BioWare today announced the "first" Dragon Age: Origins expansion, titled 'Awakening' and continuing the fantasy RPG's storyline with new areas and party members in March.

Playing with an existing Dragon Age character or starting afresh as "a new Grey Warden from the neighboring land of Orlais," Awakening will charge players with rebuilding the order and "uncovering the mystery of how the darkspawn survive after the slaying of the Archdemon," BioWare reveals in a press release. Read more »

Initially slated to arrive during the "holiday season," the first post-release downloadable add-on for BioWare's fantasy RPG Dragon Age will hit PC and Xbox 360 next Tuesday, January 5, the developer and publisher / studio owner Electronic Arts announced today.

Priced at 400 BioWare Points / 400 Microsoft Points / $4.99, "Return to Ostagar" brings players "to the fateful battleground in Ostagar where the Grey Wardens were nearly wiped out," offering up new items, more darkspawn to kill, and "a second chance to add Dog to your party" in the process. Read more »

Dragon Age: Origins takes a step back toward the traditional dialog system developer BioWare used for all their role playing games prior to Mass Effect. While selecting phrases verbatim might feel old school compared to the emotional responses in Mass Effect don't think for a moment that they didn't put as much into it.

Quite the opposite is true. Despite the cinematic nature of Mass Effect 2, in comparing the dialog systems of the two games BioWare co-founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk told me that Dragon Age: Origins packed over twice as many dialog options. Why so much? In Dragon Age a large proportion of the potential responses are based on the race and class you've chosen for your main character, their skills and demeanor, and the decisions made in developing the relationships. For every group of possible responses you see on any given play through of the game, there's probably an equal number hidden to handle all the other potential combinations as Zeschuk explained it. Read more »

The official Mac-compatible release of Dragon Age: Origins will arrive as a digital download next Monday, December 21, original developer BioWare and "portability technologies" studio TransGaming announced today.

The Mac version of the RPG will be sold in standard and digital deluxe form through "popular online digital reatilers," according to today's press release. Read more »

A new patch for Dragon Age: Origins PC is now available on FileShack, delivering several fixes and updating BioWare's recent fantasy RPG to v1.02.

Among the changes of the 37MB download are balance adjustments and bug fixes, including faster health and mana regen and shorter cooldowns. Notes BioWare: Read more »

Dragon Age developer BioWare today launched "the first in a series of compelling social experiences" from its new R&D group BioWare Labs--Gift of the Yeti, a festive Facebook game which donates money to charity and Dragon Age discounts to players.

With Santa struck down by bad eggnogg, it's up to a friendly yeti to save Christmas by stomping around town delivering gifts. Joining in the Yuletide spirit, BioWare will donate one cent per play to children's gaming charity Child's Play, up to $10,000. Read more »

In a rather fortuitous coincidence, new trailers for both Black Rock's Split/Second and Bizarre Creations' Blur have been released by their respective publishers, allowing for easy comparisons of the racers coming to PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2010.

First up is Split/Second, which centers around explosions and hits in May:

The first post-release downloadable expansion for Dragon Age: Origins has been announced by developer BioWare, with the content due "this holiday season."

Coming to all three platforms--PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360--"Return to Ostagar" is said to let players "exact their revenge and embark on a quest for the mighty arms and armor of the once great King Cailan when they revisit Ostagar, the site of the Grey Wardens' darkest hour, to reclaim the honor and learn the secrets of Ferelden's fallen king." Read more »

Update: According to Big Download and Blue's News, Left 4 Dead 2 pre-orders were listed as Steam's second top-grossing game for the week of 11/8 - 11/14, though it seems that listing disappeared after the game launched on November 17.

Original: The week before Left 4 Dead 2's release curiously saw Valve's zombie shooter get left behind by digital customers, as online pre-orders for the sequel slipped from the number three spot on Steam's top ten to, well, a position not listed on the chart. Read more »

Last week was a big one for PC RPGs, as BioWare's long-awaited Dragon Age: Origins dominated the sales charts of digital distribution outlets Steam and Direct2Drive, joined by Gearbox's shooter-RPG Borderlands and Runic's Diablo-esque Torchlight.

Also of note is the fact that the Steam charts include three titles not sold by Direct2Drive: Left 4 Dead 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and Shattered Horizon. Read more »

Dragon Age: Origins PC players struggling with the difficulty of BioWare's fantasy RPG should head on over to FileShack to download the 12MB Patch 1.01a, as should players who don't much fancy the idea of having their character's statistics corrupted.

As well as fixing several bugs, the patch--which has already been deployed to Steam players--tweaks the RPG's difficulty by slightly boosting the combat stats of all party members on the 'Normal' setting and making 'Easy' easier. The full changelog follows. Read more »

The latest deluge of Dragon Age: Origins media presents us two new videos: one made for the internet, the other for TV. Guess which one features a shower of blood?

First up is the TV commercial, tame by video game standards:

While the PlayStation 3 of Dragon Age: Origins was looking to be delayed several weeks past the November 3 launch date, BioWare confirmed today that all three versions--Xbox 360, PC and PS3--will ship on the same day. Three DLC packs--The Stone Prisoner, the Blood Dragon Armor and Warden’s Keep--will also be available at launch.

The company also announced that Dragon Age has gone gold and is now off to manufacturing. To mark the occasion, we've got a new trailer highlighting the character of Oghren, the dwarven gladiator: Read more »

A new Electronic Arts studio dedicated to creating Flash games has revealed its first project, a browser-based take on BioWare's upcoming RPG Dragon Age.

"At EA 2D it is our mission to create blockbusters for the browser," wrote EA 2D producer Ethan Levy in a dev diary. "Some will be original games created by our teams and some will be games within other EA franchises, such as Dragon Age Journeys." Read more »

Remember Alf? He's back! In POG form! Now just replace "Alf" with "split-screen multiplayer" and "POG" with "trailer" and that sentence will make a bit more sense.

The latest from Project Gotham dev Bizarre, Blur hits PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2010.