Battlefield 4 will feature five-man squads over the series' staple four-man grouping.

"They've been asking for bigger squads," DICE producer Aleksander Grondal told Joystiq at E3, referring to the Battlefield community's insistance on larger squad counts. "We believe five is a good figure. It allows for more team-based gameplay, basically. You have more options and you can spawn in more places."

In previous Battlefield games, DICE made a purposeful design decision to limit the number of players per squad. "It was a design choice back then – forgive me, I don't exactly remember why it was chosen four. You know, it feels like light years ago from previous games," Grondal joked, rubbing the tired from E3's first day out of his eyes. "But five is a little better; it gives a bit more flexibility and more interesting choices."

Battlefield 4 launches on October 29 for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

Saints Row 4 is being shown at E3 and if there's anything those rascally Saints know how to do it's self promotion. These two thespians of marketing pictured were seen on the show floor promoting Saints Flow, the energy drink available at your local Steelport convenience store and Planet Saints.

Ubisoft had a few surprises in store during its 2013 E3 press briefing, teasing a bold new direction for its Rabbids series and introducing the post-pandemic online RPG, Tom Clancy's The Division, among other notable announcements.

Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell kicked off the conference with a guitar-shredding demonstration of Rocksmith 2014's Session Mode, in which budding guitarists can customize backing music tracks in real-time using voice commands. A trailer for the online PC RPG The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot followed; afterward, Ubisoft revealed that it is accepting signups for a closed beta.

Ubisoft assured that Obsidian Entertainment's RPG South Park: The Stick of Truth is alive and well, narrowing down its release date to Holiday 2013. Ubisoft previously acquired the project from THQ following the troubled publisher's dissolution late last year. Ubisoft Reflections and Ivory Tower's The Crew was up next, showcasing its unique brand of destructive multiplayer racing across a persistent online world. A release is planned next year for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC platforms.

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The Walking Dead's next episode, 400 Days, stars five different characters in five separate stories of survival during the zombie apocalypse, all tied together by a geographical locale: A truck stop. These newcomers offer a fresh perspective on the events in season one of The Walking Dead, but overall, Telltale's tone hasn't changed much.

"Aw, fuck."

Those are the first words that Vince, one of the five characters highlighted in 400 Days, says. He spits the phrase into a dark alley as he searches for a spot to stash his gun, police sirens blaring from down the street. The player gets to decide where Vince throws the pistol – the garbage, his pants, the roof – but it doesn't appear to affect where he ends up: chained to the floor of a prison bus, with a heartbroken statutory rapist in front of him and a white-collar, former millionaire behind, all latched on the same line.

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Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is being planned for PC, producer Brian Lindley told Joystiq at E3. The third-person action game was announced for Xbox One and Xbox 360 at EA's E3 press conference yesterday. Lindley said the game will launch in spring 2014, and that "at the moment we're not announcing any platforms." You know, outside of PC.

Garden Warfare was announced with a demo of its four-player cooperative multiplayer action. Lindley confirmed that the game will include competitive multiplayer modes in which players can control zombie characters instead of plants.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut will launch on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC/Mac later this year, Square Enix announced in a press release. The version was initially announced for Wii U in March, and Eidos Montreal said the Director's Cut improvements were not planned for other platforms as of April.

The touchscreen features seen in the Director's Cut version developed for the Wii U version will translate to Microsoft's SmartGlass app and the PlayStation Vita.

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The new episode for Telltale's The Walking Dead, 400 Days, is set to launch in July for $5 on PC, Mac, XBLA, PSN and iOS. It'll hit Vita one month later, in August. That version will be bundled with the entire first season, for the first time ever on Vita.

That bundle is a good deal for fans of continuity – the decisions players made in the first season of The Walking Dead will show up in 400 Days, and the choices in 400 Days will impact season two, Telltale marketing man Richard Iggo said at E3. Players can start 400 Days without having played any of season one, but Iggo warned against it for those who want the full effect.

The DLC features five new characters in five separate stories, with a truck stop as their connective tissue. The truck stop is near events in season one of The Walking Dead, making it easy, geographically at least, to include previous player choices in 400 Days and beyond.

"Who knows, some of the characters that you meet might end up in season two," Iggo teased.

After some confusion, we've clarified Kevin Conroy doesn't feature in Batman: Arkham Origins at all. Origins Senior Producer Ben Mattes told Joystiq, "We've got Roger Craig Smith, he's our Batman. Troy Baker, he's our Joker. Kevin Conroy, he's not part of this game."

Initial reports indicated long-time Batman voice actor Conroy wasn't in Origins. He then announced at the recent Dallas Comic Con that he'd been working on "the next Arkham" game. Shortly after, Craig Smith was officially unveiled as Origins' younger Batman, leading to speculation Conroy might be involved in some kind of retrospective role.

However, it now emerges Conroy was apparently talking about another Arkham game in development, perhaps at series dev Rocksteady Studios - Warner Bros. Montreal is the studio behind Origins.

That would seem to be backed up by Spong's report from last month, which noted a Twitter account ascribed to Conroy tweeted "Confusion in Dallas! I am in new ARKHAM GAME coming soon, NOT ARKHAM ORIGINS coming this fall." The tweet was deleted shortly after being posted - we're not sure if the world's greatest detective is needed for this one.

Following a demonstration of Titanfall at E3, EA's Craig Owens confirmed that the game will have dedicated servers on all platforms – PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

"We're using Microsoft's cloud compute initiative to run all our servers for it, so it's all running on dedicated servers," Owens said. "We'll spin up and spin down servers as necessary, and it'll do all the AI hosting and physics calculations and all matchmaking and all of that good stuff. It's all dedicated servers, all the time." Owens also confirmed the PC version would feature dedicated servers.

It's an insane week for gaming, so take a break, take a breath, and play the Lune free alpha in your browser. Lune is an exploration adventure game about controlling the moon, altering the tides and gravity, and providing light to guide your character safely across an island.

Lune comes from a group of students entering the French development competition Hits Playtime, and they welcome player feedback. This free alpha is the first step of a larger project coming this fall, designer Sergey Mohov says.

Go ahead and give Lune a try – because being the moon is probably less stressful than anything else you'll do this week.

Magic 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers, the next installment in the Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers series, is set to launch on Steam June 26, according to the game's product page.

Magic 2014 is priced at $10, which falls in line with every other entry in the series. A special edition, which includes the game, soundtrack, five desktop wallpapers, a "Return to Ravnica" eBook and ten foil conversions, is also listed on the Steam page. Magic 2014: Duels of the Planeswalkers will launch on PC, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iOS and Android this summer – this marks the first time the series will be available on Android.

[Thanks, Mitch]

Standing watch over EA's E3 press conference at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was a massive mech from Titanfall. It was kind of cool until we realized its eye was moving, at which point it became terrifying. See it for yourself after the break.

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Ubisoft revealed a pair of new Trials games during its E3 conference. First is Trials Fusion, a new game in the motocross racing/crashing series for Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360 and PC. Meanwhile, Trials Frontier is for mobile devices. Each version will interact with one another in some way.

Both games are due in 2014.

Update: Ubisoft has provided a few more details. Fusion will be "tet in a shining vision of what our future could be, where technology and nature co-exist." It also promises "social and visual breakthroughs." Frontier, meanwhile, sounds like the Trials formula adapted for touchscreen platforms, though Ubisoft does call it a "a unique social racing game."

The Crew was present and correct at Ubisoft's E3 conference today. As expected, it's an open-world racer from Ubisoft Reflections and Ivory Tower, and it's coming early next year to the PS4, Xbox One, and PC.

Ubisoft says it's using next-gen hardware with The Crew to "change the status quo" of driving games. The Crew will feature an online persistent representation of the US, in which players infiltrate criminal organizations in individual cities. Ubisoft says the online persistent world "blurs the lines" between the game's single-player, multiplayer, and co-op.

Ubisoft showed off a demo featuring four players playing in four different US cities. One player was taking part in an illegal street race, while another was fighting through a 20-second trial, and the third was racing against a ghost. The final player called upon the first three to join him in a co-op mission in Miami, demonstrating how The Crew doesn't need a lobby for online multiplayer. The game will also have a companion 'second screen' app on iOS and Android.

Update: We've added the announcement trailer (above) and gameplay demo (below the break). A press release notes the game is also coming to PC, and we've updated the post as such.

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Update: We're rolling! Click here to get into the liveblog.

Ubisoft's E3 2013 media briefing kicks off in the Los Angeles Theater at 6:00PM EDT (3PM Pacific, 11PM UK). Hosting duties will once again be commandeered by the frequently animated Aisha Tyler, who will share a stage with the games we expect – such as Rayman Legends, Assassin's Creed 4, Watch Dogs – and perhaps a few surprises.

Once the liveblog activates, you'll be plunged deep into the third of four press conferences for the day. Now that's the definition of insanity.

During Ubisoft's E3 keynote, it was revealed that South Park: The Stick of Truth's launch has been narrowed down to Holiday 2013. The turn-based RPG, which Ubisoft recently acquired from defunct publisher THQ, is currently in development at Obsidian Entertainment.

Ubisoft announced that its free-to-play PC action-RPG The Mighty Quest of Epic Loot has entered closed beta ahead of a public release later this year.

More information and signups are available at themightyquest.com, which currently seems to be under a bit of strain due to an influx of visitors. You might want to try that link later.

Ubisoft has just announced Rocksmith 2014 during its pre-E3 press conference in Los Angeles, a follow-up to 2011's rhythm game/educational suite Rocksmith. The game was introduced by Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell, who demonstrated the game's Session Mode, wherein he used voice commands to alter the song's tempo as he played along. The game is expected in October.