I still have not played the 1st one, is it something I should pick up and play in order to understand this second one??

I never heard of it before and they did a crap job of explaining what the game was since the video was just some shooting which reminded me of COD and streamers making generic comments. I am still confused on what the game is since they didn't explain it at all just said to try the beta lol

And not to get off on a tangent but, I honestly felt compared to Xbox Direct, the producers on stage for Ubisoft Forever had no real enthusiasm nor did the audience which turned out to be mostly Ubisoft game developers. Really lackluster of a show