Long-time readers will probably be aware of my love for the Dragon Age series. I’ve covered both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II on these very pages over the last couple of years.

I hailed the first as an excellent and challenging technical combat RPG, praising its depth and scale, while highlighting its unforgiving nature and its potential to put off the more casual gamer.

Hell, I even loved the second game, something that seems to put me in the 0.02% minority in the games industry it seems. While I acknowledged the way it regressed in terms of scale and narrative, I felt that the combat was, when taken on its own merits, engaging in a different manner to the first. Really, the big reason it put players off is that it changed to court the more casual player, but managed to find itself caught between two stools; with casual players put off by experiences from the first game and returning fans disappointed to find a very different game to the one they remembered.

So, that in mind, I was very interested to see how Bioware would approach crafting the third game in the series.

The first thing that jumps out is that the huge improvement visually. The game environments in particular have taken a massive step forward and the work that Neil Thompson, Director of Arts & Animation, and his team have put in has really paid dividends. Each area of the game has a very distinct and unique feel and personality and not in the usual ‘fire/ice zone’ sense. From sandy deserts to lush forests, pretty much every environmental style is expertly depicted and in painstaking detail. Thompson asserted at EGX 2014 that the design team had taken baroque and renaissance paintings and distilled thematic colour palettes from them which they then used as the basis for the game and it really shows. The game world feels entirely authentic and real in an intangible sense. It’s that sort of thing that can really cement the suspension of disbelief and Bioware have pulled it off masterfully. If I was to be slightly critical of the visuals, it would be in the character models, which remain very distinctly Dragon Age. This, in one sense, is good as it maintains the constancy of visual identity from previous titles, but does mean that the old problems of duplication remain. There’s a lot of genero-faces around the game world and its disappointing to meet so many identical looking people in the game. Oh, and they still suck at beards… the beards look awful; either having a massive gap between beard and face or just looking like they’re made of plastic. As a bearded man myself; this is most annoying. Oh, and chainmail and scale mail look like tin foil…

Storyline wise; the game was, for the longest time, looking like a disappointment. It starts of pretty bland and standard in the vein of the old ‘there’s trouble  and you’re THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SAVE THE WORLD’ trope; basic and steady, but not very inspiring. However, later on (and without spoiling anything) stuff kicks off royal and It.Gets.Awesome… As I said, I won’t spoil anything here as it deserves to be experienced first-hand, but the story takes some unexpected twists and there are several parts where you’ll have to pick the route forward, leaving other routes/options unexplored. This gives a tangible feel of your impact on proceedings while also ensuring replay value. Well played Bioware, well played indeed…

Speaking of choices, there’s a hell of a lot of them and most of them surround how to approach/treat your companions, followers and general populace of the game world and feels like a nice upgrade on the Mass Effect system its clearly based on. Forgoing the rather tired Paragon/Renegade  morality system, the game allows you to do pretty much what you want, when you want; meaning you can play that glorious shade of grey that you want and is, funnily enough, more realistic. The old system forced players to ‘game’ the system; pick entirely saintly or dickish options to ensure future options remained open; not so anymore. Being able to play a good guy who occasionally does something a bit iffy or an asshole who has moments of conscience feels much more real than an extreme of one or the other and it makes for a more engaging experience.

But the big question, when we get down to it, is really about the combat. It is, after all, the mechanic you’ll spend the most time on in the game and will largely define how much you enjoy the game.

In essence it’s a massive shift back towards the gameplay of the first game, while retaining some of the better aspects of the second. You are introduced to the various facets of the combat in the opening tutorial sequences in an approach that feels less intrusive than expected. You start by running up to enemies and holding right trigger to attack, as well as using the various face buttons (A,B,X,Y) as hotkeys for special abilities, like in previous titles. When it really gets interesting is when the tactics overview button is revealed, which stops time and allows you to cycle through your party assigning actions, then allowing time to flow briefly with a pull of the right trigger. It sounds a bit slow and steady, but it flows excellently and really adds a huge amount of depth and tactics to the game. Combo moves, such as smashing frozen enemies and such return and can be expertly timed through the tactics view, really allowing for tactical play.

And you’ll need to use all those tactics effectively, as the game is very challenging. Even basic mobs can overwhelm you if you don’t pay attention and careful use of your party’s strengths is a must for victory, even in the lover difficulty levels. While, in theory, you could just run in and hack away, leaving your party AI to fend for itself, you’ll quickly find that theory makes fools of us all; or in Dragon Age: Inquisition it makes corpses of us all. Put simply, I love the combat mechanics in Inquisition.

In addition, Inquisition does something that I’ve rarely seen in other games like it and that in my mind shouldn’t work; it reveals an additional mechanic to the combat about half way through. The Focus system is effectively a limit break that you can use after filling up a damage meter, allowing for what are essentially finishing moves. Again, it sounds awful, but it works very well, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on.

All in all, Dragon Age: Inquisition is an unmitigated success. Yes, some of the old flaws remain and perhaps the companions in this iteration aren’t quite as endearing and memorable as previous versions, but you know what? You won’t care. You’ll just be busy having a hell of a time with the huge, huge game world, exploring fantastic environments, engaging in tactical battles with interesting enemies while pursuing an epic and engaging storyline.

And after all, isn’t that what Fantasy RPGs are all about?

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