Dragon Age: Inquisition Hands-on Previews
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A few select members of the press had the chance to try an early build of Dragon Age: Inquisition and recently released their impressions, and given these are the very first hands-on previews for the game I figured most of you would be interested.
Polygon is incredibly enthusiastic about the thought of hunting dragons:
That feeling of death for death's sake came to me in the midst of battle.
Early on, Mike Laidlaw, creative director of the game, pointed out that the dragon was so massive that it had individual hit points for different parts of the body. Those body parts could be, essentially destroyed, and the dragon would react.
So I set about attacking the dragon's right hind leg. Freezing it over and over again and then pounding into it with a stone fist. Eventually the creature roared, and then it buckled, its leg limp, and collapsed on its side for a moment.
I play games to kill, not to injure, was the first, odd thought that popped into my head.
When the creature righted itself and flew away, its rear leg curled protectively curled up underneath it, my band of companions took it down.
The fact that this completely unscripted, digital dragon hunt could elicit a genuine feeling of guilt and sadness speaks volumes for the game.
If killing one of this fictional world's most dangerous creatures, something Laidlaw calls an apex predator, can make me feel pity, what would seeing a comrade or a villager die feel like?
Shocking, appalling, meaningful.
I started in a forest area called The Highlands, one of about ten in the game bigger than the entirety of Dragon Age: Origins. I was supposed to use my time to explore, and with guidance from BioWare Producer Cameron Lee, hit a few key locations and events, but I kept straying from the critical story path.
Even with much content still missing from the demo, The Highlands were densely packed with details and interesting landmarks in the distance I wanted to see up close. I wandered into the ruins of a castle, killed a few enemies, and found some chests as I was exploring an environment I was genuinely interested in, not because of a conscious decision to step off the story's yellow brick road and grind for loot or experience.
It's easy to get lost in Inquisition because of how beautiful it is. The sun coming through the trees, mythical critters (which you can hunt and skin for the game's crafting system) frolic through pastures, a little cave with creepy wood sculptures straight out of True Detective It's easily the prettiest game BioWare has ever made. It's the developer's first to use the Frostbite 3 engine (the same used in Battlefield 4), and the team is making it sing.
Frostbite lets BioWare create huge beautiful environments, but Lee told me one of the biggest challenges for the team is filling them with meaningful content. So far it seems that it's rising to the challenge. Nothing looked copy/pasted, or efficiently generated with tile sets. Every environment looks like it's handcrafted.
Up until now, the combat in Dragon Age has been of two distinct schools of thought. Once a player decided on their combat style, they found little motivation to change it up or experiment with other strategies. Tactical combat froze the actions and kept the camera higher and removed from the action for a more massively multiplayer online game feel, while fighting in real time kept the screen flooded with gore and floating status effects.
Better views of the carnage
Comparatively, Inquisition encourages more swapping between the two methods. Most of this stems with Bioware's improvements to the camera system. Players can move the camera almost anywhere in 3D space around the immediate battlefield. In the tactical view, this control makes every battle into a grotesque ballet of mace impacts and arrows connecting with heads. Full control over the camera also removes the biggest visual hang-up between combat options, making switching between them feel more instant and seamless.
By giving player's smoother camera control, tactical fighters will be able to plot their movements between enemies and target specific limbs with greater ease. The latter becomes all but mandatory in large-scale battles. The middle of my demo had my party fending off against one of Ferelden's many dragons by crippling the front and hind legs before going for more vulnerable regions.
Fantasy tactics. For those who prefer to tackle combat in a more strategic manner, players have the option of pausing the action at any time by pressing the Back button (Xbox 360 controller). This switches to a tactical view, with a free-roam camera that centers on a targeting reticule. You issue orders to each party member by selecting the desired character, moving the reticule to your chosen target, and selecting whichever action you want to queue up (only one at a time, but characters auto-move to act out the order, if necessary). Pressing the Back button again reverts to real time as each order plays out; you can also hold down the RT to move time forward without switching out of tactical view.
There's no requirement that you stick to either combat system; this is simply another option. You might stick with real-time action for a brief battle against a small group of minor enemies, but then switch to the tactical view to more effectively micromanage during a showdown with a dragon, since you might want to have everyone focus fire on individual legs, the better to cripple it more quickly. All combat in Dragon Age: Inquisition unfolds in the same spaces that you're exploring, so it's an easy, seamless jump between the two systems.
The controls have been overhauled to fit the blended approach with this third installment. The tactical camera is handled with a toggle of the back button (on the Xbox 360 controller we were using for our PC demo). From there, I was able to freely move around the area (in three dimensions - the camera isn't fixed to a specific altitude), cycle through each of the characters to move them or choose from one of eight different quick abilities (up from six in the previous two games), and plan for the fight ahead.
Unlike previous BioWare games, which require you to either queue abilities or play in real time, Inquisition offers a third option. By pressing the right trigger in tactical view, you enter what Laidlaw calls (engage mode.) This slowly winds the action ahead and can be immediately stopped by letting go of the trigger.
The benefit is more precise timing of abilities to maximize synergistic effects. For example, triggering Blizzard (a spell that swirls biting snow across an area as menacing clouds gather above) has a chance of freezing enemies in place. Slowly progressing the action will let you know if a fellow mage should use Stone Fist or a warrior should strike with a Heavy Blow, both of which will (shatter) a frozen enemy for additional damage.
I found myself entering tactical mode more than any other BioWare game I've played, largely because of the combined flexibility of the camera and engage mode. That's not to say that playing things out in real-time isn't fun or useful. Rather, using both at the appropriate time is far more intuitive in Inquisition.
I ask Lee to tell me more about the Dragon Age identity. Inquisition allows me to move into a tactical camera view and control my party from overhead, but BioWare prefers to show the game from its third-person view. This makes sense: the game looks lovely, and the drama of its spellcasting is more apparent when you watch from a third-person perspective. But I also suspect that BioWare wants to distance itself from the games of its past--Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, namely--and be mentioned in the same breath as Elder Scrolls. Lee's words reinforce this notion. "Gaming's moved on from Neverwinter Nights, we've moved on from Baldur's Gate," he says. "Neverwinter Nights, when you think about that is a transition point from Baldur's Gate, being 3D at that point. So that would have had a similar question, just from the change in perspective, and the change in the pacing. So it's more of an evolution in being immersed in the world, and I think that this kind of freeform movement to the world, giving you a massive place to explore, is just an evolution of the world."
This direction isn't wholly surprising. After all, Dragon Age II eschewed a tactical camera entirely, and the combat was more immediate than the original Dragon Age was. Yet that sequel still suffered from the sophomore slump: it wasn't as tactical as Origins, nor was the combat as reactive as in Skyrim. By contrast, Inquisition seems to want it both ways, rather than to stick to a single unsatisfying merger of gameplay styles, though I can't yet say how well the game plays from an overhead view. From a third-person perspective, at least, Inquisition feels fluid during this demo. Tapping buttons and pulling triggers fires off spells and swings axes, depending on what party member you directly control. My party includes a rogue, a couple of mages, and a warrior, and several of its members are of the Qunari race, which is playable for the first time in Inquisition.
Lee assures me that in spite of the series growth that Inquisition still hews close to the fundamentals that make BioWare games unique. "When you think of Baldur's Gate, when you think of Neverwinter Nights, RPG mechanics, staples that make an RPG, like crafting and exploration and character customization, and all the different things that you do, that's all in here as well. A lot of the action RPGS out there don't have that. Some games don't have crafting. Some games don't have character customization and you're given a fixed character. Some games don't have a massive story and something that impacts the world."
Traipsing about the valley, my party of four including Ironbull the Qunari mercenary tank, Sera the elven archer, and Vivienne the Orlesian mage scoured the majesty of the countryside, filled with foliage, brooks, and craggy pathways. Leading the party as the Inquisitor, I peered behind every nook and cranny to gather spindleweed, embrium, and elfroot for crafting potions, used by selecting them by popping up the radial menu. The left shoulder button can also be given a tap for a quick heal, but this function might be disabled in the final build.
Adventuring with a healthy stock of healing potions is important since party members don't heal in between battles like usual (or at least in this build), so you'll need to decide how long your party can venture into the wilds before retreating to a safe location. We'll see, though, whether a wizard can specialize as a healer to lengthen the time before restocking on potions. Either way, being a completionist and explorer will give you enough ingredients to fabricate enough reserves for the boss fight and the battles leading up to it.
Beyond that, players can gather minerals, metals, and schematics for weapons crafting, which unfortunately wasn't shown in great detail. But from what the developer described, a schematic will leave the player a wide amount of options; for instance, making a sword hilt or blade can be done by combining any number of metals together. Melding the same metals or a specific combination of metals will make the weapon stronger, so there looks to be a tier system at play.
