Ever wonder what The Blackrock Sword would look like in D&D?

Well…someone crafted a spec sheet for it, for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. So now you can say that you know.

Just how did BioWare write The Old Republic?

each story line gets passed back and forth between the writers, artists and animators. A line like “and then a the annoying Gungan is hurled face first into an exploding sun” is easy to write, but technically almost impossible to realise. It’s initially up to the world designers to help decide what is and isn’t going to work.

“They go through with a fine-toothed comb and look at everything that’s required,” Erickson explains. “They look at the pacing, and look at how it would feel in the world, and they’re gonna give us feedback and say, “this whole scene here where you have 700 people here, and they’re all going to fly in the air and then get juggled and then turn into tarantulas? We don’t have a way to do any of that.”

“Then it’s gonna go to the cinematic team, it’s gonna go to the art team – they’re gonna look at all the requirements, everybody gives their thumbs up, and then the writers start writing.”

Then all that’s left to is write hundreds of hours of dialogue. This is not straightforward.

The more I play SWTOR and the deeper I get into its plot, the more I appreciate just what a massive undertaking creating a MMORPG with such a strong single-player narrative component must have been. Even something like making sure that key quest landmarks reset in a timely manner after being interacted with must have been mind-bogglingly difficult. On one hand, you don’t want a queue of players standing around in the desert, each waiting for his turn to click on the rock under which the information cache is buried. And on the other hand, you don’t want it to reset too quickly either, lest someone figure out an exploit. SWTOR seems to have found a good balance, but I am not sure I want to know how many people went insane trying to figure that out.

Related: SWTOR won the Guiness World Record for voice acting. Over 200,000 lines of dialogue and more than 200 voice actors attached to the project. Yeah…that’s a pretty solid win.

And: If you’ve ever wondered how a Hutt might actually fight, BioWare has the answer: giant freakin’ mechs.

Age of Booty actually looks like it might be very fun to play!

It also, of course, wins in either the “Most Unfortunate Game Title” or “Most Amusing Double Entendre in a Game Title” category. I can’t decide which.

I am quite intrigued by the Lytro camera concept.

The idea behind the Lytro concept is that, instead of capturing a single image, the entire “light field” entering the camera is recorded. Lytro’s software then performs the “next steps” in the image processing chain (stuff that most digital cameras would normally perform before saving an image), allowing the user to adjust even the focal point in the image.

You have to really see it in action to understand just how powerful an idea that is, so I would direct all of you to visit the Lytro website. With the right software, you could even use these cameras to create 3D reproductions of scenes from just a handful of images…to say nothing of the fact that you’d never have to worry about an out-of-focus snapshot ever again!

Finally! A Swiss Army Knife with a 1 TB drive included!

Because we all needed one of those, right?

Bethesda owns all rights to the Fallout name.

So much for Interplay, it seems.

On Dragon Age’s cinematics.

The BioWare blog has an interview with Jonathan Perry, the cinematic lead for the Dragon Age series. It sounds like he has a pretty fun job.

On the new XCOM game (the strategy title, not the FPS).

Rock, Paper, Shotgun links to a set of screenshots from Firaxis’ newly-announced remake of Enemy Unknown, and offers up some commentary on the good and the worrisome from the set.

Related: Why should you care about this XCOM remake from Firaxis? GameInformer tells you why..

See also: A more recent article/summary of thoughts from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, with at least 50% less worry!

Seven things to know about HTML5!

Including some stuff that aspiring browser game developers might want to take note of!

Steam just topped 40 million users.

Does Valve even need to make games anymore?

Whatever social ills may be plaguing it, the UK does seem to have an awesome education system.

And they are in the process of overhauling it a bit, so as to enhance the technical side of its curriculum, aiming to make it more “open source” and to give it greater focus on computer science.

There could be as many as 100 billion alien worlds in the Milky Way.

Related: Should we re-think the definition of “life”? With so many potential worlds, some of which will no doubt fall inside the habitable zones of their stars, we may need to. Assuming alien life does in fact exist, would we recognize it as life if we encountered it? Is the sort of life we see all around us on Earth the only kind of life that exists in the Universe?

Hell…is the notion of the “habitable zones” around stars even valid for anything other than evaluating whether it might be possible, in some dim and distant future, that human beings might be able to set foot on and/or inhabit an extrasolar world one day?

EA had an amazing year, especially on the digital distribution front.

So much so, it seems to have caught them slightly by surprise, prompting a bit of a re-org:

Moving into 2012, Electronic Arts has made some key organizational changes to its internal structure in hopes of better executing its digital initiatives. Following the launch of the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, the online service FIFA Ultimate Team, and the company’s Origin distribution platform, EA says it hopes to make digital goods a larger part of its overall strategy.

Related: Zynga just poached Barry Cottle from EA. He had previously headed up their mobile/social/casual gaming division. Cottle’s division would have been at or near the forefront of EA’s digital successes.

Syndicate is coming to Good Old Games on Thursday!

And GOG is having a bit of a contest to celebrate:

Mission:
Assemble your team of cyborgs, give us your Team Name, Method of Operation, and any other relevant information you’d like.

Go on, spread your influence across the globe and tell us how.

Bounty:
1 free copy of Syndicate for the 10 posters who have the best Syndicate team. We’ll be reading through all of your posts (Hello, discordiac, our new marketing manager who “volunteered” for this job!) and picking the ones that we like best.

Rules:
1. Only one entry post per user. Feel free to comment & edit until the contest closes.
2. You may enter into similar contests that we are running on Twitter and Facebook, but only once via each different channel.
3. We will be picking 10 of our favorite teams from this thread to win their free copies of Syndicate.
4. The contest will end on Thursday the 19th of January 2012 at 7:00 AM EST.

I guess submissions can be left in the comments of the above-linked news post, or submitted via Facebook and Twitter.

Also: judging by the latest tweet from Paul Barnett, the timing of this release all still part of a grander plan. Actually, the release is rather timely, since a co-op-enabled demo version of the upcoming Syndicate FPS will, it has just been announced, be released later this month. (The full game is slated for release in February.)

How ScummVM survived…and kept adventure gaming alive.

LucasArts isn’t exactly known for being particularly tolerant of fan projects involving its games or works derived from its projects. So how, exactly, did the fan-made, open-source multi-engine-supporting framework ScummVM managed to survive and grow beyond its original developers’ wildest expectations?

Ars Technica’s historical piece on ScummVM is a grand read. Do check it out.

Forget Angry Birds plush toys…now you can have soft, cuddly, heavily armed Worms plushies!

IGS’ Worms key ring plush line launches with four characters – Original Worm, Army Worm, Pirate Worm and the Super Sheep.

In addition to the collectable-sized key rings, the Worms will also be available in a variety of regular plush sizes.

And hey, whaddya know? Worms United was just released on Good Old Games! Convenient!

The origin of Stonehenge’s inner stones has been found!

Apparently, they came from a quarry about 160 miles away. How they were transported over that staggering distance is still a mystery, however.

More Skyrim moddy goodness!

If, you know, summoning zombie dragons and dual-wielding greatswords is your thing.

Tonight’s post brought to you by too much starch:

Thin mattress, too.

G4TV has posted a list of RPGs to watch for in 2012.

Naturally, both Reckoning and Risen 2: Dark Waters are on it, as are a few other titles that you can probably guess at if you don’t try particularly hard.

And to be fair, it’s not a great list, because Risen 2 only gets an “honourable mention”.

Which brings us to GamesBeat’s list of the top 10 new game brands that will appear in 2012.

This list is a bit more interesting, since it covers some titles that should be familiar to most of you, but may come as a surprise if you don’t follow news for particular console systems or publishers. Risen 2 isn’t on this list, since that’s already an established series, but Reckoning certainly is, and wins high praise:

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the studio’s first project and it has already generated buzz simply because of the names attached to it. Ken Rolston, former lead designer of classic role-playing games The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is leading the project, while New York Times best-selling fantasy author R.A. Salvatore is creating the lore and game world and Spawn creator Todd McFarlane is in charge of the art direction.

38 Studios says Reckoning will have the open-world exploration, vast narrative, and character customization fans expect from the genre, as well as fast-paced, graphically stimulating action and fluid controls. If God of War and Fable had a baby, it would probably look a lot like Reckoning, and expectations are high for this brand new IP.

Dishonored and Journey (the latter is a PS3 exclusive, sadly) also look interesting; Dishonored is the upcoming game from Arx Fatalis developers Arkane Studios.

Other preview articles of note:

• Check out PC Gamer’s previews archive of upcoming 2012 games.
• And don’t miss GameInformer’s “Year of the RPG” round-up preview either!

Hallelujah! Firaxis is making a new, tactical XCOM game!

It’s actually a remake of Enemy Unknown, but even so: gaming enthusiasts are all but dancing in the streets that it’s not a first-person shooter. And that it’s Firaxis.

To celebrate, Steam put all the other XCOM games on sale.

The upcoming Syndicate revamp was denied classification in Australia.

Starbreeze Studios’ interesting-looking re-imagining of dystopian action franchise Syndicate will likely not be coming to Aussie players, both because the Australian Government Classification Board has declined to actually rate the game due to its apparently quite explicit violence, and because Electronic Arts has said in response that it won’t be selling the game there as a result.

Australia’s ratings system, you see, doesn’t have an 18+ category like Europe and North America do. The highest the Aussie system goes is a 15+ rating, and the Board did not want to assign Syndicate this rating after deeming (in a process that EA calls “arcane”) that minors should not be exposed to the violence and other events depicted in-game.

So, that’s that.

The Doctors BioWare talk about expanding into the MMO space while staying true to their roots.

Essentially, it distills down to the element that most observers have already noticed sets Star Wars: The Old Republic apart from other MMOs to which, at a mechanical level, it is otherwise quite similar: storytelling and emotional engagement. That sort of thing has become a pillar of BioWare games these days, as series like Mass Effect and Dragon Age demonstrate; nascent elements of it were present in earlier titles like KOTOR and Jade Empire.

And it’s hard to dispute their general point. Granted, it’s hard to see where that sort of engagement is going to factor in to something like Generals 2, but I suppose we’ll see in time.

Also: don’t miss The Doctors talking about the making of The Old Republic.

An interesting read, and a summary of what drew them to making an MMORPG (which, it turns out, could have actually been a Game of Thrones title, had things gone differently), and why they continued to have faith in something that took six years and every spare developer at every studio they had to finish.

See also: the BAFTA lecture from The Doctors BioWare.

And also: an amusing invulnerability cheat (since patched) from the game.

Hey, guess what!

That ancient violin you shelled out a cool million dollars for?

It probably doesn’t produce a sound that is noticeably or actually any richer than a quality modern violin which could have been obtained for a small fraction of the price you paid for it.

Now you know!

Obdisian’s South Park RPG looks exactly like the cartoon.

Not, granted, that it was a hard artistic style to emulate. Still, the reproduction is uncanny.

Here’s the skinny on the game from RPS:

The framework of the game sees the player controlling a new kid arriving in South Park and journeying around to make both friends and enemies. Characters that have been discovered will be added to a social network style database, which could prompt me to indulge in the acquaintance-gathering urge that I’ve managed to avoid in the real world. It’s to be small parties and side-on combat, with classes chosen from fighter, mage, thief, cleric and Jew. This is a game in which Jews will beat up hippies for experience and loot.

It’s impressing the hell out of Sergorn and myself that this game will be powered by the same Onyx engine that brought Dungeon Siege 3 to life. Talk about versatility!

Zynga’s IPO wasn’t exactly a steaming bucket of fail, but it was certainly a disappointment!

Granted, I’m happy to see Zynga taken down a peg; this reaffirms my faith in the market a little bit. A very little bit, sure, but even so.

Gamasutra’s analysis is interesting to read, addressing the less-than-stellar performance of Zynga stock at opening from a number of angles. A lot of it, though, seems to reduce to the fact that Zynga, while still the dominant force in social gaming, has been slowing down (quite noticeably) over the last few months.

Sick of the default Skyrim interface?

If you’re playing it on PC, give SkyUI a try!

Speaking of Skyrim, let’s talk about Dragon Age 3 for a moment!

“Wait,” I hear you say. “What the?”

There was a bit of a rumour circling around a week or two ago concerning the impact that Skyrim’s success might have on the development of the third entry in BioWare’s Dragon Age series. The Doctors BioWare have, in past interviews, conceded that companies like Bethesda are far, far ahead of where BioWare is at when it comes to world design, and after Dragon Age 2 was (rightly) panned for a world that felt too cramped, it’s not really a surprise that Ray Muzyka might be heard to make statements like this:

“[The next Dragon Age] is gonna have the best of features from the prior Dragon Age games, but it’s also gonna have a lot of things I think players are gonna find compelling from some of the games that are out now that are doing really well with more of an open world feel,” Muzyka said.

“We’re checking [Skyrim] out aggressively. We like it. We’re big admirers of [Bethesda] and the product,” he said. “We think we can do some wonderful things.”

Now, don’t hold your breath too deeply, Dragons and Dragonettes. The next Dragon Age, whatever form it takes, is probably not going to be an open-world epic that puts even Skyrim to shame. It’s probably still going to be an area-based world, semi-open at best.

At the same time, it’s kind of an exciting prospect, and could possibly herald a good turn in the overall direction of the series. Dragon Age 2 would not have worked as an open-world game even if it had been built to feature just such a thing; its story was not compatible with that sort of world design. Maybe I’m mixing up cause and effect, but…well, hear me out. DA2 wasn’t that, but Dragon Age: Origins would probably have worked rather well as a more open-world game (I think). The use of the map as a navigation tool actually felt not-dissimilar to open-world travel, for how long it took and how it peppered you with encounters at random points. Keeping everything in-engine was never a possibility given the limitations of the engine itself, but it would have worked had it been possible.

Which, in a way, could mean that in Dragon Age 3 we see a return to some of the aspects of Dragon Age: Origins that made it the more enjoyable game as compared to its sequel.

Or maybe I’m speculating too much.

Interplay and Bethesda have apparently reached a settlement.

At least, that was the initial report. An update to it notes the existence of a “Joint Motion to Seal to Temporarily Seal Joint Motion to Dismiss With Prejudice by Bethesda Softworks LLC Responses”…which I am assuming means that Bethesda has filed a joint motion to seal (that is, remove from the public record, temporarily) a motion to dismiss.

Which, I assume, means that Bethesda’s case got tossed out. But as the records are (evidently) sealed, we’ll have to wait until later to find out.

Is the PlayStation Vita already failing?

It’s only been out for a bit now, and its sales are dropping off pretty rapidly. Meanwhile, the Nintendo 3DS is surging ahead in sales.

I’ve maligned the Vita in the past, and I wonder if this isn’t a sign that we’ll see a real split occur in the mobile gaming market. The Vita is, at a hardware level, pretty much just a beefier smartphone, using the same chipset and graphics controller that you can find in a boatload of different iOS-, Android-, and Windows Phone 7-based devices. Even current-gen iPods are within reach of its performance and power. So why buy a Vita, when so many quality games are coming to phones?

But I digress. The split in the mobile gaming market…yes. That. I think it’ll happen. I think we’ll see dedicated mobile gaming platforms essentially go the Nintendo way, where they won’t try to compete directly on specs and performance, but will instead try and adopt Nintendo’s seemingly unique “amp up the fun factor” approach. Meanwhile, smartphones will continue to iterate their hardware, adding more and more power with each generation (like an octo-core iPhone 6, for example), and what could perhaps be called AAA-grade mobile games will be targeted at mobile operating systems like iOS and Android.

Of course, the Mass Effect 3 coverage is in full swing now.

That said, BioWare are showing some skill at keeping the major details of the game hidden from view. Here’s a couple of all the ME3-related articles that’s worth taking a look at:

• A handful of screenshots showing off some new player armour and some new baddies.
• Pre-order bonus weapons have been revealed, accompanied by a video demonstrating them in action.

Should TSA officials be able to wear the cop-like getup?

Not if a proposed bill gets passed!

How to break in to or out of almost anything!

Useful life skills advice and/or criminal mischief advice from Lifehacker!

Tonight’s post brought to you by Ding! Dong! IE6 is dead! (In the US at least.)

Buhbye!

Bonus question: Why are you still using Windows XP?