The Werewolves of Ferelden in Dragon Age: Origins

The opening paragraph of Bobby Travis’s Greywardens.com post on werewolves in Dragon Age: Origins reads like it was written by a guy who bought a cape at Hot Topic and wears it without irony.

I was decidedly annoyed. Annoyed that the creators of something I had been waiting for, and for so many years, had apparently sullied their potentially great work with something so common to run-of-the-mill fantasy and pop-culture.

“This is the sort of pseudo-intellectual wankery that Roukas lives to destroy,” I thought, but I read on, and I was rewarded. I’ve never actually played Dragon Age, but I’ve heard good things from people whose opinions I trust. Once he gets going, Travis waxes philosophical & sociological on the game’s werewolves in a way that got interested enough to look up the game’s required system specs (yes, I can run it). He analyzes the role of werewolves within the game’s world, and comes to the conclusion that they contribute something important to the development of Ferelden’s culture. How cool to see werewolves in games being utilized as something more than hairy “pass the McGuffinNPCs!

I’m not gonna lie, though. The embedded gameplay video helped.

Werewolf Babysitter on This Week’s “This American Life” Podcast

Monday morning’s walk to work is often the best commute of the week for me, courtesy of the This American Life podcast that arrives on my iPod. This week’s episode, Babysitting, begins with a story that had me grinning like an idiot all the way to the office.

Act One. What Big Teeth You Have.

Lots of babysitting is done by family members. Hillary Frank reports on what can happen when a teenaged son is put in charge of his younger brothers. It’s not pretty.

Hint: a full moon and a group of little kids camping in the back field come into play. I can’t recommend This American Life enough, even when it’s not about an 18-year-old traumatizing his little brothers. Check it out.

Vote for “Berserker Teenage Werewolf” on Threadless

Designer Chakz has got a werewolf shirt up on Threadless: Berserker Teenage Werewolf. If it’s gonna get made, it needs your votes.

Berserker Teenage Werewolf - Threadless T-shirts, Nude No More

Mozart and The Wolfman Vs. The Mummy

It’s by Alex Cox. It’s four panels long. I might have printed the last panel and stuck it on the wall. Maybe. Probably.

You Wish This Was You: Applying a Werewolf Facial Prosthetic

UK special effects & creature company Nimba Creations have posted a how-to video featuring the application, painting and fur-ing of their werewolf prosthetic. I don’t usually have the patience to sit through a 7-minute Youtube video, but this was quite interesting– it was possible to watch the model slowly transforming throughout the process. The laying of the hair (sounds like an arcane ritual, doesn’t it?) was particularly cool. Check it out, and if you fancy trying it yourself, you can buy the supplies directly from Nimba.

Monsterpalooza 2010

If you missed Monsterpalooza this year (like I did), avail yourself of Dread Central’s event report. By all accounts the Monsterpalooza Museum was awesome, so be sure to check out the photo gallery. Here are two famous werewolves from the Museum (let’s just ignore that plaque by Michael’s mysteriously perfect shoes).

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Screenshots (in Which a Werewolf is Beaten Up)

Everything old is new again, even Castlevania. I spent the summer of 1987 hitting things with Simon Belmont’s whip, and now Kanomi is rebooting the series so that today’s gamers can hit things with Gabriel Belmont’s whip. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is being developed for the Xbox 360 and the PS3, and should be out later this year. Here are two screenshots from a batch that Kanomi recently released (thanks, CinemaBlend), and they’re the only two that show any combat. Fortunately(?) that combat is against a werewolf. Click madly on the images below for (much) larger versions.

Beware the Cream Wolf!

Tired of Robot Unicorn Attack? No, neither am I, but if you need a break, why not try Cream Wolf, where you’re an ice cream truck driver who fattens kids up so you can devour them when the full moon arrives? I’ve been playing it for a few minutes every day for the past week, and it never fails to make me feel filthy and gleeful at the same time. What an awesome combo!

2019-01-24: updated broken links

“The Wolfman” Available for Pre-Order on DVD & Blu-ray, Out June 1st




If you’d like to watch Lawrence Talbot do terrible things over and over from the comfort of your own home, you’re in luck: Director’s Cut DVD and Director’s Cut super-bonus-feature Blu-ray editions of “The Wolfman” are available for pre-order now, and will be released on June 1st. In addition to the director’s cut of the film, the DVD version contains the theatrical cut and deleted / extended scenes. The Blu-ray version contains all of that too, plus

  • Five featurettes: Return of The Wolfman, The Beast Maker, Transformation Secrets, The Wolfman Unleashed, Werewolf Legacy, Lore and Legend
  • A “Take Control” feature with Makeup Artist Rick Baker, Visual Effects Producer Karen Murphy-Mundell and Director of Photography Shelly Johnson
  • A digital copy of the film (no doubt encumbered with DRM)
  • A copy of the original 1941 “Wolf Man” movie

I want to mention that every site I’ve seen mention these home releases has felt obligated to include a few shitty editorial comments about how “disappointing” this movie was. Even the official review Amazon is running moans about “bland computer-generated werewolves”. Sorry this movie didn’t blow the doors off Schindler’s List and the first three Indiana Jones movies, guys. It’s a bloody werewolf movie.

What Time Is It, Mr. Werewolf? The Moonwatch By The Emotion Lab Will Tell You

The Moonwatch from The Emotion Lab will allow you to answer that question using the only chronology that really matters to werewolves: the current phase of the moon (it also tells the time too, but who needs a watch for that?).

Gizmodo’s writeup is appropriate: “This watch? Oh, it just warns me when I’ll turn into a berserk beast capable of ripping off your head, chomping your entrails, surfing on vans, hooking up with Willow, hooking up with Bella, you know, normal werewolf stuff.”

Edit: Sadly, the Moonwatch is not (yet) for sale: The Emotion Lab is an industrial design studio, not a retailer or a manufactory. If you want a Moonwatch of your own, maybe offer them a whole pile of money to turn the concept into a workable, sell-able item just hang on: according to this tweet, The Emotion Lab is working on getting the watch into production ASAP.