BioWare Blog: Visiting the Toronto Fan Expo, Part One

BioWare showed off Dragon Age: Origins at the Canada Fan Expo in Toronto, so it comes as no surprise that we’re being treated to a new three-part blog series covering the event. From part one:

Fan Expo takes place at the Metro Convention Center in Toronto Ontario and is sort of 4 smaller conventions all wrapped up into one big show. In past years, Toronto hosted a comic book show, one dedicated to horror, one on Sci-Fi and one on Anime. They realized that instead of having 4 small shows with only so-so attendance to each, they could combine and have one massive show that would pull in fans from all groups simultaneously. This year, they were hoping to have around 50,000 fans come out, but on Saturday the lines were SO huge, I think they will have easily beat that number this year.

So what goes on at Fan Expo? Well, as I said, it is a combination of Sci-Fi, comic books, anime and horror. There are the usual booths selling their back issue comics or gothic clothes or Pocky or whatever. There were a large number of celebrities attending, like Bruce Campbell, Roger Corman and Leonard Nemoy, signing autographs and taking pictures with fans. There were some big companies like DC Comics, Disney and Warner Brothers present showing off their upcoming projects. And there was a staggering amount of fans in costumes. Don’t get me wrong, there are always fans in costume at conventions, but I say that I saw more fans in costumes at Fan Expo than any other Con I have been to. I saw Leatherfaces chasing after Narutos and Squirrel Girl doing battle with Ghostbusters as a squad of Yeoman Brands watched. We even had a few (famous) characters come by the booth to try out Dragon Age: Origins, but sadly, their superpowers couldn’t prevail over the Darkspawn Blight.