A short piece from Tales of the Rampant Coyote on encounters as "soft boundaries":

His philosophy - which I adhere to - is that it is far better for the players to choose to follow the prepared course of the game than to be forced to do so.

More powerful enemies in CRPGs are one example of a (sometimes frustrating) "soft boundary." The player isn't prevented from making a run into the deep end of the pool while still in the early stages of the game, but the difficulty of the encounters may convince her that it's more profitable to go back to an earlier area to pick up some quest threads. But the possibility of heading into more dangerous territory remains open ... maybe to make a mad dash to another town that sells more powerful equipment. Why not? In the past, these kinds of self-initiated quests have proven to be among the highlights of several games I've played.

An essential part of a great RPG, for me.

The Witcher site has a FAQ on The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut, which should be available shortly.  Turns out the Director's Cut is simply a North American release that combines v1.5 and the original uncensored content.  Here we go:

• What is The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut?
  The Director’s Cut is the version of the game our developers originally intended for you to play. It is essentially the same game that gamers around the world have experienced – now available legitimately for the first time in North America. 
• Where will The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut be available?
  The Director’s Cut update will be available from TheWitcher.com and all applicable digital distributors in North America, including Steam, Impulse and Direct2Drive. We will announce the release date in the coming days, but as of that date, people who buy The Witcher: Enhanced Edition from digital distributors will be purchasing the Director’s Cut, as it will replace the existing Enhanced Edition on those sites.
• Will The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut obtained from digital distribution contain 1.5 patch features (i.e. additional adventures):
  Yes, Director’s Cut version of the game will have all features of patch 1.5.
• Do I need The Witcher: Enhanced Edition to get the Director’s Cut?
  If you want to just install the patch to get the Director’s Cut content, then you do need The Witcher: Enhanced Edition. If you’re just buying The Witcher for the first time (or feel like buying it again!) then you can just purchase the product via Steam, Impulse, Direct2Drive, etc. as they will offer the Director’s Cut as a full product already patched to the latest version. 
• I don’t live in North America or I imported a copy of the game from outside of North America. Should I get the Director’s Cut?You really already have the Director’s Cut if you have the international edition of the game and have installed the 1.5 patch! 
• What is the age rating of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut?
  The Director’s Cut has received an M rating from the ESRB, with Blood and Gore, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content and Violence.

Taking a break from bestiary updates, the Risen site has the first of a series of short story snippets.  The first is called The Prophecy and here's the entire text:

Uncaring, people walked past the ragged figure braving the scorching sun in front of a whitewashed wall.
"I tell you, we are all doomed," he ranted, ignoring the fact that no one was listening to him.
"The gods have abandoned the island. Evil has awakened! The Holy Flame alone cannot protect us forever!"
No one stopped. People had their own worries. Business had been bad since the city was closed. The preacher continued without wavering. "Three signs have been revealed," he cried with a rough voice, "three signs!"
"The earthquakes were the first. And no one paid attention. The heathen temples were the second. And again, no one would listen. They were plundered – you have defiled yourselves with their trinkets. The beasts were the third sign. Three signs. The gods have abandoned us, and soon the Holy Flame will be extinguished. Ancient powers will arise. The end is near!"

IGN has a piece titled What to Expect From Fallout: New Vegas (and labeled a "preview") that speculates based entirely on existing information.  It introduces Obsidian for those that might think Fallout = Bethsoft but, otherwise, simply states the obvious:

Whether or not Fallout: New Vegas uses the same game engine as Fallout 3 remains to be seen, but it seems likely. Putting together a game of the size and scope of Fallout is no easy task. Building a new engine and set of game mechanics on top of it might make the ambitious 2010 release window impossible, though we don't know how long Obsidian has been at work on this project. Even if the team did have the time, Bethesda might be unwilling to let Obsidian make drastic changes to the new Fallout formula. Fallout 3 was a massive hit and the group now has a successful franchise to manage. Fears of driving it into the ground or confusing new fans might take any big changes off the table.

Another generic Mothership Zeta interview is available, this time at GamePro:

Travis: Tell more about the aliens themselves. What are they like, what are they called, why are they "pissed"?

Jeff Gardiner: The aliens are the same type that people claim are currently abducting people around the globe, small grayish-green with long appendages and big heads with huge eyes. They are studying humanity to see if we're a threat, they have no proper name.

We have four new screens from the latest Fallout 3 DLC Mothership Zeta for you.

Mothership Zeta is scheduled to be released on the 3rd of August and has the following features:

Description: Defy hostile alien abductors and fight your way off of the massive Mothership Zeta, orbiting Earth miles above the Capital Wasteland. Mothership Zeta takes Fallout 3 in an entirely new direction - outer space. Meet new characters and join with them in a desperate bid to escape the Aliens' clutches. To do so, you'll wield powerful new weapons, like the Alien Atomizer, Alien Disintegrator, and Drone Cannon, and deck yourself out in brand new outfits, like the Gemini-Era Spacesuit and even Samurai Armor.

Story: A strange Alien signal is being broadcast throughout the Capital Wasteland, originating from a crashed UFO. Is it a distress call, or something far more sinister? That question is answered when you find yourself beamed aboard an enormous Alien spacecraft, with only one alternative - to fight your way to the bridge of the ship and secure your escape.

Key Features:

• Find and exploit new and destructive alien technology, like the Alien Atomizer and Drone Cannon.
• Explore the vast Mothership and learn the secrets of the Aliens' master plan.
• Thwart the Aliens' attempt to stop your escape, and take over the Alien ship before it wreaks havoc on the unsuspecting Earth below.
• Fight against the Alien Invaders, their robot drones, and turn their own horrible experiments against them.
• Ally yourself with an unexpected array of characters, both from the Capital Wasteland and from Earth's past.

Well, at least according to Eidos Montreal's Twitter page.  The very brief message:

Development on Deus Ex 3 is going well and the Thief 4 team is ramping up!

Worthplaying has the news that the full range of Fallout 3 DLC will be rolled out on the PS3, starting in September.

Didn't Prairie Games' RPG/MMORPG Minions of Mirth once bill itself as a "massively single player RPG"?  Kotaku writes that BioWare will use Facebook and Twitter to extend the reach of Dragon Age:

As a Dragon Age: Origins demo I received in a rented New York City nightclub was nearing its conclusion yesterday, I was shown a video that teased more of the game's content. There were fights and arguments and epic beasts. And there were flashes of logos at the end for the companies or platforms involved — I can't remember — along with — and this is burned into my mind's eye — the logos for Twitter and Facebook.

I turned to David Silverman, the senior product manager for the EA/BioWare game and asked him what that was all about.

He said he couldn't reveal much, but that I should think of Dragon Age: Origins not just as a single-player game with hundreds of hours of content, but as a "massively single-player role-playing game."

We used to hear more of Ashley Cheng than we do now but the Bethblog is pointing out an interview with the production director at GameObserver.  The questions are general and spend quite a bit of time on their choice of engine:

GameObserver: After Oblivion, what made you guys decide to reuse the Gamebryo engine for Fallout 3?

Ashley Cheng: Gamebryo allowed us to get up and running very quickly with Morrowind. Since then, we’ve taken this core technology and added new features on top of it. We’ve actually had the guys at Gamebryo come to us, and ask if we would be interested in a particular shader or feature, only to turn them down and say, sorry, but we’ve already written our own version. With each new project, we scope how much time we have and decide which systems to upgrade. A major reason many projects are delayed or never ship is because the developers decide to start from scratch. Games these days cost way too much for that kind of reboot. For most programmers, it’s easier to write new code than to read old code -- it takes a lot of discipline to selectively upgrade parts of your technology and to maintain others.

The third entry at the Bioblog about the recent Dragon Age Toolset Builder Event reveals a new, dedicated modding site that BioWare will launch to support the title:

The morning was then rounded off with probably the first real surprise for our builders. We unveiled the new community site currently under development, and specifically the builder area within it – this will continue to be available to the builders after the event, and very soon to DA Toolset beta members, as part of the plan for the closed beta of the site.

The purpose of this new site (in so far as it most relates to builders) is to provide a central modding resource for all things DA – there’s a whole other section specifically for players which ties into those online features I hinted at before, but we’ll cover that another time. Amongst other things, the builder area of the site has a new wiki with DA Toolset documentation and tutorials, including many of those being covered at the event.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's "Gaming Made Me" column where writers discuss the games that made them identify as "gamers" gets a mention here, because Kevin Levine lists Ultima Underworld as one of his inspirations:

I always remember one of the first true immersive experiences I had as a gamer; I was being chased by some goblins, and of course the world was really crude, but I was seeing these bit mapped goblins chasing me down a corridor and I was low on health so I was fleeing them and I turned this corner thinking “I got away from them!”. I turned the corner to find this giant spider and all of a sudden I was in a scenario that the designers probably never contemplated.

The designers trusted their system enough to know all they needed to do was put a goblin down in one place and they put a spider further down the hall. The game (and the gamer!) would handle the rest.

Alec Meer continues his forage into Morrowind.

Agent Loaf returns, after a brief hiatus so RPS could spend some quality time documenting its own history. Now, my plan with this series had been to avoid the core narrative for as long as possible (even though it’s something I never got around to the first time I played Morrowind.) Then a funny thing happened. It became compelling. Based on how unsatisfactory I’d found Oblivion and Fallout 3’s main plotlines to be, this was not something I’d been expecting. It also puts me in the unusual position of narrativising someone else’s narrative -a starkly different prospect to diarising my own haphazard experiences. If you’ve not ever played Morrowind and still intend to, be aware that here be spoilers…

For those who might be considering the console version of Bioware's Dragon Age, UK tech and gaming site bit-tech.net posts their impressions of how it"s shaping up, in terms of interface, controls, and general gameplay, not too surprisingly coming to the conclusion that the PC version will be the stronger one:

...Until recently we hadn’t actually had a chance to go hands on with Dragon Age: Origins on consoles and a question kept going round and round in the back of our heads – how would an epic RPG of this scale control on a console if BioWare was true to its promise of not dumbing the game down.

The answer, it turns out, was incredibly simple. It uses a radial menu...

Continuing in the vein of being as succinct and to the point as possible, we’ll go ahead and say that it doesn’t really work all that well either and the UI on consoles suffers a bit from being a bit too cluttered and not having a simple and direct interface. The PC version of the game, which we’ve played several times now, controls far better than the console one.

A handy analogy for comparing the two is that the PC interface is like being a kid in a candy store with some very generous parents – all you have to do is point at what you want and voilà! Point, click, get – easy. The console version is like the same situation, but this time both your arms are in a cast, your parents are only half paying attention and you’re diabetic. In short, it’s harder to get at what you want and, even when you do, you’re not really sure about it any more...

Conclusion:

In the end, we were left with somewhat conflicted feelings about Dragon Age. We still like the look of the game...but the console version feels weak. The BioWare team members we spoke to said they were still working out some of the details and that the final version of the console game will have a slightly different UI – but we imagine that means performance optimisations so the menus aren’t so sticky, rather than an overhaul and rethink of the entire control scheme. That makes us worried.

Dragon Age: Origins looks like it’ll be a great game, even though the more we see of it the more we start to suspect that the increasingly sexy marketing push is being used to hide some of the blandness of the fantasy world, but it’ll be at its best at PC. There it’ll run much smoother and more easily, without demanding that players coordinate all their fingers and thumbs across a dozen buttons when in reality a few mouse clicks is a better solution. That’s not to say that the console version isn’t worth a look for gamepad veterans, but if you’re undecided about the game then the PC version looks like the way to go.

RealGamer  posts their review for the XBox 360 version of Codemasters' and Triumph Studios' Overlord II, giving it a 7/10:

...You travel the game world trying to conquer towns, gain treasure and so on accompanied by your army of minions causing chaos and destruction as you go. There are four different minions for you to summon, Browns - the basic grunts, Reds – fire minions, Greens – a sneaky stealth unit and blues - water minions. Obviously each minion type has its own unique strengths and weaknesses and the game world features many areas that only one minion type can reach. This of course adds a level of variety and strategy to the gameplay, albeit in small amounts. In general Overlord II is good fun, and sending your minions on the rampage, attacking any enemies or small animals they comes across is strangely entertaining and very additive...

Conclusion:

Overlord II is a nice improvement over last year’s game with a lot of worthwhile additions to the core gameplay. However, some questionable design choices stop this instalment from being a great game and can at times make Overlord II a very frustrating experience. Despite its problems it does generally provide a fun experience and fans of the first game will love the new ways of spreading chaos.

Some German previews have popped up in the last couple of days.

In a positive preview Eurogamer.de states that the games does a lot of things in the right way and that there is a deep story combined with lots of humor but that the success of the game depends on how well Larian is able to solve some of the issues they encountered with balancing, framerate and CTD's. Still they conclude that if these issues are solved the game is something to look forward to.

There are also a lot of screenshots on Eurogamer.de.

GBase.ch has lots of positive things to say about the deep story, character development, graphics and combat, while also making a side remark about Larian still working on balancing.

And finally Krawall brings us a preview as well with a preliminary rating of good, but note that the graphics when flying as a dragon are a bit bland, which they blame on the Oblivion engine. When not flying as a dragon they state the game is very beautifull.

GamesRadar takes a somewhat sceptical look at the  usual E3 materials for Bioware's Dragon Age  but end up willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt:

It’s confusing. Is Dragon Age a serious game with armor class, character levels and rules? Or do you push the X-button as quickly as possible and watch your character impale everything with showy and impractical swordplay? We went to see it with the intention of finding out and came away from our play time feeling that, behind the trailer shot in super kill-o-vision, there’s most likely a serious role-playing game with magic swords, dialogue and healing spells – all things we really, seriously love.

Screenshot Friday at World of Risen offers a single screen of an impending confrontation. 

A pretty general interview on Mothership Zeta at OXM:

So when and where does Zeta fit into the events of Fallout 3? How will players discover the Mothership?
As with the previous DLC, there will be a radio broadcast... this one is unintelligible, however, and will lead the player to the alien crash site they may have already found in Fallout 3. The player will then find themselves aboard Mothership Zeta, in Earth's orbit. Let's just say it won't be the friendliest of greetings. From there, they'll meet other abductees, and plot their escape. They'll have to explore and exploit the alien ship- and even spacewalk to escape!

We've already seen the Alien Blaster in Fallout 3 - will there be new technology for gamers to play with?
Most definitely. The player will have a handful of tasty alien technologies to play with. There are new fire arms and melee weapons, which will comprise the most powerful weaponry in the game.

Gametrailers has two new Mass Effect 2 features.  First, the latest episode of Gametrailers TV has a section titled Weapons of Mass Destruction and offers more detail on combat, directing party members and weapons.

Next, a new dev diary is on offer: 

dtp sends word that the German version of Larian Studios' Divinity 2: Ego Draconis has gone gold and is on track for release on July 24th. The XBox 360 version has been delayed until early September to focus on a high quality PC version.

The date for the international release is also "early September".

Divinity II: Ego Draconis – PC-Version erreicht Gold-Status, Version für Xbox 360 verschiebt sich

Hamburg, 10.07.2009 – Nach mehr als drei Jahren Entwicklungszeit hat die PC-Version des kommenden Rollenspielhighlights von Publisher dtp entertainment und Entwickler Larian Studios, Divinity II: Ego Draconis, den Gold-Master-Status erreicht und befindet sich nun in Produktion. Damit erscheint Divinity II für den PC in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz plangemäß als Standard-Fassung und Collector’s Edition am 24. Juli 2009. Der Veröffentlichungstermin der Xbox 360®-Version des Spiels verschiebt sich allerdings.

„Divinity II ist im Laufe seiner Entwicklungszeit zu einem sehr großen Rollenspiel herangewachsen, dessen Ausmaße unsere bisherigen Planungen deutlich übertreffen. Allein für das Spielen des Haupthandlungsstranges benötigen fortgeschrittene Rollenspieler nach unseren Berechnungen gut 40 Stunden – und damit haben sie nur Teile der riesigen Spielwelt richtig erkundet. Durch diese Größe, bedingt durch die unzähligen Nebenquests und Handlungsmöglichkeiten des Spiels, mussten wir den für die Qualitätssicherung benötigten Zeitaufwand ebenfalls deutlich erhöhen. Wir haben uns im Sinne der Spieler dazu entschieden, den Veröffentlichungstermin der Xbox 360-Version zugunsten einer hochqualitativen PC-Version zu verschieben, damit die in Deutschland größere PC-Rollenspieler-Gemeinde sich auf einen pünktlichen Release noch im Sommer freuen darf. Im Anschluss konzentrieren wir alle Qualitätssicherungsmaßnahmen auf die Konsolen-Version, so dass diese Anfang September in den Handel gebracht werden kann“, erläutert Claas Wolter, Senior PR Manager bei dtp entertainment.

Auch international wird Divinity II: Ego Draconis Anfang September veröffentlicht.

Divinity II: Ego Draconis bringt den Spieler zurück in die Welt Rivellon, mehr als ein halbes Jahrhundert, nachdem der Divine regierte. Viel ist seitdem geschehen, doch der Tod des Divine – dem Helden des Vorgängers von Divinity II: Ego Draconis – ist zweifellos das tragischste Ereignis. Er wurde von einem Drachenritter während der Schlacht gegen Damian, Rivellons Erzfeind, verraten und getötet. Seine Paladine schworen Rache, und so entstand der Orden der Drachentöter.

gezeichnet von vergangenen apokalyptischen Kriegen. Seine Landschaften und Labyrinthe sind frei erkundbar. Rivellon ist auch die Heimat zahlreicher Nichtspielercharaktere, die eine große Auswahl an Quests und Handlungssträngen eröffnen – und sonst gerne zum Plaudern bereit sind. Das verzweigte Questsystem verschafft den Handlungen des Spielers weitreichende Konsequenzen.

Divinity II: Ego Draconis, entwickelt von Larian Studios und veröffentlicht von dtp entertainment, erscheint in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz am 24. Juli 2009 für den PC. Neben der zum Preis von 49,99 € erhältlichen Standard-Edition veröffentlicht dtp entertainment auch eine randvolle Collector’s Edition. Zum Preis von 69,99 € enthält diese eine 18 Zentimeter große Drachentöter-Standfigur aus Kunstharz samt Brieföffner-Schwert aus Metall, eine Stoffkarte der Divinity-Welt Rivellon, eine Soundtrack-CD und weitere Fan-Goodies.

Another list of Dragon Age previews, this time courtesy of Blue's:

• 1UP
• Gamers.com
• IGN.UK
• NowGamer

...and a sample from 1Up, who played with the X360 controls:

Yeah, when I played it on PC for a Pre-E3 event, I naturally zoomed the camera out to a pseudo-isometric perspective, and liberally used the space key to pause combat and queue up commands. Going into this meeting, I didn't have a good grasp of how it would play on a 360 gamepad. Now after actually playing it, I might, just might, find myself also playing this on 360. Like KOTOR, the basics of party and time management have been preserved, and are now enhanced with Mass Effect's radial wheel. You can just jump around your party members, and use the triggers and buttons to quickly pull up and maneuver through radial wheels containing all of your options. If you're like me, and just want to spam Magic Missile (my apologies to Bioware; I do realize Dragon Age has a different name for your basic wizard bullet, but I'm blanking on it at the moment), you can assign spells/abilities to the face buttons for easy casting/spamming.

Moving on, the Bioblog has Part 2 of their Toolset event coverage:

Builders, or modders, specifically are another integral part of our long term strategy for DA:O. Community created content is a great way to keep fans playing the game, as well as attracting new fans to the franchise.

With DA:O we will be supporting this segment of our community more than any of our previous titles, and working hard to create a much stronger tie between builders and players – after all, players want content, builders want an audience – one of our jobs is going to be to facilitate that and then get the heck out of the way. I’ll cover more on the ways we’ll be doing this in the near future as well.

I noticed a job ad on Gamasutra for a lead designer for a new Ubisoft RPG project, based at Ubisoft Shanghai.  That's about all we have - alhough the cynical might recall Ubisoft has the Might & Magic rights.  We'll probably have to wait a while to find out:

Ubisoft Entertainment Shanghai is looking for an experienced and talented Lead Game Designer to develop a brand new fantasy RPG title for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac.

If you’re dedicated to making innovative high quality games and have already collaborated to design complex systems for strategy games you could be the perfect candidate!

In the second part of the 3 part series of cinematic trailers for Divinity 2 you'll now get to know that you are on your path to destiny as told by Talana, Dragon Knight of old.

Unexpected news that Arkane is collaborating with 2K Marin on Bioshock 2.  According to their website, they are helping in the areas  of "design, animation and art".  Another snip:

Here is what Alyssa Finley, producer at 2K Marin, says about Arkane’s contribution to the game :

“BioShock 2 is a world class project led out of 2K Marin that features involvement from a variety of premiere studios from around the world. In the past we’ve been working closely with 2K Australia for our tech needs and Digital Extremes for our robust multiplayer experience. Today I’m proud to say that we’ve added another important developer to the mix. Under the direction and leadership of 2K Marin, Arkane is assisting in the creation of levels that embody the aesthetic and gameplay ideals that make BioShock such a unique and exciting experience”

Thanks dju and stealth!

In celebration of the 15th Anniversary of The Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda has chosen to make the second iteration, Daggerfall, available for free download on their website. The game is released "as is", meaning no technical support will be given by Bethesda.

- Here's the announcement on the BethBlog.

- Here's the direct download link from elderscrolls.com.

Dark Savant on the forums has made us aware of an alternative version of Daggerfall including patch, display changer and a modern control patch.

BioWare's recent press event has resulted in a flurry of previews and interviews and they've also held a Toolset Builder event, so plenty to talk about.  First some previews:

• TeamXbox
• GameSpot
• GameSpy
• IGN

...and a snip from the last:

As for the demos we were given, both stations had different party compositions. For the first, which we'll refer to as D1, the main character, who you get to create, was a human fighter. In the second group, D2, the main character was a mage. Both groups stood next to a ferryman and were attempting to secure passage to a mage tower with the eventual goal of enlisting the help of its residents in fighting the Darkspawn, the game's primary enemy. In D1, one of the party members was Morrigan, a seductive mage character who chimed in during the conversation with the ferryman to intimidate him into letting them pass. In D2 party member Sten was present, who for some reason thought it to be in the group's best interest to offer cookies to the guard to get everyone across. Since you can only have three members in your group not counting yourself, you'll need to consider who to bring along not only for their skills in the field, but also how they might be able to help out during conversations.

Other sites are dribbling out comments from interviews. So, we have Line Between RPGS, Shooters Blurring at Wired, BioWare on not making Baldur's Gate 3 at VideoGamer and - most importantly - VG247 with BioWare Undecided on Nudity During Love-Making Scenes.

Finally, the Bioblog has (short) coverage of the Toolset: Builder Event II -

Lead Designer Mike Laidlaw kicked things off with a short demonstration of Dragon Age and introduced the vision and basic themes of what the team was trying to capture and explore. The group saw a beta of the planned website features being built to help builders start and organize projects locate the right team members and show off the content they create.

Technical Designers David Sims and Joshua Stiksma were tasked with an introduction and overview of the toolset, creating simple plots, scripts, and dialogue. The final lesson of the day was a look at combat and abilities by Technical Designer Grant MacKay.

And that’s only Day 1 of 3.

Hopefully the next couple will offer more detail.