There are actually significant improvements to the gameplay, depending on what kind of games you like to play. The combat is much more of an action style game, especially for console, where you have to button mash normal attacks. Characters never just walk up to their targets to attack. They will jump, charge, roll, or do something else equally dramatic and the end result is that the combat feels very cool and dynamic. However, it still plays like MMOs such as World of Warcraft, RIFT, or DC Universe Online, except that you can pause the combat and take control of different characters in order to get more strategic control. On PC, you can move your character using the WSAD keys, or by pointing and clicking, or by holding both mouse buttons down, which is the way I’m used to navigating in WoW. Removed from this game is the bird’s eye camera that would truly give you a strategic sense of the battlefield, but I didn’t miss it too much.

Questing was made much simpler with quest markers. People with quests will have an exclamation mark above their heads while people or things relevant to a quest in your Journal will have some arrows pointing to it. This new “feature”, so prominent in other games, is actually an unwelcome change. Sure, it’s great that the game is easier to play, and I’ve always been a big believer in making things easier to play, but I found myself just mindlessly following the markers instead of taking the time to know my environments and talk to every NPC in the city. Instead of picking the quests I felt were urgent, I would just go to the areas with the most quests to complete. It’s not that exploration isn’t rewarded, but it is to a lesser extent than the first game. The first game was more immersive simply because it forced you to figure out things on your own, and I prefer immersion in my single player RPGs.

The Tactics system, borrowed from Final Fantasy XII, remains intact. This is usually a boon and for most of the game you just let your NPCs do their thing, but there are occasionally hard battles where you must turn these off and control things on your own. There’s no easy way to disable all the Tactics, but that’s a minor complaint. I enjoy the Tactics system and how it just keeps the game flowing when you don’t need to micromanage things.

Dragon Age II keeps the Enchantment system from the last game, where you place runes that you find into weapons and armour in order to increase their effectiveness. It also introduces a crafting system, where you can find different sources of materials throughout the world and then craft potions, bombs, poisons, or runes from them. You’ll have to discover the recipes for them, too. Unlike the last game, you can’t recover the runes from your equipment, and you have to destroy them by slotting a new rune. Even though that improves the enchantment system, the crafting system feels unfinished. The crafting table just becomes another store. Discovering the materials are a way to reward you for exploring, but it’s too shallow and straightforward to be enjoyable, and not quite involved enough to be annoying. So in the end, the items are useful, but the system is like that wallflower at the high school dance: It’s just kind of there.

The skill trees are a bit more interesting this time around, with each tree being a graph of different dependencies. Once again you’ll get two specialization points to spend in two of the three specializations you can get for each class. Each of the Warrior, Rogue, and Mage classes had 6 skill trees plus 3 specializations, so you can actually get fairly diverse characters even within the same class. The spells and skills look really cool, too. Every spell is a joy to use because of the magnificent effects that happen, such as encasing someone in rock with Petrify, or spraying an arc of ice with Cone of Cold.

The Stamina and Mode systems are kept from the last game, so if you choose to turn on helpful Modes, it will reserve a portion of your Stamina or Mana that you would otherwise use on skills or spells. This is an interesting trade off and definitely affects your gear decisions and decisions about which skills to pick up.

The equipment management interface underwent an upgrade as you have the option not to show your helmet, and now things are sorted into five helpful categories: Weapons and Shields, Armour, Trinkets/Belts, Consumables, and Junk. Looting everything from a container or corpse is now bound to a hotkey, making looting a smooth experience. However, you can no longer choose what armour your party members wear. Though you have full control over your own gear, you can only choose weapons, shields, necklace, belt, and two rings for your other characters. In place of choosing what armour they wear, you are forced to find up to five upgrade slots for their armours, usually by going through their individual story quests. I don’t really understand why BioWare chose to do it this way, but it means that most of the torso armour, helmets, boots, and gloves you find are garbage to be sold as they will not be for your class. Upgrading the equipment of my party is one of the joys of playing RPGs, so in this particular aspect Dragon Age II is only a quarter of what nearly every other RPG delivers.

Perhaps the most important system of all to any BioWare game is the Friendship system. This is equivalent to the Paragon system in the Mass Effect franchise, and appeared in some form in Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, and everything significant BioWare has made dating back to Baldur’s Gate. After all, what is awesome about BioWare games are the choices you have to make and how other people will like or dislike you for them. If you become friends or rivals with different party members in Dragon Age II, they will gain an extra skill. For example, if you are friends with Aveline, the protective warrior, she will start taking a portion of your damage in your stead. Being friends or rivals will also have massive implications at certain points in the game, but I can’t discuss it too much without spoiling the story.

So does this mean Mass Effect 3 will have multiplayer? Hopefully, but this could also mean that they could make another game which takes away from the trilogy but still features multiplayer. Maybe we could find ourselves with a Mass Effect MMO?

What do you make of this and what do you think  we will see at E3 from BioWare?

The expansion will also include new creatures for players to battle, including an evolved, more intelligent breed of Darkspawn, the menacing Inferno Golem, and in keeping with the game’s namesake, a Spectral Dragon. However, perhaps most exciting are the new ways for players to customize their characters, which include new spells, abilities, specializations, and items, as well as the ability to completely re-spec any existing characters. New spell combos for the win! Additionally, five all-new party members will join the player in their journey to Amaranthine.

“Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening shows BioWare’s commitment to our fans by delivering new story-driven experiences which enrich the dark heroic fantasy universe our fans have come to know and love,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Group General Manager of the RPG/MMO Group, EA, and Co-Founder, BioWare. “The vibrant worldwide community of Dragon Age fans will relish uncovering the secret motivations of the darkspawn, revealing how the darkspawn continue to infest the world despite the defeat of the Archdemon.”

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening will be available on March 16, 2010 for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 Platforms.

With Mass Effect 2 orbiting around the corner, and the new-found marketing budget of Electronic Arts now supporting BioWare’s releases, I am happy to announce that the Collector’s Edition will be available in Canada – no pleading necessary! However, finding it may be a little tricky, especially if you’re a PC gamer and like games that come in boxes. So we have decided to post a short guide to finding the Collector’s Edition, and will update it regularly as new information becomes available.

Xbox 360

EBGames.ca
Amazon.ca

PC

EBGames.ca (boxed retail version)
GamersGate
Steam (officially announced, but not yet available for pre-order)

I was told by both BestBuy and FutureShop employees that the game should be made available soon through their respective online stores, but I have yet to receive official confirmation. Additionally, EBGames will take pre-orders for the Collector’s Edition in their brick and mortar stores as well, but why not make use of their shiny new website?

As stated above, we’ll keep this post updated to include additional retailers as they are discovered. If you know of a retailer that will be offering the Collector’s Edition that is not on our list, let us know in the comments below and we’ll add it as soon as possible. Happy hunting!

In addition to the returning cast of Seth Green and Keith David, BioWare has secured performances by Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning actor Martin Sheen, Shohreh Adhdashloo of the House of Saddam, Chuck special agents Yvonne Strahovski and Adam Baldwin, Michael ‘Lieutenant Worf’ Dorn, Canadian beauties Tricia ‘Number Six’ Helfer and Carrie-Anne ‘Trinity’ Moss, and perennial Canadian tough guy, Michael ‘Colonel Tigh’ Hogan. That’s more star-power than your typical CBC program!

“Emotionally engaging narrative is a key design pillar for BioWare, and the top-notch voice talent in Mass Effect 2 helps drive this goal,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder, BioWare and Group General Manager of the RPG/MMO Group of EA. “Credible, powerful personalities are vital to delivering a compelling story experience in BioWare’s games, and we have assembled an amazing ensemble cast that surpasses the very high bar set in the original Mass Effect!”

Martin Sheen plays a significant role in the game as the mysterious Illusive Man who commands Cerberus, a secretive paramilitary organization dedicated to protecting human interests throughout the galaxy. Yvonne Strahovski plays a deadly Cerberus operative, Miranda Lawson, who has been genetically engineered for superior mental and physical traits, and hopefully, her sexy, native Australian accent. Tricia Helfer plays EDI, the voice of the new Normandy; Carrie-Anne Moss plays the role of Aria T’Loak, the crime lord that rules planet Omega; Shohreh Aghdashloo plays Admiral Shala’Raan vas Tonbay; Michael Hogan plays the hard-assed Captain Bailey; Adam Baldwin laces up the combat boots of Kal ‘Reegar; and Michael Dorn lends his baritone voice to Gatatog Uvenk.

This game sounds better and better by the day – and yes, that pun was intended.

I do not dare dive into the expansive story that encompasses this game. It rivals Lord of the Rings (Jrr Tolkien) in scope and scale, A Song of Ice and Fire (George R.R. Martin) in political intrigue, and the original Dragonlance Chronicles (Margaret Weiss, Tracy Hickman) in enjoyment. It was much like an excellent fantasy novel that I just couldn’t put down. The characters are memorable, entertaining, and alive. The ambient dialogue that takes place among your party members while you stroll about town is brilliant in addition to being expository. The player gets to develop relationships with characters that join the party, much like Baldur’s Gate II. You can fall in love, knock boots, or learn class specializations from them. If you piss them off enough, they will leave. They have their own aspirations and desires, and they will often be vocal in the choices you make. There are also six backgrounds to choose from, and aside from each of them having its own opening chapter, will offer different dialogue and affect the game in different ways, which was a really nice and interesting touch.

The voice acting is incredible and sets a new benchmark for videogames. The banter from the playable characters always managed to put a smile on my face, and the villains are appropriately sinister sounding. Even the background NPCs that litter the different towns and cities are well done and have interesting monologues or dialogues. If you’re the type of player that likes to talk to every person in the game, then your task is going to be more pleasant than in the past.

The combat and gameplay will be familiar to those who have played the Baldur’s Gate series or Neverwinter Nights. You assigning actions to a group of up to four characters. In the PC version of the game, you have an entire action bar you can fill up with skills for easy access whereas on the console versions, you map skills to the buttons. You can pause the game at any time in order to strategically plan out your moves. Where Dragon Age differs from its predecessors is the adoption of the Final Fantasy XII tactics system. Each character has tactic slots which you can fill with conditional commands so that your characters can heal anyone below fifty percent health, for example, or attack the target of a party member. This system has its advantages and drawbacks as characters will sometimes not do what you expect, but the use of tactics are entirely optional and in general make combat faster. You can also save presets of tactics so that you can easily change from offense to defense in just a couple of clicks. The camera is quite interesting and provides some variety to the experience. The default third-person camera puts you in a flexible view similar to many games like World of Warcraft, but once you zoom back all the way, you get a strategic isometric view. You can’t see as far in the isometric view though and miss out on a lot of the detail, so I found that I traveled in the third person view but changed to the isometric camera once I was in combat. The one complaint I have about the camera is that it should let you zoom out farther in the third-person mode and have a button to switch to isometric as opposed to automatically switching when it zooms out all the way.  A really minor annoyance as I prefer the wider field of vision.

The graphics in the game are plenty awesome and surprisingly runs at max settings even on my two-year old PC. One little thing that I enjoyed about the graphical presentation is that the blood splatter from combat will make its way into dialogue cutscenes, so your party members are talking with blood all over their faces and armour. The art and graphics has that efficient Bioware style which some people may not like, but the character creator provides sufficient customizability and I enjoyed the presentation.

The difficulty of the game is unusual and refreshing, especially for the role-playing genre. Even random groups of enemies are usually no cakewalk and require some management. Whereas I could just walk around and defeat groups of enemies without even pressing a button due to the tactics in Final Fantasy XII, I found myself micromanaging many of the battles in Dragon Age. Survival is a bit of an issue since healing spells have cooldowns that prevent you from continuously casting them. There is also basically no way to grind levels on your characters, so the traditional “get more levels” method of overcoming difficulty in role-playing games won’t work. Gold is not easy to make, either, so getting the best items from all the vendors is nigh impossible. The few dragons you encounter in the game are amazing and epic to defeat, and after defeating internet dragons so easily in World of Warcraft, it was a refreshing reminder that dragons should be hurting you in the face area. Needless to say, I am impressed with the difficulty and am playing through on the hardest difficulty this time just to challenge myself even more. One neat little addition to the combat are these little finishing animations that your character performs on an enemy, such as jumping onto an ogre in slow motion and stabbing their eye or spinning to chop off an opponent’s head – similar to God of War.

For a single player game, Dragon Age offers spectacular longevity. In fact, the first thing I wanted to do after completing the game was to go through it again with a different character and a different plan. I wanted to explore the different dialogue and plot paths, try a different character build, a new background, a harder difficulty and even a new group makeup. The game does a very good job of forcing difficult choices upon you and failed attempts at persuasion will sometimes close opportunities forever, so you have to play through the game again a few times in order to see everything it has to offer. There are achievements to collect if you’re a fan of those, but the content out-of-the-box takes 40-plus hours to complete and there’s more to be had in two downloadable content packs.

The content packs are the only gripe I have with the game. Warden’s Keep offers a party chest, an extra vendor, and an extra (albeit amazing) sword. Stone Prisoner offers a new playable character with its own back story, quest, and hilarious voice acting. They cost $7 USD and $15 USD respectively, and neither are really worth the money. They each provide about one to two hours of gameplay, but if you truly can’t get enough of the game there are worse ways to spend fifteen dollars. Hopefully the next content pack, Return to Ostagar, will offer a lot more content considering you can get excellent full games like Torchlight for $20 USD. As with previous Bioware games, the community has taken it upon itself to offer up some free content to spice up the experience. With the release of the toolset, we’re already seeing modifications that allow you to respecialize any character, add a party chest to your camp (which is better than having to travel to Warden’s Keep), and change the faces of characters in the game. There’s even an ambitious project to remake the Baldur’s Gate series with the toolset, which I will personally be keeping an eye on.

In case I haven’t gotten this point across: Dragon Age: Origins is amazing, incredible, and just about every other superlative you can throw at it. In fact, I need to stop writing this review and go play it some more.

Review made possible by

Here’s hoping that Commander Shepard saw that episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation in which the crew of the Enterprise found the Borg drone named Hue, and that he’s able to make the decision that Captain Picard could not.

“We’re really excited to roll out this Collectors’ Edition featuring so many unique items, including special Collectors’ Edition armor and weapons and content that will surprise Mass Effect fans,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder, BioWare and Group General Manager of the RPG/MMO Group of EA. “The limited edition comic book and bonus DVD will really enhance and expand the overall Mass Effect 2 experience.”

The Mass Effect 2 Collector’s Edition will retail at an MSRP of $69.99 CAD on the Xbox 360 and $59.99 CAD on the PC.

“Our fans are in for a genuine thrill in the New Year with Mass Effect 2 – the second installment in the trilogy will be of amazingly high quality,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder, BioWare and Group General Manager of the RPG/MMO Group of Electronic Arts. “BioWare’s fans worldwide have been eagerly awaiting this epic sequel, and we couldn’t be more excited to reward them for pre-ordering by delivering some awesome bonus content!”

Players that pre-order their game through EBGames will receive a download code for a set of Terminus Gear, which includes the powerful Terminus Assault Armor and the M-490 Blackstorm Heavy Weapon.

The Terminus Armor is designed for use in extreme planetary conditions, increasing run speed and personal shields, and augmenting weapons with an additional magazine of reserve ammo.

The M-90 Blackstorm Heavy Weapon generates a high-powered localized gravity well, accelerating particles to near-infinite mass, and ultimately expanding the selection of heavy weapons available to players when they gear up for combat missions in Mass Effect 2.

Players that pre-order a copy of the game at other retail outlets will receive a suit of Inferno Armour, which is apparently used by officers to monitor battlefield conditions by recognizing elevated heart rates, and it regulates sub-systems with extreme efficiency to allow for a greater response time. In-game, that translates into a negotiation bonus for Commander Shepard, as well as an increase in running speed and augmented damage from combat powers.

I have never been keen on the idea of different pre-order bonuses being made available to different retailers, because gamers shouldn’t be made to choose where they will spend their hard-earned gaming dollar, but knowing Electronic Arts, each of the pre-order bonus items will be made available for purchase as downloadable content, regardless.

The trailer gives us a glimpse into the Quest of the Sacred Ashes, where danger awaits a band of Grey Wardens on the glacial, jagged edges of a treacherous mountainside. Darkspawn ambush the group, pressing the Grey Wardens into battle, but with a little might and magic, the Grey Wardens prevail. However, something else awaits the Wardens at the top of that mountain. Something much bigger.

Check out the launch trailer for Dragon Age: Origins below, and brace yourself for four minutes of awesome.

Click here to watch the video

To celebrate this announcement, BioWare has sent us a video of the aforementioned thespians in action. While Mulgrew’s character is not specified, it looks as though Curry will be lending his voice to one of the game’s villians, which is only appropriate given his talent for portraying the wicked and the sinister.

Click here to watch the video

In addition to the usual tournaments and competitions, this year’s expo will offer a chance for Canadian gamers to delve into the latest from our beloved BioWare: Dragon Age: Origins. Furthermore, Sony will be on hand to give fans a chance to try several of their upcoming blockbuster titles, such as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Buzz Quiz World, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, and I hope you’re sitting down for this one: God of War III.

The Microsoft and Nintendo camps have been mum about their offerings at the show, but they’ve always been present in recent years. However, it’s going to take one heck of a presentation to pull us away from Sony’s booth. That’s right, the staff of GameNorth, or those that live in Toronto anyhow, will be on-hand, and hands-on, at Fan Expo 2009 to give you our impressions of the games available at the show. If you’d like to find us, I’ll no doubt the the gentleman that’s hogging Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Don will be the gentleman hogging God of War III, and Brad will be the robot scaring the children away from the latest Xbox LIVE Arcade titles. Ahh, good times.

Are you planning on going to Fan Expo 2009? If so, gives us a shout in the comments below, we’d love to meet you!

Update: We’ve been informed by Microsoft that they’ll have Madden 10, Forza 3, and Batman: Arkham Asylum at the event.

In this week’s installment, we will venture into the Dwarven realm of Orzammar. Used as a starting point for players that choose the role of a Dwarven Noble or a Dwarven Commoner, Orzammar is a city of stone that harbors many mysteries. To the eyes of an outsider, Orzammar is labyrinth, a maze of stone where discovery, reward, and treachery lurk around every corner.

The Land of Orzammar

History tells us that the Dwarven kingdoms once spread across all of Thedas, and that the underground city-fortresses called thaigs were almost beyond counting. Kal-Sharok was the capital then, home to all the noble houses, and Orzammar was simply the home of the miner and smith castes. Upon encountering this ancient city, many are struck in awe by the sight of the great city of stone. Orzammar stands within a vast cavern, poised over a sea of molten lava. There, the sounds of the forges ring loudest as the finest smiths craft works that are the envy of all races. Countless thaigs were lost in the first Blight, when the darkspawn poured out of the Deep Roads of Orzammar like smoke. With each generation, due to the threat of the darkspawn, more of the Deep Roads have had to be sealed and more thaigs are lost forever. Now only Orzammar stands – the last bastion of the dwarven race and its finest creation.

“Fans of Mass Effect are going to be pleasantly shocked by the events of this comic,” says Marc Walters. “We worked with Dark Horse to make sure this story was built into the Mass Effect 2 story arc, right from the ground up. Reading the series won’t just add to your experience of the universe, it will change the way you look at Mass Effect 2…and beyond.”

Dark Horse Comics has had many successes adapting other franchises such as Aliens and Star Wars into the comic universe. It looks to be a must read for fans when the first issue in the four part series hit shelves in January 2010.

In the following video, Project Director Casey Hudson and his team walk us through some elements of the sequel’s plot, as well as some new gameplay features. Amongst other features, new to Mass Effect 2 is a fully-realized space exploration system, complete with real-time fuel consumption and detailed planetary scans. As huge fan of Star Control II, I cannot tell you how excited I am to have such a similar exploration system appear in my favourite role-playing game franchise.

In addition to the exploration, BioWare previews the expanded dialogue interruption system, as well as the new cover system during combat. Furthermore, it is revealed that Mass Effect 2 will employ multiple endings, and that some endings may have shocking ramifications in future instalments of the franchise.

Stop reading and watch it already!

Click here to watch the video

• A cloth map
• Tin case
• A making of documentary
• soundtrack
• wallpapers
• 3 pieces of exclusive in-game content: Bergens Honor, Grimoire of the Frozen Wastes, and Final Reason
• An unlockable bonus quest, The Stone Prisoner, and an unlockable character, Shale
• An unlockable item for Mass Effect 2

The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will cost $75 USD and the PC version will cost $65 USD. A cloth map – aside from being really cool – is a strong indicator of quality from Bioware, who included a cloth map with some of the greatest games of all time.

Checking the Best Buy site, it looks like the regular edition of the game for all platforms will cost $70, so expect the Collector’s Edition to be around $90.

Source: Destructoid

The group will oversee and be responsible for the development of Electronic Arts’ in-house role-playing games and MMOs. Muzyka will act as Group General Manager while his partner in crime and fellow BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk will act as Group Creative Officer. We’re not sure what that position entails, but it sure sounds like a lot of fun.

With the departure of Mythic’s Mark Jacobs, Mythic Entertainment co-founder Rob Denton will assume the role of General Manager of Mythic and report directly to BioWare’s Muzyka. Mythic Entertainment will retain its individual identity, but all business and creative decisions are now in the hands of BioWare. BioWare’s business operations will remain unaffected.

Here are the system specs released by BioWare this morning:

Windows XP Minimum Specifications
OS: Windows XP with SP3
CPU: Intel Core 2 (or equivalent) running at 1.4Ghz or greater
AMD X2 (or equivalent) running at 1.8Ghz or greater
RAM: 1GB or more
Video: ATI Radeon X850 128MB or greater
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Windows Vista Minimum Specifications
OS: Windows Vista with SP1
CPU: Intel Core 2 (or equivalent) running at 1.6Ghz or greater
AMD X2 (or equivalent) running at 2.2GHZ or greater
RAM: 1.5 GB or more
Video: ATI Radeon X1550 256MB or greater
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

Recommended Specifications
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz Processor or equivalent
RAM: 4 GB (Vista) or 2 GB (XP)
Video: ATI 3850 512 MB or greater
NVIDIA 8800GTS 512 MB or greater
DVD ROM (Physical copy)
20 GB HD space

A 20GB install? Those must be some big dragons. Makes me wonder how the console versions will hold up.

Grey Warden hopefuls can begin tracking the evil dark fiends when Dragon Age: Origins arrives at the following events:

• San Diego Comic-Con, July 22nd-26th, San Diego, California.
• Gen Con, August 13th-16th, Indianapolis, Indiana.
• GamesCom, August 19th-23rd, Cologne, Germany.
• Fan Expo Canada, August 28th-30th, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• Penny Arcade Expo, September 4th-6th, Seattle, Washington.

“Dragon Age: Origins is the biggest, most ambitious BioWare game to date, and we will be delivering that great experience simultaneously on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, CEO and co-founder of BioWare and General Manager and Vice President, Electronic Arts. “Whether you’re a PC or console gamer, Dragon Age: Origins reinvents the fantasy experience, combining a great story with raw emotion and brutal action. We’re excited to share it with gamers before it ships this fall.”

GameNorth will be on hand at Fan Expo Canada to play Dragon Age: Origins and whatever else the exhibition has in store for us. If you’d like to meet up, feel free to drop us a line!

Now give me Wrex, Garrus and Liara and my party will be complete.