Dragon Age Central

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BioWare will be presenting the Dragon Age™ Toolset at the Penny Arcade Expo, held August 29–31, 2008, in the Washington State Convention & Trade Center. Designed specifically for the highly–anticipated Role–playing PC game Dragon Age™: Origins, the Dragon Age Toolset provides players with developer–grade tools that will allow them to produce their own content.

Attendees of the Penny Arcade Expo will be the first ever to see the new toolset in action as BioWare will provide a live demonstration of some of its exciting features and capabilities. The Dragon Age™ Toolset will be part of a stage demonstration during the Penny Arcade Expo at 1:30pm, August 31, on the main stage at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center in Seattle, Washington. Key features include:

• Create Original Adventures – Using the rich set of Dragon Age assets and locations as starting blocks, users can modify these stunning areas by adding new quests, characters and scripting to craft their own adventures, fate–defining conversations and cut–scenes.
• Powerful Script Editor – Users can fully customize combat and creature AI, allowing them to create detailed action sequences full of heart-pounding party–based tactical combat.
• Content Creators Community – BioWare plans to have a dedicated community area online where content creators can share content easily and get content updates for the toolset.
• On–Going Toolset Content Updates – BioWare plans to release additional assets and features for the toolset in the future, allowing for expanded creation of new areas.

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BioWare Presents Dragon Age: Origins

New Details To Be Revealed About BioWare’s Dark Fantasy Epic At E3 2008

EDMONTON, Alberta–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Leading video game developer BioWare®, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS - News) today announced details of the highly anticipated dark fantasy Role Playing Game Dragon Age™: Origins which will be featured as one of the premier video games at the 2008 E3 Media and Business Summit, July 15-17.

As the spiritual successor to BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate™, one of the most successful role-playing games in the industry, Dragon Age: Origins represents BioWare’s return to its roots, delivering a fusion of the best elements of existing fantasy works with stunning visuals, emotionally-driven narrative, heart-pounding combat, powerful magic abilities and credible digital actors. The spirit of classic RPGs comes of age, as Dragon Age: Origins features a dark and mature story and gameplay.

“We’re thrilled to be returning to BioWare’s fantasy roots, with Dragon Age: Origins representing the culmination of over a decade of experience,” said Ray Muzyka, co-General Manager and CEO, BioWare and Vice President, Electronic Arts. “Dragon Age: Origins is a dark heroic fantasy that doesn’t pull any punches. Our fans are in for the most emotionally intense gaming experience we’ve ever created, and we hope to surprise them with just how dark and gritty it gets!”

BioWare will be demonstrating some of the compelling features of Dragon Age: Origins behind closed doors at E3, including:

• Epic Party-Based Combat – Dragon Age: Origins will introduce an innovative, scalable combat system, as players face large-scale battles and use their party’s special abilities to destroy hoardes of enemies and massive creatures.
• Powerful Magic – Raining down awesome destruction on enemies is even more compelling as players apply “spell combos,” a way of combining together different spells to create emergent unique effects.
• Deep Customization – Players will develop their characters and gain powerful special abilities
(spells, talents and skills) and discover ever-increasing weapons of destruction.

• Your Story, Your Way – With its emotionally compelling story, players choose with whom they wish to forge alliances or crush under their mighty fist, redefining the world with the choices they make and how they wield their power.
• Origin Stories – Players will select and play a unique prelude that provides the lens through which the player sees the world and how the world sees the player. The player’s choice of Origin will determine who they are and where they begin the adventure, as they play through a customized story opening that profoundly impacts the course of every adventure.

Dragon Age: Origins is scheduled to ship for the PC in early 2009. For more information, the latest updates, or to join BioWare’s Dragon Age community, visit www.dragonage.com.

Today AGEIA Technologies, developers of hardware-accelerated physics technologies for games, announced that BioWare is integrating AGEIA PhysX technology into its BioWare Eclipse Engine for PCs and next-generation consoles.
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Its integration of AGEIA PhysX technology into its next-generation game engine should raise the bar for physics in its games such as the long-in-development Dragon Age.
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