BioWare's Greg Zeschuk (and the team behind Dragon Age: Origins) is totally psyched to be developing on the PlayStation 3. Speaking to VideoGamer.com recently, Zeschuk expounded the team's excitement at BioWare, saying, "People on the team were really pumped to work on it ... we have a lot of people that like doing new stuff and trying new things, and they were like, wow another platform, can't wait!"

He added that the EA-owned development studio doesn't have "anything against Sony," it's just that "we [BioWare] worked with Microsoft for five years - that made it so easy to focus on Xbox and we didn't have to worry about the PlayStation platforms." Looks as though BioWare are warming up to new platforms, eh? Hang on to your butts, folks, it's a new world.

Despite being set in ye olde fantasy lands of impossibly large swords and questionable female attire, there's something anachronistic about Dragon Age: Origins. An uncomfortable, zealously juvenile spirit seems to permeate the dragon-slaying proceedings, a feeling that seems to linger even after the game's obnoxious marketing has left the room. Paring BioWare's scenes of war and blood and guts with a Marilyn Manson tune is such a strained ploy, it's almost embarrassing.

The thing is, not all of Dragon Age's awkwardness comes from the suits on the upper floor -- sometimes they come from the clothes discarded in front of a romantic campfire. BioWare is really playing up your character's playboy tendencies, chatting up members of his party, plying them with gifts (that have immediate stats and ability benefits) and weighing up his futures with the adorable redhead or the hard-edged sorceress. It's wrapped up in BioWare's traditional dialogue menus (a strange regression from Mass Effect), but approached -- at least in EA's E3 walkthrough -- with the verve of Grey's Anatomy. And you thought leathery-skinned fire breathers were the only things those two had in common.

Last night on GameTrailers TV, the release date for BioWare's upcoming Dragon Age: Origins was revealed. Players will be able to start ruthlessly swording downed monsters on October 20.

Along with the announcement, EA released a trailer for the RPG that should help answer the question of how BioWare plans to differentiate its game from the Lord of the Rings property: by being totally metal. Not just in terms of music ... or armor, but the brutality and the feel of the trailer make it look rather like the kind of album cover Brütal Legend is emulating. Most people would have just pushed a door open, but the flaming sword/glowing eyes flourish makes the act of door-opening so much more badass. The trailer is available after the break.

We got our fingers on the PC version of EA's Dragon Age: Origins recently, noting the powerful Alienware system processing the game's gorgeous visuals. We're quite interested to see how the experience will transition to console platforms, but for now, the PC version is the only one being shown by BioWare.

Lead designer Mike Laidlaw walked us through the demo level, which was purposefully difficult -- we couldn't just breeze our way through it! According to BioWare's PR coordinator Erik Einsiedel, the sample represented "one of the most difficult fights in the game," and considering our inexperience with the title, it was a bit like dropping us into the middle of the Olympics with no training and saying, "See you on the podium!" Find out what we thought about the challenge after break, where you can check out the (NSFW!) new trailer, as well.

Remember all the fuss that Electronic Arts caused when it started shackling its PC games with ire-inducing -- and ineffective -- SecuROM DRM? It looks like BioWare was paying attention, as the company has announced that the EA published Dragon Age: Origins will not ship with the much maligned copy protection.

BioWare's Chris Priestly stated on the Dragon Age forums that the game will rely on a simple disc check for copy protection and will not require any kind of online authentication. There is still no word on whether or not the upcoming pen-and-paper version will include any sort of anti-Xerox measures.

[Via Big Download]

This may surprise you, but every once in a great while your old buddies at Joystiq like to disconnect from the electric teat and just be. We don't go outside or anything stupid like that, no, we like to do things that remind us of playing video games, like eating the old boxes of Nintendo Cereal System we bought off of eBay or wearing a pink hoodie and chasing overweight black men on bikes.

BioWare and Green Ronin are set to feed our habit with a pen-and-paper RPG based on the forthcoming Dragon Age: Origins, just perfect for sort of -- but not really -- taking a break from games. You can look for the boxed set wherever people buy such things this summer.

With a sequel, an original IP and now an MMO in the pipeline, it's a wonder that anyone at BioWare gets any sleep these days, least of all company head honchos Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk. Still, if there's one benefit to insomnia it's that it leaves you with a lot of time on your hands to talk about any number of things, including what life is like after being gobbled up by a publishing giant.

"Honestly, I don't think there have been too many changes at all," reflected Muzyka on the state of BioWare following the company's acquisition by Electronic Arts in 2007. "If anything, we feel enhanced." The BioWare co-founder added that given that the company is now a publisher as well, "we control our destiny in terms of both development and marketing now."

Part of that destiny includes Dragon Age: Origins, a game that Zeschuk admits has been a challenge to market as something more than just a Lord of the Rings clone. One difference is the role of elves, which are described as "not special" and "second-class citizens" in the eyes of humans, promising a stark contrast to those scampering about in Middle Earth when Dragon Age rolls onto retail shelves later this year.

While news of Dragon Age: Origin's delay still has us holding back tears, developer BioWare has handed us a tissue in the form of new screenshots from its upcoming fantasy RPG. Light on action, these newest drops of delicious eye candy draw from of each of the game's six different origin stories. Think of it as a warning an early taste of the many hours you'll spend glued to the screen ignoring family and friends as you pour over BioWare's latest offspring in the back half of 2009.

BioWare's return to PC as a primary platform has been met with rapture and glee from the PC gaming crowd. The development chops of the Canadian company are almost impossible to question, with hit after hit being released from its Edmonton headquarters. Now the reunion with keyboard and mouse is accompanied by the most ambitious fantasy RPG BioWare has attempted since the original Baldur's Gate. Dragon Age: Origins is a true return to roots for the company, a homecoming with its dearest fans.

It makes sense then to find David Gaider, one of the original writers of the Baldur's Gate plot, at the keyboard behind Dragon Age. We had the chance to talk briefly with the author about what this highly-anticipated title will offer. Though he couldn't reveal much in the way of story components, he did offer a tantalizing view into the world's history. Join us as we talk with Gaider about stepping back from Mass Effect's advances, the joys of returning to PC gaming, and what he considers required reading for any Dragon Age fan.

How would you compare what you've done with the story in Dragon Age to what you did with Baldur's Gate?

Dragon Age is a huge game, much like Baldur's Gate. I don't know that we'd ever make a game as big as Baldur's Gate again, though. That game was just ridiculously huge. That said, there is something to making a game that is substantial like that. The word "epic" is thrown around like there's no tomorrow, but in some ways epic does fit with the scope of the game's story. It's a long story that takes your character through this large arc. It's appropriate for what we're doing.

It is also similar to Baldur's Gate insofar as how much we focus on character. You have all your party members, and I would say almost a third of the writing that's been done is just for the members themselves. The amount of talking they do may in fact be sort of endless. I think for a lot of players that's really important. To this day in any given forum, people will still bring up characters from Baldur's Gate. Some of them are quite beloved. I would like to think as a writer that Dragon Age is the next step from there. Not to knock the Baldur's Gate characters, but these are the characters you'll be interacting with at length for a long period of time ... they're important to the story.

Go for the eyes Boo! Go for the eyes!

Exactly.

It seems as though Dragon Age is very much BioWare returning to its roots. Was that a conscious decision or just a reaction to the way the company and gaming as a hobby has been going?

The company has gotten big enough now that we can have several projects on the go at any given time. Console has its place, of course, and we can't ignore them.

"We chose the subtitle 'Origins' specifically. This is where it begins, and we're not abandoning the PC gamer."

I'm sure a lot of PC gamers would love it if we did, but we can't. What PC players hate, though, is when you have a game that tries to work on a PC and a console at the same time. It has to go for the "lowest common denominator." I think that's a legitimate concern. I think there are games that have successfully worked on both platforms, I don't think it needs to be that way. But here we're focusing on, we're starting on the PC.

We're doing a couple of things differently with this game, though. I mean, we announced Dragon Age really really early. In the normal scheme of things, we would have probably only been announcing it around now for release next year. Instead we announced it really early so that PC gamers wouldn't feel left out. They could look at Mass Effect and know we had huge plans for Dragon Age as a world. We chose the subtitle "Origins" specifically. This is where it begins, this is where the new story starts, and we're not abandoning the PC gamer.

That's something I wanted to mention; origins would seem to suggest a number of things especially for PC gamers. A lot of them still see the Baldur's Gate series as this great franchise that they'll really appreciate forever. Do you see Dragon Age as an attempt to go for that kind of success?

In the end the proof is going to be in the pudding. Rather, the proof is in the eating of the pudding. A lot will depend on how well the game does, right? Before we go crazy with it we want to see how the game is received. I think we're very confident, though, that there's a big group out there that has been anxiously waiting for something like this. I think they'll really respond if we've done well.

I have a good feeling about it, it's not just because I created the world. I watched this game grow before my eyes, I got to start see the cutscenes back, see the world I created take on a life of its own. The coolest thing is when the artists started getting on board. They're one step ahead of me now, instead of me being the one to say "well this is what this should look like". I have that same feeling as I did when we were at this point in developing Baldur's Gate. There's always that point where you're like 'this game is utter crap!' Then it starts to change, and finally we're at the point where we're like 'wow, this game is awesome!'

We really hope this is the launching point for something bigger.

One last question: I'm sure that as a fantasy writer, you read a lot of fantasy as well. Who are some authors you would suggest to gamers that are looking forward to Dragon Age, as a sort of primer to get them in the mood for the world?

There is one series of books that is required reading for any Dragon Age fan. It's not to say we copied him, but it's required reading for what it represented when I was thinking about the game. I sort of got tired of the same old fantasy-style stories. I read The Belgariad and Wheel of Time back to back, right? And they both started the same way, with a "chosen one" with a boy in a remote village who is carried away just as his village is destroyed ... they both started the same way. They're both decent series, but they're very high fantasy titles.

Then I picked up a series of books by George R.R. Martin called A Song of Ice and Fire. It's a low magic world there, and ours is a bit higher. Dragon Age is lower than the normal fantasy world, though, because magic is sort of rare and mages are very distrusted. As I described how Darkspawn came to be, people kind of have a bad opinion about them as a group.

For me, it was the tonal shift that really changed for me personally. It was such a dark story, and sometimes I think he may get too dark ... but it was focused on politics and civil war, dark and gritty, and there was the possibility that characters you loved might die. I went from being kind of "meh" on fantasy in general to really excited because of these books. We didn't go out to copy his works, but that sort of shift, that darkness, that seriousness are all elements we've embraced for our game. That's the tone of Dragon Age.

Thanks so much for your time, sir.

The Dragon Age: Origins booth at PAX08 has been surrounded all weekend by both walls and people lining up to get inside. So when PAX opened for the third and final day this morning, we bolted straight to the game booth and avoided the nasty line. By joining in with the first group of the day to see the game demoed live. It didn't take very long for the room to fill up and once the doors close, we were elbow-to-elbow with what turned out to be some pretty enthusiastic BioWare fans.

Though we're sure BioWare PC fans appreciated how free it was, having to wait for Mass Effect DLC must have been tough for them after getting used to creating their own content in Neverwinter Nights. Today, the company announced it would be returning to form with Dragon Age Origins, revealing the content creation tools that will be packed in with the game.

We've put full details after the jump, but expect to be able to fully customize and create your own Dragon Age adventures and share them with the rest of the community. If you want an early look at the tools, you can head to PAX, where they'll be on display Sunday afternoon.

We reported during E3 that the Dragon Age franchise would be heading to consoles in "the future," though it wasn't made clear in exactly what form it would arrive. Given that Dragon Age: Origins is heading to PC, it would make sense that we might see a version of the same title hit consoles, and BioWare's Dan Tudge has confirmed just that to Eurogamer. "Yes. Dragon Age: Origins will be coming to consoles in the near future, yes," said Tudge, adding that the console version should be arriving in late 2009 following the PC release earlier in the year. Such dates should be taken with a grain of salt though, as BioWare PR notes that "plans for consoles haven't been finalised yet."

Frankly, it doesn't matter when the game shows up. No matter how soon it arrives, the wait for the "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate will feel like an eternity.

[Via Joystiq]