Since I joined TechSpot, I haven't washed a whole ton of gaming content. Only when EA and BioWare invited me to a private hands-on session for 1 of the most anticipated games of the year, I couldn't resist. Not just is the serial one of my personal favorites, but a break from the usual schedule of smartphone reviews is always welcome.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is third main title in BioWare'south action RPG series, and it's a much more expansive and aggressive game than those that came before it. Part of this is explained because it's launching on 'side by side-gen' consoles, and part of it is thanks to the use of Dice's Frostbite 3 engine. Another cistron is simply that Creative Director Mike Laidlaw wanted this game to finally realize the vision for Dragon Age.

I was one of the lucky few at EA'due south effect to test the game on PC (instead of PlayStation 4), and the first matter that struck me was how unbelievably good information technology looked. The graphical item on Ultra settings is jaw-dropping: everything from the particle effects, to the lighting, to the textures looks incredible. It is easily the nearly visually astounding RPG game I take ever played.

Graphics aren't everything though. I was most curious to meet how fun Inquisition is to play, and to encounter whether I could feasibly sit downward and play the game for weeks on end, exploring the vast in-game earth and it's plethora of content. Laidlaw mentioned that for a completionist like myself, you lot'll need to spend at least 100 hours in control of your four-person political party to actually encounter everything.

Your first task upon firing up Inquisition is to make a character, who, after a short fourth dimension into the game, becomes the Inquisitor. The protagonist is different from previous Dragon Age games, though there are many familiar characters and settings scattered through the game that volition delight fans of the serial. You're so put through a Prologue sequence that brings you up to speed on what's going on in the fictional world of Thedas, and how you come to be office of the Inquisition.

One of the few negative things that I can say of Inquisition is that the opening sequences are very overwhelming. Not only is the combat and control organization on PC difficult to immediately grasp, but as someone who doesn't remember much of the story of past Dragon Age games, I found information technology hard to figure out what was going on, and how the story relates to past titles. A few hours in, though, and you'll feel comfortable in the globe of Inquisition.

Speaking of the combat system, BioWare has listened to fans disappointed by Dragon Age II and implemented a revised system that'south more than reminiscent of Origins (the offset game in the serial).

Inquisition features a combination of third-person hack-and-slash-manner combat with a tactical view, the latter of which pauses the game and allows you to assign commands to members of your party. With multiple ways to control the game it tin exist tricky to immediately master, but afterwards a few hours in Inquisition it felt like I had a grasp of how each system functioned at a basic level.

The beauty of Inquisition's combat organization is that you have so much control over how battles play out. You can start by attacking enemies with your unique skill gear up in third-person mode, switch to Tactical View to programme how your allies should efficiently tackle the state of affairs, and and then regain alive command to satisfyingly hack-and-slash. Combined with special moves, potions, looted items, and the ability to switch betwixt members of your political party during combat to harness their abilities, Inquisition impressed me with its rich combat system.

It'due south not but the combat system that feels rich and well-designed: the game globe is so deep that three hours of gameplay is non fifty-fifty close to beingness enough to explore what's on offer. At that place's quests left, correct and centre, NPCs everywhere to meet and greet, and romantic relationships to foster. At that place's crafting, there'southward skill copse, at that place's a massive list of attributes, and a earth chocked full with lore.

The size of the map has been increased significantly, but information technology's not completely open earth. Thedas is split up into multiple expansive areas, each with a set of things to explore, people to come across, and quests to undertake. The thought is to condense the world into areas that are rich, detailed and entertaining, removing boring and lengthy sections of interconnecting roads with a fast travel organization, equally a BioWare employee explained to me at the event.

Merely don't be fooled into thinking the game world is small: the one huge open department of Thedas I spent time in was larger than the entirety of Dragon Age 2. And patently there are multiples of these areas to explore as time goes on. Even if information technology'due south not truly 'open world', I welcome the modify to an expansive setting that's far less linear than previous Dragon Age games.

Decisions that you brand through dialogue and actions throughout Inquisition will take a pregnant bear upon on how the game progresses. Mike Laidlaw, Dragon Age's Creative Director, was telling me that depending on which path you go downwards, the content and world effectually you lot will shift and modify. Reactions from certain people in game will also be different depending on the race of your character, something you'd expect in real life.

But is the game fun? Definitely. Across my three hour feel I slaughtered enemies, activated special abilities, explored the game earth, started quests, and met many characters including some familiar ones, all while enjoying myself. And that'due south without diving likewise deep into combat tactics, the boodle system, decision making and multiplayer, all which will add new and exciting experiences to Inquisition.

In fact, as I sit here writing this preview commodity, I wish I was playing Inquisition. It's set to enthral me for countless hours when it launches on November eighteen (in N America) on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation four, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The Technical

As an avid PC gamer, I was curious as to how optimized Inquisition would be on the platform. The systems at the result were powered by AMD Radeon R9 290 GPUs (I was told), enough to return the game at 1080p, Ultra graphics settings with 2x MSAA at effectually 40 FPS. Combined with some motion blur the game is playable at this quality and on this hardware, though personally I'd decline some of the settings to accomplish smoother gameplay. (Annotation that new GPU drivers volition almost certainly improve performance come up launch.)

Inquisition was built from the ground upwards on all v launch platforms; that's to say, the PC version is not a port. A BioWare employee informed me that the team was producing up to sixteen builds of the game per 24-hour interval, ensuring it was optimized on PC along the way. While the Frostbite engine does scale well allowing those with lower-end systems to play, if you want to crank it all the way to attain a stunning level of fidelity, you'll need a top-finish single GPU.

As a couple of other side notes, there are lots of graphics options for the PC version, allowing you to fine melody the level of fidelity. Pall will be supported in Inquisition equally well, for those with AMD systems (it wasn't prepare for the preview), and BioWare tells me that there are no stupid limitations on the PC version: that means no FPS cap, no resolution cap, and fifty-fifty (potential) support for triple-monitor gaming.

Compared to the PS4 version on the other side of the room, the PC version looked superior. That's non to say the console version looks bad; in fact it looks pretty awesome for the express hardware that's found inside. But you'll undoubtedly go the best feel on PC, with enhanced textures, better lighting and more of the crawly particle features of the Frostbite engine. You also get access to the advanced mouse-optimized interface on PC, rather than the simplified hack-and-slash focused UI on consoles.

The only thing that's been scaled downwards across the versions of Inquisition is graphics. Unlike Shadow of Mordor, which loses the Nemesis system on last-gen consoles, Inquisition will take gameplay parity on all platforms. This includes on-screen NPC and enemy counts, likewise equally the size of the map.

The BioWare squad also spoke passionately about how collaborative the effort was to build Inquisition on the Frostbite engine. At present that many of EA's projects are using it, teams focusing on different projects were able to lend code to BioWare for systems inside Inquisition. This includes the Demand for Speed team; Inquisition apparently features some Frostbite code segments adult by the people working on racing games.

Of all the games coming out this holiday season, I was almost looking forward to Dragon Age: Inquisition. Now that I've played the opening hours and spoken to some of the people who fabricated the game happen, I can't wait to absorb myself in what looks to be a game of the twelvemonth contender.