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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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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My review of Dragon Age in PC Gamer is now online. All 60 million words, but short the very pretty boxouts (and thus vital details about the “taint” – snigger). It looks very splendid in the magazine. (Unfortunately an RPS review will be a while coming as our attempts to get review code were not responded to.) It’s a tremendous game, in many senses of the word. Here’s an excerpt that captures one of my favourite details:

“Whether you play as a human, elf or dwarf, a rogue, warrior or mage, a noble or a commoner, Dragon Age requires smart use of your wits and weapons. Combat is a combination of real-time fighting and turn-based handing out of orders. You have control of all in your current party (which has a maximum of four characters), as well as an elaborate Combat Tactics system that enables you to all but program your team’s AI. But there’s also an entire realm to explore, and a central, overwhelming theme of acculturation within its many towns and races. This is about politics, moral philosophy and love. And about killing dragons with swords.”

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.

First of all, I’m very sorry for the headline. Moving on. The Dragon Age trailers, they will not stop. The latest is the reveal of the Dwarven potential party member Oghren, a fighter who can join your gang. As you’ll see in the trailer below, he’s brash, rude, and partial to the odd drink or seven, and at odds with the political state of his home city of Orzammar.

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Bioware’s fantasy epic is trundling towards us like a siege tower made of conversation trees and noisy metal, and we’re starting to get a few glimpses of the characters in detail. One such glimpse, a video show-casing Zevran The Asssassin, possibly Dragon Age’s stabbiest character, sits below the click. I’ve also posted a small gallery of the latest screenshots, which you can click upon for embiggenment.
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After our last rather cynical few comment thread chats about Dragon Age, a source from within EA (who will have to remain anonymous) got in touch to say that the cynics were wrong, and that the game really is the modern equivalent of the famed Baldur’s Gate games. It is, our source insists, one of the great RPGs. Do we believe them? I mean, it’s all within towing their company line, isn’t it? Well, despite some scepticism induced by terrible marketing, I do hold out that this is going to be a thoroughly enjoyable RPG. Bioware aren’t exactly short on talent, and this game has been years in the tweaking. That said, I’m kind of looking forward to both Alpha Protocol and Mass Effect 2 more, because they’re both looking bold and non-fantasy. But then again, the collector’s retail edition of Dragon Age comes with a cloth map (see below). And that kind of changes things… Terrible map-lust.

Anyway, GamesCom trailer below. It’s good. And Darkspawny.
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There were surprisingly few disappointments at E3 this year. Most trips behind a closed door revealed something new and exciting, or reinforced enthusiasm for an ongoing project. EA’s demonstration of Dragon Age sadly did not. If the content shown was indicative, it seems reasonable to worry about with the forthcoming old-school fantasy RPG. I’m just hoping it was not.

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What interesting timing. A few weeks ago I talked to Dragon Age’s designer Mike Laidlaw at a press event. It has just gone up on Eurogamer. Of course, this ties in to the uproar around the recent violence trailer. I found myself eye-brow raising a little in the PR-line which Bioware seem to be following with this too, but when pressed Mike defended the mature direction as more than just trailers…

“I’m not sure the level of maturity is the difference – but the depth, the experience itself. Does it all hang together on a single theme? Because I think our greatest failing could be it’s just a standard oh-look-a-unicorn fantasy… also, this guy’s head just popped off. For it to feel tacked on, and not part of the experience.”

More here. Of course, there’s also the sarcastic response inspired by Psychopomp’s comment thread post…
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A spot of interesting news regarding Dragon Age: Origins. Bioware and EA have announced that the game will be coming out without Securom DRM, or any other form, beyond an old-fashioned disc check before loading. This means the old-skool fantasy RPG won’t require any online authentication at all, and thus will have no install limits. Another sign of EA’s changing mind about game protection.

Blues News reports the story, picked up via the official Dragon Age forums, where Community Coordinator (come on community, follow me in groups of four) Chris Priestly describes the announcement as “good news.”

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