Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Dragon Age’s first post-release DLC has been announced, and it’s called “Return To Ostagar”. It apparently “allows players to exact their revenge and embark on a quest for the mighty arms and armor of the once great King Cailan when they revisit Ostagar, the site of the Grey Wardens’ darkest hour, to reclaim the honor and learn the secrets of Ferelden’s fallen king.” It’s going to cost 400 Bioware points on PC, which I guess is about $5. Release date is the less-than-specific “this winter”. Full press release below.
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Danger! Danger! This contains a few minor, character-specific spoilers – but nothing to do with DA’s main plot.

My first few hours with Bioware’s latest had more worried I wasn’t going to be entertained. Sure, I was having fun, but my party, the people I was travelling with, were pretty dry. Facetious holy warrior Alistair had a nice line in comic deflections, but arch sorceress Morrigan seemed a textbook line in sneery, sultry know-it-alls (though I’m sure there are many stings to be found in her self-confident tale) and, while the dog was sort of cute, it wasn’t exactly chatty. As for wide-eyed, pseudo-French bard Leilana – well, my cat could read those lines better than her. Sigh. Could I really make it through a couple of dozen hours with these ciphers, these stereotypes, these appalling cod-Euro accents? (Though, seriously, I like Alistair a lot). Then I met Shale, the golem – almost immediately the game’s bright, dazzling star.
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Perhaps you’re one of those people who isn’t playing Borderlands, or Dragon Age, or frothing at the mouse in anticipation of Modern Warfare 2. Perhaps you want to see something of a popular sequel to a reasonably entertaining science fiction role-playing game. If you are such a person, then you are in luck. Three such videos have turned up, and can be inspected below. They’re swollen with game footage, and developer jabber. I have to admit I entirely ran out of Steam on the original Mass Effect and never got to the end, but perhaps the improvements here, fun-looking characters, and general turn for grimness, will prove entertaining. Having hammered through a chunk of Risen and a portion of Dragon Age, I’m certainly in the mood for some RPG that doesn’t involve potions, wolves, or daggers. (And assuming that Mass Effect 2 is suffering from the same marketing-failure as Dragon Age, I have some high hopes for it.)
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The Dragon Age toolset has been released, which is surely they only sensible way to defeat the DLC demon that walks in our shadow. Purge it with the capacity to “build new, original campaigns, quests, or cut-scenes,” or even “create your own stories with the powerful cinematics editor that offers full control of the camera, voice and lip syncing tools, and a full character creator.” Hmm. It’s 472mb in digi-girth, and even has its own trailer, posted below. Get the toolset here or here, and probably other downloady places too. The important issue, however is whether anyone going to make us an RPS campaign? Eh? Anyone?
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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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