Dragon Age: Origins - Darkspawn Chronicles • Eurogamer.net

Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw leaves BioWare after 14 years

Que Sera, Sera.

Mike Laidlaw, the creative director of the Dragon Age series, has announced his departure from BioWare, where he's worked for 14 years.

Dragon Age loses lead writer to new BioWare game

"10 years is a long time to work on any one project."

Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider has moved onto "a new, upcoming BioWare project" and left Dragon Age behind.

Dragon Age: Origins gets Ultimate Edition

It only does everything.

BioWare has announced plans to wrap up all add-ons and DLC packs released for Dragon Age: Origins into one tidy package.

Dragon Age: Origins - The Darkspawn Chronicles

Spawn to be mild.

Let's talk a little about meaning. Meaning's important. Take the word "chronicles", for example. What does that suggest to you? An ongoing saga, perhaps. A record of some event so epic that it can only be told one piece at a time. Majestic myths, tales too big to be constrained between Once Upon a Time and Happily Ever After. What it doesn't suggest is something you can finish off in about an hour.

That, needless to say, is what we get with the latest Dragon Age downloadable. As with the similarly short-lived Return to Ostagar, let me make it perfectly clear that I'm not about to fall into the trap of equating length with quality. If this was the finest hour of gaming ever produced, or even just up to the quality of its parent game, then the low price (400 Microsoft or BioWare Points, or Ł3.99) would be perfectly justified. But it's not. It's yet another linear hack and slash journey through familiar environments that stumbles to a halt before it even gets up to speed.

The twist is that this is a standalone outing which casts you as a Hurlock Vanguard working for the very same Archdemon you spent many hours working to defeat in the game proper. Set during the climactic battle for Denerim, the episode sees you advance through the city, killing everyone in your path and occasionally performing rudimentary "quests" that involve nothing more taxing than smashing gates, pulling two levers or, you know, killing everyone in your path.