Well, to sell more. Duh.  Anyway, here's Molyneux on how numbers are confusing and so on:

Action-adventure franchises like Grand Theft Auto and Assassin’s Creed include RPG elements, but don’t burden users with numbers and statistics. The action-adventure genre is a more natural home for “emotion and drama” – qualities that are core to the Fable franchise.  Molyneux also noted that the market share for RPGs is a niche, while action-adventures sell more broadly and are easier to market. Molyneux said the goal for Fable 3 is sales of over 5 million – more than 25% growth over Fable 2.

G4TV recaps Alpha Protocol after seeing a GDC presentation.  A nifty snip:

Our most recent experience with Alpha Protocol showed off the divergent paths one can engage upon in the game.  SEGA's associate producer, Matt Hickman, put it another way, “Where other games talk a lot about multiple endings, we're all about multiple middles.”  As an example, the game was set up on two different stations, each playing out the same scene side-by-side.  In one, our super spy Mike arrives back at his safehouse to find his lady friend resting.  The scene is full of prompts, allowing the player to react in a variety of different ways.  In this demo, he's appreciative, tender and the scene culminates in the two sharing a kiss.  Clearly, he's earned this somehow.  In the other, upon walking inside, Mike's beaten and eventually electrocuted into submission by the same woman, in reaction to some heinous acts he must have committed along the way.  There's no opportunity to interact with the scene; it's merely a byproduct of a past sin.

Thanks, Omega.

Meanwhile, VG247 has some brief and not very informative comments from a Sega rep on the improvements over the delay:

If you’d seen it before, the visuals and the gameplay were rock solid back then. We used the time to do a lot of under-the-hood stuff and tweaking, things that you wouldn’t notice unless you’d played it in terms of polish.

With days left before the expansion hits, BioWare has given fansite Greywardens.com a couple of reveals for Awakening.  First, they have a page on The Architect:

The Architect is the first darkspawn to develop a will of his own–an unusual outcast who seems not to be subject to the call of the Old Gods, nor to the other darkspawn compulsions.

But although he is highly intelligent, the Architect has little understanding of humanity. Treating him as anything other than what he is–a darkspawn–would be folly.

...and Knotwood Hills:

To the west of Amaranthine is an area they call the Knotwood Hills, so named because of the dead, gnarled trees that dominate the landscape. For reasons undiscovered, the hills are inhospitable and barren, in striking contrast to the fertile farmland of the rest of the arling of Amaranthine.

Omega sent in a bunch of Puzzle Quest 2 links mostly related to GDC, so I'm going to collect them here.

• "Return to Fantasy" video interview at Gametrailers
• Puzzle Quest 2 will ruin your life at Destructoid
• Hands on preview at MTV Multiplayer
• Hands on at GameSpot
• "Blowout" preview at IGN 
• Goblin Witch battle video
• Night on the town HD video ("New to the Puzzle Quest franchise, travel the towns and bash in doors to explore new areas!")
• Screens at IGN

...and a quote from IGN:

While the puzzle battles are pretty familiar, moving about the game world is completely different. Gone is the world map with various towns and caves to visit. Puzzle Quest 2 takes place entirely in the town of Verloren and the dungeon below it. This is more of a dungeon-diving game and most of your quests and side quests will lead you into the depths underneath the village. Like the first game, you can take on multiple quests at once and keep track of them all in your journal. Eventually you'll reach warp points that will allow you to jump to previously explored areas of the dungeon. And there is always the opportunity to just run around killing monsters if you want to do some grinding. Unlike the original PQ, purple gems don't provide experience. They now provide mana and experience is awarded at the end of battle.

You also have a much closer view of the world this time around, due to the camera being zoomed into your characters. You'll be able to walk right up to individuals and engage in conversation while some light voice acting lends the NPCs personality.

The Din's Curse beta has hit 0.909 - grab the file here and the notes here.  As always, Steven has been diligent watching comments from fans and if you've been following the game, you can actually see the relationship between someone pointing out an issue and the immediate response.

Thanks Steven and Omega.

The Escapist have a retrospective on Bloodlines.

Sadly, Bloodlines was the last game that Troika would ever make, as the company folded just a few months after its release. With more money, time and manpower, Bloodlines could have been a genuine masterpiece rather than the cult classic it eventually became. But even though it stumbled out of the starting gate, Bloodlines accomplished something great: More than five years on, there is still a dedicated community creating unofficial patches and restoring cut content, a feat that few games - even incredibly popular and well known ones - can boast. Great games may inspire awe, but Troika's swan song stirred a feeling in players that is just as powerful: devotion.

Logan Westbrook is a news room contributor for The Escapist. Occasionally he updates his blog at http://www.verbscience.com.

Publisher dtp released the 4th Drakensang: The River of Time "Making of" video:

DIYgamer has Max Schaefer heavily hinting that a console port of Torchlight is in, or will be in, the works.

In a brief interview with The Rumble Pack, Torchlight CEO Max Schaefer has confirmed a very juicy detail concerning their recently released action RPG, Torchlight (which we were quoted on the retail box, btw). Now I don’t want to go raising any hopes or anything, but in the interview Max has basically confirmed that Torchlight will be coming to consoles in the future. I believe his exact words were: “We are definitely moving in that direction.”

The Witcher site is pointing out a new adventure mod called Medical Problems, hosted at ModDB.  Here's the description:

Description:

Shani needs help fighting an epidemic of a new, unknown sickness. But what could a monster slayer possibly do about a medical problem?

The game has several different possible endings, depending on which choices you make while playing. Three choices each have consequences, making eight different paths through the game, and which ending you get depends on the combination of choices.

Geralt has monsters to kill, human lives to save, a mystery to solve, and witcher contracts to fulfill. There are also some ladies to woo, though all but one of them are optional. :-)

Features:

* 12 quests (only 11 of which can be completed in any one game, since two of them are mutually exclusive)
* 45 NPC's, all of which have names and conversations of their own.
* 18 explorable areas plus three special areas, with 19 new loading screens
* 40 monsters to kill
* 6 sex cards to get, including one new one and 5 recolored ones
* Many, many recolors of clothes
  * Approximately three hours of gameplay

GDC 2010: A Glimpse at BioWare's Philosophy on RPGs comes from a GDC presentation on localising large RPGs.  The article starts with a look at some of the stats and word counts and ties this back to the discussion on whether Mass Effect 2 is an RPG or not:

From what I've read, the average 300 page novel clocks in at approximately 75,000 words. By comparison, the original Mass Effect contains approximately 300,000 words, Mass Effect 2 adds to that total with 450,000 words, and Dragon Age dwarfs them both with some 1,000,000 words. On top of that, Mass Effect 2 contains 140,000 lines of voice-over dialogue, which were recorded over the course of some 300 days at the studio with the help of more than 350 actors. The takeaway, of course, is that making an RPG is hard. [...]

The reason I mention all this is because much of the debate concerning whether or not Mass Effect 2 is an RPG is based around the combat and the lack of an inventory (there's even another BioWare panel later this week titled "Where's my Inventory!") But the common thread in all of BioWare's games is always the dialogue trees, which is obviously what they consider to be the heart of an RPG. During the panel, the localization team talked about how the writers are tweaking and recording new dialogue up until the last weeks before Cert, and how a great deal of time and money is devoted toward making sure the dialogue is just right.

During a promotional event held in Germany last week, fansite for Dragon Age: Origins, Grey Wardens, talked to Fernando Melo, Biowares online producer. The interview moves in different directions, but here's a snip where Fernando speaks about the fiasco that was Return to Ostagar:

The delayed release of Return to Ostagar caused a fair amount of drama within the community. While these things happen in the world of software development it never paints a good picture of the company, at least not in the eyes of the average End User. Is there anything BioWare has changed in their digital distribution methods to better combat such a delay in the future?

This was a big blow for the team as well. We really wanted to make this a special content piece for fans to enjoy over their holiday season, and the team worked extremely hard to try to make that come true.

Instead Return to Ostagar (RtO) was to become something along the lines of a ‘perfect storm' for us where a lot of small faults and circumstances, not only internally but also externally to us, all came together at the same time and in a really awkward time of the year. This managed to divide everyone's efforts and attention in such a way that issues got through the previous processes that normally would have spotted it - certainly well before it ever made it to the public.

Since then, RtO has turned into an important case study for us, and we've changed quite a lot of our own process actually - not only with how we develop and test our content and patches, but also in how we will communicate these going forward.

King's Bounty: Armored Princess is being released by UK publisher, Focus Multimedia for retail sale in the UK.  It will be in stores March 19th 2010.

GamaSutra has the full press release:

March 2010 - Focus Multimedia, one of the UK's leading PC games and software publishers, is bringing the smash hit adventure RPG King's Bounty: Armored Princess to UK retail for the very first time.

King's Bounty: Armored Princess is the standalone sequel to the multi-award winning role-playing game (RPG) King's Bounty: The Legend. Described as "awesome" in a 9 out of 10 review on gamesradar.com and "outstanding" by gamespot.com, King's Bounty: Armored Princess is already garnering critical acclaim.

King's Bounty: Armored Princess unfolds in a rich new fantasy world. Hordes of demons have ravaged the lands of Darion and defeated the troops of King Mark. Darion's only hope is the legendary knight Sir Gilbert, but the celebrated hero left long ago to explore the distant world of Teana. The player takes command of Princess Amelie as she travels to the mystical and dangerous kingdom of Teana in a quest to find Sir Gilbert and bring him home.

Armies of terrifying creatures and monstrous bosses all stand in Amelie's path. Fortunately she has many new skills and abilities to help her overcome the enemies attacking the kingdom of Teana, including her own pet dragon! 

The princess and her army of companions travel across a huge continent, communicating with other characters, collecting resources and recruiting an army. Whilst exploring, Amelie is controlled in real-time mode.

When a battle takes place the game switches to classic turn-based mode with a strong emphasis on tactical elements. King's Bounty: Armored Princess is a game with widespread appeal.

With a fascinating storyline, beautiful hand drawn environments and gameplay that is both accessible and immersive, King's Bounty: Armored Princess will enchant fans of the fantasy game genre as well as casual gamers. 

King's Bounty: Armored Princess is the first title of a new partnership between Focus Multimedia and leading Eastern European games publisher 1C Company, marking Focus' expansion into the full price gaming market.

Focus is the UK's market leader in impulse price PC games and software. King's Bounty: Armored Princess is available on Friday 19th March from all good games retailers, or may be ordered direct from www.focusmm.co.uk.

To view a list of UK stockists, visit http://www.kings-bounty.com/eng/links.php. The suggested retail price is just £19.99 including VAT.

According to a Tweet that VG247 picked up, Stephanie D'Astous, boss of Eidos Montreal flustered this in the tweet:

leaving tomorrow for GDC-SFO, i advise everyone to log-onto IGN thursday the 11th march at around 20:30 PST ... little surprise from DX3!

Apparently, announcing that there'll be an announcement is how marketing is done today.
VG247 speculates that the surprise could maybe be a trailer?

The company behind Grim Dawn has updated their site with the first screenshots from the game. The game is still very early in development as this disclaimer shows:

Please note that developers do not usually allow their audience to see a game this early in development while the art is still in such a rough, unpolished state. However, we felt it was worth the risk because we want you, our fans, to be involved in the development of the game and to watch as things progress. So, please, keep in mind that we're not releasing materials to drum up buzz a few months in advance of release, rather, Grim Dawn is still pre-pre-pre-alpha and I might have even missed a pre. Thank you for your understanding!

You can find seven new screenshots for Diablo III at Hooked Gamers. They show the witch doctor and wizard in action. They were apparently handed during the Game Developer's Conference.

The official dtp YouTube channel features the first three of four planned making of videos for Drakensang: The River of Time. In German, as usual. Here's the 3rd one.

The other clips can be found nearby, as well as a TV special, a TV spot and a creature guide.

Thanks Omega!

GameSpot's On the Spot video feature sees Bio Brand Manager David Silverman demonstrating Awakening.  There's around 8 minutes of footage and discussion, so well worth a look.

A new free DLC from the dripfeed has been released for Mass Effect 2 - the Arc Projector heavy weapon:

Attention all Cerberus Network members: The Arc Projector heavy weapon has been deployed for field use.

The Arc Projector is capable of discharging a massive electrical blast that can jump to multiple targets. For more information, check out the Arsenal on the website.

GameBanshee catches up with BioWare's Ferret Baudoin to discuss Awakening:

GB: By the time a character reaches level 20 in the base game, there really aren't any desirable talents left to choose from. How do you intend to keep things fresh and ensure that we have plenty of appealing advancement options when the level cap is raised even further? How many more spells and other talents are you implementing in the expansion? Will these fall under the existing talent trees (Archery, Entropy, Two-Handed, etc.) or will we be seeing additional talent categories for each class? Care to give us an example or two?

Ferret: When we extended the level cap in Awakening (from 25 to 35) we also added a ton of new spells and abilities. There’s over 50 new ones to choose from, so there’s more new high level talents than you can get with one character. There’s two basic type of talents we’ve added – the talents that support our new specializations and those which are available to the core classes. The ones that give more goodies to the core classes fall into existing talent trees. Each type of weapon combat has another talent chain added to it. So two handed weapons, weapon and shield, dual wield, and archery all have four new abilities apiece. Mages get two new spell chains, as well. You have to be high level to pick up the new talents, but they’re often more potent than anything you’ve seen before.

An example of a warrior ability is “Peon’s Plight”. This ability allows a warrior to outright kill any one normal or critter level enemy, or deal a lot of damage to anyone else. This allows warriors to really change the tide of many battles. For example, if you start a fight and you see a non-elite Hurlock emissary in the back ranks – just bull rush him and lop off his head in one fell swoop. Conan would be proud.

Another awesome ability that both warriors and rogues can pick up is “Accuracy”. It’s a modal ability for archers that once activated increases the effectiveness of all of your ranged combat stats. The difference is immediate and noticeable. If you get the entire Archery ability chain it feels like Legolas has got your back.

Diehard GameFan has the most detailed X360 review of Risen I can recall, although their scoring system seems a bit uneven.  Ultimately the game is praised for RPG fans but criticised as unappealing to the console mainstream:

Risen is the sort of game that will appeal to diehard fans of the action RPG genre, as there’s enough good elements to the game to make it enjoyable, but it’s more than likely to put off more console-oriented fans because of its obtuse nature and more casual fans because of its stylistic and mechanical issues. The story is interesting and varied enough to keep the game going, the visuals and audio are competent and inoffensive, and the gameplay offers enough variety to be interesting. There’s plenty of variety to the things the player can do, and plenty of challenge to the game all around, and with a long quest and different factions to ally with, there’s plenty of play and replay value for anyone interested in the game. However, console-oriented action RPG fans may well be put off by the often unhelpful quest maps and lack of solid directions to objectives and the unimpressive presentation, while more casual genre fans may be put off by the, “exploration equals death,” mentality, the long time it takes to achieve any sort of notable character development, the lack of attachment to the main character as either a personal avatar or a character in the story, and the general technical issues. If you’re looking for a challenging and time consuming action RPG with some depth and substance and you don’t mind some mechanical issues and presentation flaws, Risen will be worth a look, but anyone looking for something a little more technically competent and polished may find this a bit too flawed and archaic to enjoy.

GameBanshee writes in about a press release they received from German bitComposer Games, announcing the acquisition of the Jagged Alliance license and the development of (a new) Jagged Alliance 3.  You may recall Strategy First spent a long time fumbling around with failed Russian partnerships - hopefully bitComposer can do better, though nothing is know about the actual development team or goals at this stage.  A partial snip:

bitComposer Games Acquires the License for Jagged Alliance

– Jagged Alliance 3: a Strategy-Genre Classic Gets Revamped and Re-released –

Eschborn/Frankfurt, March 09, 2010: Preliminary development work has started on Jagged Alliance 3, the new episode in the internationally successful Jagged Alliance series. The German publisher bitComposer Games has secured the full rights to the license from Strategy First, and will publish this famous strategy brand with roleplay elements worldwide. The aim is to preserve the popular basic concept of the previous versions and place it in a contemporary setting. A specific release date for Jagged Alliance 3 has not yet been confirmed, but a 2011 release is anticipated.

This week's update for DoubleBear's Zombie RPG brings news about the characters and their clothing. It is done via Iron Tower Studios, who hosts the game:

Since the team is rather small, we can't do a lot of characters. It's so small, in fact, that we're only going to do two, a male and a female version (personally, I like to call them Zombob and Zombette). That means, for example, that all male characters will share the same face [About the faces, we are going to have a couple of variations. Perhaps a scarred one, and definitely an old guy one, just like AoD - Oscar]. We're hoping that you won't notice with the camera zoomed out as much as it will be. Luckily, we can still make variations, through clothing, accessories and haircuts [Note: and facial hair and skin tones]. I'd have loved to be able to show you that, but we don't actually have any assets that can be swapped here yet. Expect an update specifically about all that when we've got a fancy and varied assortment of moustaches.

A hands on preview for Dragon Age: The Awakening can be found at Inc Gamers.
They seem to think that more of the same is a good thing. Their focus is on Vigil's Keep which they find very different from the original Dragon Age game -  (some spoilers to follow):

Once you fend off the Darkspawn in the initial attack you're granted control of it and, indeed, the title of Arl, essentially making you the ruler of Amaranthine. In a fashion inspired by the class keeps from Baldur's Gate II, all the problems of both Vigil's Keep and the region on the whole become yours. With the increase in Darkspawn attacks, will you send soldiers to defend the city, or spread them out throughout the countryside to keep the farmers alive? Will you focus on expanding trade to maintain and build up the region? Can you spare the manpower to guard ore deposits so that your soldiers' weapons and armour are improved, or will you have them defend a quarry so that Vigil's Keep's walls can be reinforced?  

If this sounds like Bioware were inspired by the classs keep of BG2, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Bioware has released  patch 1.03  for Dragon Age: Origins. Here's the patch notes:

Various changes have been made to code and resources to support the Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening expansion pack. Most of these changes do not affect Origins itself.
Some players were experiencing increasingly long load times. A major cause of this problem has been fixed.
At higher levels, non-player characters now receive a bonus to armor penetration. This mitigates an unintentional imbalance with well-armored high-level characters, since armor penetration previously did not scale as aggressively as armor itself did.
Elite-rank enemies (lieutenants) can no longer be shattered. This preserves the intended tactical design of many combat encounters.
Portraits for summoned creatures (like a ranger's wolf) were displaying improperly while in the party camp. This no longer occurs.

As you can see many of these changes are identical to the changes occuring in the patch released for PS3 earlier.

EA will publish BHG's single player RPG say Gamespot.

Code-named "Project Mercury," the single-player RPG is being developed by Rise of Nations studio Big Huge Games. (After then-owner THQ threatened to close the studio in 2009, 38 Studios stepped in and bought the Maryland-based developer.) It will be an all-new intellectual property co-created fantasy by comic-book artist Todd McFarlane (Spawn) and author R.A. Salvatore (The DemonWars Saga), who will provide art direction for the game. Both men helped Schilling found 38 Studios--then called Green Monster Games--in 2006, and respectively serve as art director and "executive creator of worlds" at the Maynard, Massachusetts studio. The game will not be based on any of Salvatore's or MacFarlane's previous work.

Though 38 Studios is a relatively new operation, Project Mercury has some veteran development talent behind it. Its project lead is Ken Rolston, who was lead designer on Bethesda Softworks' acclaimed high-fantasy RPGs The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Several other Bethesda vets are working on the project, as well as a senior designer from Lucasarts' the Force Unleashed. Veterans of Civilization and Civilization II are also on board.

According to EA Partners general manager David DeMartini, Rolston and his team will also be able to tap the minds of EA's own RPG powerhouse. "The guys at BioWare were actually involved in the early discussions with the folks at Big Huge," he told GameSpot. "They've had an opportunity to have some preliminary discussions and preliminary talks….So, I certainly think that you could expect strong collaboration that would include the BioWare team."

Depths of Peril is both one of my favourite indie games and one of the best hack'n'slash action/RPGs I've played.  Soldak's third game - Din's Curse - is just around the corner and I've been fiddling with the beta.  Here's a snip from the preview:

I spent a fair bit of my time playing a Rogue and then a Conjurer – and the gameplay was quite different. As a Rogue, I used Sneak to move around and explore (finding the gates and stairs on each level is important) and pick off trailing mobs to thin the herd, all without being seen. As a Conjurer, I used a variety of interesting summons and necromantic abilities, such as changing into a Lich and raising skeletons. Finally, I mixed a Thief (one of the Rogue Specialities) and a Fire Mage (Wizard); this was all sorts of chaotic fun – sneak into the middle of a group of mobs and then unleash fiery Armageddon.

Read it all here.

A fully localised German release of Armoured Princess will be available in April, according to this PR (partial snip):

Hamburg, 08.03.2010 – In Großbritannien, den USA und vielen weiteren Ländern ist King‘s Bounty: Armored Princess bereits seit Ende November 2009 erhältlich. Die Fachpresse lobt den Nachfolger des Strategietitels King’s Bounty: The Legend in den höchsten Tönen. Spieler in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz müssen sich bisher mit dem Import oder Download der englischen Version begnügen – das ändert sich Anfang April 2010. Dann nämlich veröffentlichen dtp entertainment und 1C Company King’s Bounty: Armored Princess, entwickelt von Katauri Interactive, in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz – und zwar komplett auf Deutsch.

Thanks Alrik and Gorath.

Six new screens from Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny at Worthplaying.

Time for a new update on Scars of War.  This week, Gareth takes advice from the Rampant Coyote but promptly ignores it:

I read this last week on Coyote’s blog and thought ‘Hmmm, that sounds like a great idea! I’ve had a host of small, annoying issues bogging me down on the code front, what if I put all that aside and just jam at max speed all weekend, I wonder how much progress I could make?’ It seemed like a great idea and I was all fired up to do it. The goal was to throw together my existing code with some hacked-in workarounds to the issues I’m currently dealing with, build some city zones using the art I’ve already got + some quick and dirty prototype art and get some playable if ugly zones out of it over the weekend.

J.E. Sawyer has written a blog on the Obsidian forums titled High Level Writing Principles and helpfully filed under the category "dachsund grooming tips".  Here's the intro:

At work, we have a lot of rules for how to write. These range from punctuation (single-spacing after terminal punctuation) to spelling ("all right" vs. "alright") to structural (where a "goodbye" response should be relative to a "start combat" response and where that should be relative to a "friendly" response). Every project has a document (or documents) on the specific guidelines for that project. In spite of all the details, there are certain high-level principles that tend to be common. Okay, maybe it's just in my mind, but here are principles that I believe are important for writing player-driven dialogue in choice-heavy RPGs.