While the game world isn’t strictly open-world, much like previous titles, it is large enough to warrant the introduction of mounts. We’ll also lay siege to fortresses and repair bridges with magic!
In Inquisition, the player leads an independent group that is out to investigate just why the world is going downhill, but you’ll need to muster allies along the way for political clout.
Not since Dragon Age: Origins have players been given the opportunity to choose what race their character will be. BioWare won’t be offering prologues for each like in Origins, but many fans will be just happy enough that they need a booster seat at the tavern playing a dwarf.
Other snippets from the Game Informer piece include all fully voiced characters, which is no surprise, ‘levelling up’ the Inquisition in power and influence with the story focused on this, and a whole new crazy level of choices to make. Exploration of the immense game world is also heavily encouraged.
”I’ve been trying to drive exploration, something we used to have more of in our games,” executive producer Mark Darrah told Game Informer. “It’s something that, frankly, BioWare hasn’t done in a while…In a lot of ways, I’d say we’re a lot like what you saw in the Baldur’s Gate series, with areas that existed in part just to be spaces that you went to, but they had a story of their own.” To help us out exploring Dragon Age will have mounts for the first time.
Dragons are of course returning but these encounters aren’t scaled down to the players current level, meaning you’d best hightail it out of there and return later when you’re hopefully ready. This isn’t a Skyrim-like open world but something more akin to how CD Projekt RED is approaching The Witcher 3, meaning the story is made to feel organic.
Thanks to the Frostbite engine, the Inquisition has been playing around with the environment and so we can expect to come across a number of malleable areas like bridges that could be repaired with a touch of magic, or an old outpost renovated into a base of operations. It should certainly make sieges a lot more interesting.
Finally, but certainly not least, BioWare is putting serious time into optimising Dragon Age: Inquisition for keyboard and mouse. The RPG is due on PC, Xbox One and PS4 in late 2014.
