Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Almost forgot there was another Bioware game in the offing (two, in fact – Mass Effect 2 also looms) amidst all this cheery chatter about Dragon Age. The Old Republic remains The New Hope of both Star Wars games and mainstream MMOs, and while we’re all lacking a clear picture of quite how it’s going to play, Bioware are at least providing a steady drip-feed of new info. This time, some of their thinking behind the Jedi class, and the revelation of what another class will be – boo-hiss-baddies, these ones…

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Dragon Age playing masses, the 1.01 patch is out, and it’s likely essential. Those who’ve seen my PC Gamer review, and indeed very many others saying the same, will have noticed complaints that the Easy difficulty level at certain points isn’t altogether that easy. And I’ll wager many playing on Normal aren’t exactly finding it a breeze. The patch notes explain that they’ve, “made Easy difficulty easier”, and crucially, “slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty.” I’ve yet to check what difference it actually makes, but hopefully this will address my one major complaint with the game. Steam has already auto-patched, so restart if you’re playing it over there. (And while I’m here, here’s Eurogamer’s review of the 360 version – it seems the PC won this one rather well.)

Over the weekend the Dragon Age pre-loading has started, meaning if you pre-order it – er – it’ll start downloading. Early. And similar. Anyway, to celebrate this momentous event, Direct2Drive have given us five copies of the Digital Deluxe Edition to give away to you. Our fine readers. So it’s compo time! To secure your copy of this much anticipated game, you have to use the recently released character creator to make the most interesting looking character you can. What does “interesting” mean? Well, you read the site. That’s your job to work out. Reverse analyse our evil noggins. Anyway – when you’ve done that, send a link to a grab of your creation, perhaps with a little in-mail elaboration of why you think it’s so splendid. Don’t actually mail us the screengrab. Mail us a link to the photo. I repeat, mail us a link to the grab of your character. We can’t have our compo inbox bunged up with enormous jpg files, you understand. Anyway – get the creator from here and get cracking. The compo will close at 6pm EST GMT on Thursday 5th, so those who don’t win still have time to actually pre-order the thing. The usual compo rules apply.

EDIT: If you have trouble grabbing, try FRAPS.

We mentioned the recently revealed existence of EA 2D project Dragon Age Journeys a couple of days ago, and it seems it’s with us sooner than we expected. Today, in fact. The first episode of the Flash-based 2D action RPG, The Deep Roads, will be released on the game’s site at 8pm BST (12pm PST) this very day. It acts as a prequel to the game, set in the Dwarven city of Orzammar, and going into the mining passages known as the Deep Roads. Screenshots reveal that it’s definitely deeper than a simple hack-n-slash, featuring much of the main game’s screen furniture, multiple party members, an inventory and character items. We’ll find out more later today, it seems.

BioWare, in the build up to Dragon Age: Origins, have revealed details of Dragon Age Journeys: The Deep Roads. It’s a Flash game, created in collaboration with BioWare by a new division of EA called EA 2D, designed to play as a prequel to the main game. Cor – let’s unpack all of that.

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You can now download the Dragon Age character creator, letting you find out the range of races and looks available for your potential avatar. You can get it in English directly from clicking here, or if you’re after another language head to the official Dragon Age site, in the column on the right. There’s also a new and rather excellent CGI trailer, which you can see below.

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The time when I get really envious of game developers is usually when they get down to the full sweep of world building. In this latest video Bioware talk about the making of the city-planet of Coruscant in The Old Republic, and explain how they’ve had to build a planet entirely without terrain – a purely urban setting, miles deep – while also getting across a spectrum of political power and corruption via the gradation of environments through layers of the capital of the Republic. Ooh, there’s also some boasting! This is an unprecedented city environment, they claim, with the kind of infrastructure that would be required for a sort of endless Manhattan, which dwarfs any city environments in other games. From the shiny surface mega-structures of the senate and the spaceport, down to the endless dereliction of the lower levels. It’s a kind of architectural encyclopedia of Star Warsian styles all on its own. And what is going on with Robert Chestney’s t-shirt? Ah, the many mysteries of Star Wars…
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Dragon Age designers talk architecture, history, archaeology in the latest Dragon Age trailer. There’s a lot of discussion of level design, world design, and the way that the game was prototyped in the Neverwinter Nights engine. That makes for an interesting “compare and contrast” for tech and design between the two games. This is the kind of trailer we were expecting, I think? That said, it’s an odd choice of trailer title with “Making A Living World,” because it’s definitely not making a living world in the sense we understand it as gamers. I’ve also posted a bunch of the new (and old) images EA released earlier today, and you can click for big versions.
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And the internet has flattened the SWTOR site. Theoretically you can sign up here, with the beta stuff here. But the site is now unavailable. Basically you sign up to the SWTOR site and then opt in for testing in your profile blather. No date for commencement has been decided upon, and places for the test are described by LucasArts as “limited” so getting in might be a long shot. Probably worth having a go if you’re interested, of course.

Dark tidings from Camp Bioware, in this seemingly rather ill-judged trailer for the new Mass Effect 2 character Subject Zero. Bitch. Shoots for Strong Vengeful Joss Whedon Villain-Type, but comes off like an insipid, low-rent exploitation movie. Bitch. Hopefully this is simply an unfortunate marketing misfire, as with those very silly Marilyn Manson/low-budget porno trailers for Dragon Age, and not representative of the tone of the game itself. Bitch. But I must say, they’re going to have to fight to win back my anticipation for the game at this stage. Bitch.

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