BioWare has announced that the DLC Return To Ostagar for Dragon Age: Origins will be delayed again across all platforms, following the recent Xbox 360 title update.
As we reported last weekend, the title update affected specialisation classes in the game, rendering them almost useless. As a temporary measure, the Return To Ostagar DLC was removed from Xbox Live, and players were advised not download the title update until the issue was resolved. Players who had already done so were assured that BioWare was hard at work, coming up with a fix.
This latest news from BioWare indicates that, despite the delays, a fix is indeed on the way. Not only will this patch deliver the expected fixes, it will restore the game saves for anyone who had been affected by the title update. Bioware issued a statement on the situation and future plans for testing.“DA:O is an incredibly large, very deep and complex game, making it virtually impossible to test every system and permutation possible for each update/DLC. When testing any large endeavor like that, we depend on selectively targeting systems related to the changes being made, prioritized by order of perceived risk. Unfortunately we did not foresee the changes being made to impact the systems it did, which is how something seemingly so visible still managed to avoid the dev team, and multiple test cycles of seasoned QA all through our internal teams, and EA & MS cert teams, and ultimately ended up out to the public.To help us avoid similar problems in the future, we’re updating all our test plans across all platforms to take additional edge cases into account, as well as committing to more detailed test passes that will also prevent something like this happening again.Short term, this means another delay across all platforms for the immediate console patches and Return to Ostagar DLC releases as this is a substantial increase in test coverage, and that time is needed to do so and ensure there are no other knock on issues with either the main game, the updates or the DLC.In the meantime, there is good news – a fix is already in test for the 360 issue and looking very good, we hope to have a new update out as soon as possible and will update you as best as we can. If successful through the updated test plans, it will still deliver the expected fixes as well as restore the game saves for anyone affected by this week’s title update. For now, we do not have a timeframe for when the fix will pass approval and certification, but we will keep you updated.In addition, while this creates a delay with the immediate content already expected to have released, the additional testing actually benefits some of the upcoming DLC and expansion pack, and as such is not expected to impact dates of the future content.
the BioWare rep.Be sure to read our Dragon Age review if you missed it earlier.
Published: Jan 20, 2010 05:18 pm