Dragon Age: Inquisition Preview and Editorial
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OXM UK starts us off with the preview:
Inquisitors don't just wander the land in search of trouble, you see, like those filthy chancers the Grey Wardens. They command armies, spies and trade networks. They can wipe settlements off the map by proxy, order the destruction of river dams, excavate ruins, build bridges and even poison water supplies to weaken rival encampments. How all this works in practice is still being thrashed out - screens suggest the Inquisition's main base will contain a strategic map room of some sort - but right now, the implementation feels like a mixture of Total War's region management and Assassin's Creed's much-imitated synchronisation points.
To unlock the bulk of an area's prizes, you'll need to establish or capture (that's to say, personally invade and purge) a keep, which then serves as a sort of mission-giving NPC clubhouse and can be customised for resource pay-offs that, in turn, drive the game's party-based combat. Assigning Inquisition agents to a keep allows you to fiddle with the geography itself. You could send five agents to reactivate an old mage gate, for faster movement around your empire, or 10 agents to build a mine on top of a sulphur pit, for extra cash, or 50 to rebuild a fallen colossus, inspiring the keep's defenders to greater feats of valour.
And then we stop by Pixlbit for a list of five things they're looking for in the game:
3. More Interesting Races
You want to know the real reason I love the Mass Effect universe so much more than Dragon Age's. It's because in Mass Effect other races come in all kinds of shapes and sizes with very creative designs. Dragon Age, they're midgets, small humans, and big humans. I want more races like Golems or Zelda's Zora and Gorons. Ones that fit in the universe, but look very different from humans. 2 actually did a good job by making Qunari more fun, but I want a new race or two introduced as fleshed out as Elves and Dwarves that have a really fun new design.
And if you want to argue the lore, Inquisition takes place in a different part of the world and Mass Effect 2 introduced Drell, Collectors, and Vorcha very well into a universe where communication is easy. I'm sure they can make it work.
2. Better Balancing
The worst part of Dragon Age hands down was how the game was always either too easy or unreasonably hard. There were far too few sections where I felt I was getting a legitimately fair challenge and even on the easiest mode there would be difficulty spikes I had no chance to survive. 2's fix was just to make things way too easy where I felt I didn't even need AI companions most the time. I want Inquisition to be tough but fair.
