Actor Robin Sachs, who voiced Zaeed Massani in the Mass Effect games, passed away recently; BioWare posted a touching memorial tribute to him. Which I suppose means that Zaeed won’t be featured in any of the upcoming Mass Effect games, the next of which evidently will not be called Mass Effect 4.

Speaking of Mass Effect, the last entry in the Shepard trilogy merited a mention on Forbes list of the best RPGs of 2012, although it didn’t capture the top spot. There is also, apparently, a Mass Effect-themed edition of RISK either being made or already available.

And, as always, the series continues to inspire some epic fan art.

On the Dragon Age front, writer David Gaider recently opined about the danger of opining on the Internet. PC Gamer, for their part, posted a Dragon Age 3 wishlist.

And…well, Dragon Age also inspires some pretty amazing fan art.

The latest update — version 1.7 — for Star Wars: The Old Republic goes live tomorrow; check out the latest trailer for it if you like.

Feargus Urquhart and Ray Muzyka, the latter one of BioWare’s co-founders, hosted a panel at the DICE Summit recently, the topic of which was the future of RPGs. Both men agreed that asynchronous multiplayer as a feature was a part of that future, for what it’s worth. I’d argue that a return to the inclusion of ready-to-go modding tools will likely do more for the longevity of a title, although from a revenue-generation standpoint multiplayer probably makes more sense to include.

Oh, and speaking of Ray Muzyka, both he and Greg Zeschuk will receive Lifetime Achievement Awards at GDC. Well-deserved, I’d say, even if not everything BioWare has done in recent years has won the agreement and approval of everyone.