EA BioWare unveils its new fantasy game, Shadow Realms

Electronic Arts’ BioWare Austin division showed off a new fantasy game called Shadow Realms.

The developer’s intent with this action role-playing game is take people back to the good-ol’ days of creating their own dungeons. A voiceover talked about evil things running rampant on Earth.

“We’re the only ones that can fight them,” the voiceover said. “When we stand together, we’re unstoppable.”

Shadow Realms appears to have third-person online combat with lots of demonic creatures attacking modern cities. It’s a 4-vs.-1 story-driven online action RPG. It sounds a lot like Take-Two Interactive’s Evolve in that respect. But this is four fantasy heroes against one enemy, The Shadowlord.

“While gaming has evolved over the years, we can bring back some of that magic,” said Matthew Bromberg, the head of the BioWare label, speaking onstage at EA’s event at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. “We couldn’t be more excited to introduce Shadow Realms.”

Shadow Realms tries to re-create the magical feeling of playing a game created by a dungeon master. One side is pitted against another side that controls the Shadowlord, who can manipulate the environment.

You can choose good or evil, as you wish. It has an episodic release schedule. It will come out late next year on the PC, and EA BioWare is signing up candidates for its alpha test next month.

“Each new episode will be experienced together, by the community, as it is released,” Bromberg said.