Day 3 Report-Part One-Bioware & Stainless Games
Games. Games. Games. (sing along with Motley Crue’s Girls, Girls, Girls…LOL.) That’s what was humming through the Outlaw’s head all weekend.
I don’t have any of my own pics for you today, because my camera took awful shots of monitors. (I assure you that I will have another cameraman with me besides myself next year.) When you get to the main exhibition hall at PAX ’08, just to the right, the BioWare setup this year was most impressive. You may not recognize the name, but Jay Watamaniuk, returned to PAX and previewed the new Dragon Age computer fantasy RPG. Depending on your graphics card, this may be comparable or even better than Bethesda’s Oblivion.
http://downloads.bioware.com/dragon_age/desktops/dragon_age_logo_desk_1024.jpg
Jay made a joke that since they made Neverwinter Nights, they’ve developed the technology to put ceilings on all the buildings. Everyone had a good laugh. True enough, the camera can be manipulated at various angles around the playable character, and he showed us the ceiling in a building. During combat, the playable character made a decapitation and then the BioWare guys paused the game. The gushing blood from the neck in freeze frame was fantastic to see in 360 degree angles. There was a unified “Whoa” throughout the audience.
Playable characters are customizable to gender, race, and profession. They only showed us the classes of warrior and mage. They showed us two races, human and elf. And Jay confirmed the dwarves are in the game, but he wouldn’t say anymore. Apparently in the game, elves are considered second class citizens and NPCs will react differently in conversation to you depending on your race and class. Being from BioWare, this RPG will allow the you to play the light side or the dark side (so to speak). Choices may affect story as the game progresses. There was a scenario in which we had an option to help a prisoner or kill him. Jay asked what the human warrior with noble heritage should do to such a lowly prisoner. “KILL HIM!!” was the mutual cry from the mob. Julius Caesar would be proud. LOL.
According to the story, a blight is coming to the land. The blight is comparable to some orcish horde in other tales. The PC (playable character) starts as an apprentice Grey Warden. The Grey Wardens seem to be some special forces outfit comparable to the Harpers or the Dúnedain Rangers.
Combat was shown with melee and magic. Unless I’m at the controls, I don’t think I can really explain how combat is done. All I can really say is that the combat wasn’t turn-based, and the game is in third-person. In the presentation, the PC was accompanied by three others to make up the party. The user can switch from the PC to any party member. Each party members has his own abilities and inventory, it seemed. A question was asked, “Does the inventory system suck?” Jay guaranteed that the inventory system did not suck. There was a communal chuckle from the audience.
With the elf mage leading the party, the BioWare guys switched to a fighter in the party and controlled him to go into a room solo to scout out the room. The lone fighter was ambushed and found himself attacked by a grease spell that surrounded the floor around him, and then immediately a fireball spell was cast and the fighter was engulfed in flames. The action then switched to the elf mage and she cast a blizzard spell to counter the spell and save her fighter. It seemed like maybe one of the first boss fights of the game, the party of four fought an ogre. The ogre was comparable to a troll from Tolkien’s Middle Earth. As the elf mage did magic ranged combat, she sent in the other three in her party for melee combat. As the party was getting KOed, the mage rushed in and cast a heal spell on the last remaining party member before the elf mage was KOed herself. The user then switched automatically to the last party member and jumped straight forward into the ogre’s torso and planted his sword in the ogre’s chest. The action went into slo-mo, the ogre fell backward as the fighter rode on. As the ogre lay on its back, the fighter pulled the sword from its chest and planted the blade right into the ogre’s skull. So sweet!
I could talk about the impressive cut scenes, but I’m all about the game play. Any game can have awesome cut scenes, and BTW this game does have awesome cut scenes.
How is this game different? Can’t really say for sure, but it look like the next-gen version of Neverwinter Nights. It’s not D&D, so BioWare can be as liberal with this universe they have created. One complaint I have for sure is the lack of a voice for the PC. It may not be important to some, but I think anymore voice work is important in all next-gen games. BioWare said since Mass Effect only had a male or female human, this new game had more options for the PC. I agree it would be a lot of work, but one that needs to be undertaken. Since the game is still under development, maybe users (gamers) can cause enough hype to get some voice actors. But in my opinion, the game seems pretty complete and they have probably game tested the heck out of it and are not going to change it now.
Another demo I tried was from Stainless Games. They had one of their latest Alphas on the show room floor at PAX. Who’s Stainless Games? They developed games such as Carmageddon and more recently Crystal Quest downloadable from LIVE Marketplace. Well what game is it? Oh, it was Duels of the Planeswalkers. What? Oh, sorry, for all you noobs, it’s the new Xbox 360 LIVE Arcade game based on MAGIC the GATHERING. Stainless Games didn’t have a booth, but it was presented by our friend of Wizards of the Coast, the makers of MAGIC and Dungeons & Dragons.
For those of you that have played Magic Online, I must say the presentation of the 360 game is much prettier. The board can be customized and standard decks seem to be 10th edition theme decks. The Wizards of the Coast rep said by playing through single player, we can unlock cards and later customize our own decks. CyberViking, the Outlaw, and Dragon, were all impressed and excited about the game. CyberViking asked about downloadable cards, and the rep said there wasn’t going to be any. Yeah right, we thought. Knowing Micro$oft and their microtransaction, there will be downloadable content. It’s cool, regardless.
As I was playing the game, even though I knew how to play Magic, I still needed assistance from the rep when trying the controls. I think that after a while, the controls scheme would become second nature. I won’t get into the game rules, but it’s the same as the actual card game. Let’s say you or your opponent plays a card and you can’t quite see what card was played or you just want to take a closer look, there is a zoom function. You can also spin the board 180 so you can face your opponent’s cards right side up. You can change the camera view to look straight down on the board or angled as from eye level if we were sitting at an actual card table. The coolest thing since this was still in development, the rep showed us how we can see the A.I. opponent’s hand. LOL.
We tried this in single player and CyberViking asked if there would be any multiplayer. Of course there will be 1 v. 1 play against real human opponents. What about co-op? The rep assured us that there will be 2 v. 2 mode (what’s called two-headed giant) also. Fantastic! Dragon saw this game also, and we all unanimously decided that this was a must buy for the system to play with friends. With or without download content, we were sold on this alpha and the assurances of the rep. Hope we get our co-op.
I know I said I would talk about games, games, games, but this article is getting a little too long. I will split this Day 3 Report on games into sections. But to finish this little bit off I must remark a serious flaw in this alpha version. I happened to attack my opponent with this card:
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http://mi.wizards.com/global/images/magic/general/suntail_hawk.jpg
It’s a flying creature which can only be blocked by other creatures that can fly or have a reach ability. The A.I. opponent blocked me with this creature:
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/cards/15073.jpg
CyberViking, the OUTLAW, and everyone around us were collectively LMAOing. For all you noobs, a Civic Wayfinder cannot block the Suntail Hawk. The game cheated! We pointed it out to the rep. “Oh, we’ll have to fix that.” LOL. ‘Til next time…
Have fun, game on, and God bless!
