Dragon Age III: Inquisition

[Cyros]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

I want my isometric overhead camera back

[Flawless]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

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[Flawless]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

"Tactical View" is mentioned on Dragon Age site under Game Info.

Go toe-to-toe in visceral, heroic combat as your followers fight by your side, or switch to tactical view to coordinate devastating offensives using the combined might of your party.

[Flawless]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

https://twitter.com/bioware

Just announced at #PAX2013: Tactical combat view returns to @dragonage on ALL platforms!

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The Beauty and Brutality of Dragon Age: Inquisition

You can play as a qunari...

The horned antagonists of Dragon Age II can, if you opt in, play a vital role in the waging war between mages and the Chantry, the rise of the long out-of-order Inquisition, and the general rescuing of Thedas from enemies beyond the Fade. You can also play as a female qunari -- not only is this the first time we're able to play as the race itself, it's the first time we'll even see a lady of their kind.

Exploring the open world...

Meandering through Thedas has a purpose. The team used a phrase I really like: "honest discovery." Dragon Age won't force you into a cave to fetch a book. Ideally, you'd stumble upon an opening, go in blind, and see what you find inside. On the larger scale, the sprawling spaces serve a bigger-picture purpose. Capturing keeps allows you to turn your growing army into a militant brute, a commercial enterprise, and more. Branding your new little fortresses reminds me of Far Cry 3's captured control points -- your influence and infamy grows alongside your army, which you can use in various ways.

The Agent system...

Recruiting followers and amassing a trusted force comes naturally to a good leader, which is what you'll become as the Inquisitor in Dragon Age. This goes beyond companions. Your Agents are specialized units that take care of dirty work off-screen -- think Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker or Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood -- to create new opportunities with serious gameplay ramifications. In a simple example, we're shown a valley absorbed by poisonous gas. Should specialists head into the toxin and cap their source, you're able to explore what lies within. This is a behind-the-scenes mechanics that means something in the grand scheme of the world you inhabit, and it brings the thriving open world to life.

The Frostbite 3 Engine

Dragon Age: Inquisition is gorgeous, and brings the sort of A-game visual splendor you want at the turn of a console generation. Its scenery is beautiful, its spaces are dense, and its destruction looks as great as you'd expect -- and not in a "medieval Battlefield" sort of way. Rocks crumble beneath go-getter dragons tumbling into a structure. Bridges collapse when cut or detonated, boats burn when ignited -- which can halt an enemies' escape or resources long-term -- and combat bowls can be carved through to upend the level design. It's more than a shiny coat of paint. Like most things in Inquisition, the new bits have meaningful consequence on the gameplay.

The new dialog wheel

Speaking of consequence, making tough calls has always been part of BioWare's legacy, but oftentimes the reaction to an action isn't quite what you expect. Selecting the "Shut up" option in Mass Effect, for example, may have led to an unexpected act of violence that didn't suit the character, or damaged something later on that you may not have expected. Now, when you highlight dialog, you'll see a text pop-up explaining what's likely to happen if you say or do something. This is optional, so if you'd rather not know that a village will certainly fall if you leave its under-attack inhabitants hanging, or you'd rather deal with it on your own terms, you can.

The combat

I loved the physicality of Dragon Age II's combat, but like many, especially PC players, I missed the almost-turn-based tactics level of stop-motion strategy from Origins' combat. That's back in Inquisition (on all platforms), so even console players can stop time, get a high-level view of the battlefield, and assign orders for each of their characters. You can assign move orders, spells, and attack patterns with quick grace, and jump right back into the fray for real-time slicing and dicing. A.I. states also let you assign behaviors to units, as usual, so you can send an aggressive character ahead of his or her teammates to take care of business while supporting them from afar. That, and the Z-targeting, reactive enemies, and vicious force of each strike really makes each fight look like a scary place to be.

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Putting The Dragons In Dragon Age

Unlike Dragon Age II, very little of the content in Inquisition is scaled to the player’s level. That means that some parts of the world will have enemies that are too difficult to defeat until you reach a certain level. This approach conveys a satisfying sense of progress; few things in an RPG are more rewarding than finally defeating a foe that was previously beyond your abilities. That’s the driving idea behind how dragons are implemented in Inquisition. “I don’t ever want a player to casually kill a dragon,” Laidlaw says. “I see a dragon as something you aspire to. You see it flying overhead and make future plans. ‘I’ve seen that there’s a dragon. I know what kind of environment I’m going to be up against. I know what I’m going to fight on my way in. So I’m going to need to prepare accordingly.’”

In any case, fights against dragons are being treated as optional battles that you prepare for deliberately and undertake carefully.

Because confrontations with dragons are placed encounters (not random, as opposed to games like Skyrim), BioWare is able to design them for specific environments and situations. “We need to consider them as something we should be tuning,” Laidlaw says. “Their environment should have some nice lead-in. You should feel that anticipation. You should clench up a little. And when they appear, they should be aware of the space in which you’re fighting them and be able to use that.” For example, if you fight a dragon in a rocky clearing, you may be able to take cover from its breath weapon behind boulders. However, the dragon can flush you out by concentrating its fire to melt the stone.

No one tactic works for every fight, and they are intended to be difficult. In fact, you have the option to withdraw from some of these encounters in case you bite off more than you can chew. So, how can your Inquisitor defeat these colossal foes? Each one is a little different, but you can find and create gear that gives you an edge against dragons. You should also pay attention to the dragon’s behavior and environment, because your tactics may change as the fight goes on. “You can individually target their limbs, and they react to the damage to a leg versus another one,” says Laidlaw. “I think that helps ground the encounter a lot more. If you need to get in close to the legs, we open up a whole new realm of counter-moves. He can take a swipe at where you likely are, which feels more like what a real beast would do. It grounds the encounter, and keeps it very physical.”

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Save Imports Detailed

I’m excited to announce the Dragon Age Keep. Within the Keep, you’ll be able to customize a Dragon Age historical world state to your exact specifications. How did you modify your Warden and Hawke? Who were your companions? Who did you choose to romance? Who rose to power, and who fell in defeat? What legacy did you leave?

Within the Keep, you’ll be able to customize as much or as little about the world of Thedas as you wish. Then you’ll be able to import your saved world state into DAI at the start of a new game. Have you lost or corrupted your save files? No problem — remake your world state on the Keep, and preserve it for the future. For those folks new to the Dragon Age franchise, the Keep will serve as a great way to understand the people, places, and events that shaped the world leading up to DAI.

I’d like to give some history on how the Keep came into existence. Very early in the planning of DAI, we began to think about how we were going to address the issue of importing save game files. We were dealing with a brand new game engine, plus the next generation of consoles. It was a priority that our fans be able to have their decisions carry forward, regardless of their past or future platform.

We realized that in order to make this work, we’d have to look into a cloud-based solution. Moving to the cloud allows players to take their unique world state into any platform (present or future) and even other media. For existing fans, an advantage of being in the cloud is that (if you are ok with spoilers) you can fully explore what-if scenarios, and become aware of events and consequences in our past games that you may not have known were possible. You can then fire up the previous games and go exploring for those moments.

Even if you don’t go back and re-play the previous games, you can still establish that scenario as part of your world state, and import it at the start of a new DAI game to see the consequences of your actions.

Starting today, you can visit the Dragon Age Keep and register for its beta, set to kick off early next year. We’re eager to hear your feedback and get your impressions before it launches publicly in 2014. The Keep will be available to everyone a few months before DAI gets released, in order to give fans plenty of time to experiment with scenarios and make their history exactly how they want.

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[Flawless]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

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[bakan723]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

With all the kickstarters going on now, I had almost forgotten what the grim face of mainstream RPGs was like.

[Kearnzo]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

With all the kickstarters going on now, I had almost forgotten what the grim face of mainstream RPGs was like.

Then don't play them and stay out of the "mainstream" RPG's threads. Seriously man, all you do is complain about modern games.

[jfsolo]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

For me, Bioware still hasn't surpassed Baldur's Gate II yet. KOTOR, and ME 2 were pretty close, ME 1 was superb, ME 3 stumbled down the home stretch, while the two Dragon Age games are good but not great, IMO. My early feeling for Inquisition is that is it will take the crown as Bioware's best game ever. I really, really like, what we've seen so far.

[K0ZZ]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

I recently started DA:O again, trying to finally beat it. There is still some annoyances but I'm liking it better now.

I'll keep my eye on it and could end up picking it up down the road, more likely for PC than PS4, but still. It's sounding interesting.

[HustlinOwl]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

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[rdnk]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

Having just beaten DA:Origins and DA:Kirkwall, I'll have to wait and see how this game turns out. The games are good but they don't stand up against KOTOR or the Mass Effect series.

DA:O just felt like KOTOR: medieval edition. Throughout the whole game I felt like I've done this before. The combat in DA:O was a hot mess; by the end of the game it wasn't even fun anymore, I was just blowing through it to see the end of the story and seeing what happens to the characters.

DA:K was a disappointment. I enjoyed the combat a lot more although it did have issues that would need to be ironed out (camera, aiming system, randomly spawning in dudes). While I liked the characters for the most part (in both games there were characters I didn't like), the story was rushed and poorly thought out. There were other hallmarks of a game being rushed out like the lame repackaging of dungeons. However, there were things I liked about the game; had it been given a proper development time DA:K could have been a great game.

I could go on about why DA:O's combat was dreadful or why DA:K's story was trash, but I'm hoping that DA:I will end up solving the main issues both games had and everyone will end up with a top notch WRPG.

[Flawless]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

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[BenGerman]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

This and Witcher 3 are at the top of my most anticipated right now. Need an RPG badly.

[Eman5805]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

Can't wait to see ME4 or whatever it'll be called.

[Chrisksaint]

Re: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

This and Witcher 3 are at the top of my most anticipated right now. Need an RPG badly.

Yup and they both look fantastic so far, can't wait to see how RPGs are gonna be on these new systems.