Former Dragon Age lead writer and Summerfall Games co-founder David Gaider has strung together some opinions on Xitter - the original spawning ground for all opinions - about the full reveal video for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, expressing broad enthusiasm for the new RPG’s narrative tone, combat system and environments, while offering a more ambivalent analysis of BioWare's decision to let players seduce every last member of their party.
]]>It’s been a decade - 10 years! - since Dragon Age: Inquisition. It’s fair to assume that you might’ve forgotten what happened during the last Dragon Age game, or some of the specific choices you made back in the misty ages of 2014. Whether you remember or not, this year’s long-awaited sequel Dragon Age: The Veilguard should have you covered, with the ability to carry over your story choices from the previous game and get a refresher on what happened last time around.
]]>I've clocked up nearly 400 hours playing BioWare's big fantasy RPG Dragon Age: Inquisition, which is not a stat I'm particularly proud of. I'm not ashamed either, partly because, as has been identified by artist Corey Brickley, via the Maw, there's a lot of filler. Brickley has collated a list of suggested mods to slim down Dragon Age: Inquisition from a potentially 80 hours-long epic to a trim 40 hour story-focused romp, which means you might be able to play through it again in time for the launch of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf - which is a direct sequel to Inquisition.
I find this list of mods interesting! It's a way to change the game quite substantially without exactly transforming it, and it's very in-keeping with my campaign to make games 60% smaller. Still, there's at least one item on there I'd push back on, but also this isn't really a new problem for Dragon Age as a series.
]]>The first week of January is always one of my favourite times of the year. It's a time for making plans, setting goals, thinking about all the cool new games I'll be playing over the next 12 months (while also looking nervously at the pile of games I missed over the last 12 months and placing them very, very gingerly on the teetering and totteringly tall pile of my backlog). And, of course, making some new year's resolutions. Traditionally, I don't often set myself too many resolutions - I always give myself a reading goal (35 books is what I'm aiming for this year), for example, but the rest I usually play pretty fast and loose with - more 'nice to haves' rather than 'musts', I'd say.
This year, though, I do have a few gaming-related resolutions on my list, and in discussing them with the rest of the RPS Treehouse, it turns out we all have some games-themed goals this year. So I thought it would be fun to share them with you all below. And if you've also made some gaming resolutions for 2024, tell us about them in the comments. We can hold ourselves accountable together, like that big curtain of eldritch eyeballs up there in the header from good game Norco.
]]>“It’s incredibly weird for anybody who knows me that I’ve become the romance guy,” David Gaider tells me. “I’m the least romantic guy. Especially when I get to the characters saying ‘I love you’ to each other…” Gaider mimes the sickliness of the scene and his own horrified response. “Apparently I did it so well on Baldur’s Gate II that James Ohlen kept handing me this stuff. And, god, I hated it so much.”
It’s weird, in fact, that Gaider wound up working on Baldur’s Gate II at all - let alone that he became synonymous with Dragon Age and romanceable companions afterwards. At 27 years old, he ran a hotel in Edmonton, Alberta - the same city where, unbeknownst to him, Bioware was busy making its name. Once it came time to make a sequel to Baldur’s Gate, Bioware cast around for local writers, and a friend recommended Gaider, who had played D&D in the ‘80s before it fell out of fashion.
]]>We’ve finally got a proper look at the upcoming fantasy animated series Dragon Age: Absolution, heading to Netflix on December 9th, thanks to a new trailer. The series is made up of six half-hour episodes following Miriam, an elven mercenary, and it’s set in Tevinter. That’s where the next Dragon Age game, Dreadwolf, will take place, too. Have a watch of the trailer below.
]]>Videogame publishers look at animated series like I look at air fryers: everyone else seems to have one, so I want one too. I assume that's why BioWare are working with Netflix to produce Dragon Age: Absolution, a new animated series coming this December.
]]>Have you ever wanted to dress up two of the most treacherous Dragon Age: Inquisition companions as Christmas dorks? Well, now you can! A modder has made Christmas-themed outfits for Blackwall and Solas, turning them into Santa Claus and his little elven helper. That's right, you can now dress up a literal God and potential big bad of the future Dragon Age games as a merry red and green-clad lad. It's what he deserves.
]]>Easter has come and gone now, and here in the RPS treehouse we lounge with bellies full of chocolate chatting about our favourite little surprises in games. Alice O has already asked you, dear reader, what's your favourite video game Easter egg? It appears some game developers have been pondering a similar question on Twitter, and revealing the best Easter eggs they've hidden in their games - from hiding games within games, to live coding an RPG to rewriting an RPG's script live to mess with streamers.
]]>What did you do to celebrate Dragon Age day on Friday? I watched a voice actor get brutally shut down by Dragon Age fans, after he posted the cringiest video I have ever watched in my life. Greg Ellis, the voice of Cullen in Dragon Age: Inquisition, decided that it would be a good idea to post a 40 minute video, in-character as Cullen, complaining about him and his voice actor being victimised by cancel culture. It is awful. It is hilarious. It might well be the best thing to happen to Dragon Age since Dragon Age 2.
]]>Whether you like wizards, sword-and-board warriors, the irradiated wasteland, vampires, or isometric text-heavy stories, the RPG is the genre that will never let you down. Accross the dizzing number of games available where you can play a role, there's something for everyone - and we've tried to reflect that in our list of the best RPGs on PC. The past couple of years have been great for RPGs, so there are some absolute classics as well as brand spanking new games on this list. And there's more to look forwards to, with rumblings of Dragon Age: Dread Wolf finally on the horizon, and space epic Starfield in our rear view mirror. Whatever else may happen, though, this list will provide you with the 50 best RPGs that you can download and play on PC right now.
]]>Electronic Arts left Steam nine years ago to do their own thing with Origin, but over the last few months their games have been returning. Now, their subscription service, EA Play, is on Valve's platform, too, allowing you to play games like the Dragon Age series, Battlefield V, and more on Steam for a monthly or yearly fee. It's not just the old stuff EA are letting Steam have though, because you'll be able to access some of the publisher's new releases through the service as well.
]]>Down it, down it, dowwwn it, yeeaahhh! Nice one, you skulled that pint of fizzy water and lemon like an absolute legend, mate, well done. I always knew you were a top enjoyer of a wild night on the tiles, on the rip, on the slosh, on the tear, on the floor, on the bathroom floor, no listen you’re on the bathroom floor mate, for real, get up. I think that San Pelegrino went straight to your head. Maybe just go home, lie down, and play some RPGs. You can always simulate the reckless abandon of a big night in one of these, the 9 best nights out in PC games.
]]>With very rare exceptions, EA have long been shy about bringing their games to Steam. But over the last year or so, the two massive firms have slowly shown signs of making amends. It started with last year's Jedi: Fallen Order, and this week saw the fruits of that partnership properly come to pass as a ton of EA games, old and new, made their way over to the house of Valve - alongside some hefty discounts and hints at a Steam debut for subscription service EA Access.
]]>It's been a tough weekend for a lot of people. And there's a tough season coming up, too. Despite Saint Nick's PRs working over time to make us all cheerful, Christmas can actually be a sad and stressful time, can't it?
Listen: it’s ok to be sad. It's fine. You feel what you feel. So, I asked the RPS hivemind what their gaming happy places were, so we could all share them together. They might turn out to be places you'd like to visit too.
]]>Electronic Arts are returning to Steam after a long hiatus. The first game to come over to the dark side is, appropriately enough, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on November 15. It'll be followed by the EA big guns of FIFA 20, Battlefield V, and more next year. And they're bringing their subscription service, EA Origin Access, which is a real surprise.
]]>Horses, that’s this week’s topic. Big galloping buddies full of teeth and flies. Brush ‘em, ride ‘em, put ‘em in your videogame. The RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, will appreciate it because this episode the pod squad are talking about their favourite saddlepals from the fantastical realms of this bewildering industry. Horses. They’re like big cats.
]]>Reports coming out of BioWare continue to sound grim, although notably not unusual among larger games studios. After their breakdown of Anthem's troubled development last week, Kotaku continued to dig into what the status of Dragon Age 4 is. We've known for a while that development of the game (under the codename 'Joplin') had ended in 2017, and the game as it stands now is still early in development. Thanks to today's Kotaku report, we have a rough idea of what Joplin was: A game of mystical spy heists set in the wizard-ruled Tevinter Imperium. Oh, what could have been...
]]>From darkspawn to archdemons, Dragon Age is renowned for its epic battle against undead beasties seeking to wreak havoc in Thedas. However, my favourite mission in the entire series isn’t a magnificent fight, nor has it anything to do with high tales of monsters and men. My favourite mission is a fancy party in Dragon Age Inquisition.
]]>We all knew this was coming. Dragon Age: Inquisition came out in 2014, and they finally teased the new one, which means I am officially allowed to go back to this RPG well of mine.
]]>With BioWare starting to mutter about Dragon Age again (and rumours saying they'll announce DA4 this week), here's one person who won't be involved: long-running designer and director Mike Laidlaw, as he's joined Ubisoft Quebec. Laidlaw [not to be confused with Half-Life writer Marc Laidlaw -ed.] left BioWare in 2017 after 14 years, where he'd been a lead writer on Jade Empire, a lead designer on the first two Dragon Age games, and the creative director of Dragon Age: Inquisition. He doesn't reveal what he's creatively directing at Ubisoft Quebec, the studio behind Ass Creed Odyssey, but says it's "truly interesting" and "exciting."
]]>Following the pre-pre announcement of news on something new in Dragon Age, BioWare have pre-announced that they'll open up in December. My fingers are crossed for a new game continuing the adventures of the merry gang in Kirkwall from Dragon Age II, though I suppose events Dragon Age: Inquisition would cut that off. And the mysterious project still could just be a dang comic book or something rather than another RPG.
]]>Ah, the non-player character. Stoic endurer of all our sadistic whims. It’s time the monsters on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, made tribute to these humble little robots, whether they’re annoying companions, side characters, or disembodied human heads. Let’s talk about some of our favourites.
]]>Asexuality is one of the most misunderstood identities under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. Among other issues, it’s extremely rare to see asexual characters in games or wider media, and when they do appear, they often fall into harmful stereotypes. January’s Ace Jam invited developers to go some way to change this by creating games that feature characters on the asexual spectrum, and treat them respectfully.
]]>Varric Tethras, co-star of both Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, was never your usual swords & sorcery dwarf. Clean-shaven, bare-chested, playfully roguish and broadly disinterested in the usual Dwarven concerns of mining and industry.
Beyond his core defining 'sexy dwarf' trait, he also had one other notable quirk: He was an author, and throughout Dragon Age: Inquisition, you could find excerpts from his noir thriller, Hard in Hightown. Originally a running joke, the book is now set to be published for real, 'co-written' by BioWare wordsmith Mary Kirby.
]]>BioWare veteran Mike Laidlaw has parted ways with that RPG rabble after 14 years. He was co-lead writer on Jade Empire, a lead designer on the first two Dragon Ages and the creative director of Inquisition, and did a little design on Mass Effect. Laidlaw announced his departure last night with a tweeted statement. He doesn't explain why he's away but I suppose it's not our business. What's next? Well, for starters, a lot of Twitch and Twitter.
]]>Previously in this column, somehow not taken up by the industry as of yet, I suggested that the word 'quest' was being somewhat damaged of late by the fact that it can be anything from 'Kill the Great Red Dragon' to 'bring me some orange juice.' I advocated a system where instead, tasks were split between two basic categories - what used to justifiably be called 'quests', and the more prosaic 'shit to do'. I realise now though that I missed an important third category, World Quests, named because scattering mostly pointless crap everywhere is much easier than actually filling an open world.
]]>Hannah just wanted to be a farmer. Not a male farmer. Not a female farmer. Just a farmer that didn't have to suffer NPC after NPC lumping them into one gender or the other. Hannah's hopes rose with the release of Stardew Valley, but after jumping into the farming sim they discovered it offered only male and female gender identities, with he/she pronouns to match. As someone who identifies as non-binary, Hannah couldn't help but be disappointed.
"I’ve almost come to expect little to no representation," says Hannah. "Being able to play a character that is different from myself is fun and interesting, but playing one true to myself I find is often more fun. It feels more real if you are in the world rather than just an observer playing a person in that world."
Unwilling to sit idly by, Hannah took it upon themselves to broaden Stardew Valley's gender diversity, modding the game so that NPCs referred to the protagonist with gender-neutral pronouns and replacing the gender symbols in the character creator with ungendered body-type indicators.
The response from other players was overwhelming.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I know you're supposed to say the first one's best, but Mass Effect 2 is definitely my favourite in the series.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Back in the spotlight recently, due to Bioware's latest game, Mass Effect Andromeda, to some extent aping its MMO/Ubimap-like structure. I have mixed feelings about Dragon Age: Inquisition. On the one hand, I thought it had a great cast of companion characters, boasting both charisma and weirdness (say hello to Solas, above). On the other, I never finished the thing, having burned out on frantic random encounter combat, endless pursuit of icons and the ever-spinning loot'n'craft wheel before the storyline could resolve.
]]>If you like a lot of big-budget on your biscuit, join this club. Enormo-publisher EA just announced that its previously console-only Access service is now available on PC, as a bolt-on for its Origin game store. Pay a monthly Origin Access subscription fee of $4.99/€3.99/£3.99 and you'll get all-you-can-eat access to a (currently) small archive of recent EA titles. Perhaps more likely to flog subscriptions is that they include access to 'trials' of new releases five days before the full games go on sale, as well as 10% off Origin purchases. The walls around the garden just got taller.
]]>Well blow me down! BioWare are releasing a DLC-bundling Game of the Year Edition of one of their RPGs! It's been a while since the last - long years of me grumbling about EA's add-on pricing and decision to stop making easy ways to buy the whole thing.
The GotY Edition of Dragon Age: Inquisition [official site] is coming soon too, on October 6th. It'll include the base game along with all its story DLC, its gubbins DLC, and the gubbins from its Deluxe Edition. EA haven't stated a price, but I bet it's cheaper than the - strewth! - £102.46 it currently costs individually.
]]>You've inquired, exsanguinated, and imbibed your way across half of Thedas, but now the adventures in Dragon Age: Inquisition [official site] are drawing to a close. BioWare today released the final DLC for their fantasy RPG, named Trespasser (no, not dinosaurs), and say "Character relationships and big moments are at the forefront of the Inquisitor's final adventure." That makes me imagine it may be like Mass Effect 3's Citadel DLC, which gave the whole gang a big old send off before they went away to die, become cyborgs, and whatnot. The base game's on sale to mark the launch too.
]]>Depending on where you stand on the Darkspawn fence, this could be either good or bad omen for the future trajectory of the Dragon Age series. Dragon Age - Inquisition [official site] is getting what basically looks like a Diablo-style descent into the depths of the Deep Roads - an enormous network of tunnels that originally belonged to the dwarven empire and is now full of bad dudespawn. Named The Descent, the single-player DLC - which, confusingly, ends up looking like a weird single-lane MOBA in the trailer - is launching on August 11th.
]]>As a sprog replaying demos again and again to draw out the stretches between getting new games, I loathed timed demos. I'd happily replay the same two or three levels over and over. As a growed-up, mind, I'd much rather have a one-off timed chunk to explore a game and see what it's really about. It's especially handy for open-world games - difficult or pointless to section up.
It's high time that Dragon Age: Inquisition [official site] got a demo, and I'm glad that it's a timed one. It's on Origin. Six hours of singleplayer isn't bad, and it offers unlimited multiplayer time too.
]]>If you've mastered the multiplayer side of Dragon Age: Inquisition [official site], killing everything and saving everyone a dozen times over, good news: the game's latest update has added a new 'Nightmare' difficulty setting to tackle and new rare weapons to collect.
Conversely, if you've barely scratched Inq's multiplayer and find it a bit overwhelming, good news: the update also added a tutorial, which teams you up with AI characters on a guided experience through your first adventure.
]]>Good news for all of you clambering for inspiration to write your Inquisitor/dragon slash fiction romance. Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw has confirmed the studio have more on the cards for the Dragon Age: Inquisition [official site] narrative.
]]>BioWare, in their deep and powerful wisdom, have decided that we puny mortals like stuff that's free. So starting May 5th, a new multiplayer add-on called Dragonslayer is coming to Dragon Age: Inquisition [official website] at exactly no cost to you.
Dragonslayer gets you three new playable characters: an Avvar warrior called Skywatcher, a rock 'n' roll bard known as Zither the Virtuoso, and series veteran Isabela, the Raider Queen of the Eastern Seas. Also coming is a new location in the form of a Ferelden castle.
]]>Once at primary school I tried to convince my teacher that we needed a new word - or at least that we needed one that might exist already, but that we’d somehow forgotten. This is going to be a piece partly about words, and “fantasy” was one that I was never totally happy with. It lacked, as I saw it, the generic precision of “science-fiction,” and I wanted a more specific description for that strand of fantasy storytelling and world-building that (I did not really know at the time, but would have pretended to if asked) has flowed from Tolkien’s consolidation of elves and dragons, dwarves and orcs. I wanted to be able to pin, with a single word, that mixture of magic and folklore, that particular set of imaginative boundaries with which I was so often engaged and so thoroughly obsessed. The best I could come up with was “fantamystical”, which, if you’ve been paying attention for the last twenty years, did not catch on.
Luckily it’s been a very kind twenty years for this area of fiction, to the point where we hardly need the word fantamystical at all (although I am willing to give it one last push if you guys are). A combination of, among other things, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, and screen retellings of The Lord Of The Rings and A Song Of Ice And Fire have made my adolescent anxieties about the ambiguous categorizations of fiction redundant, leaving me with merely dozens of other anxieties, and us with Tolkien-fenced fantasy imprinted on our culture, and our games (this is being written in the gap between the arrival of Pillars Of Eternity and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with Dragon Age: Inquisition still questing, exploring and adventuring in the background).
]]>Please welcome Richard Cobbett to our roster of weekly columnists. Every Monday at 1pm, Richard will be donning his +8 cap of writing to present a ragbag of news and reflections on role-playing games.
It's been a great year for epic, old-school RPGs. A good tax-year anyway, since that conveniently scopes in everything from Divinity: Original Sin to Wasteland 2 to the other week's Pillars of Eternity, to say nothing of several smaller titles. As we all know, part of the joy of a good RPG is slipping into a world - when everything works out, the long playtime feels like an epic journey rather than a commitment. Or at least it should. In the wake of The Witcher 3 promising 200 hours or so to see everything it's got though, I've been thinking - at what point do the scales start to tip?
]]>Video game forests: yes, more please, thank you. Big trees, dappled sunlight, ferns, moss, lichen, wild flowers, and hidden ponds: ooh twist my arm.
BioWare released the first singleplayer DLC story hunk for Dragon Age: Inquisition [official site] today and while I understand there's something about Inquisitors and dragons in it, the real take-away is that it has a big forest. With ferns, tree houses, mystic groves, ancient ruins, some huge cliffs with waves crashing at the bottom, and something about an old god and ice dragon, 'Jaws of Hakkon' is on Origin for - cripes! - £11.99.
]]>Give me a long, sprawling RPG with appearance options and I will replay the first hour at least six times. I didn't realise how ugly that haircut actually is. I didn't know its lighting would make that skin tone so ugly. I'd forgotten to make them interesting from behind. On reflection, that hair colour is awful. What was I even thinking with that tattoo? And I should tower over puny NPCs more.
When I get around to Dragon Age: Inquisition [official site], I might be able to skip that for once, as the next patch is due to add ways to customise your chap mid-game.
]]>In all honesty, I'm not especially on fire with passion at the news of free Dragon Age Inquisition song downloads, but I don't often get to use the phrase "sheet music" in this line of work, so carpe diem.
]]>I was reading through Dragon Age: Inquisition's 1.03 patch notes for the information on how the banter system has changed. I haven't actually got to Inquisition yet in my playing of the series so I was kind of peeking but trying to squint so I could look away at the first sign of a spoiler* without having accidentally read the whole thing.
The banter change is just a minor change to make the chatter less random in when it occurs and thus avoid long periods of silence – a good thing I'd say (confidently, having not played Inquisition) because the banter is the reason I really warmed up to the series.
]]>In this quietest time of the year, as people take their spare holiday days to fill the gap between Horacemas and the destruction of the Old Year, there will be many who are using the time to catch up on games they've missed. Top of that list for many will be BioWare's epic RPG, Dragon Age: Inquisition. But what to do with the 95-99% of dead-time playing the game leaves, as you stare at its loading screens between moments of playing? Or maybe you'll boot Far Cry 4? How to wile away the hours during those intro titles? Are you catching up on Shadow Of Mordor, and need activities while it's showing you yet another close-up of an Orc Captain?
I've come up with some suggestions of how to fill this time.
]]>In Dragon Age: Inquisition, you are the most important person in the entire world. People will follow you into battle, go along with your decisions and occasionally kiss you on the lips. There's an enormous world to discover and it's all there for you. Go and have an adventure. You deserve it.
Adam: Inquisition is like comfort food. A month-long banquet of comfort food, with all the trimmings.
]]>Continuing a Dragon Age: Inquisition diary.
I spent a bit too long harvesting vegetables in the wilderness. Now I'm conquering castles and fending off zombie apocalypses. Life has meaning again.
]]>This weekend I am scratching my BioWare itch by playing copious amounts of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Who needs a real social life when you have BioWare making so many virtual people for me to make friends with?
Truth be told I was not going to bother with Dragon Age: Inquisition. Don't get me wrong I love the Mass Effect trilogy for all of it's obvious flaws, I just never really got into either of the past Dragon Age games. The only reason I started digging into playing Inquisition was because someone on Twitter drew my attention to a character who I now really want to see in context. Minor character spoilers for DAI incoming. Nothing plot related, but there are some character backstory details coming. You have been warned.
]]>Continuing a Dragon Age: Inquisition diary. Spoilers once again.
The kleptomania's out of control. In any new location, my first activity is to raid the place. Sure, sure, I'm the Herald of Andraste, I'm here to rescue you, blah blah, but first - what's in your cupboards? There's also a special spell I can cast to tell me whether there's anything of value in the nearby vicinity, and I cast it incessantly. Even in the middle of a pitched battle I'm feverishly hoovering up any loot left by the fallen or casting my spell to check whether there's anything hidden in the corner. People die because I'm rummaging through some spook's innards in the hope there are a few coins or a piece of cloth in there somewhere.
]]>Continuing a Dragon Age: Inquisition diary. Pretty heavy spoilers in this one, probably.
It's not easy, being a member of a magical class that most of the world is convinced will destroy it. It's also not easy being a member of a race who like demons and have, in the eyes of some, a culture of religious oppression. This place doesn't trust mages and it doesn't trust Qunari, but its only known hope that the evil spirits invading from the sky can be stopped rests on my Qunari mage shoulders. As such, I get asked for my opinion, and my decision, rather a lot.
]]>Continuing my Dragon Age: Inquisition diary. Earlier chapters here, and once again there are mild spoilers of a sort.
I've spent most of my time so far rambling (and in the game, etc). Off to find a campsite over there; off to close a rift on top of these cliffs here; off to recruit a Grey Warden who's hiding out in some fishing huts; off to do menial work for some dude who thinks it's more efficient to send the lady who's busy SAVING THE BLOODY WORLD twenty feet outside his village to collect some sheep meat for him than to do it himself.
]]>Continuing my Dragon Age: Inquisition diary. Earlier chapters here, and once again there are spoilers of a sort.
I haven't been super-impressed by my battlechums to date. Whenever I talk to Cassandra I feel as though she's forever on the cusp of admonishing me for being late with my homework. Disco-chested sex dwarf Varric walks the walk (and you can tell by the way he uses his walk, he's anyone's man) but I couldn't say he's talking the talk just yet. Egg-faced spirit-botherer Solas just makes me feel weird, and not in a climbing the rope at gym class way.
I'm pretty relieved to have recruited two new battlechums. They're far more entertaining. And, er, maybe they are a bit more on the climbing the rope at gym class spectrum.
]]>I had to take out a stack of dice when I was playing Dragon Age: Inquisition over the weekend. Not to re-roll the complexities of combat - the numbers thrown around are too big for my collection of bones - but to generate a face for my character. Above you can see my knobbly-nosed dwarf. His name is Pootle and he has a Radioface.
]]>Continuing a Dragon Age: Inquisition diary.
I seem to have found friends by default. They were just there when I performed my Act Of Ultimate Heroism (i.e. wavey green hand shtick) and now they won't seem to go away. I already introduced you to the relentlessly serious Cassandra, a very, very solemn ex-Templar who first wanted to kill me and is now telling the world that I'm its salvation. In a fight, I'm her boss. Outside of a fight, she's calling the shots. Not sure how I feel about that yet. There are two others who've decided they're going to stick to me like glue. They're bit... full-on.
]]>Beginning a new diary series for Dragon Age: Inquisition. Yes, I'm mostly doing this so I have an excuse to play Dragon Age: Inquisition during work hours. There will be spoilers and there will be presumed knowledge, but there probably won't be much taking anything seriously.
]]>Dragon Age: Inquisition might just be my favourite game released this year. Considering my expectations and relationship with recent BioWare games, that's about as likely as Saturday night's soggy kebab being my favourite meal of the year. I've spent almost sixty hours uncovering as much of Inquisition's enormous open world and intricate story as possible, and as soon as I have a few days free, I'll be spending another sixty or eighty hours seeing it all through new eyes.
]]>We've been speculating about Failbetter Games' collaboration with BioWare since February, so it's a relief to finally discover that it's Dragon Age: The Last Court. It's a text-driven project set just before the events of BioWare's soon-to-be-released Dragon Age: Inquisition.
]]>Filling in the history of Thedas in the Dragon Age Keep, I realise I really don't remember much about Dragon Age. I needed to consult Google just then to discover that the world it's set in is named Thedas, for example. Did I give an amulet to a beggar in Origins? Maybe. What's it to you? Who's Gascard and why did I kill him? Was Cullen the nice Templar or that mean one? Maybe I killed both.
Keep is the tool that BioWare are using to set up the state of the world in Dragon Age: Inquisition, building up a history of decisions your characters made in earlier games. And it's now in open beta.
]]>We only have a few more months to wait until five years of questing and world-saving conclude in Dragon Age: Inquisition, and the question on everyone's lips is: can I make a real cool-looking wizard or, like, some kind of really dopey one, or maybe one that looks like my nan, or Taylor Swift? That's it: can I make Taylor Swift save the world and sing Shake It Off whenever she brushes blood and viscera off her armour? That's what everyone's asking, anyway.
A BioWare livestream yesterday giving a good look at the character creator revealed the answer: sure, I guess, probably, if you want! And if you provide your own singing.
]]>After being a big grumpbag about Mass Effect 3's multiplayer when BioWare announced it, thinking it a cynical cash-grab, I was pleased to discover it was actually pretty fun for a box-ticking feature. So, if you don't mind, I'd like to skip that rigmarole for Dragon Age: Inquisition. The fantasy RPG will also have a four-player co-op multiplayer mode, BioWare announced yesterday. It sounds like it'll try the same sort of stuff ME3 was up to, only better.
]]>The Dragon Age hype train rolls ever onward. As we near the delayed release of Inquisition on November 21st, the latest trailer had its debut at the EA press event at Gamescom. It's titled "The Enemy of Thedas," who one would presume is giving the threatening baddie monologue throughout, and shows off all the usual fantasy violence we've come to expect. It also seems to let out some rather significant story beats. Spoilery analysis of those below.
]]>I hadn't noticed until now, but the vast majority of the footage we've had of Dragon Age: Inquisition hasn't featured combat in the way it will be played. Everyone will use the over-the-shoulder camera for, oh, 24 seconds or so then never again. Far more useful is the free-roaming tactical view that pauses time, giving you a moment for a sip of tea and a good think. Perhaps you'd like to target your fireball over here, sir? Or bash this ingrate's head in with a warhammer, ma'am? Bioware, continuing a trend of blitzing us with trailers at Ubisoft pace, show it off below.
]]>Nobody expected the Dragon Age: Inquisition to be released on time. Nrrggh. The originally slated release date for what I imagine BioWare wish they could call Dragon Age 2 was 7th October, but as we all know, the Walker Principle states that original release dates will never be met. The slip, however, is only six weeks, meaning we'll now see the game on the 18th November in the US, and then FOR SOME SODDING BLOODY REASON Europe on the 21st.
]]>The last chunk we saw of Dragon Age: Inquisition was from an area we've seen a fair few times before, roaming around the open world-y bits of The Hinterlands. Open skies and rushing waterfalls are nice and all, but what about stone corridors with thick wooden doors, pillars, and all those castle-y bits? I understand these things are very important to fantasy RPGs. A new 14-minute gameplay video shows the Inquisitor and chums roaming through Redcliffe castle, chatting with villains, fighting a boss battle, and getting into all sorts of scrapes.
]]>As you might have guessed by now, I'm all about hugs in videogames. I'd say I'm RPS' foremost hugsman, but that title probably goes to John, who hugs bears and rhinos into submission in his free time. Even so, the prospect of huggable party members in Dragon Age: Inquisition - which is now a confirmed thing, at least for "some" of them - is tremendously exciting to me. Oh also I guess there's now 16 minutes of raw footage for you to watch. That's pretty neat too. No hugs, though :(
]]>Once upon a time, videogames were really horrible at depicting romance and sex. Plot twist: that time is now. Dragon Age: Origins, however, holds the dubious distinction of having some of the worst sex scenes in gaming, not to mention many relationships that ended in BioWare's patented(ly pernicious) "give gifts until sex falls out" method. On the upside, the developer has been promising much more robust romance options for Dragon Age Inquisition - much more so than in Dragon Age 2, even - but it hasn't offered much in the way of details. I asked producer Cameron Lee, and we took a ride on the loooooove train - by which I mean we mostly talked about Saints Row IV and also animal genocide in Inquisition. Also I saw Inquisition's E3 demo and I... have some concerns.
]]>We've had the portentous "the world is ending and flames and demons and things" trailer for Dragon Age not-III, but perhaps more useful is this 'stand together' one, which shows off some of the party members you, as a titular Inquisitor, will be travelling/fighting/beast-with-two-backing with during the Bioware RPG. After all the recent hoo-hah about you-know-what, it's rather heartening to see that Bioware/EA has gone with narration and perspective from the woman version of the player-character for this video. Strange to think how familiar that currently-novel voice will likely to sound to my ears in a few months' time.
]]>The triple A team of Alice, Alec and Adam have spent the last 24 hours absorbing every trailer and piece of footage that has emerged from E3. Now they gather together with Graham 'G-Man' Smith to discuss their findings. Does the imminent arrival of a GTA V port please them? Are any of them still wearing socks or has No Man's Sky blown them clean off? Is Cuphead really the game of the show? And will Valiant Hearts' dog-in-a-war bring tears to their eyes? Read on for answers to all of those questions, and remarkable insights into the Oculus Rift and much more besides.
]]>Dragon Age: Inquisition's new trailer makes me think that Bioware's blood and (b)romance fantasy series has noticed the brooding character standing at the other side of the RPG battlefield. The veteran of a thousand deaths stares back, scars criss-crossing every inch of its face, nostrils included, and then rolls backwards out of the door. Dragon Age looks on enviously. It wants to have cool scars a well - it's the scars, right? Chicks love the scars - and it wants people to notice when it rolls into a room. That, presumably, is why the E3 video caused me to react with a raised eyebrow and a murmur of "Soul-y shit".
]]>You probably should have called it Faux Dragon Skin, Bioware special edition packaging designers. If you're going to use it a fake reptile to decorate the supermegaultrodeluxe version of Dragon Age: Inquisition's box, you might as well go for the ultimate fake reptile.
Other than this misstep, EA/Bioware are going all out with the clumsily yet wonderfully-named Dragon Age: Inquisition Inquisitor's Edition. A lockpick set! A tarot deck! A quill and inkpot! Pretend money! A bloody enormous cloth map!
]]>I remember when Dragon Age trailers were all Marilyn Manson, blood, guts and witchy sex. How things have changed. Or perhaps not. The latest trailer for Dragon Age: Inquisition shows some in-game footage, including a moment of dodge-rolling that made me hanker for Dark Souls II even more than I already am, but it's mostly bombastic music and high-falutin' voiceovers. In fact, watch the Origins trailer and this one back to back, switch out 'Blight' for 'Breach' whenever one or the other occurs, and it doesn't look all that different. Prettier though. And with less blood and sex.
]]>GDC was jam-packed with brilliant talks, and I missed far too many of them because infinity appointments beckoned. One of the absolute best I *did* see, however, was Mass Effect 4 designer Manveer Heir making an impassioned plea to developers for more diversity in games. He gave a talk equal parts well-reasoned and resolute, arguing not that all games should change their icky ways, but that our industry's predominate pattern needs to shift away from generic leads and hurtful stereotypes. "I sincerely hope that you are ready for that challenge, because I sure as hell am!" he bellowed before being mobbed by fellow designers. I caught up with Heir afterward to discuss some of his talk's finer points and how BioWare's become more sensitive to these issues as time has progressed.
]]>This year? THIS YEAR? Why was I not told of this? (I was. It's just that I have the memory of a Leveson Inquiry witness these days). Yes, fantasy RPG sequel Dragon Age Inquistion is due this Autumn/Fall, and much as Bioware have some faith-rebuilding to do after the double-whammy of Dragon Age II and Mass Effect Ending-Gate, I really would like a big, fat, indulgent, glossy RPG on my hard drive right now. Will it be Dragon Age Not-III? The trailer below, which focuses on Frostbite 3 engine-powered environments, suggests I will at least be cooing at its surface.
]]>Romance in videogames is weird. For one, it's often handled in ways that range from awkward to downright offensive, and let's not even start on how deep the uncanny valley suddenly becomes when plasticine mannequin men/women start making goo-goo eyes at each other. But romance, relationships, and sex are fundamental parts of the human experience. They make and break people, peel back layers of personality and reveal us at our most vulnerable. So I'm glad to see that BioWare has no intention of quitting romance, but I sure do wish they did it better.
]]>Quick, quick, before it's pulled!
Unless of course this is a clever marketing ruse, wherein giving the impression that this half-hour of in-game Dragon Age 3-ing is somehow illicitly-obtained makes everyone frantically watch every second of it. WE ARE BEING TRICKED DON'T WATCH THIS VIDEO WHATEVER YOU DO
]]>Has it really been an entire age since Dragon Age: Inquisition lead designer Mike Laidlaw and I last spoke? Of course not. The first part of our interview went up yesterday. We discussed combat, choice, and exploration, and today we're delving even deeper into the rabbit hole dragon den of certain doom. Read on to find out how race/sex, crossovers with previous DA games, romance, and more will function in BioWare's hopeful return to form.
BioWare's finally taken the wraps off Dragon Age: Inquisition, and hey, it looks like it might actually be worth getting excited over. Far from the chaffingly cramped confines of Dragon Age II's Kirkwall, Inquisition seems rife for roaming - a land that will whet your appetite for exploration and then stuff your intestines with intrigue until you have no choice but to physically ingest a Call of Duty game to correct the balance. Also, combat looks interesting again! There is tactical view. And rolling. Somewhat astonished, I sat down with lead designer Mike Laidlaw to discuss the resurgent role-player's newfound confidence in tactical combat, wide-open exploration, and choices that actually bar players from a significant portion of the game.
]]>UPDATED: Tactical view filmed off screen at PAX added below.
Nothing of the much-touted tactical view, sadly, but it does look rather slick.
Take a look, below. And then perhaps join the discussion over in John's article from the reveal of the game in London last week.
]]>Like our fair, occasionally fire-breathing John, I also recently saw Dragon Age: Inquisition in action, and - against all odds - I came away very impressed. Dragon Age: Origins was a very important game to me for a number of reasons, and the crazy thing is that BioWare actually seems to *get* why its return to fantasy's pointy eared realms made people like me chant(ry) its name to the high heavens. There's action-y stuff in Inquisition, sure, but also plenty of tactical options (TOP-DOWN VIEW YEAH) and yummy conundrums to scramble my moral compass. But it wasn't until I spoke with lead designer Mike Laidlaw that I really began feeling good about Inquisition. His favorite game? Planescape Torment. And, if Laidlaw is to be believed, the Black Isle classic's influence is strong in this one.
]]>Sometimes you realise it's just a tricky situation for a developer. You want to show your game, but you're a year away from finishing, and you've got a year's worth of press to rustle yet. So what do you show? You pick between a few reveals, a lot of what people were expecting, and a healthy dose of ambiguity. And so it was for BioWare's first reveal of in-game footage from RPG epic Dragon Age: Inquisition. Everything we learned is below.
]]>The other day, I took part in a trebuchet building competition with some friends. When the Grand Tosser was finished, there was much discussion about what to toss. After some Crabbie's, it was decided that my PC should be the Tossed One. We loaded it up and flicked it through the air at the castle. As I watched my main source of entertainment and work splinter against the ancient stone, I suddenly remembered that I hadn't backed up my Dragon Age saves. When the blubbing had stopped, and the cuts I'd received from hugging my broken PC were tended to, I was told about Dragon Age Keep, Bioware's new thing that means even save games that have been trebuchetedededdd, corrupted, or wiped aren't the end of your Dragon Age journey. The Keep is a cloud-based service that will let you set-up the story for 2014's Dragon Age Inquisition.
]]>I want very, very badly for Dragon Age: Inquisition to be good. Great, even. Once upon a time, I found myself in a torrid, fiery love affair with Dragon Age: Origins, but things fizzled when DA II rushed onto the scene (though I did enjoy certain aspects of it more than some). To its credit, however, BioWare has been making some seriously promising, er, promises about its impending no-longer-a-threequel. It will have dragons, yes, and ages certainly, but also oh so much more. Player choice is taking center stage again, and it's a mantra that apparently flows through character customization, party control, story progression, and even your commanding role as the Inquisitor. Watch some of BioWare's beardliest faces talk about it below.
]]>Dragon Age: Inquisition won't be out until Autumn 2014 at the earliest, but that doesn't mean we can't poke through the nuggets of information emerging from within the extended development cyclone. In the last week, two significant gobbets of information have emerged from Bioware's lair. The first, as alluded to in the headline, is the news that Morrigan won't be a party member, although that's not to say her witchy ways won't have a place in the game. The second piece of news wasn't really news at all to me - Inquisition will contain multiple playable races. I didn't realise that was a thing that might not be happening but confirmation came in a Game Informer interview.
]]>Dragon Age: Inquisition has pretty much stayed entirely under wraps except in order to briefly emerge and switch out its numerical nametag for a subtitled one. Also, it did the whole razzle-dazzle E3 trailer thing, but only the maddest of fans managed to decipher much from its cinema-tastic showing. For now, then, all we can do is snatch up whatever scraps might fall from BioWare's silently slithering brood. But how? And where? Well, by offering OXM as bait to the RPG behemoth's slavering jaws at PAX Australia, of course.
]]>I actually don't think Dragon Age II was all that terrible. Or rather, I fully understand that elements of it were very, very bad (it had more caves than Ron Gilbert's The Cave, for instance; and not on purpose), but others were incredibly fascinating. Party members lived their own lives, themes like racism and security-vs-freedom got the spotlight, and your choices really, really didn't matter all that much. Was it a game whose budgetary and time constraints hung about its neck like a noose, leaving only gasping wisps of potential? Absolutely. But those limits also shaped it, so it was interesting to see a less powerful BioWare craft a narrative about, well, powerlessness. After discussing the baffling impracticality of sexism, Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider and I talked about the ups and downs of Dragon Age II and how they've ultimately guided Dragon Age III to a very different place.
]]>All this talk of sexism isn't going away, nor should it. The gaming industry's sick, and the symptoms are plain as day. Mystifyingly often, however, the immediate reaction to even the faintest hint of that suggestion is "No, nuh-uh! You just want to censor expression! Give me one good reason we actually need to change."* Well, if you really want to move beyond "Because jeez, it's basic human decency to treat someone else the way you'd like to be treated," Dragon Age III lead writer David Gaider's got a laundry list of practical reasons for you. 14 years at one of the most influential studios out there, after all, will do that to you. Especially when it's one that's certainly not innocent of mistakes and missteps of its own. Prior to Gaider's GDC talk on the very same subject, I caught up with him to discuss why sexism (and any sort of "-ism," really) is bad for everyone: you, me, the industry, and of course, women or anyone else directly affected.
]]>I think I actually like Dragon Age II a lot more than most people. Mainly, though, I appreciate for what it nearly ended up being - not so much what it was. I mean, it explored some seriously interesting subject matter and dropped the tried and tired "epic globe stroll to save the world" format in favor of a more self-contained, intimate tale. Time passed, things changed, characters (sort of) led their own lives, etc. Unfortunately, those lives all tended to lead to the same goddamn cave, and I've played FMV games with more robust character customization. To hear BioWare tell it, though, the recently de-doctored RPG giant is taking those complaints extremely seriously. I do, however, still have a few reservations about the resulting plan for Dragon Age III.
]]>BioWare have just officially announced Dragon Age 3. It has, of course, already been discussed in public as long ago as April, making an official announcement a touch silly. But it does at least have a name now. Dragon Age III: Inquisition, and it will be made in the Frostbite 2 engine. Which if you were of a curt enough mind, you might describe as the first full Dragon Age sequel.
]]>↑ that logo is a fake, sorry.
With Mass Effect now concluded, at least until the inevitable announcement of a new trilogy, a first-person shooter and a free-to-play god-knows-what, and SWTOR currently being fitted into its microtransacted iron lung, all eyes turn to the core Bioware team's next roleplaying move. The smart money is surely on a new Dragon Age game, and tiny wee scraps of hint have seemed to support this. Today we got significantly more than tiny wee scraps, as an alleged survey allegedly leaked by alleged specially-selected community members offers all manner of alleged potential details on a third Dragon Age game.
]]>Yes, obviously there's going to be a third game. It's a long way off, still. But what are they going to do with it? Match-3 puzzler? We should be so lucky. Instead it's going to feature an art style similar to DA2, and you'll be able to full tinker with the loadouts of your party members. Fighting will also be encounter-based, rather than surviving waves of enemies. Hooray!
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