Tag: dragon age: dreadwolf

Kotaku’s Biggest Gaming Culture News For The Week November 18, 2023

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From mergers to memes, the landscape of interactive entertainment is always in motion. Here’s your cheat sheet for the week’s most important stories in gaming.

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Baldur’s Gate 3’s New Deluxe Edition Is A Steal For The Price

Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

Baldur’s Gate 3 already has one special edition, in the form of its Collector’s Edition. We even unboxed it here at Kotaku, and it’s got a lot of cool knickknacks that pay tribute to its tabletop roots. Of course that was expensive, solely for PC and PlayStation 5 players, and didn’t include a physical copy of the game itself. But Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to Xbox next month, so Larian Studios is taking the opportunity to release a new, Deluxe Edition for all three platforms. And given what comes in the box, I think it’s pretty darn affordable. Read More

The Best Soulslike Of 2023 Just Got Easier

Image: Neowiz Games / Round8 Studio

Like game director Ji Won Choi promised in early November, duo-developers Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio have dropped a new update for their gothic, Belle Époque-era Soulslike RPG, Lies of P. And just as expected, this update makes some significant changes to the game so that you have an actual fighting chance at surviving this bloodied retelling of the Pinocchio story. Read More

Modern Warfare III Players Beg For OP ‘Groot’ Skin To Get Removed

Image: Activision

Modern Warfare III players are begging Activision to remove a “literally invisible” cosmetic first introduced in Modern Warfare II that’s plaguing multiplayer matches yet again. Read More

Valve Has A Plan To Stop Bots And Resellers From Hoarding The New Steam Deck

On November 16, Valve will let folks purchase a new Steam Deck OLED Limited Edition model, which features all the upgrades of the base OLED version of the portable PC, but with some extra cosmetic details, too. And to help folks actually get a chance to buy this thing, Valve is implementing some safeguards to slow or stop bots and resellers from buying them all up instantly. Read More

Hades Is Joining The Best Free Game Library Nobody Uses

Image: Supergiant Games

One of the best action-RPGs in a generation is finally getting a mobile version, but it’s a mixed blessing. The good news is that Hades is coming to iPhones in 2024 and will be free for Netflix subscribers. The bad news is that it will be exclusive to both, with no way to buy the game outright or play it on Android devices. Read More

Suicide Squad Game Resurfaces With Big Map And Live-Service Plans

Rocksteady is finally ready to start talking about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, after delaying it (again) earlier this year. The studio first announced its upcoming supervillain co-op action game way back in 2020. In a new video series going behind the scenes of the game, the devs explained how big its map will be and showed off some new cutscenes. Conveniently, they barely mentioned any of the live-service aspects fans aren’t happy about. Read More

Here Are Your Picks For The Biggest 2023 Game Awards Snubs

Photo: JC Olivera (Getty Images)

Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards are far from the be-all and end-all of which games are good, creatively bold, and deserving of praise each year, but they’re still fun to get way too serious about. It’s the one day game developers get to dress fancy, go up on stage, and receive our collective thanks for their artistic accomplishment rather than getting canned the night before the quarterly earnings call. Read More

Former Mass Effect Lead Forms New Studio To Make Narrative-Focused Games

Screenshot: BioWare / Kotaku

Chinese publisher NetEase is opening a new studio with the lead writer behind the Mass Effect series at the helm.

Worlds Untold will be based in Vancouver, and helmed by CEO Mac Walters, who’s known for his work at BioWare that spanned almost 20 years. Walters was a writer on martial arts RPG Jade Empire, then a senior writer on the first entry in the sci-fi RPG series, Mass Effect, and was eventually promoted to lead writer on Mass Effect 2 and 3. Following this, he was brought on as creative director on Mass Effect: Andromeda, worked on early narrative direction on Anthem, and project directed the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters, before ending his tenure at the studio as a production director on Dragon Age: Dreadwolf. So he was at the forefront of a lot of the narrative direction of BioWare’s last two decades. How you feel about that probably varies depending on your opinions on the state of the studio, but speaking personally, the narrative wasn’t my biggest problem with most of those games. Read More

Kotaku Unboxes The Spider-Man 2 Limited Edition PS5

Kotaku Unboxes The Spider-Man 2 Limited Edition PS5

The $600 set is currently sold out at PlayStation’s store but is still a gift to keep in mind for the Spidey-loving gamer in your life this holiday season

Total Recall: How Does KotOR Hold Up In 2023?

How Does KotOR Hold Up In 2023? | Total Recall

We look back at what made BioWare’s first Star Wars RPG one of the most celebrated of all time

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November 18, 2023
Dragon Age And Mass Effect Studio Lays Off 50 Devs, Claims Games Are Unaffected [Update]

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Storied RPG developer BioWare is downsizing. The studio announced on August 23 that it will cut 50 roles as it continues production on both Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and Mass Effect 4, telling fans it needed to take a more “agile and focused” approach to game development.

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“In order to meet the needs of our upcoming projects, continue to hold ourselves to the highest standard of quality, and ensure BioWare can continue to thrive in an industry that’s rapidly evolving, we must shift towards a more agile and more focused studio,” wrote BioWare general manager Gary McKay. “It will allow our developers to iterate quickly, unlock more creativity, and form a clear vision of what we’re building before development ramps up.”

Read More: New Mass Effect Game Very Briefly Teased At Game Awards

Fifty developers at the studio will be laid off as a result of the restructuring, with McKay claiming the changes are necessary to “create exceptional story-driven single-player experiences” moving forward. Those include Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, which at one point was planned to have multiplayer live-service elements and has continued to face seeming delays and departures in top roles, as well as the next Mass Effect game, which despite promising teases appears to be many years away from release.

“If you’re wondering how all of this will impact development of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, let me be clear that our dedication to the game has never wavered,” McKay wrote. “Our commitment remains steadfast, and we all are working to make this game worthy of the Dragon Age name. We are confident that we’ll have the time needed to ensure Dreadwolf reaches its full potential.”

The latest round of cuts comes shortly after publisher Electronic Arts announced that BioWare’s longstanding sci-fi MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, would be outsourced and taken over by a new studio, Broadsword. VentureBeat also reports that BioWare has decided not to renew its contract with Keyword Studios, an in-house contracting company whose employees that were working on BioWare projects recently unionized and have been bargaining on their first contract.

Read More: Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Leaks Show God Of War-Style Combat

A spokesperson for EA told VentureBeat other work orders had been renewed post-unionization and that it simply failed to arrive at a new agreement with Keyword Studios, meaning work for its onsite QA testers will expire in September.

James Russwurm, a member of the Keywords union embedded with BioWare for several years now, told Kotaku in a phone call that while he’s sad to see the contract not renewed he believes it’s just a cost cutting measure rather than something targeted at the union itself. KWS Edmonton United is still bargaining with Keywords on its first contract and Russwurm was optimistic an agreement could be reached as soon as the end of the year.

The company announced 800 layoffs back in March of this year. In August it posted a quarterly profit of $400 million, up nearly 30 percent from the same time a year prior.

Update 10/4/2023 5:39 p.m. ET: All of the unionized Keywords devs who previoulsy worked at BioWare were laid off at the end of September, Polygon reports. The company cited the lost contract and the employees are currently trying to negotiate over severance.

Something similar happened to bug testers contracted to work at Microsoft in 2016. Despite unionizing and negotiating their first contract, Microsoft eventually canceled its work with the contracting company, which subsquently laid all of the unionized testers off. A union-busting complaint was filed with the NLRB, but legal proceedings moved to slow to get the workers their jobs back.

Update 8/23/2023 2:11 p.m. ET: Added comment from a Keywords Studio contractor.

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Ethan Gach

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October 4, 2023
All the Ways ‘Dragon Age: Absolution’ Hints at New Lore in ‘Dreadwolf | The Mary Sue

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So, at this point, most of us who’ve seen it can agree that Dragon Age: Absolution slaps supremely, and it’s a must-watch for anyone who’s a fan of the series. Absolution went above and beyond in bringing us back to Thedas and getting us excited for what’s to come.

But the really neat thing is that it also dabbled in some new territory that perked my ears up like a curious dog. Call it desperation, since I’m just trying to absorb as much info as I can in anticipation of Dreadwolf. Or call it super duper good sleuthing, if you wanna flatter me. Either way, these are some of the little hints Absolution dropped that allude to potential new lore in Dreadwolf.

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Madeline Carpou

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December 14, 2022