v.plonk!

The prices are okay... I payed 12,50 Euros to get in (that's a normal ticket for 1 adult and 1 day). So my colleague Carsten and I went in and started in


Hall 6
We directly passed the stand of Microsoft, as there wasn't much to be seen, except for some of the well known consoles and a few games.

Right next to it there was the stand of Capcom, who showed a few nice games including Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars, a very funny beat'm-up and Dark Void, an action game that looks very appealing but I kinda doubt that the storyline will convince many PC gamers.

TakeTwo showed three real smash hits: Mafia 2, Borderlands and Bioshock 2. So you see: It's not much, but it's a really good line-up and worth trying to have a look at it (which we didn't, as my main goal was at the end of the hall).

Right next to these stand was the huge presetation of Activision Blizzard, with loads of people waiting to get their hands on... oh yes: Diablo III and Starcraft II! These two crowd-pullers can actually be played there, so if you're into those games, get there and wait. Furthermore I've seen contests like a deathknight-leveling contest in WoW.

But still this wasn't my goal, so we moved on to the Stand of Electronic Arts. Here there was the biggest show of all on the Gamescom (imho), with a several meters large video show (approximately 4-5meters high and 25meters wide), with playable stands for StarWars: The Old Republic, Sims 3, Command & Conquer 4, Mass Effect 2, Need for Speed: Shift, Brütal Legends and the game I was there for: Dragon Age: Origins. So both of us stood in line until we were next to the entrance, where we talked a bit with the guys who managed the stand... mainly I tried to ask them about the DA-Toolset, but they didn't really know much about it. While talking with them they went back into their "chamber" and gave me a "special keyband", for community members ans told me to visit the conference rooms around 5p.m., then they let us in.

Dragon Age: Origins - first impressions
So here we were: playing Dragon Age: Origins for the first time. I selected a character, had a short look on the customizing options and headed in into the game. The graphics look beautiful, very smooth and detailled. The sounds, especially the voice acting, is really state-of-the-art... I often just enjoyed listening to the actors. But what surprised me the most, was the wide range of options to chose from when talking with your counterpart and the wide range of consequences. The fighting system is fast and highly tactical (I selected the second highest difficulty), so clearly thumbs up!

I missed the grain effect you know from the last games from BioWare (like Jade Empire and Mass Effect) and there wasn't any trace of the Toolset, but more about that later on.

I played for around 20 minutes, mainly trying to figure out how the game mechanics are working, then we left and headed to


Hall 7
There we mainly found Sony... with a very big stand including PS3 and PSP, several games and a big show. But as it was always heavily crowded we passed it very soon and ran around a little bit.

So we had a look at Ubisoft, who showed Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, James Cameron's Avatar, Red Steel 2, Rabbids Go Home and more. A very interesting and varied line up and worth having a look at.

A bit more relaxing, than hall 6 but still very interesting and for many people surely more to get their hands on.


Hall 8
This hall is dominated by Nintendo, with a very light, beautiful and appealing stand. Many Wii-consoles and DSi-handhelds to get your hands on, many things to try yourself. We played with the new Wii Motion Plus controller enhancement I must admit, I was pretty surprised about the improved accuracy while playing Wii Sports Resort. I'm very sure, that I'll buy that game and controller extension very soon.

The next stand I really wanted to see was dtp entertainment, showing Venetica, Drakensang - Am Fluss der Zeit, Black Mirror II and some more. I'm very excited about Venetica... the game already runs smooth and looks wonderful, and I'm also very sure, that Drakensang will be a big hit.

The Atari/Namco Bandai stand showed Tekken 6, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the new world and Ghostbusters, but aside from the mentioned titles I wasn't really convinced.

But the most disappointing stand was Sega. They didn't show anything aside from Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, even though the video trailer showed many more (for example Bayonetta, Alpha Protocol, Alien vs. Predator). I wonder where to see and play those?

Carsten found a nice stand at Rondomedia, where we could test a working MediaTable... and he commented it with: "I can do it better..."

We furthermore had a good talk with a guy from quantm about ZBrush and current and older 3D packages.


Hall 9
A bit weird part of the Gamescom was the last hall we visited: Hall 9 was dominated by NCSoft (mainly presenting Aion) and the Electronic Sports League (ESL), besides some hardware stands. At the time we came to the ESL stand that wasn't anything going on at all, so we left Hall 9 and Carsten left the Gamescom, while I had another short look around while waiting for the conference at 5p.m.


Dragon Age conference
Now the special event of the day: I was invited to a conference about Dragon Age: Origins, where we saw an exclusive, very long, interesting (and funny) presentation, with things that haven't been shown before.

It's very cool to see how your choices change the whole story. Mike Laidlaw showed two totally different ways how (and why) to solve a certain situation and how many more possibilities in this scene would be playable. He answered many interesting questions by the audience (including one from me ) and later on Fernando Melo answered some more questions about the downloadable content (DLC). So here are some facts:

1. Because the game will be released on PS3 and xbox360 too (and thereby will released at the end of October), at least 56 more quests will be integrated!

2. The famous "film grain" some people might know from Jade Empire or Mass Effect won't be used or even availoable in Dragon Age. Mike Laidlaw told me that this was decided due to design reasons: While Mass Effect is like a big sci-fi movie, and the effects fits into that. In Dragon Age it doesn't play like a movie so this effect won't be available there.

3. At the moment the people who already work with the Toolset write a Wiki with many tutorials. This will be public in september, but the exact date isn't set yet.

4. The Downloadable Content will directly start with two addons: one will be included in ALL packages of the game, the second one will be part of the Deluxe Edition, but can also be bought. It is planned to support the DLC for at least 2 years directly by Bioware. What's even better: The best community mods will be available via the DLC option!

5. I talked with Fernando Melo about the 3D formats that will be available to import into the Toolset: Right now 3D Studio Max is fully supported, but further import option can be made as a toolset-plugin. I really hope that Blender will be among those, because it's a free open source 3D content creation suite. But at least Blender can export in .3ds, so maybe it won't be even necessary to create a special export plugin for Blender.



A few photos can be found in the Gamescom 2009 gallery.