Sunday 12 December 2010

Two major new game sequels on their way

Two of the biggest computer game franchises are returning in 2011 for new instalments.


First up, the fifth game in The Elder Scrolls series is landing on 11 November (11/11/11). Skyrim is set in the frigid northern country of the same name, located to the north of Cyrodiil (the setting for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) and west of Morrowind (the titular setting of the third game). Expect lots of snow, ice, mountains and bad Viking impersonations. The game seems to be more of a sequel to Oblivion than previous games (which were pretty much divorced from other games in the setting), with the events of that game referred to in the trailer. Also, dragons will apparently play a role, or so Max Von Sydow tells us. Encouragingly, the game will use a new engine rather than the Gamebryo engine that powered Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

Secondly, the third and apparently final game in the Mass Effect trilogy should also appear somewhere around the same time. Mass Effect 3 opens with Earth under assault by alien forces with Shepard and his crew having to find reinforcements and save the day. For a change, the game trailer depicts London as being the main city under attack rather than an American population centre.



As with the previous game in the series, you can transfer existing characters and saves into the new title and events in the game will vary depending on decisions you made in the prior two games.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

don't forget dragon age II, which I believe is an even bigger release in 2011 than the ones you mentioned!

Nick Cirkovic said...

Okay. Double excitement is in order!

jamie said...

Hm, while I feel that I should be vaguely excited by all of this, I found Oblivion to be rather uninteresting (no idea about Morrowind) and Mass Effect 1 isn't rocking my world at the moment either which is disappointing.
On the other hand the Portal 2 trailer, even being no game play whatsoever looks like fun, yay, robots!

Anonymous said...

Deus Ex , Mass Effect 3 , Skyrim , Dragon Age 2

Nerdgasm !

Adam Whitehead said...

In terms of sales, DRAGON AGE is a little bit below the other two, although IIRC EA were surprised with its high sales given it was a PC-focused title with the PS3 and 360 versions being after-thoughts (the other way around to normal).

Annoyingly, though, DA2 looks like it's being dumbed down a little for the consoles and made more action-based. Which considering this series is apparently the spiritual successor to the BALDUR'S GATE series, is not a good development. Still, let's see.

There's also THE WITCHER II in addition to the other titles mentioned. CRYSIS 2 as well.

@ Jamie: MASS EFFECT 1 took a while to catch fire for me as well. The moon-salvaging missions got really annoying after a while (luckily you can skip them). However, once the story kicks in, it gets a lot better. The final mission is pretty cool and there's some good twists halfway through, but overall it was riffing a little bit too hard off KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC, which was a stronger game.

Anonymous said...

@Jamie: It is worth it to soldier through Mass Effect (which turns out amazing apart from the salvaging) to experience Mass Effect 2 which is a landmark game