Game Informer reveals new details about BioWare’s upcoming ‘Dragon Age Inquisition.’ Some highlights below.  Plenty of gamers are still feeling burned by Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 3′s less-than-stellar ending, but this month’s Game Informer cover article is all about Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I’m feeling quit a bit more excited about the next installment in BioWare’s fantasy RPG franchise after reading it.  The game takes place ten years after the Darkspawn blight plagued Ferelden. You play as an Inquisitor in Thedas.  The Chantry and the Mages are at war, with the Templar split off from the Chantry and plenty of chaos and politicking going on hither and thither. In neighboring Orlais, civil war bleeds the land. And Ferelden is still picking up the pieces of its Darkspawn doom.  Then the sky opens up and starts dumping demons everywhere.  As a member of the Inquisition, part of what you’re out to do is find out what exactly just happened.  Here’s some of the highlights from the Game Informer piece:  1. You play as the leader of the Inquisition. Apparently this happens early on, as you’re the last surviving witness to the mysterious “breach.” You lead the Inquisition, shaping it from the ground up.  2. Multiple PC races are back. I suspected we’d only get to play humans, but Inquisition is bringing back Elves, Dwarfs, and Humans. This is one of a number of ways the team is trying to recapture the Dragon Age: Origins spirit after Dragon Age II ditched multiple races in favor of just humans. BioWare isn’t saying if the qunari will be playable.  There won’t be different origins, but all races will have their own unique pros and cons that can affect both gameplay and story. To be honest, I was fine with just humans but I know many others were extremely disappointed by the human only Dragon Age II.  3. The game will be fully voice-acted. Beyond that, you can customize your character as male or female and pick your own name. No more being confined to Hawke. I think the voice-acting adds a nice touch to the game, but I kind of liked my silent Grey Warden from Origins.  4. The Inquisition is independent. And since it’s your baby, you can shape its trajectory. You can also determine where you’ll investigate, who you will forge alliances with, and more. How this plays out is an open question, but Game Informer’s article makes it sound like an ambitious—hopefully not too ambitious—addition to the game.  5. You can lay siege to fortresses. The game is all about navigating the politics of the various political power centers in the world. You may be independent, but that doesn’t mean everyone, everywhere will just let you in to peak into their private affairs. That’s okay though, because you can do things like lay siege to stubborn lords’ fortresses. (With the Frostbite 3 engine this sort of warfare could be extraordinary. If there is a multiplayer portion of the game, I’d love to see it take shape as a fortress-siege/warfare mechanic.)  6. The Inquisition “levels up.” Or, rather, it grows in strength and political power as you acquire new influence across the land. No word on whether this means you get your own fortress or not.  I do wonder if this is a way for EA to slip in some multiplayer functionality. Play the multiplayer game or download the iPad app to further spread your organization’s influence, etc. This would be similar to what we saw in Mass Effect 3 with your military preparedness rank which could be boosted by playing on the app, online, and so forth. Just speculation on my part, however. Other than the words of EA executives who have said in the past that all EA games will have multiplayer, the mode has not been confirmed (or denied) by BioWare. 7. Story follows exploration and the powering up of the Inquisition. The story of Dragon Age Inquisition is not linear. The world is apparently huge, with the Frostbite 3 engine allowing for huge levels and the game design promoting exploration across multiple kingdoms and major cities. Better still, the game’s narrative progresses as your organization ratchets up its power. The way to do that is to explore as much of the game world as possible. As a fan of exploration in games, this is marvelous news. The sameness of Dragon Age II’s corridors was its worst shortcoming.  8. Choices, choices everywhere… BioWare tells Game Informer that the approach is basically a “campaign” that hearkens back to old tabletop games, where things are still story driven but more open-ended. The idea is that you can approach the game how you want. Go solve mysteries, help those in need, or adventure. You have choices about how you approach the world, based on a common narrative framework.  I’m curious to see how this compares to the open-world, open-approach that CD Projekt RED is taking with The Witcher 3. The two games both promise a lot of player-driven content and if both can pull it off, we may be in for a real evolution in RPG gaming.  9. The game isn’t truly open-world, but its open areas are huge. They are also filled with little tidbits of lore and secrets that you can just stumble on, that might not even have anything to do with the broader story. And the new Frostbite 3 engine makes it all possible.  “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.”  I love how much Baldur’s Gate is referenced in the article. The Dragon Age Inquisition team really sounds like they’re trying to get back to their roots. Is this just PR? Many fans are disillusioned enough to not believe any of it, but I want to believe.  10. Mounts. Yes, you’ll get mounts this time around, helping you traverse those huge levels.  11. Dragons. But there will be dragons and other monsters and oftentimes these won’t be scaled to your level or anywhere close. Retreat and return later.  12. Balance. As I mentioned above, BioWare isn’t making this a Skyrim-style open-world game. Like The Witcher 3, there will be balance between traditional BioWare-style storytelling and more “organic” story elements conveyed through exploration and environment. Striking this balance is crucial to the Inquisition team, according to the Game Informer piece. Open world has been a pretty mixed bag, in my opinion. It’s wonderful from a game standpoint, but it’s terribly difficult to balance story and open-world exploration. Look no further than Far Cry 3 to see how this can sometimes end badly.  13. Manipulated environments and structures. You can use magic to restore a bridge, or convert an old outpost into an Inquisition-controlled base. The world is your oyster, in other words, or your pallet to paint the Inquisition’s future. Opening up new areas by magically restoring a bridge sounds pretty excellent.  14. The game will be optimized for mouse-and-keyboard. PC gamers will have an optimized mouse-and-keyboard system, something left out of the second Dragon Age. Gameplay will be basically the same across all five systems, but next-gen and PC will look prettier.  15. Combat will be both tactical and action-based. BioWare is trying to hit the middle place between Dragon Age II and Origins where tactics do matter but the action and responsiveness is crisp and satisfying. I wouldn’t mind this at all, as I enjoyed the tactical nature of the first game and the better animations and action-y feel of the second. Combine the two and we could have a really great combat experience on our hands. The sweet spot may be hard to hit, but I’m glad to hear that they’re trying.  The AI also sounds more advanced, with enemies using strategy and not just mobbing individual characters. And you’ll have the ability to set your own characters’ AI and fully control each member of the party individually.  Actually, Game Informer’s description of combat sounds really exciting, with deep strategic elements. They describe a fight where a fighter bashes off a dragon’s leg-scales and then a rogue sneaks up and poisons the exposed area.  This reminds me that I think there’s room for a separate co-op game here. If co-op is the multiplayer option we get, I’d be pretty happy.  Weather effects, day and night cycles, new demonic enemies, and much more are all coming to the third Dragon Age game, and I for one remain optimistic in spite of BioWare’s recent issues. I know a lot of people are more cynical than myself, but I’m happy to be optimistic for the time being.  There’s lots more in the Game Informer piece, which is subscriber only at the moment. If you don’t already, this would be a good time to head over to their subscription page and take a look.  I want to quickly add that this piece was never meant to be a way to deter readers away from Game Informer’s cover story. That story, written by Joe Juba, is an excellent read. It’s for subscribers only, and one of the examples of why Game Informer is one of the only magazines I’ve subscribed to over the years. Juba’s piece is a great example of why I still do.  I purposefully left quite a bit out from the original article (or thought I did) including a lot of details on characters and the way the game ties into the previous titles, not to mention tons of quotes and insights from the developers.  In the original post I also included one image from the Game Informer piece. I believed it to be Fair Use at the time, but it turns out that’s not the case. I was wrong and I completely acknowledge being in the wrong. For that I apologize. However, my highlighting of the original article was not designed to step on anyone’s toes at all. It was meant solely in the spirit of sharing interesting information that I’d come across, nothing more.  Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here.
Dragon Age Inquisition is featured in this month's Game Informer, and tons of new information has been revealed.