Absolutely nothing happened in the world of BioWare this week, so why not check out some ridiculously good cosplay featuring EDI from Mass Effect 3?

Not buying it, eh? How about some Mass Effect 3: Leviathan review scores? They’re pretty deeeeeecent…and so are these ones! Oooh, and look! Joystiq confirms what we already knew months ago, namely that the Wii U port of Mass Effect 3 will include all the DLC.

There! Now, go! Nothing to see here.

What the…how did this get here?

Oh…right. That.

Yup…Dragon Age 3: Inquisition was announced today on the BioWare Blog by series executive producer Mark Darrah. Its title confirms some rumours we’d heard about it about a month ago, and I rather suspect that the I-can’t-believe-it-isn’t-France region of Thedas, Orlais, will form a major part of the game’s setting.

The more exciting news, however, is the revelation that the game will use the Frostbite 2 engine from DICE as its graphical backbone. This marks the end of the long-lived Aurora engine and its many iterations, which have powered BioWare games since Neverwinter Nights, but it also introduces massive potential to the Dragon Age franchise. Frostbite 2 is an amazingly versatile engine and supports fairly large environments…some of those rumours from earlier this year about Dragon Age 3 being more open-world than its predecessors may yet prove true after all.

Also promising is the fact that the game has already been in development for two years (a longer time frame than the entire development cycle of Dragon Age 2, it should be noted). Dragon Age 3 isn’t due to release for at least another year, meaning that it will have a pretty lengthy development window…longer than that of any BioWare game in recent memory, in fact. That bodes well, I think, for its plot, world, and scale.

As yet, apart from the game’s logo, BioWare don’t want to show anything off yet, it seems like they are trying to listen to player feedback and incorporate elements that will hopefully win back fans for the franchise. Which, honestly, I will admit to being quite stoked about.

Meanwhile, on the Star Wars: The Old Republic front, the game’s lead designer is apparently seeking a change of career, even as the game’s team has committed to a rigid six-week update cycle and launched the Terror from Beyond expansion. They’re also testing a new high-population server technology for the game, presumably in an attempt to shave resource costs.

Oh, and before you go, do check out this glorious re-creation of the opening sequence of Baldur’s Gate 2, made with the Dragon Age toolkit. It’s nothing short of awesome.