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'Mass Effect: Andromeda' coming holiday 2016
We've waited and waited for solid details on Mass Effect: Andromeda for what seems like an eternity and now we have a few more. The game launches next holiday season, to start. That's big enough on its own, but BioWare had even more to share from the stage of its press event here at E3 2015. Since it's using the Frostbite game engine pioneered by DICE, the game looks predictably gorgeous. It's in a new galaxy; the Mako is back; you're an N7 officer once again. You're playing as a human male or female, but not as the character seen in the trailer. BioWare says that Andromeda's "very much a new adventure" and that it takes place quite a bit after the events of Mass Effect 3.
'Mass Effect' director Casey Hudson joins Microsoft's HoloLens team
Casey Hudson, the producer largely responsible for EA and BioWare's Mass Effect trilogy, is now Creative Director at Microsoft Studios, where he's working on HoloLens and Xbox games. Microsoft appears to be all-in on HoloLens development -- Hudson now works alongside former Lionhead Studios boss John Needham and he reports directly to CVP of Next Gen Experiences Kudo Tsunoda, who previously led Microsoft's Kinect Games initiative. Hudson relocated from Edmonton, Canada, to Redmond, Washington, for his new role.
Catching up with BioWare cofounder Greg Zeschuk
Greg Zeschuk, the man that co-founded BioWare and shepherded the development of now classic franchises like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, left the gaming industry for good more than two years ago. Yet, despite that apparent retirement, he was back on the show floor at GDC in San Francisco to show off Biba, one of his many part-time side projects. Don't worry. Zeschuk's main passion remains beer, beer and more beer. But he's also committed to using his influence and financial resources for more altruistic endeavors.
BioWare cancels 'Shadow Realms,' its first original game in six years
Well, that was quick. Six months after its debut, BioWare's announced it's canceled its online action-RPG, Shadow Realms. The Austin-based studio isn't moving forward with the four-versus-one PC game because, as the studio's general manager Jeff Hickman tells it, it's working on other things at the moment --including the next Mass Effect, add-on content for last year's Dragon Age: Inquisition and the team's Star Wars online RPG, The Old Republic. As GamesIndustry notes, that last title might attract new players given this December's release of The Force Awakens. Don't fret if you signed up for Shadow Realms' closed alpha, though, as BioWare says it's working on a reward for your trouble.
Hyperspace Beacon: Seven things I learned while writing about SWTOR
This travel through hyperspace cannot be compared to anything else. Not many people get an opportunity to work on something they love professionally, like my writing about Star Wars: The Old Republic. With Massively as we know it coming to an end, it's time to say goodbye to this passenger. Before I actually say my final farewell to Massively, I'd like to leave you, fans of Massively and the Hyperspace Beacon, with a list of things that I've learned from writing this column.
SWTOR dishes out punishment for a major exploit
Last last week, BioWare community manager Eric Musco wrote a detailed post regarding a recent exploit that's plagued the PvE endgame for Star Wars: The Old Republic, explaining the planned punishments and the team's reasoning behind them. "We didn't take these actions lightly," Musco posts, "and reviewed every account to determine where we could be lenient. From our end, this was a no win situation. We feel responsible for allowing the exploit to occur and remain in the game for an unreasonable length of time, but we also cannot and will not condone cheating." Penalties applied to the affected accounts ranged from a warning and one day ban to even full and permanent suspensions. Musco finished up the post by encouraging players to continue to report potential exploits as soon as they are found.
Hyperspace Beacon: Examining SWTOR's producer letter
At the community cantina that Star Wars: The Old Republic held this past weekend at PAX South, community manager Eric Musco said that the community team was going to do something different in 2015 during the cantinas. He said that he wanted to reveal some tidbit at each and every event. And this cantina yielded us an early look at Producer Bruce Maclean's roadmap letter to the community. In the letter, he talks about where the SWTOR story will take us, what's on the horizon for flashpoints, personal stories, planets, and the outfit designer. But what is all this new stuff, and should it get people excited about the coming year? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer for that. If you play for similar reasons as I do, then there is plenty to be excited about. However, there are certain players, like PvPers, who might be a little frustrated by what they are seeing and not seeing in the letter.
PAX South 2015: SWTOR reveals its plans for this year
When Eric Musco, the Star Wars: The Old Republic community manager, took the stage at the Community cantina last night at PAX South, he revealed that in 2015 the team wants to do something a bit different with this and future cantina crawl events. In the past, it has been policy not to reveal anything at the cantinas; they were intended to be social events where players could get some face-time with the developers of the game that they both enjoyed. However, going forward, the community and development teams have decided that each cantina will reveal that had not been mentioned before. The reveal at this weekend's cantina came in the form of the yet-to-be-published producer's letter by Bruce Maclean. The completely made-up story is that it was stolen from his computer while he wasn't looking and printed out to share with us at the cantina. After the break, you'll find a copy of that letter as it was dictated to cantina goers. The caveat, of course, is that this is not the final version of the letter that will appear on the official site in two weeks, so everything is subject to change.
SWTOR Q&A mentions 12x, soloable flashpoints
Werit has posted a Q&A with Star Wars: The Old Republic's community team. It touches on the well-received 12x experience boost, which BioWare says it will be discussing "later this year." There's also a bit about making older flashpoints soloable and while BioWare says it doesn't want to make all group content accessible to single players, it does have "some major story moments that [it] would like every player to see."
Dragon Age: Inquisition PC patch 3 notes, 'close' to launch
The third PC patch for Dragon Age: Inquisition is focused on fixing myriad bugs, particularly those that break the game for some players, BioWare writes in a blog post. The patch is "close" to release, Executive Producer Mark Darrah said on Twitter over the weekend. The patch tweaks multiplayer issues, balance issues, and adds requested features such as a key binding that allows walking on PC, armor upgrade menus and a push-to-talk option in the multiplayer end-of-match summary. "Based on feedback from our players, we tweaked the banter system to be less random in order to prevent extra-long periods of silence," BioWare writes. "We fixed quest blockers in the personal quests of Dorian and Sera as well as a spawning issue in Solas's personal quest (I won't elaborate to avoid light spoilers). [...] We continue to listen to feedback from our players, and we thank everyone for working with us to create an even better Dragon Age experience." Information about patches on Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One and PS4 is incoming. See the complete PC patch 3 notes direct from BioWare below. [Image: BioWare]
Dragon Age: Inquisition stats record more than 2 million flying lizards slain
The official Dragon Age: Inquisition Twitter account has some interesting statistics for all the Heralds of Andraste out there. According to tweets made earlier this week, more than 2.6 million dragons have been slain by players of Inquisition. The unfortunate Ferelden Frostback was the most-killed of her species, while the Highland Ravager has been the most successful at evading death. Fifty-eight percent of all dragons were killed in the land of Orlais, so any of our readers who happen to be fire-breathing monsters, take note: this is not a land you want to be traveling to right now. As for who's doing the slaying, the overall majority - 68 percent - of Inquisitors have been male, while 32 percent have been female. While the percentage of female heroes may seem small, it's actually a big step up from BioWare's Mass Effect series; back in 2011, the developer revealed that fewer than 15 percent of players used a female version of Commander Shepard between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. But really, it doesn't matter if you're male, female, Qunari, Dwarf, etc. What matters is that we find the dragon that sounds like Sean Connery and -- oh, wrong thing? Wrong thing. [Image: EA]
Star Wars: The Old Republic will address balance and ranked PvP for update 3.1
Star Wars: The Old Republic is launching update 3.1 in about a month, and the developers are using this patch to address some standing issues. The patch also kicks off the game's fourth ranked play season, which is scheduled to last about three months. This season will be used as the basis for some new ranked play adjustments, such as implementing a "floor" rating for picking up the lowest-tier season rewards in Season 5. The season's titles will also be class-specific based on forum feedback. Designers are also looking into balancing classes, starting with the Darkness Assassin and the Kinetic Combat Shadow, addressing issues with survivability and damage in the class. If you've been feeling squishier or less resilient or noticed oddities with abilities, you can take part in the thread yourself. Early versions of these changes have already been rolled out to the test servers for the coming update. [Thanks to Mikey Moo for the tip!]
Hyperspace Beacon: Handling SWTOR exploits
On this week's Hyperspace Beacon, I'd like to discuss the exploit issues that have popped up in Star Wars: The Old Republic as of late. Admittedly, the widespread exploit that SWTOR recently experienced wasn't gamebreaking, and it certainly didn't fracture the economy as exploits in other games have. In fact, I don't even think that a rollback or anything severe was even considered for this particular exploit. However, the community team mentioned some things in its handling of the situation that made me wonder about exploits and cheats that violate the intent of the game designers. I don't know that I will have all the answers in regard to how to handle specific situations, but I really intend for this to be a conversation starter. I want to read your thoughts in the comments.
SWTOR devs looking at lag issues, prepping 3.0.2 and 3.1 updates
BioWare reps are all over Star Wars: The Old Republic's official forums as the week winds down. Thus far we've gotten an announcement about the game's 3.0.2 update which is scheduled to go live on January 13th. We also got a heads-up regarding the 3.1 update currently on the test server. Finally, community manager Eric Musco chimed in with a lengthy post detailing what BioWare is doing about the prominent lag issues introduced with game update 3.0. [Thanks Mikey Moo!]
See Commander Shepard's first steps
Straight from the Twitter feed of Mass Effect 1 and 2 Lead Animator Jonathan Cooper, Mass Effect protagonist Commander Shepard was a woman in the game's very first animation tests 10 years ago. Turns out, FemShep is the OG Commander. Ten years ago this month, my very first anim test for Mass Effect. Yup, Commander Shepard was originally a woman: pic.twitter.com/FhC2E0FSrA - Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) January 9, 2015 "For those asking, I repurposed mocap from Jade Empire," Cooper said in a follow-up tweet. "Shepard was always planned to be both male & female after JE's pre-set characters."
Rumor: BioWare's Shadow Realms 'totally rebooted'
Shadow Realms is "going through big changes and may have been totally rebooted," according to an unnamed source who spoke to Kotaku. BioWare's episodic online action RPG was revealed in August of last year and was hit with an alpha delay on October 31st. A "reliable source familiar with goings-on at BioWare Austin" tells Kotaku that the title was revamped in October and "will now have a full campaign." Why the changes? Apparently BioWare's decision to embrace the integration of EA's digital store and Origin coincided with the decision to reboot Shadow Realms. "Developers at EA take budget hits if they don't use internal technology and services," Kotaku says.
Joystiq Top 10 of 2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition
ATTENTION: The year 2014 has concluded its temporal self-destruct sequence. If you are among the escapees, please join us in salvaging and preserving the best games from the irradiated chrono-debris. Dragon Age: Inquisition presents a world on fire; fire formed from the spark of lovers, the friction of politics, and the heat of a dragon's breath. It is a game that gives players everything they could have wanted from another entry in the classic RPG franchise. It satisfied our appetites for combat, beautiful worlds, thought-provoking narrative, memorable characters and challenging scenarios. And then it somehow made us hungry for more.
Hyperspace Beacon: Five SWTOR predictions for 2015
It's that time again to make my educated guesses on what BioWare will attempt to accomplish in the coming year with Star Wars: The Old Republic. In the last Hyperspace Beacon, I gave my grade card for how I think 2014 went, but now I extinguish the Force ghost of Christmas past and get a visit from the blue-glowy of Christmas yet to come. I don't always get everything right, but I like to make a guess anyway. When you've finished reading my predictions, let's continue the discussion in the comments. I want to hear your thoughts as well.
KOTOR finds the Androids you've been looking for
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, BioWare's beloved RPG, is now available on Android devices. To mark the occasion, developer Aspyr Media has slashed the usual $10 price in half (with a lightsaber, presumably). You can snag it from Google Play right now, so long as your device is up to snuff, of course.
Joystiq Presents: Dragon Age, Dark Souls and dominatrixes
Anthony John Agnello (@ajohnagnello) chats with BioWare Creative Director Mike Laidlaw about Dragon Age: Inquisition. They discuss the influence that From Software's Dark Souls series had on Laidlaw when crafting the developer's latest RPG. Listen to the MP3
