Village Gamer

Edmonton – Hot on the heels of missing the release date for Dragon Age’s DLC Return to Ostagar (and the mysterious removal of its announcement from the front page of the game’s site), Bioware has announced that Dragon Age™: Origins – Awakening, the first official expansion pack to Dragon Age: Origins, the recent recipient of Spike TV’s Best RPG and PC Game of 2009, IGN’s Best RPG of 2009, CNN.com’s Best RPG of 2009. Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening will be available for the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system, the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and PC on March 16, 2010.

Designed and written by the same team that brought you Dragon Age: Origins, the Awakening expansion pack offers a brand new area of the world to explore known as Amaranthine, featuring an epic story that will allow players to unravel the secrets of the darkspawn – and their true motivations! Players will face a range of horrific and terrifying creatures including an evolved, intelligent breed of darkspawn and other menacing creatures such as the Inferno Golem and Spectral Dragon. Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening provides exciting new ways for players to customize their heroes and party, including the ability to re-spec their character attributes, allowing even greater customization and replayability. Featuring an increased level cap, new spells, abilities, specializations and items, plus five all-new party members, players can continue their adventures from Dragon Age: Origins, or begin with a brand new character.

“Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening shows BioWare’s commitment to our fans by delivering new story-driven experiences which enrich the dark heroic fantasy universe our fans have come to know and love,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Group General Manager of the RPG/MMO Group, EA, and Co-Founder, BioWare. “The vibrant worldwide community of Dragon Age fans will relish uncovering the secret motivations of the darkspawn, revealing how the darkspawn continue to infest the world despite the defeat of the Archdemon.”

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, BioWare’s next thread in the Dragon Age: Origins tapestry, occurs following the events of Dragon Age: Origins and puts players into the role of a Grey Warden Commander entrusted with rebuilding the order of Grey Wardens. In addition to rebuilding the ranks of the Grey Wardens, you will be tasked with uncovering the mystery of how the darkspawn survive after the slaying of the Archdemon. How players choose to rebuild their order, resolve the conflict with the mysterious “Architect,” and determine the fate of the darkspawn are just some of the many intriguing moral choices that will shape each player’s heroic journey. Players will be able to import their character from Dragon Age: Origins or start out as a new Grey Warden from the neighboring land of Orlais.

In the meantime – where is Return to Ostagar? Twice release dates were announced, and twice we’ve been told it’s delayed. Speculation on the delay has (at time of writing) produced over 120 pages of posts on Bioware’s Social Community for Dragon Age. This is where more of an explanation other than Chris Priestley’s post at the 20th hour stating:

“Hello Dragon Age fans,

We’re sorry but the planned Return to Ostagar downloadable content scheduled to launch on January 5th has been delayed for all platforms.

We will update you as new information becomes available.”

would’ve been nice – granted, I have not gone through all 120+ pages of posts to see if anything’s been added, but the original post still stands without edit, and from the tone of the last few community posts, there hasn’t been any update.

Note to game dev peeps: Let your fans know why products are delayed – if you’re fixing bugs, say so; if there are no NDA areas being violated, all your fans want is a simple explanation. While studios have improved their community relations, it appears that there is still a very long way to go.