Soldak sent us this PR about the updated v1.004 demo for Din's Curse.  The latest version adds some graphical and UI improvements and is worth a look:

We released version 1.004 of the Din's Curse demo (Windows and Mac) today at:
http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Demo.html

The major changes for this version of the demo are a new perspective view, a better shadows option, and improved UI graphics.


Din's Curse is a single player and co-op multiplayer action RPG with 141 class combinations, infinite number of dynamically generated towns, real consequences, and a dynamic, evolving world.

Din, champion of the gods, has cursed you into a second life of service because you selfishly squandered your first one while causing misfortune to those around you. To redeem yourself, you must impress Din by building a reputation for helping others. Travel the spacious western plains of Aleria and save desperate towns from the brink of annihilation. Until you're redeemed, you're doomed to wander the earth alone for all eternity.

In Din's Curse, you will explore an extensive underground, slaying dangerous monsters, solving dynamic quests, dodging deadly traps, and in your spare time, plundering loot. Quell uprisings, flush out traitors, kill assassins, cure plagues, purge curses, end wars, and complete other dangerous quests or the danger WILL escalate. Not all is as it seems though, traitors will gladly stab you in the back, renegades can revolt against the town, spies can set up ambushes, and items might even curse or possess your friends.

Choose one of 141 class combinations and journey to an infinite number of dynamically generated towns with vastly different problems. Every game is a surprise! Your actions have real consequences in this dynamic, evolving world. Your choices actually matter!

Open the door to Din's Curse. Surprising adventures await!

Describing it as "disappointing", Games Nexus has reviewed Disciples III with a rating of 'D+':

What is unwelcome, however, is the changes made to the combat system. In the past, once a squad interacted with enemy units on the map, a simple combat screen would pop up and an elegant, uncomplicated battle would ensue. Rather than maintain that unique battle style, Disciples III instead copies just about every other recent turn-based fantasy game, and moves to a 3D battlefield. To make matters worse, Disciples III does the battle system quite poorly. The 3D hex-based combat screen is sprinkled randomly with some obstacles and some special power-up hexes. While it at first seems like this tactical map would add layers of delicious complexity to the battles, what we really get is longer, more tedious fights. The enemy AI mostly just takes a "get em!" approach, and so battles soon become laughably simple. The elegant two-rank battle system from previous Disciples titles was much more enjoyable, and actually more challenging.

A large part of the lack of any challenge stems from the enemy AI's antics outside of battle. The static neutral troops can mostly be avoided until players' units are strong enough to vanquish them, and the active enemy factions consistently make the worst possible choices. In fact, "choice" is probably the wrong word. In all but a few occasions, the AI units simply saw my units and attacked. There was no gauging of strength, very little softening up with spells or attacking with waves of squads. There was just all-out aggression. At very early stages of a campaign, before there's much chance to work up a strong army, the more-powerful enemy factions can be a bit of a challenge. Before too long, however, it merely becomes something of a miserable comedy as the enemy repeatedly throws wimpy armies away, time after time. Thankfully we're given the option of a "quick battle" button for each combat, a feature I used almost exclusively for most of the game.

You'll recall that when broswer game giant Bigpoint acquired Radon Labs, it immediately confirmed "Drakensang 3" for 2011.  The fear of many fans was that DS3 would be some sort of browser or online game, in the vein of Bigpoint's other products.

It looks like that fear was right, with Bigpoint revealing Drakensang Online via Twitter, as reported by PC Games.de.  PR Manager Janine tweeted that they were working on "drakensang online" and "the prototype looks great".

For those of us with challenged German, you can read the Google translation here.

Thanks, Alrik!

Shacknews have an exclusive look at the lore book included in the limited edition of Elemental.

The book was written by Stardock CEO and Elemental lead designer Brad Wardell and Random House, which is also publishing the companion book Elemental: Destiny's Embers through Del Rey on August 24.

The game itself will also be released on August 24 at retail and digitally through Stardock's Impulse service. A beta is currently running for pre-order customers.

You'll get a surprise when you see the new Qunari design, which GameInformer has unveiled today.  They have two large concept arts and a bit of background:

BioWare’s been forthcoming about the new art style for Dragon Age 2, but even that didn’t prepare us for the surprise of seeing the redesigned qunari. Unlike the strange but decidedly humanoid qunari Sten from Origins, the images of the Dragon Age 2 qunari that we saw were muscular, nearly demonic-looking creatures. The most striking difference was the addition of horns. As it turns out, Dragon Age lore has an answer for why we haven’t seen them on qunari before.

Unfortunately we've overlooked dtp's PRs about their lineup for the upcoming GamesCom in Cologne. They'll show two RPG add-ons and a couple of adventures.

RPG fans can look forward to a special treat. They will be able to try out Drakensang: Phileasson’s Secret, the official add on for Drakensang: The River of Time, which will be released in German-speaking territories on August, 20th.

The Divinity 2 add-on is only playable for those who received the German PR. ;)

Mit Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance bringt dtp entertainment am 20. August 2010, also noch während der GamesCom, das Add On zum Rollenspiel-Erfolg Divinity II: Ego Draconis in die Regale der Händler. Auch dieses Add On ist auf der Messe spielbar zu erleben.

As you already know the DACH release date for Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance has since been pushed forward to this Friday.

Other games shown at the dtp booth:

• Black Mirror 3
• Gray Matter, the new adventure by Jane Jensen (Gabriel Knight)
• Summer Challenge - Athletics Tournament
• TNT Racers

All mentioned games will be playable!

There's a Two Worlds II trailer at IGN titled Return that offers a collage of short sequences, showing off some sightseeing, combat, backstabbing and so on.

Inside the Vault talks to Denise McMurray for their latest dev profile:

What’s your job at Obsidian?

I am a World Builder, basically my job is to decorate the New Vegas wasteland. This includes both interiors and exteriors, everything from rocks and trees to that bottle of Nuka Cola you see sitting on the table. I try to set up cool looking areas for players to explore, and set up props that tell a story about what happened in that area. Occasionally I’ll get to add lighting to help emphasize what the area’s all about.

Omega and wolfgrimdark on our forums point out this interview with Greg Zeschuk at VideoGamer.  It's a general conversation that covers BioWare's approach, the console reaction to Dragon Age, changes to DA2 and so on - but this quote is probably the headline:

Q: I enjoyed your keynote speech this morning. You mentioned that BioWare had been lucky to have a few 'minor hits'...

Greg Zeschuk: Well, not minor!

Q: I was going to say. If Mass Effect 2 is a 'minor hit', I can't wait to see a major one.

GZ: Well, we need to sell 10 million units. That's actually the new target, right? We do Top 10 games, our stuff is quite successful. I know Mass [Effect 2] is number eight so far this year, in North America. Sometimes I'm facetious when I say some of those things, knowing that we can sell a few million but seeing that someone else can sell 25. You're kinda like, 'Well, that's a hit!' We always joke that if we only do half as well as Blizzard on Star Wars: The Old Republic, we'll be quite satisfied. We've been very fortunate. I always joke about that, but...

BioWare has officially unveiled the latest Dragon Age DLC, Golems of Amgarrak, on the official site.  Here's the blurb:

MMORPG.com: Give us some background on the new DLC – Golems of Amgarrak.

Rob: Golems of Amgarrak is the next installment of downloadable content (DLC) for our hit dark fantasy title, Dragon Age: Origins. It will be releasing simultaneously for $5 on the Playstation Network and for 400 points on the PC and in the X360 Marketplace. Designed with our hardcore players in mind, it sends the player on an extremely challenging journey into the Deep Roads to uncover the lost secrets of the dwarves.

Ferret: Rob isn’t joking. Golems is seriously tough. If you played through Origins and thought it couldn’t keep up with your mad skills, then this is the DLC for you. You face a brand new boss who has more than a few tricks up his sleeve, and unless you bring your A-game you won’t last long. Getting the hardest achievement for this DLC is a real badge of honor. Only a handful of BioWarians managed that accomplishment.

Although combat is front and center, Golems of Amgarrak has a tricky puzzle to solve, new characters to talk with and get to know, and an engaging story. All the things you’d expect from Dragon Age. You also can import your character from Origins or Awakening, so you can have further adventures with your favorite hero.

By playing Golems of Amgarrak you can unlock several reward items that show up in Origins or Awakening. It’s a good time to be a Grey Warden!

A new beta 1.004 patch for Din's Curse is out, hot on the heels of the last patch.

Both JoWood and Bethsoft have announced their GamesCom lineups for the upcoming convention in Cologne.  I won't repost the press releases because there are no surprises, with JoWood showing Arcania and Spellforce: Faith in Destiny and Bethsoft will have Fallout: New Vegas and Hunted.

Time to catch up on a couple of Zombie RPG Monday Design Updates.  First, from a week or so back, Annie asks for debate on XP systems:

ONE - so what parts of experience systems do you feel are totally played out?  Maybe getting xp for disarming mines (leading one into death-wish jaunts into minefields for a chance at powerleveling)?  Possibly getting more xp for taking the "super good" or "dastardly evil" options instead of favoring a more middle-of-the-road approach?  For a concrete example: Shining Force 2 is one of the old strategy RPGs that I love from back in the day, but the fact that you only really got xp per kill meant that your best characters speedily outpaced everyone else, and you basically had to trap and bleed out monsters so that your weaker units - healers and thieves - could get the killing blow and thus actually level up.  That was some BS.

...then Brian talks about morality:

So, #1 on our list for dialogue presentation was making sure the dialogue was never completely clear cut good/bad moves, or at least that the decisions involved realistic consequences. Allies all have their own codes of what’s right and wrong and while some of them may agree with each other on one point, there will never be a decision where everybody is in 100% agreement. And the player isn’t expected to be able to please all of them all of the time – it is a constant balancing act for any player to not alienate any of their allies. A popular decision might be the most difficult to execute – like taking action against another group to boost food stocks and losing several allies in the process. The player may also use their dialogue skills to try and sell unpopular or difficult courses of action – for example, they might try to convince everybody that rationing would be a good way to extend the food, reducing (but not getting rid of) the Morale penalty of such an action. And decisions are less based on being a good guy or bad guy but on figuring out how much pull you might gain or lose with an ally if you don’t throw a decision their way – unlike a random NPC, your survivors are theoretically in it for the long haul, and they’ll remember what you did.

An anonymous reader (honest!) writes in to point out Beyond Divinity has dropped to $5.99 on GOG.

We don't normally do much with roguelikes but the popular Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup recently released v0.70 (and 0.71) with a number of enhancements, including much nicer graphic tiles.  If you haven't really delved into roguelikes before, this isn't a bad place to start.

Missed this one but thanks to Resch for posting it on our forums (where I saw it eventually!).

It's good to have Age of Decadence news.  Vault Dweller has a new Let's Play... style thread to show off the text adventure feature in the game.  Head over to this thread to check all the screens and follow the choices.  Here's the setup:

It's been awhile since we've shown you guys anything, so please allow me to thank you for your patience and support, and to entertain you with one of our text-adventure sequences.

Text-adventures are an old, venerable, and sadly all but forgotten element and I have no idea whether or not we did a good job capturing the spirit, so as usual, you're invited to bitch and complain make helpful suggestions. For those who like to quantify things: this particular text adventure is 14,687 words long. 

You start the game in Teron, a small crumbling town controlled by House Daratan. At some point you may (or may not) decide to have a chat with Lord Antidas who, for some reasons, isn't pacing back and forth outside of his palace eagerly awaiting your arrival.

There are several ways to meet him. You can talk to Dellar, Antidas' man in charge of fucking with people and keeping the enemies of the House at bay. He will offer you a traditional "prove yourself first and if you're still alive, which is doubtful, then I'll let you in" way via 2 quests. If that's not how you prefer to roll, there are 3 more quest-related ways to gain entrance (i.e. certain side quests may attract or require Antidas' involvement). If you're still shaking your head and want to do it completely on your own, that's what the text adventure is for.

Omega points out this Deus Ex: HR preview at CVG, re-posted from Xbox World magazine.  It covers known material but serves as a good catch-up:

Find an informer and pump him for the location of a secret entrance? Yes, that certainly sounds promising. What about getting insanely tooled up and swanning in all-guns blazing? We like your style. Swim in via the sewers? Eurgh, frankly. Hack into the mainframe, get all those turret bots on your side while opening up all the doors? Now you're really talking. Human Revolution's scenarios are never quite as cut and-dried as that though, and mostly you'll need to combine all Adam's natural and bolted-on talents to make any headway in the game.

Admittedly, none of this sounds what you'd call cutting edge - but it's the way in which Eidos Montreal are going about their business that demands attention. There's a level of sheen here - from the seamless switching between first and third-person during gunplay or stealthy bits, to the impressive assortment of techy augmentations Jensen can utilise to, er... make his point.

I'm pretty sure these are the first released in-game screens from Dungeon Siege 3 - check the pair out at Eurogamer.

BioWare announces Retribution, the third Mass Effect book, has been released.

This is the first time I've seen the name of the new "combat oriented" DLC for Dragon Age, with Joystiq previewing Golems of Amgarrak from Comic-Con.  The author describes his short gameplay experience but doesn't really reveal much:

So yes, alongside the public, I got a chance to see the upcoming DLC. And the first thing I heard about it is that it's hard. Really hard. Dragon Age: Origins  is already a game that requires some thinking, but BioWare has apparently turned up the difficulty on this one -- there's lots of big enemies, I was told, that will provide a challenge even on the easiest setting.

1Up looks over the announced classes for Diablo 3 to speculate on what the fifth and last character option might be:

There's one archetype glaringly absent from Diablo 3: no traditional ranged physical attacker. The Wizard and Witch Doctor might have ranged spells they regularly use, but neither of them -- or either of the other classes -- uses a bow. This particular prediction seems to be the prevailing theory on the Internet, as the concept of a bow-wielding class seems like a necessity in a modern Diablo game. It fits so well, in fact, that I find it hard to believe that the last class isn't some sort of Hunter or Rogue that (at least sometimes) employs a bow.

Bethsoft and Stardock have announced the Bethsoft game lineup is now available on Impulse if that is your favourite digital vendor.

Eurogamer has a followup on the news that BioWare was assisting Maxis with DarkSpore.  Turns out BioWare is not associated with the title at all but Maxis did hire writer Malcolm Azania who worked on Mass Effect 2 "at one stage".

In other DarkSpore news, SDDT.com has a video interview with Maxis System Designer Paul Sottosanti from Comic-Con.  Thanks, Omega.

GameInformer continues their coverage of Dragon Age 2 with a movie titled An Epic In Progress.  The 4 minute video shows a handful of developers at their desks, discussing various aspects such as sound, 2D art and animation.  At a couple of points, we see some shakycam WIP footage of the game itself.  The sound is poor and the footage is clearly deep in development but it's worth a quick look.

While the real details are still scarce, Joystiq has a preview-slash-interview on Reckoning with comments from Schilling, Salvatore and Big Huge Games' lead designer, Mark Nelson.  Schilling continues to call the game "God of War meets Oblivion" but here's a bit that really caught my eye:

But he does want to say that 38 plans to put something great in the game for both RPG players and action fans. "Curse of the Azure Bonds, which is an SSI Gold Box game, old D&D game. I can remember that storyline like it was yesterday, playing through that. RPG players, that's what we want." Action gamers love pressing buttons for big hack and slash moves that leave them almost hyperventilating with intensity. And Schilling wants to see both thrills in Reckoning: "I've never played a game that had both of those. And that's the game I'm playing, that I see. I see these incredibly deep quests, this incredible combat, and I'm having fun doing both."

Meanwhile, GamePro has separate video interviews with Schilling and Salvatore.

Thanks to Omega for these three.

TopWare's Jake DiGennaro has been interviewed in the latest issue of Gamerzines (.pdf, direct link).  It's a pretty general conversation, although Jake does list the game length for Two Worlds II at around 40 hours including sidequests; here's a sample:

"We took special care in identifying the things we did well that players enjoyed, as well as the areas we needed to improve that caused the game to suffer, and are excited to bring players back into the totally revamped world of Antaloor."

"Two Worlds II is really the franchise's opportunity for redemption, and one we have not taken lightly."

Thanks, Omega.

In semi-related news, you can now pre-order Two Worlds II at Direct2Drive.

Obsidian's Rich Taylor has been interviewed about Dungeon Siege 3 at IGN, with a cinematic trailer also embedded in the article (or head here just for the trailer).  Sounds like they really are beefing up the story and quest aspects:

IGN: Obsidian's always been known for doing a great job of embedding interesting stories into its game worlds, so can you talk about the story surrounding Dungeon Siege III and how much of an integral part of the experience it is?

Rich Taylor: We can't go into story details at this time. We can say that story is every bit as important in Dungeon Siege III as other titles we have developed at Obsidian such as Neverwinter Nights 2 and Knights of the Old Republic 2. The player will be an integral part of the story that unfolds as they progress through the adventure. There will be decisions the player has to make. These choices can impact how your party feels about you or affect the way other characters in the game respond to you. There are times when the player has to make a decision that will make one group or another unhappy, and this will have a long term effect on aspects of the story.

Rich Taylor: One of the refinements we are making to this system for Dungeon Siege III is that we are having each of these decisions have a short term, mid-term and long term affect on the game. So, you'll see the effects of your decisions constantly as you play through to the end.

Games Radar also have a preview; here's an interesting replacement for minimaps:

Perhaps the most striking new feature was the one that showcased the game’s stunning graphics. You’ll be able to survey your surroundings more effectively by using vistas – vantage points in areas that let you see far out into the distance, giving a better glimpse of the areas and goals that lie in wait. This has allowed the developers at Obsidian to remove the unsightly mini-map that mucks up the view in most Action RPGs from Dungeon Siege 3’s HUD. It might seem like a terrible design choice at first, but once you see the beautiful landscapes stretching before you from a vista point, we doubt you’ll miss that ugly thing.

Deus Ex 3 director Jean-Francois Dugas and producer David Anfossi have spoken with Gamasutra about the challenges in making this type of game:

A lot of first-person games have become more directed and scripted, more about spectacle, in the last several years. Games in the Deus Ex style are not very common these days. What kind of experience have your designers had? Did it seem like they had to readjust their level design mentality for this?

JFD: A little bit. A lot of games we worked on in the past, and for a lot of other developers too, you're used to thinking that every single bit that you build, players need to see, because it's so expensive to be making a game. I will spend three months on something, but if a player doesn't see it -- "Oh my God, we cannot do that. We can't afford this."

But Deus Ex is all about the things you might miss. At first, to be honest, it was hard to convince the team and say, "Yeah, you're building this," because they'd say, "Yeah, but the player might not see it." It's not about that.

What it's about is the consequence of choice, letting them play the fantasy the way they want, letting them explore the maps and find creative ways to achieve their objectives.

This is the heart of the experience. At some point, everybody got on board with it, but at first it was tough to get all the people on properly, because they are not used to making that kind of game.

As for the more, like you said, spectacular aspects, I think by making great systems, like cool augmentations to use and having great enemies, it's going to give you those "wow" moments that make you think, "Oh my God -- this just worked into that, and it was really awesome," while keeping the spirit of multiple pathways and solutions alive. We're trying to balance it out -- keeping what Deus Ex is and bringing in a new generation of gamers.

Strategy reviewer Troy Goodfellow has reviewed Din's Curse for GameShark, calling it "one of my favourite games from 2010".  The score is 'B+' and here's a snip:

The monsters fight each other, too, which is a great way of winnowing the hordes except for the fact that monsters can gain experience and status, too. A normal zombie is really no big deal; if he fights his way to champion zombie, though—watch out. Occasionally you will be asked to find a townsperson in the depths of peril, and saving them from death is no easy task.

The dungeons then become sort of a chaotic mash-up of wilderness and gladiatorial free for all where you can get overwhelmed, especially at lower levels. The monsters are rarely in high enough numbers or levels to pose a threat to an experienced hero, especially once you've unlocked some of the bigger feats and talents (fireballs, poison clouds, multiple target melee fighting) but it can be touch and go sometimes if you get stuck in a corner, low on healing potions.

If you remember the effort to merge the Companion 1.4, Camarilla v1.3 and ClanQuest 2.0 mods for Vampire: Bloodlines, the initial release of the resulting merge is now available.  You can grab VTMB2010 from Planet Vampire, with details in this thread.

Greywardens got some hands-on time with Dragon Age 2 at San Diego Comic-Con.  Here's a snip from their preview - a spoiler does follow but this has already been foreshadowed elsewhere in other previews:

The story is told by two different narrators who tend to embellish how powerful you really are, and the intro filled out the story of Ostagar (in the same stained glass fashion of DA:O). The game definitely played a bit more like Mass Effect 2, what with the voice acting, as well as in the general gameplay. At one point, I was offered the chance to utterly destroy mobs of darkspawn that were coming at me, or have the mage that was with me (Bethany, I think her name was) blast them. Mage spells in the demo were crushing prison and mind blast — which worked to marvelous effect, of course. The spellbook worked well, but, at least in the demo, there were no tooltips. When I reached the end of the preview, just as it was obvious everyone was going to die, a dragon came out of nowhere and, graciously, killed all of the darkspawn. The dragon then morphed into a familiar old lady with long grey hair — guess who, anyone?

Magic Moments in Antaloor is a collection of Two Worlds II magic casting video clips.  These are from the official site but Inside Two Worlds has collected them in a more convenient format, showing off Trash Vortex, Fireball, Necromancy and Invisibility.