A few small details and concept art for Dragon Age 3: Inquisition were revealed during a BioWare panel at the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo today thanks to the live-tweeting work of Cameron Lee, a producer on the game.

Namely, Cinematic Designer John Perry said that "he's had a longer pre-production on Dragon Age 3 than any other BioWare project he's worked on," and that "one level in Dragon Age 3 is as big as all of Dragon Age 2's levels." Creative Director Mike Laidlaw noted that players will be human in the game, and that "customization is going to be bigger than Dragon Age: Origins."

BioWare GM Aaryn Flynn posted a picture to Twitter of the backs of event attendees' heads, which happened to include concept art for the game in the background. As nice as those heads are, we will update when the actual art is available. Dragon Age 3: Inquisition is in development and slated for a late 2013 release.

The decline of social games has been "overhyped," Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said at Friday's App Conference in San Jose, California, AllThingsD reported. "Companies that are now suffering will have another day," Riccitiello said.

The CEO noted that viral marketing-style messages in social games that spam friends lists with requests don't make for "great gaming," and that "consumers won't pay for crap." Riccitiello had similar comments in May, when he said that "consumers want to be entertained, they don't want to be data managed."

Zero Dark Thirty is a movie based on the mission to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden – a perfect tie-in to a game about hunting down terrorists such as Medal of Honor: Warfighter. EA will deploy a $9.99 multiplayer map pack in honor of the film, part of the proceeds of which will go to charity through EA's Project Honor program – all pre-orders will get the additional maps free of charge.

The program was initiated with the goal of "raising awareness and generating charitable contributions for fallen warriors from the Special Operations Community." The Zero Dark Thirty map pack includes two multiplayer locales based on real locations where Osama Bin Laden was suspected of hiding in Pakistan: the Darra Gun Market and Chitral Compound. Feel free to gather intel on each in the video above.

Look, you don't need an expensive piece of paper from some institution to know that you're the Dohvakiin. You know it, we know it, the guy you yelled at until he died knows it -- that's all that really matters in the long run. But, if for some reason you did want to expand your knowledge of the ancient legends behind your ancient legend, Rice University has you covered.

"Scandinavian Fantasy Worlds: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim" is a new course at Rice University in Houston, TX, which "introduces students to fantasy as both psychological concept and driving force in gamer culture" by having students "read selections from Old Norse and Old Icelandic sagas (in translation) as they play different quests within Skyrim."

As you can imagine, enrollment availability is limited to actual, bona fide students at Rice University. Additionally, the class is only available this semester, which is sad considering that beating Skyrim will most likely take longer than passing the course.

Team Meat's next game is called Mew-Genics. The game is described as "randomly generated" and will involve cats in some way, purr per Team Meat's announcement blog.

Super Meat Boy creator Edmund McMillen said the project is the strangest he's ever worked on, and that platform announcements, gameplay details and screens for Mew-Genics will be revealed soon.

It turns out a full console version of Zombies!!! is still shambling around, according to a new trailer and dev diary released this week. Developer Barbaroga has been working on a bigger and better video game version of the Twilight Creations board game for over two years now, though the project's been dark since late 2010.

A version did get released on Windows Phone last year, but it's finally arriving soon, according to these videos, on Xbox Live, Windows, iOS and Android.

The graphics have been updated, the gameplay and controls have been tweaked, and Babaroga has added asynchronous multiplayer features, so players will be able to trade turns back and forth. Babaroga says the full console version of Zombies!!! should be out as soon as "winter" this year.

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Xbox 360 users will find two new games available under the Games on Demand section of Xbox Live. Capcom has announced Slant Six's shooter Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is available for download on Xbox Live alongside cross-over fighter Street Fighter X Tekken. Each will set you back $39.99 in the United States.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City wasn't in the best shape when we reviewed it, but a patch issued back in June may have alleviated some of our issues. And as far as Street Fighter X Tekken goes, that thing's been patched up, down and sideways, and Capcom is promising a "hefty update" later on this year. There's also a new mobile version of Street Fighter X Tekken on iOS now, if you're more for fighting on the bus, train or – well, everywhere we guess since you won't stop staring at your iPhone.

Today marks the second anniversary of Valve's introduction of the Team Fortress 2 Mann Co. Store into the hearts and minds of Steam users everywhere. To celebrate the occasion, Valve is doing what it does best: hold a massive sale.

While not all encompassing, the sale does drop discount bombs on a large portion of Team Fortress 2's microtransaction-based hat/weapon/sundry shop ecosystem, reducing prices on fan-designed fedoras and other miscellany by 25 to 75 percent. Let's be honest, this is probably the best deal you're going to see on pretend hats for a while. Also, we know a guy that can get you an incredible deal on a bridge, if you'd be interested.

The glossy revamp of Sony's PlayStation Store has been delayed in several territories, including the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Sony Network Entertainment VP Eric Lempel says "an exceptional experience with the new store" must be certain before a new launch date is announced, and that means adjusting the overhaul in response to inconvenient issues that have bothered customers elsewhere.

The new storefront missed its launch date with the UK, but is already available in seemingly imperfect form in PAL territories like Turkey, Greece, Hungary and where can we get a panini right now?

After its official website (and only source of crowdfunding income) went offline due to server-crushing amounts of traffic, Chris Roberts' Cloud Imperium Games have opened an ancillary Kickstarter project to support Star Citizen.

The main difference between the Kickstarter and the website itself – beyond the stark difference in fundraising goals – is the Kickstarter's special $5.00 donation level, which grants the ability to change a ship's hull design to players that have already donated on the main site. The rest of the game's registration process, as well as all of the other donation rewards, remain the same regardless of where the donation originated.

As of press time, the official site has reached approximately $1.13 million of its $2 million goal, while the Kickstarter has earned $208,370 of its $500,000 target. Funding on the official site continues for another 21 days, while the Kickstarter remains active for another 30.

This week we put out our cheat sheets of all the games launching this autumn. Here's October, November and December. Oh, don't worry, that scream you hear is just your wallet.

What's everyone playing?

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Using Kinect on Xbox 360, Need for Speed: Most Wanted will try its best to keep you out of menus and in the open world constructed by Criterion Games when it launches on October 30.

In the video above, producer Chris Roberts shows off just some of the stuff you can yell at your television while racing away from authorities. The insta-modding is perhaps the most useful, allowing players to strengthen their car's chassis while being hounded by zealous coppers.

Skylanders Giants launches October 21, and if you're in the market for some elite figures, you may want to hit up your local Toys R Us. The retailer has the exclusive rights to sell a limited edition 'Legendary' series of Skylanders Giants figurines with special in-game abilities. Toys R Us is also selling an exclusive three-pack featuring Jet Vac, Series 2 Slam Bam and Series 2 Ignitor – all of which have enhanced in-game powers.

Though our own review says it's possible to get through Skylanders Giants without buying any additional figures, it's probably not the most realistic expectation – especially if you've you have kids interested in the franchise. Toys R Us will be open early at 8am on Sunday for your Skylanders Giants purchasing needs.

Finally acquiescing to Game Design Statute #71, Square Enix will be adding zombies to Sleeping Dogs in its upcoming Halloween DLC. The publisher promises these are no ordinary undead, however, but are instead inspired by Chinese mythology. Entitled "Nightmare in North Point," the DLC tells the story of gangster Big Scar Wu, who was so unruly that the Grand Dragon "set out to make an example of him and had him stabbed 42 times before feeding his bleeding corpse to the grinder at the Smiley Cat food plant."

Wu hasn't taken the whole affair lying down, apparently, and "has risen from hell as Smiley Cat, bringing with him an army of Jiang Shi." So yeah, not exactly your typical zombie story. Nightmare in Northpoint is slated to arrive on Xbox, PS3 and Steam this Halloween.

Sleeping Dogs - Nightmare in North Point

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Remember those scenes in License to Kill where James Bond hacked an office PC using mini-games on his Sony smartphone, massacred 100 henchmen with his custom-configured assault shotgun, bounced his car off some invisible walls, then had a Punch-Out!!-style QTE fist fight with villain Franz Sanchez? Neither do I – but that's how 007 Legends remembers things.

Admittedly, such inaccurate adaptations are not entirely to blame for 007 Legends' failings; certain concessions need to be made to create an engaging video game. But the degree to which developer Eurocom and publisher Activision fail to successfully capitalize on any of the crazy action sequences or exotic settings of the five films featured in Legends is astounding. Bond's most memorable moments have been mutated almost beyond recognition to fit the mold of a safe first-person shooter, and the result is a bland, boring mess.

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This is a weekly column from freelancer Rowan Kaiser, which focuses on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.

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2012 may not be remembered as a fantastic year for pure western role-playing games (especially without a Skyrim to sweep the end-of-year awards) but it's been a great year for me as a video game fan. Why? Because many of the "best games of the year" may not be RPGs, but they've adapted some of the best components of RPGs to become stronger games.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown, for example, is one of the best-received games of 2012, due in part to its use of RPG mechanics. Tactics games are often associated with RPGs (especially Japanese-style tactics games) but the connection isn't always so concrete with "western" games. For example, I don't really qualify the original X-COM: UFO Defense as an RPG, due to its too-large squads filled with personality-free squaddies, whereas Jagged Alliance 2 certainly fit the mold.

XCOM tweaks the initial game's form in ways that align with traditional role-playing games. The squad size is limited to 4-6 characters, traditional RPG numbers, and only having one base means you rarely need large numbers of squaddies – I never had more than 15 at once, and even that was high due to playing on "Classic" difficulty. It also slightly decreases the importance of the strategic decision-making level, putting the focus on the characters in the field.

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