help the environment is something we can do, its something we should do. Gizmodo Church isnt the only one working to clone a mammoth. Theres also Hwang Woo suks Korean dog cloning lab, Soaam Technologies. Can you talk about how you got involved with them Mezrich This is a wild storythis is the story of a disgraced scientist. He was the one who claimed to clone human cells, but it turns out he had been forcing his students to donate their eggs, and secondly that his clone cells are fraudulent, so hes trying to resurrect his reputation by being the first to clone a mammoth. So, he has supposedly got incredibly preserved frozen mammoths out of the ice in the Arctic in conjunction with some Russians, and is going to use those cells to clone the mammoth.