Rock, Paper, Shotgun

It’s a moderately amusing trailer for World Adventures, by way of parodying vampire movie, New Moon (see below). Teenage girls should consider themselves mocked.
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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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Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight will be released on March 16th, which means it might just nip into our gaming consciousness before Starcraft II’s “Spring” release. The fourth game in the series is probably going to have its work cut out to face down the Blizzardian behemoth, and with all the rumours of layoffs at EA, you have to wonder about the developmental fate of this beast. The first proper game trailer explaining in-game action has just surfaced, and I’ve posted it below. It’s looking rather vehicular, with a particular emphasis on stompy romping of robots. The trailer also points a beady-eye at the RPG elements which grace C&C4 for the first time. Like Dawn of War II, it’s taking that levelling-up thing quite seriously.
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The World Adventures expansion pack for The Sims 3 is released on November 17th, and it’s looking like a fairly ambitious idea: holidays for your Sims, complete with multiple locations, places to explore (Egypt, China, and France), and things to bring home such as an… ancient Egyptian mummy? It’s going to be interesting to see where EA go with these expansion packs from here, frankly, because the new game is ripe for expansion both inwards and outwards. I’d quite like to see the career side of things developed, as some of the stuff your characters do at work (which is largely hidden from view) sounds a good deal more interesting than what they get up to in the rest of the game. Trailer ‘neathward.
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Apparently this new piece of footage from Battlefield Bad Company 2’s multiplayer is a map that will feature in the beta. It’s confirmed as a pre-order beta at the moment, so I’ve no idea if we’ll be able to get our hands on this for general play with an open beta for PC in December. It’s looking remarkably solid, with the environmental destruction stuff right at the forefront of the game. It makes me wonder whether certain maps will have logical destruction patterns in them once you’ve been playing for a while, like you always destroy a specific wall or fence in the first 30 seconds of the game because it opens a route, or removes sniper cover. You’ll find yourself performing the same makeshift demolition tasks over and over again, like some kind of builder’s nightmare.
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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 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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Or even BANGBANGBANG! Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has many best things, as you’ll see in this trailer of the multiplayer aspect of the game, below. We’ve heard only good things about the game so far, better things, indeed, than the previous game. It’s good to see some of that confirmed in a riot of game footage. Destructible scenery, vehicles, beautiful animation and particle effects… all splendid in the virtual violencing. I’ll stop prattling, I’m almost delirious with exhaustion. Go watch.
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Twelve years of Ultima Online (twelve years!) are being celebrated by EA by allowing old players to return and play for free until the 16th of October. You can download the client for your glorious return here, which is also where newbies can access the 14-day trial. The most recent expansion for Ultima came out back in August, with a load of new content including a playable Elven race.

Read about Alec’s adventures in the aged MMO just here, and tell us if you’re going to return to Ultima in the comments below.