What was looking to be a year packed full of epic RPGs has become a little more spacious thanks to The Witcher 3's delay. Fret not, though, fans of magic, monsters and mead, for Dragon Age: Inquisition is still on course to land in the back half of 2014. Bioware have now confirmed the game's release date, announcing their October 7th target alongside a new trailer for the RPG sequel.
The Dragon Age series has evolved in a tumultuous fashion since Origins. The switch from the world-threatening crisis of the first game to the personal stories of Dragon Age 2 proved too great a shift for some fans. Inquisition will again take the series to a grander stage. An open world with dynamic keep battles will bolster the central story, which sees inquisition—led by you—recruiting aid aid to postpone an imminent apocalypse.
How else will Inquisition differ from its predecessors? What have Bioware learned from fans of the series? How will they correct the awkward savegame bugs that could bring characters back to life, and how have they chosen your companions for the new adventure? Chris spoke to executive producer, Mark Darrah, to find out.
Perhaps it's just a side effect from the afterglow to watching this week's Game Of Thrones, but I can't seem to stop staring at the recently revealed box art for Dragon Age: Inquisition.
The Dragon Age series has never romanticised its Elven population. Rather than the proud, immortal, luscious locked demi-gods of Tolkienesque fantasy, the pointy-eared citizens of Thedas are downtrodden, impoverished and - as seen in these new Dragon Age: Inquisition screenshots, published by All Games Beta - occasionally as bald as a coot. Even follically challenged, they can be capable of chucking a few fireballs. Well, it is still a fantasy game.
BioWare announced on Wednesday that it will add player housing to Star Wars: The Old Republic in a new expansion, Galactic Strongholds. Like the rest of The Old Republic, Galactic Strongholds will be free-to-play when it’s released this summer.
If you've still got some levelling to do in The Old Republic, this would be the weekend to jump back in. Starting in a few hours, the game will award twice the experience for completing missions, killing things, and... well, generally doing stuff. And, by progressing at twice the speed, you'll get a quicker route to the game's best bits. It'll be like watching the entire film saga, but then skipping Episodes One to Three. I think that's what you're meant to do in the first place.
Dragon Age: Inquisition producer Cameron Lee has dropped a new trailer and a couple of new screenshots on the Bioware blog showing off the wild lands we'll get to explore in Bioware's next big RPG, and very pretty they are too.
"Each area in the video has its own realistic ecosystem with predators, prey, factions, and opportunities to expand your Inquisition," Lee writes. "The world’s population is based on an emergent system that adjusts what you’ll encounter based on how your actions tip the balance in the area. You’ll see towns attacked by bandits, deer fleeing from wolves, giant’s feeding on bears, and countless other scenarios." Click through to see the new video and pics.
Star Wars: The Old Republic's latest expansion, the space combat mode Galactic Starfighter, has joined the MMO's free-to-play content. The dogfighting game-within-a-game had until today been playable for subscribers and "preferred status players" only, but now throws open its cockpit doors to anyone ready and willing.
Dragon Age: Inquisition producer Cameron Lee has made a suspiciously uncommitted statement about a multiplayer mode for the game: "The Mass Effect multiplayer stuff is really good, so we've certainly looked at options like that, but we haven't decided on anything in terms of multiplayer at this point," Cameron tells OXM at a preview event. The statement is the latest in what is now a years-long tease about a multiplayer mode, which would be quite the novelty for a fantasy role-playing game of this type.
How do you follow an act like the galaxy's most high-stakes game of three-card monte? Apparently by completely starting over. BioWare has long insisted that Mass Effect 3 marked the definitive end of Commander Shepard's story arc, regardless of whether you picked the green pill, the red pill, or the blue pill. The good news, of course, is that it's created a universe that leaves plenty of room for other stars.
The big question is who that star will be. BioWare has only dropped a few hints that yield some clues as to what kind of ride we're in for during the next installment, and thus we'd like to put forward a few of our own ideas about how the next chapter in the Mass Effect saga should unfold. (Also, there are spoilers ahead, particularly if you somehow missed the furor over the ending of Mass Effect 3 last year. For convenience, the upcoming game is called "Mass Effect 4," even though BioWare has stated that this won't be the title.)
While some of us are anxiously awaiting the holiday break so we can catch up on sleep (nope), see family (nah), and play through a disgusting amount of video games (bingo), the dedicated team at BioWare will also use that time to continue working on Dragon Age: Inquisition, playing through its latest build. Executive Producer of the Dragon Age franchise Mark Darrah explains on the company's blog that BioWare has always used the break to allow its teams to play through what they term the "Holiday Build." Basically, as complete of a build of the game as possible.
Every day is space day when you're riding the PC gaming news shuttle, but today perhaps more than most. Between X Rebirth's launch, EVE's new trailer, and now this, a video preview of next month's Galactic Starfighter expansion for Star War: The Old Republic, it's a great day for people who love the inhospitable and unyielding void of eternal darkness. Or, for the less introspective among us, bright lasers and things that go "pew, pew".
Quickly, pile on into this post, where the armies of darkness can't see you. We're sheltering thirty minutes of leaked Dragon Age: Inquisition footage, smuggled out from the Finnish Digiexpo 2013. Watch it quickly, before EA's ever-watchful legal dragons swoop down and burn it to a crisp. In it, you'll see combat, dialogue, and a brief glimpse of the less litigious lizards.
As a jerk, I'm tempted to shout "HEY EVERYBODY, LOOK AT THIS IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUT THE NEXT MASS EFFECT." If you want that, though, you're going to need to leave this website, get into a time machine, and travel a year or so into the future. What we have here is good ol', entirely inconsequential teasers. A series of pictures were tweeted over November 7th (or "N7 Day" as BioWare so desperately want people to rechristen it), showing Mass Effect developers working on a Mass Effect game. If you really, really squint, you might even see a tiny bit of some new Mass Effect.
According to an email sent to Star Wars: The Old Republic players, BioWare will soon begin a “Character Name Renewal” program, targeting inactive players. Free-to-play characters who have not logged in to the game for long periods of time will have their names released into the general pool for anyone to use.
Star Wars: The Old Repuclic's free Galactic Starfighter expansion is bringing PvP space dogfighting to the sci-fi MMO on either December, January or February, depending on how much BioWare love you. Fans hoping for a PvE variant will have longer to wait. That's "longer" as in, between a very, very long time away, and the full heat death of the universe.
Were you hoping for Commander Shepard to make a triumphant reappearance in the next Mass Effect, after that thing happened at the end of ME3 that a lot of people got quite upset about? (I seem to recall that he/she turned the island off and on again, and then it turned out everyone was dead all along.) Well consider your hopes dashed: Mass Effect 3 lead writer Mac Walters has explained to Complex that BioWare want to move the series on. "The idea is that we have agreed to tell a story that doesn't relate necessarily to any of the Shepard events at all, whatsoever".
The second expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic has a name and a date. Galactic Starfighter, a free expansion will introduce rail-free space combat to the game for the first time, in the form of 12v12 PvP dogfights. How soon you'll be able to join in depends on your Subscriber/Preferred status in the game.
Here's a new trailer for Baldur's Gate 2, 2000's hottest RPG. Just pretend the last thirteen years never happened, and check out those tasty particle effects. After a successful roll against some unfortunate legal issues, Beamdog's Enhanced re-release of the BioWare classic is now preparing for launch. You'll be able to regather your party before venturing forth from November 15th.
Space, by its nature, is pretty big. Not that you'd realise from The Old Republic, which has up until now struggled to make the best of the giant void that exists around its many planets. At a recent community event in Seattle, Bioware teased a long-rumoured update, and from the hints they gave, suggested that more robust space-based combat is on the way.
