Tag: bioware

Gaming Podcast 214: A Fully PAXed EpisodeGaming Podcast 214: A Fully PAXed Episode

We review our experiences of PAX East in this podcast and the second half is full of gaming news and community comments. Derrick reflects at his fun experience of Orcs Must Die while Jonah spent some time with LA Noire and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The news highlights include:

  • PSP Go Price Goes Back to $200 After 3 Days
  • Phil Harrison Sez Industry Struggling With Casual and Mobile Game Market
  • Angry Birds Hits 100 Million Downloads
  • Bioware Talks Jade Empire Again
  • Gamer Loses $1800 In Games from Steam

This week’s question of the week: Which convention would you want to attend most: E3, PAX or Comic Con?

Gaming Podcast 208: Sony’s NGP RevealGaming Podcast 208: Sony’s NGP Reveal

We’re covering some of the NGP information, Sony’s new hand-held and trying to find the good and the bad for the hardware. With a market getting hit with smart phones, is there a place for the NGP? This week in the news we’ve got:

This week we flash back to the gaming impact created by one Garry Kitchen and ask the question of the week: Should Sony give up on the PS3 and release the PS4 as soon as possible?

Gaming FlashBack: Baldur’s GateGaming FlashBack: Baldur’s Gate

Baldur’s Gate isn’t too old, it was released in November of 1998, but that’s still a bit dated now. The gaming industry isn’t friendly to the years, often working in what seems to be accelerated “dog years” in terms of technological advancements. It figured this was worth covering because it’s one of the best selling and considered a top tier single-player RPG by most accounts.

It was also developed by BioWare, who, at the time, only had one other game under their belt from two years before called Shattered Steel.

The story begins just after a devastating event in the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign called the “Time of Troubles.” This was a great twist in the standard D&D campaign, it caused all curative magic (clerics) to lose their ability to heal unless near their deity, magic didn’t function correctly (I believe this is where the Wild Mage came from) and was unpredictable and gods walked the earth as mortals which caused magic to, in effect, die while the gods were away. Since the storyline starts slightly after this event, the game contains healing and magic but the storyline is impacted by prior events of course, people have trust issues.

The game was made great because it held “mostly true” to the 2nd Edition D&D roots so the learning curve for D&D player’s wasn’t so rough; some things were adjusted to handle the real-time effect of a video game RPG. You could party with up to six Non-Player-Characters (NPC’s) whom would swap in and out of your active party over time as part of the storyline (something also implemented by the US release of Final Fantasy 2).

(more…)