www.youtube.com Click this to watch Part 1! BioWare: All Your History (Part 2) S2E2 Over the years, BioWare has earned a reputation as one of gaming’s greatest storytellers with titles like ‘Knights Of The Old Republic’ and ‘Mass Effect’. find out how they did it on All Your History. In this second episode, see how the success of Baldur’s Gate allowed the young company to develop three major titles simultaneously — and succeed with all of them. FOR MORE MACHINIMA, GO TO: www.YouTube.com FOR MORE GAMEPLAY, GO TO: www.YouTube.com TAGS: yt:quality=high machinima CES Consumer Electronics Show all your history base are belong to us BioWare story video game Knights of the Old Republic Mass Effect med school Baldur’s Gate RPG studio Canada role playing Dragon Age Origins Star Wars 2000003035946 14633190816 14633159790
Video Rating: 4 / 5

www.youtube.com Click this to watch Inside Gaming: 1/6/2010 (CES Preview & Holiday Recap)! Inside Gaming: 1/13/2010 CES Recap (Consumer Electronics Show) After spending a week in Las Vegas, The Dead Pixel returns to tell you all about the crazy things he got to play with while there. From Dark Void to Lost Planet 2, here is a recap of what you might of missed. Follow Machinima on Twitter! Machinima twitter.com Inside Gaming twitter.com Machinima Respawn twitter.com Machinima Entertainment, Technology, Culture twitter.com FOR MORE MACHINIMA, GO TO: www.youtube.com FOR MORE GAMEPLAY, GO TO: www.youtube.com TAGS: yt:quality=high Inside Gaming IG news machinima Khail dead pixel video games trailer twitter youtube CES Preview Holiday Recap pirate Torrent Freak Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 PC Project Natal motion control E3 Half Life Microsoft DL Borderlands Mad Moxxi Underdome Riot Cameron Firefight Horde Mode Halo ODST Valve Mass Effect BioShock Crysis Steam Torchlight Shattered Horizon PS3 xbox 360 Dante’s Inferno God of War NFL Sony BioWare OnLive iPhone CES Las Vegas Outside Gaming Et Cetera ETC MAG

It’d take a cataclysmic explosion at Yellowstone to knock World of Warcraft off its perch atop MMO Mountain, but if there’s one game that will give it a run for its money it’s BioWare’s The Old Republic. Two reasons for that: one, it’s BioWare, and two, it’s Star Wars. Star Wars in the capable hands of BioWare = goodness. And I write that knowing absolutely nothing about Star Wars—I only saw Episode I and Episode III! Anyhow, a video!

This here video shows BioWare kingpins Dr. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, and others, explaining why The Old Republic will takes MMOs to another level, primarily by improving the combat.

Hopefully BioWare shows off a bit more at E3, which I do believe we’re planning to attend in some capacity.

From the opening portion you will find yourself taking your time enjoying the scenery. Mass Effect 2’s world is a very-detailed and realistic one, even on a computer with relatively weak 9500 GT graphics (at 1152 x 864). The high-production values also extend to the music and sound effects, creating a compelling world that you’re happy to be a part of. While there’s not that much to do in the beginning, that changes the first time you find yourself under enemy fire.

Even the character creation system is well thought out, a logical progression from the opening scenes. That’s the general idea I got from this game. While RPG staples such as package delivery and find the X are prominent, the whole experience seemed quite integrated and quite new to me. The overarching story arc is simplistic at points, merely a clear path you have to take, but the variety of locations and situations you find yourself in keep things interesting. Whether you’re leading your team against an enemy squad, or negotiating your way to ultimate victory, Mass Effect 2’s gameplay is the kind that keeps you playing “for just one more mission”.

And, in the tradition of past Bioware RPG epics like Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age, your teammates feel like living breathing colleagues, instead of cookie-cutter minions suited for specific tasks. As you prepare your team for the suicide mission, earning your subordinates’ loyalty by completing missions where they have a personal interest flesh out their profiles.

It will take a few marathon sessions to get through this game, at least if you want to prepare enough to get everyone out alive. But the fun doesn’t stop after you’ve won the final battle and make a decision that will most likely affect what happens in Mass Effect 3. The different character classes all have their own way of killing enemies, but it’s different enough to merit several playthroughs.

In fact, Bioware shrewdly structured Mass Effect 2 as an advertisement for Mass Effect 1; certain storylines in the second game are dependent on what you did on the first, based on the save game files your import at the beginning. Make certain choices in Mass Effect 1, and you’ll be rewarded with content in Mass Effect 2 that expounds on your old decisions.

And the choices you make within Mass Effect 2 have their own consequences. Fail to win an allies’ loyalty or prepare adequately, and you may find yourself mourning loss in the final battle. Yet more reasons to involve yourself with Bioware’s creations.

Mass Effect 2 is the complete package. From great visuals and involving sound effects, to missions that never seem to get old, this is a game you should spend your hard-earned money on. It will totally be worth it.

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Oh, the ironing. Big Daddy Cool, John Biggs, just interviewed Casey Hudson, from BioWare, about Mass Effect 2. It was streamed live! The beauty is, while they were talking about the game, kids with modded Xbox 360s all over the world were already playing the game. Yes, the game has leaked. Granted, it’s only a few days before the game actually comes out, but still, the biggest release of the year (so far) is now available where you find such things. I’ll be getting the PC version via Steam, thank you very much. (There’s nothing after this. Clicking Read More is a waste of your time.)

Watch live as we interview Casey Hudson, Lead Programmer for Mass Effect 2. You can ask questions live by Tweeting CrunchGear with the hash tag #biowareqs. The interview should begin shortly. Until it goes live, you’ll see footage from our recent CES coverage.

I’ll be doing a live interview with Lead Programmer Casey Hudson and Bioware’s Dr. Greg Zeschuk tomorrow at 10:00am EST and I’d like to know what you guys would like me to ask them about Mass Effect 2 the latest Bioware title.

I’ll be streaming the interview live thanks to Livestream and you can ask questions in comments, below, or you can ask questions live by Tweeting to CrunchGear with the hash tag #biowareqs. I hope you’re as excited about this opportunity as we are.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a conundrum. As many of you know, Mass Effect 2 comes out on January 26. It’s the first big game of the year. There’s only one problem: I’m having a heck of a hard time getting excited about it. What’s wrong with me, because clearly something is?

At CES last week, I spoke to BioWare’s Casey Hudson, who’s the game’s project director. He was the project director for Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Needless to say, he’s overseen some pretty big games. Good games, as a matter of fact. Me? I make Netherweave Bags all day in WoW.

My initial question touched on the so-called controversy involving BioWare and JRPGs. It seems someone at BioWare had recently made an off-hand remark about the lack of evolution in JRPGs in the past few years. Now, this wasn’t an official BioWare position, obviously (and as I was politely reminded), but rather one man’s opinion. Regardless, let it be known: BioWare respects the JRPG, it just has its own way of telling a story. The BioWare way, if you will.

After that incredibly awkward opening, we moved onto a subject which is something that I’ve seen discussed in various message boards: whether or not Mass Effect 2 will move far away from the traditional BioWare model in order to attract a new audience. (You can almost hear every single person on NeoGAF lamenting, “Oh, but we liked Game before it became too mainstream, now we hate it.”) You know, perhaps transforming the game from a space opera into little more than GTA or Call of Duty with a dialogue wheel.

To that, Hudson responded by saying it’s all about balance. Does BioWare want to open its games up to new audiences? Sure, but at the same time, there very much is a BioWare-style game, and these games have done pretty well so far. While perhaps a little less dramatic than “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” BioWare, Hudson said, absolutely realizes that it has a knack for a certain type of game. It just so happens that more than a few people out there enjoy that type of game. So please don’t think that Mass Effect 2 is going to mutate into Resident Evil in Space or anything. It’s not.

Come to think of it, Resident Evil in Space… isn’t that Dead Space?

But back to my original premise: why can’t I get excited for Mass Effect 2? Or, more generally, why can’t I “get into” BioWare games? (Someone should answer that with, “You’re doing it wrong!”) I never thought I’d like Fallout 3, but after forcing myself to play it, yeah, I ended up liking it quite a great deal.

I suspect the issue is, BioWare games have such a fantastic reputation, that I expect to start a new game and immediately be all, “THIS IS INCREDIBLE.” Luckily, I bought Mass Effect during the big Steam sale over the holidays, so I’ve committed myself to take at least one night off from WoW to give them game a game. (I probably should have mentioned earlier, if for no reason other than to maintain a sensible paragraph structure, that my previous BioWare experience consists of less than one hour of Kotor, less than one hour of Jade Empire, and occasionally watching my brother play Dragon Age.)

Make no mistake that after talking to Mr. Hudson at CES (and reading more and more about Mass Effect 2 since then), I’ll be playing the game come January 26. This, of course, provided there’s no last-minute unlocking shenanigans on Steam like the kind that marred the release of Modern Warfare 2.

This post is syndicated with permission from GamerFront.net

We’re just about a month away from the release of Dragon Age: Origins, which means Bioware is teasing us with new footage from the game. Today we have a video and a few high-rez pics of the Ferelden capital city of Denerim. Here’s a brief description of the city for your reading pleasure.

“Denerim, the capital of Ferelden, began originally as an outpost of the ancient Tevinter Imperium. Its mages rose up a dark tower from the side of a mountain, a symbol of the Imperium’s power. As the Imperium faded, the tower passed to the hands of the teyrns that ruled the region for a millennium.

Today that tower still stands as Fort Drakon, immediately recognizable to any ship that approaches the rocky coast. The city that has sprung up around it has almost been carved out of the side of the mountain it rests on, and during the Dragon Age, its population has grown beyond the city’s ability to cope. The cramped districts, joined to each other by a network of bridges, are built one almost on top of the other. The narrow streets of the Lower Docks have an almost labyrinthine quality, and the walled-off Elven Alienage is so overpopulated that several purges have been required to keep order.

To the rest of the world, Denerim is most famous as the birthplace of Andraste. In typical Fereldan fashion, however, the monument erected to the prophet in the Palace District is unassuming—a great rock adorned with a simple message of peace. Worshippers come from far and wide to touch the Birth Rock and issue a quiet and respectful prayer. This is how things are done in Denerim, and the locals would have it no other way.”

[ Bioware ] VIA [ GamerFront ]