23 February 2011

Creating a Social RPG

At the recent Guardian Gamesblog Live event, a trio of top designers from EA openly answered a number of questions pertaining to their upcoming releases and gaming in general. One of the attendees was Mike Laidlaw, lead designer on Dragon Age 2.

He spoke in great detail about the Dragon Age franchise and his personal opinions on the future of RPGs and video game narrative. Many interesting points were raised and Mike’s passion and enthusiasm for video games as a storytelling medium was made abundantly clear. Some of the comments he made about the direction of future RPGs were very interesting and I would like to address them here.

14 February 2011

Catherine Demo...O.K.

Damn my mono-linguistic nature. If I actually spent more time trying to learn Japanese I may have had a slightly greater understanding of the incongruous events that only recently took place on my television screen. Towers of cubes, screaming abominations, tie-wearing sheep, blood-soaked cutlery and gaping mouths assaulted my senses over the course of the demo for Atlus’ Catherine.
 

9 February 2011

A Nintendo 3DS Preview Event

23:14 February 5th – Facebook

James Pickard: "Oops, I just pre-ordered one."

4 Hours earlier...

Tucked away down a side-street in Brick Lane; a small group gathered. We were waiting outside a graffiti-riddled warehouse on a dark and windy night, a projection of the 3DS logo slowly rotated on the facade. I’ll admit, I was sceptical about the 3DS’s capabilities; the 3D effect appeared to be no more than a gimmick and the £200 price-tag seemed incredibly steep. Nevertheless, I was prepared for my opinion to be changed with the chance to spend some time trying out Nintendo’s latest handheld.