You know how badass you are when you can summon two more demons to rip a demon apart!

Yeah, I know, there’s nothing particularly Ultima-related about BioWare‘s Dragon Age series of games. At the same time, I would be remiss if I did not point out that the Dragon Age toolset is ludicrously powerful and would, I think, be well-suited to developing an Ultima adventure in.

And hence, I’m reporting this, because as I previously noted, my goal was — and continues to be — to expand Aiera‘s scope somewhat to serve as a kind of developer connection for people wanting to tell an Ultima tale. Keeping abreast of available engines and toolsets is a big part of that.

And who honestly doesn’t think that Dragon Age 2 won’t have a wicked toolset? Update: I have been informed by JasonNH that Dragon Age 2 will not have a toolset. Which, frankly, sucks.

(via Joystiq)

I’ve heard some of his work; it’s incredible.

As well, a new version of the project’s spell system modification for Neverwinter Nights 2 has been uploaded to the Neverwinter Vault. They have also overhauled the NWN2 GUI, developed a custom injury system which is partly inspired by Dragon Age, and published a currency system and a death and resurrection system.

In other words, it has been a busy month for the team; we’ve made excellent progress.

Morality — and its consequences on the game world — have been a growing trend in games for a number of years, and one can in particular point to any number of BioWare games to illustrate the example. Knights of the Old Republic featured a fairly simple derivation of the “karma” system common to earlier games (various Ultima titles included, to a degree). Games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect boasted more complex morality systems that moved beyond the somewhat Pelagian basis of the karma counter, tracking good and evil on separate scales rather than allowing past evils to be undone or smoothed over by later good deeds.

Indeed, in many such games and game series, the moral choices made in one game are — or can be — carried over to the next entry in the series, reshaping the game world and playthrough experience in ways both small and large. (And yes, I’m totally stoked to see what Mass Effect 3 does with this notion. In fact, I’m saving up my “True Renegade”, “kill all potential ally species” playthrough for its release.)

Now, no Ultima title that I can think of ever really implemented a formal morality system, in the sense of something that the player could track (certainly, nothing so apparent in-game as e.g. Mass Effect’s Paragon and Renegade score bars). At the same time, a rudimentary morality system was in place in many of the Ultima titles. Stealing when a shopkeeper was present brought the guards down on your head; attacking someone in the presence of witnesses could mean a similar guard-delivered beat-down. Some Ultimas also presented you with situations to challenge your Virtue. Supposedly, there was actually a more evolved karma system than this in some of the Ultima titles, but I never really noticed it…even when I tried to play through the game in the most asshole-like manner possible.

Indeed, about the worst that would happen is that the people I stole from or pushed around would stop speaking to me…for about a day, maybe two. After that…why, yes, they would gladly sell me that two-handed sword.

Now why, you might ask, am I musing about this at all. Probably, you’d rather I get off my fat butt (okay, it’s not that fat) and get those downloads restored. And yeah, I probably should do that as well. However, I’ve twice now been asked by a certain Mr. Paul Barnett, who has been “looking to collect thoughts and views that fans have about Ultima.”

So in the absence of my ability to contact him in return, I’ve decided to launch something of a new feature here at the site: I’d like to collect everyone’s feedback about aspects of the Ultima games. And this is the basic format that such outings will follow: I’ll open up with some musing about something or other, and then invite comments.

Leave your thoughts and tell your friends!

The latest signings bode well for the company’s new “studio-focused philosophy,” which EA Partners general manager David DiMartini describes as “giving the world’s best independent developers access to EA’s global publishing resources, letting them focus on what they do best — making great games.“

Perhaps there’s hope for BioWare‘s Dragon Age yet!

I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, of course…but EA‘s track record of turning effective companies into wrecks and producers of poorly-executed, buggy, narratively weak games has been pretty consistent since the days of Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Electronic Arts Inc., the video game developer known for titles such as “Madden NFL” and “The Sims,” said Thursday it will acquire two software studios from Elevation Partners in a deal worth up to US$860 million.

The studios, BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios, have a total of 10 games under development. Elevation owns their parent, VG Holding Corp.

Together, the studios employ about 800 people in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, as well as in Canada and Australia.

I guess we’ll see if Dragon Age gets rushed out the door now, or (worse) cancelled.

You can read the official press release from BioWare here.

Update: Further thought…