Details and Concept Art for Dragon Age 3

Character customization will return "in a big way" for Dragon Age III according to a BioWare panel spilling details and concept art on next year's game at the Edmonton Comic & Entertainment Expo today.

Already known as Dragon Age III: Inquisition and slated for a "late fall 2013" release, BioWare said it would release concept art being shown at the expo later today. Cinematic designer Jon Perry said that "one level in Dragon Age 3 is as big as all of the levels in Dragon Age 2."

Creative director Mike Laidlaw said that "customization is going to be bigger than Dragon Age Origins," to include "follower customization," according to producer Cameron Lee's live-tweeting of the event.

Asked how much control players would have over their character, lead writer David Gaider said "You will be human," before adding that "backgrounds will be in Dragon Age 3 even though you will be human, it's not playable but it does significant impact on the story." That again was according to Lee's twitter feed.

Other details trickling out suggest that you'll be able to take control of your own castle, and that the game will import prior character choices but, said executive producer Mark Darrah, "we're investigating some ways without save imports."

-Daniel, Jedi Editor

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Hitman: Absolution "Disguises" Trailer

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Assassin's Creed III "Desmond" Trailer

Assassin's Creed III Desmond Trailer by All-Games-Beta

-Daniel, Jedi Editor
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The Pirate Bay Moves to The Cloud

The Pirate Bay has made an important change to its infrastructure. The world’s most famous BitTorrent site has switched its entire operation to the cloud. From now on The Pirate Bay will serve its users from several cloud hosting providers scattered around the world. The move will cut costs, ensure better uptime, and make the site virtually invulnerable to police raids — all while keeping user data secure.

The Pirate Bay is loved by millions of file-sharers but is also a thorn in the side of the entertainment industries.

The latter group continues to push authorities to take action against the site. The Pirate Bay was raided back in 2006 and there are rumors that the police might try again in the near future.

The Pirate Bay is not oblivious to this looming threat. They have backups in place and are shielding the true location of their servers. Nevertheless, should the site lose all its servers it might take a while to get back online.

This is one of the reasons why The Pirate Bay decided to move the site into the cloud yesterday. The switch resulted in five minutes downtime and was hardly noticed by the public, but it’s a big change for the infamous BitTorrent site.

Hosting in the cloud also makes the site easier to scale, it reduces downtime, and is also cheaper.

“Moving to the cloud lets TPB move from country to country, crossing borders seamlessly without downtime. All the servers don’t even have to be hosted with the same provider, or even on the same continent,” The Pirate Bay told TorrentFreak.

The Pirate Bay is currently hosted at cloud hosting companies in two countries where they run several Virtual Machine (VM) instances.

“Running on VMs cuts down operation costs and complexity. For example, we never need anyone to do hands-on work like earlier this month when we were down for two daysbecause someone had to fix a broken power distribution unit,” The Pirate Bay says.

The setup also makes it possible for the BitTorrent site to take their business elsewhere without too much hassle.

“If one cloud-provider cuts us off, goes offline or goes bankrupt, we can just buy new virtual servers from the next provider. Then we only have to upload the VM-images and reconfigure the load-balancer to get the site up and running again.”

While most of Pirate Bay’s former servers are now obsolete, not everything was moved to the cloud.

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The load balancer and transit-routers are still owned and operated by The Pirate Bay, which allows the site to hide the location of the cloud provider. It also helps to secure the privacy of the site’s users.

The hosting providers have no idea that they’re hosting The Pirate Bay, and even in the event they found out it would be impossible for them to gather data on the users.

“All communication with users goes through TPB’s load balancer, which is a disk-less server with all the configuration in RAM. The load balancer is not in the same country as the transit-router or the cloud servers,” The Pirate Bay told us.

“The communication between the load balancer and the virtual servers is encrypted. So even if a cloud provider found out they’re running TPB, they can’t look at the content of user traffic or user’s IP-addresses.”

In addition The Pirate Bay now believes it’s more raid proof.

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The worst case scenario is that The Pirate Bay loses both its transit router and its load balancer. All the important data is backed up externally on VMs that can be re-installed at cloud hosting providers anywhere in the world.

“If the police decide to raid us again there are no servers to take, just a transit router. If they follow the trail to the next country and find the load balancer, there is just a disk-less server there. In case they find out where the cloud provider is, all they can get are encrypted disk-images,” The Pirate Bay says.

“They have to be quick about it too, if the servers have been out of communication with the load balancer for 8 hours they automatically shut down. When the servers are booted up, access is only granted to those who have the encryption password,” they add.

For Pirate Bay users the move to the cloud doesn’t change much though. If anything, they will notice significantly less downtime.

-Daniel, Jedi Editor
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Finally; Iron Man 3 Synopsis Reveals Plot

Directed by Shane Black, the film also stars Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rebecca Hall, James Badge Dale, Jon Favreau,and Guy Pearce.  Iron Man 3 opens in 3D on May 3rd, 2013.

Here’s the official synopsis, courtesy of Marvel/Disney:

Marvel Studios’ Iron Man 3 pits brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark/Iron Man against an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Stark finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy’s hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible. This journey, at every turn, will test his mettle. With his back against the wall, Stark is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts to protect those closest to him. As he fights his way back, Stark discovers the answer to the question that has secretly haunted him: does the man make the suit or does the suit make the man?

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Stephanie Szostak, James Badge Dale with Jon Favreau and Ben Kingsley, Iron Man 3 is directed by Shane Black from a screenplay by Drew Pearce and Shane Black and is based on Marvel’s iconic Super Hero Iron Man, who first appeared on the pages of Tales of Suspense (#39) in 1963 and had his solo comic book debut with The Invincible Iron Man (#1) in May of 1968.

Iron Man 3 is presented by Marvel Studios in association withParamount Pictures and DMG Entertainment. Marvel Studios’ President Kevin Feige is producing and Jon Favreau, Louis D’Esposito, Stephen Broussard, Victoria Alonso, Alan Fine, Charles Newirth, Stan Lee and Dan Mintz are executive producers. The film releases May 3, 2013, and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

-Daniel, Jedi Editor
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CD Projekt Red's Next Game is "Cyberpunk 2077"

We've known for a while that CD Projekt Red, the folks who make those great Witcherrole-playing games, are making a new sci-fi game. Previously codenamed "Cyberpunk," it now has an official title. Cyberpunk 2077.

It also has a new official website.

Here's CD Projekt Red on their new cybery, punky game, which is based on author Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk series:

The cyberpunk atmosphere, well known from William Gibson's novels, the "Blade Runner" movie and the famous pen-and-paper game, "Cyberpunk 2020", will surround the player. The creators promise that "Cyberpunk 2077" will be true to the essence of the cyberpunk genre. Players will be thrown into the dark future of the year 2077 and into a world where advanced technologies have become both the salvation and the curse of humanity. A multi-thread, nonlinear story designed for mature players (a CD Projekt RED trademark) will take place in the sprawling metropolis of Night City and its surroundings. Players will have a chance to visit places well known from "Cyberpunk 2020", including a combat zone completely taken over by gangs, the legendary Afterlife joint and the nostalgic Forlorn Hope.

Freedom of action and diversity in gameplay will be delivered thanks to the sandbox nature of the game and mechanics inspired by the "Cyberpunk 2020" pen-and-paper system, fine tuned to meet the requirements of a modern RPG. Gameplay will pump adrenaline through players' veins and be consistent with the celebrated Cyberpunk spirit – rebellion, style, edge, uncertainty. And of course, a cyberpunk reality cannot be deprived of murderous steel – guns, rifles, implants, dozens of gadgets and other varied pieces of equipment needed to survive on the streets of Night City. The developers are focused on making the technology of 2077 credible and exciting.

-Daniel, Jedi Editor

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Outlast; New Survival Horror Game Due 2013

Outlast is a new survival-horror game from Red Barrels, a new studio formed by industry vets with games such as Prince of Persia, Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, and Uncharted adorning their resumes.

Here’s the synopsis:

“In the remote mountains of Colorado, horrors wait inside Mount Massive Asylum . A long-abandoned home for the mentally ill, recently re-opened by the “research and charity” branch of the transnational Murkoff Corporation, has been operating in strict secrecy… until now.

“Acting on a tip from an inside source, independent journalist Miles Upshur breaks into the facility, and what he discovers walks a terrifying line being science and religion, nature and something else entirely. Once inside, his only hope of escape lies with the terrible truth at the heart of Mount Massive.”

Sounds interesting, and there’s a teaser trailer below for it which gives you a better idea.

“There are already a lot of great games out there about terrifying monsters that eat brains; we want Outlast’s to be scary because you’ll know the enemies you face still have them,” said Philippe Morin, co-founder of Red Barrels.

“Our team has a lot of previous experience creating big, blockbuster games,” added co-founder David Chateauneuf. “We’re all really excited to see what kind of fear-based emotional rollercoaster we can build on our own!”

Outlast is slated for a PC digital download in 2013.

-Daniel, Jedi Editor

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Matt Damon may never return to the big screen as Jason Bourne

The Bourne trilogy, as we know it, is what made Matt Damon an action star for our generation. The first film was directed by Doug Liman and the next two installments directed by Paul Greengrass. The series was later rebooted with Jeremy Renner in the lead. Matt Damon was supposed to return to the famous role, but relations between Universal and Greengrass soured. Matt has said that “he will only return to the character if Greengrass returns.”

“From what I understand, ‘The Bourne Legacy’ relives ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ from a different perspective. Because they use ‘Ultimatum’ actors and characters, that means that we would have to continue a story that wasn't our creation and we’d have to acknowledge that in any Bourne movie that we’d do. And that makes it really tough.” - Matt Damon Movieline quote.

I might be in the minority here, but I’m not a huge fan of the Greengrass directed Bourne films. Watching them is like getting drunk without alcohol because of the shaky camera shots. In Cam Sky’s perfect world, Doug Liman would announce that he is the director of a new Jason Bourne movie. I absolutely love the first film! If Liman would return to the series it would be a dream come true. I’m not saying Greengrass’s films are bad, they are just driven by action packed, thriller sequences. Maybe not for everyone but, they do have great turnouts for each new release. So, who can blame them. I haven’t seen the Bourne Legecy with Jermeny Renner in the starring role, because the reviews didn’t look too great.

I think these films are due for a re-visit!

Written by @Cam_Sky - A TechFixation Entertainment Movie Editor

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Assassin's Creed III Multiplayer Trailer

-Daniel, Jedi Editor
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Call of Duty: Black OPs II Launch Trailer

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Internet Explorer Comes to Xbox Along with Other Updates

"To ensure a stable release, this will be a gradual deployment across subscribers and regions over the course of the next week," said Major Nelson.

"Our initial deployment will reach approximately three million consoles worldwide, with additional users being updated over the course of a couple weeks."

The update will include the following features:

• Refreshed Xbox 360 Dashboard: We've updated the UI with a few things, including an updated layout with more tiles, a combined TV & Movies channel and, in the US, a Sports destination
• Internet Explorer for Xbox: With Internet Explorer on Xbox, you can easily find and view internet content on the biggest screen in the house, including HTML5 videos
• Recommendations and Ratings: Recommendations will allow you to discover new favorites, generated based on a number of variables including the content you previously viewed, what your friends are consuming and what is most relevant and popular with our Xbox community. You can now rate content yourself and also see Rotten Tomatoes ratings
• Pinning: Pinning lets you personalize the dashboard by saving your favorite movies, TV shows, games, music, videos and websites right to the home screen. It's as easy as opening an app or a favorite movie and clicking "pin"
• Xbox Video: Formerly called Zune Video Marketplace, Xbox Video offers hundreds of thousands of TV shows and movies for buying or renting in instant HD streaming
• Recent: Previously called Quick Play, the Recent view gives you a list of movies, games, apps or other types of content that you most recently accessed on the console
• Enhanced Search: The last Xbox LIVE update brought Bing voice search to Xbox so you could use voice to search for movies, TV shows, actors, directors and artists. This year we added genre search to the list, so now you can search for action, comedy, romance, drama or sci-fi. Bing voice search now includes results for video across the Web, including YouTube
• International Expansion of Voice Search: We've expanded our Kinect voice search capabilities to 9 new countries - Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Ireland

Xbox Music launched yesterday, while Xbox SmartGlass is also set to launch on the Windows 8 release date of October 26.

-Daniel, Jedi Editor
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Layoffs At Lionhead Studios

Parent company Microsoft confirmed it has issued redundancies to "less than ten per cent of staff".

In a statement sent to industry publicationDevelop, the platform holder added:

"Following the completion of Fable: The Journey, Lionhead Studios has begun work on its next projects. As is common in the games industry, a smaller headcount is needed as projects kick-off and ramp up as full-production gets underway. At this time a small number of positions have been identified as at risk of redundancy and the affected employees were notified today.

Fable The Journey looks set to be the weakest-selling packaged Fable game in the series' history, having failed to match the commercial launch and critical success of its predecessors by some margin.

Fable 2 (2008) and Fable 3 (2010) both debuted at No.1 on the UK chart (the latter was one of the biggest Xbox 360 launch titles ever in the UK), while Fable: The Journey limped in at No.37

The reduction in Lionhead's workforce comes at the end of two difficult years for the studio, which faced a community backlash following the unveiling of Fable The Journey.

Gary Carr, the group's creative director, recently told CVG how the group was "devastated by the waves of criticism directed at Fable The Journey's use of on-rails gameplay.

Though The Journey ultimately received mixed reviews, Microsoft's marketing team appeared to have made a decision to not back the project with targeted advertising.

And within the games community there is still a lingering resistance to Kinect-based games, with criticism directed at Microsoft for its insistence on making motion controls a compulsory feature on some of the projects it delegates.

CVG games critic Ben Griffin wrote in his Fable The Journey review that the game was beautiful but frustrating, and also questioned the purpose of implementing Kinect.

The Fable series is highly respected among many thousands of games enthusiasts, and its Guildford based creators have built a strong reputation for fostering the franchise over the years.

The studio is now thought to be working on an exciting new project for next-generation systems.

Microsoft said it will attempt to assist staff affected by the layoffs in securing new positions within the company

-Daniel, Jedi Editor
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iPad Mini Invites

It's official, Apple has sent out their invitations to an event where Apple will likely unveil the much rumored iPad Mini. Check back to TheTechFixation.com on October 23 for more information on this event.

Sound off in the comments below to tell us what you think it will or should have.



Posted by Dexter Jaekel
Editor-in-chief of Tech Fixation

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The Walking Dead - Season 3

TWD - Season 3 Airs Tonight! 

 Not exactly sure what it is that keeps bringing me to the edge of my seat and having my mind blown.  Maybe its the way Mr. Andrew Lincoln or "Rick Grimes" as we known him, carries himself.  AMC's The Walking Dead is phenomenal!  Please, sit back, Enjoy yourself, and then tell us what you thought!

@TechFixation

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Richard@TheTechFixation.com - CEO of Tech Fixation

Dexter@TheTechFixation.com - Editor-In-Chief of Tech Fixation

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The Walking Dead Ep 4 Spoilercast

The Walking Dead Spoilercast

How our desisions made our story play out!

Subscribe on iTunes

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IMAGES BELOW ARE SPOILERS!!!!!!

Dexter's Stats for his playthrough

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Ep 54-One Year Anniversary

3G Capable Pill Bottles

Dell's New Line of

- All-In-Ones

- Laptops

- Tablets

iPad Mini Reports

Microsoft Office 2013 Available for...

Nokia's Lumia 920

Lark Life Band

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Does Batman drive a Kia?

What kind of car does Batman really drive? I don’t think we will ever know, but we do know that the fine folks at DC Entertainment have hearts of gold! The 'WE CAN BE HEROES' is a charity campaign to bring awareness to starvation in Africa. The purpose of the campaign is to generate funds to help the people of Africa.

The Kia Optima was designed by Jim Lee and is the first of eight different cars based on different members of the Justice League. I can’t wait to see the Aquaman version!

You can donate to this cause at www.wecanbeheroes.org!! Nothing but cheers and good faith around these people!

@Cam_Sky - Movie Entertainment Editor for The TechFixation
www.TheTechFixation.com
Internets #1 Consumer Driven Web site and Podcast!

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Call of Duty: Black OPs II Multiplayer Screenshots

For All 13 Screenshots Visit ThePauseMenu

-Daniel, Jedi Editor

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Omega DLC for Mass Effect 3 Dated

Today, Bioware revealed the price and release date for Omega, the latest bit of DLC for Mass Effect 3. US gamers can pick this one up on November 27th on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC for $15 (or 1200 Microsoft Points if you're weird like that). Omega will follow the story of Aria T'loak as she fights to take back control of Omega from Cerberus. Bioware has also stated that this is the largest DLC they have made for Mass Effect 3 and that it is over double the file size of the previous largest DLC.


Posted by Dexter Jaekel
Editor-In-Chief of TechFixation

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ZombieU Takes You on a Tour of the London Tower

I've never been to London. Always liked the UK stigma and attitude though. But after watching this video I don't think I'll be apt to visiting the Tower of London anytime soon.
ZombieU IS is the killer app for the Wii U and you just have to see it in action to believe it.



-Daniel, Jedi Editor
*6

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Guillermo Del Toro Not Giving Up on "InSane"

Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro is "not giving up" on his action game trilogy InSane. THQ officially canceled the game in August, but del Toro told Kotaku recently that discussions are underway to bring the game to market.

"When something doesn't happen in one way, I just continue pursuing it in another way. I own the property and I control it. I'm not giving up on InSane," he said.

Del Toro was asked which studio would be a "dream developer" for InSane, and he responded with Half-Life and Left 4 Dead company Valve. He said he is a "big fan" of the outfit.

InSane was to be a collaborative effort between del Toro and Saints Row studio Volition. It was not expected to arrive for another two or three years. 

-Daniel, Jedi Editor

*5

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Assassin's Creed III "Encyclopedia" Edition Announced

Product Features The Assassin's Creed III Encyclopedia Edition contains the essential items for fans and newcomers to become engrossed in the history and stories of the Assassin's order- along with a copy of the game, you will receive: Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia 2nd Edition - The definitive guide to a universe that spans many different platforms and media, a must-have for fans new and old. Assassin's Creed Subject 4 Graphic Novel - Contains the whole Daniel Cross/Nikolaï Orelov narrative arc by merging Assassin's Creed The Fall and its sequel Assassin's Creed The Chain. Amazon.com Assassin's Creed IIII Exclusive Bonus Offer Pre-order the Assassin's Creed III Encyclopedia Edition for Xbox360 or Playstation 3 and receive two Amazon.com exclusive physical items and two exclusive unlockable items: the Boarding Axe single-player weapon and The Captain Of The Aquila single-player character. The code will be emailed within two days after your order ships. Offer valid when shipped and sold by Amazon.com. Limit one per household. Amazon reserves the right to change or terminate this promotion at any time. Offer will be extended to all existing pre-orders. PRICE: $99.99 Buy it HERE Available 10-30-12

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Assassin's Creed III "Weapons" Trailer

-Daniel, Jedi Editor

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Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini Specs

The Samsung Galaxy S3 mini was unveiled today. And here is everything you need to know about it.

The S3 mini features a similar name and almost identical appearance as the full sized S3 and it also gets Samsung's TouchWiz UI (designed for Jelly Bean).

The 4-inch screen is an abysmal 800 x 400 resolution, meaning it has a pixel density of 233 ppi (as opposed to 306). It's got 1GB of RAM (S3 has 2) a 5MP camera (S3 has 8) and a 1500mAh battery (S3 has 2100). The mini's dual-core processor runs at 1GHz (S3 has 1.5).

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Detailed GTA V News Coming Soon

Today, Game Informer editor-in-chief Andy McNamara tweeted that he was in NYC and about to witness, for the first time, Grand Theft Auto V in action. It was also revealed that this would be Game Informer's December cover story. So come late November we can expect to get a whole lot of juicy details on this highly anticipated game, and even possibly a release date. We will keep you updated as more information comes our way.




Written by Roger Havens
@Afro_Gear

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