Thanks to the wonder of EA’s Early Access, you are reading the blog of someone who has played Dragon Age: Inquisition.
The first thing I need to say is that it’s beautiful. The aesthetic is like Fable 3 had a baby with Skyrim.
The animation is the best I’ve seen. Better than Asassin’s Creed 4 on PS4, which was my benchmark until today.
You can play as a human, elf, dwarf or Qunari. If you pick Qunari, you’re the in-universe version of an Oreo: Qun on the outside, cultureless, uneducated husk on the inside.
We meet Varric again, looking younger and considerably less burly then in the last game, although Inquisition clearly takes place after the events of 2.
The secondary art is reminiscent of the load screens from 2, but cooler looking.
Sadly, elves seem to have taken an attractiveness hit. They’re no longer the doe-eyed Kate Moss lookalikes they were.
Everybody’s teeth look like dentures, but I don’t dislike it.
I’m also very happy that you can change their armor. I know, way to play to stereotype, but I wasn’t allowed to dress my dolls up as a child because the idea of owning multiple outfits per doll was abhorrent to my notoriously cheap grandma. So here we are. I have a little bit of a thing for armor. That’s what happens when you refuse to buy the Barbie dress-up pack.
As for game play, I am immensely happy that attack and interact are no longer the same button. That was kind of an issue for me since I do tend to mash.
If you like tactics (who has the time, I always say), Ben loves the new tactical view. It does make everything look extremely epic, which is my only input as far as tactics are concerned.
There are more conversational options than in any game I’ve played to date, and a ton of the NPC dialog seems to be directly related to player-specific choices like race and class. I didn’t play enough to see if there was dialog on any of the other choices.
All in all, it is exactly as awesome as I was hoping and more. I’m very excited to continue game play on the actual release date.