How I got rickrolled by Kotaku about Dragon Age

So this morning, I got lured in by this Kotaku article titled Dragon Age: Origins - A Tragedy in the Making? I say lured in because as much as I appreciate Kotaku for their extremely broad coverage of the gaming industry, I don’t like being rickrolled by a writer by making me think that a game that I’ve been following for awhile is in trouble for no reason.

AJ Glaser, who’s a regular writer for Kotaku, wrote about how Dragon Age is under tremendous expectations. That it’s being billed as the spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate and the fact that it’s ship date has been delayed to allow for a  simultaneous release on both the PC and on gaming consoles makes its release that much more difficult.

While that is troubling news, it’s also old news. A delay in shipping date is no cause for alarm; it happens all the time to popular games. Most fans, while disappointed with the delay, are usually understanding given the fact that a delay is preferable to a product that’s been released too early. And the hype that builds tremendous pressure is part of the territory that comes with releasing a much anticipated game from a popular development house. So where’s the story in all this?

Well, there really isn’t a story. The rest of the article goes on about how Glaser witnessed a Bioware employee play through the Red Cliffs encounter in the game and an account of his reaction to it. Glaser made some interesting comments, but there was nothing in his comments that seem to suggest that the game ran badly or even failed his expectations. Hardly the stuff to warrant a title “A Tragedy in the Making.”

Overall, my objection to the article wasn’t the content or Glaser’s commentary, but just the way it was presented. It’s disappointing to see a site as large as Kotaku rely on hyperbole and misdirection.

By the way, you can see the same game play mentioned by Glaser in his article in the two videos below. I think the game looks pretty polished at this point - hardly warranting any type of gloom and doom.

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