Hi friends, it's Joaby here and I want to welcome you to the first ever AusGamers Weekly Wrap Up which this week is brought to you by Coca-Cola’s Colour Your Summer campaign.


Watch the first episode of the AusGamers Weekly Wrap above or subscribe to our YouTube channel or Joaby's YouTube channel
The big news of the week is obviously at BlizzCon, where Blizzard is revealing all sorts of tasty treats. The major reveal is Overwatch, a team-focused first-person shooter built from the bones of the now cancelled Project Titan. The modes revealed indicate a heavy Team Fortress 2 influence -- one is called Payload, and it bears a striking similarity to the mode called "Payload" in Team Fortress 2, and there is a mode called Point Control which bears a remarkable similarity to a TF2 mode called "Control Point".

The key differentiator is a slew of heroes, all fulfilling a variety of roles as they battle through the maps, and to be fair these do look interesting. Instead of skewering traditional roles the way Splash Damage's Dirty Bomb will, it seems Overwatch will feature dramatically unique heroes with significantly different abilities.

Here's a brief look at a few of them now!

Still on BlizzCon news, and it looks like Heroes of the Storm will hit closed beta on January 13 next year. The team behind the sneakily deep MOBA also announced three new heroes -- orcish Warchief Thrall, Ice Mage Jaina and those misplaced scandinavians, The Lost Vikings. Players also have two more maps to look forward to, as well as Ranked Play.

You can catch the rest of the BlizzCon news at AusGamers, and tune in next week when Steve Farrelly joins the Wrap Up to tell us what he saw when he was there!

In the spirit of moving on, we got the scoop on another hot topic. While those following Dragon Age: Inquisition will have noticed a lack of Blood Magic in the Mage specialisation tree, I chatted with the game's Creative Director, Mike Laidlaw, to confirm that Blood Magic isn't in the game -- and that it's on the cards for future sequels.



Interview excerpt:

”So we aren't actually doing Blood Magic in Inquisition as a specialisation, in part because I made myself a promise -- if we went back to Blood Magic we would do it up real good,” he said. “I felt like we were undercutting its significance, because in the Dragon Age world it is the ultimate temptation. I think think that to do it right it almost needs to be the Malkavian option from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. And it's something we need to explore, but in a game where we were also exploring open world and five platforms and multiplayer it seemed like perhaps we had enough irons in the fire.

At some point I'll go back to it huge, because it's an absolutely fascinating part of the world that I want to do more with. If you read Dragon Age: Last Flight though, you get to see Blood Magic as it's supposed to be. It's gruesome and horrible, yet highly effective.

I guess it's disappointing to some people because they kinda dig it, but again, there's the Blood Magic you imagine it could be, and looking at what we had I don't think we were going to deliver that. So I said ok, let's get some other specs down, one of the biggies for me for mage is getting back to the combat mage, which is Knight Enchanter. They're frankly almost the cleric of the DA world because they have very good protective spells and inspirational buffs and stuff, so they're very good front line fighters too. They can be right up there swinging, like the Arcane Warrior kind of fantasy. I decided we would get some of those in that don't have this massive story overhead like Blood Magic does."

[Laughs] I don't even shut up during interviews. You can find our full Dragon Age: Inquisition interview on... you guessed it, right here on AusGamers.

Now onto the visually impressive. Grand Theft Auto V's Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions -- due out November 18 -- will feature a fully customisable first-person viewpoint. And that's on top of the increased view distance, 1080p texturing, blast processing and all that other crazy stuff that makes games pretty. It looks gorgeous. They only let me out of my cage for ten minutes each week so I can't show you the whole thing, but check out this motorcycle sequence from the new First-Person Experience trailer.


Just quickly before I go -- Depth, an asymmetrical Sharks vs Divers game that we covered back in July this year (another exclusive) is now available on Steam. It's made mostly by a New Zealand team so go have a look and support Oceanic games development (if it's your sort of game, of course).

Thanks for joining me for the inaugural AusGamers Weekly Wrap-Up. Next week as promised we'll have Steve Farrelly, Managing Editor of AusGamers, on to talk about everything BlizzCon! Make sure to enter the huge promotion we are running thanks to Coke’s new coloured cans, where you can win 1 of 5000 FIFA15 Ultimate team codes. Check out the link to that on our homepage and I'll see you next week!