Dragon Age Inquisition was at the absolute top of my must see list for this E3 but scheduling did not look like it was going to allow for it. Thankfully, I had the right window and EA was kind enough to let me squeeze in to see it. Mirroring my experience with Mass Effect 3 years ago, I sat on the floor to watch the presentation and I was very happy to do it.

I absolutely loved Dragon Age Origins and despite some janky combat, I have played through it a ridiculous number of times. I liked Dragon Age 2 but the strength there was the combat and the more political bent but it lost a lot of the deep storytelling and relationships that I loved about the first game. Going into Inquisition, the question becomes which sort of game are we going to get here? The answer seems to be a bit of both. From what I saw at E3, which includes the first actual game play I have seen, Inquisition looks to have taken the best aspects of the previous two games and melded them into one. It remains to be seen how this shakes down in the end but I trust Bioware to bring the goods.

To start off with, Inquisition takes us back to the sort of character building offered in Origins. It is not quite as robust nor does it offer the variety of backstories but you have the choice of gender, four different races and three different classes. This makes me very happy because the restriction on Hawke having to be human last time around felt very stifling considering how much variety Origins offered. Four races is still fewer than that game but I will definitely take it over no choice at all.

Going through the gameplay demo, the team reported that the world in Inquisition is so large that the single area they were showing at the time was bigger than the whole explorable map in Origins. That is pretty huge scope and anywhere you visit is a part of the larger story so presumably nothing is trivial here. That being said, the developers said that it would be difficult to get to all the content in one play through just based on how large it is and how much there is to do.

The story revolves around a new character who is charged with ending hostilities between warring nations and quieting the war between the Mages and Templars. This is done by recruiting allies, building up your own forces and taking control of captured regions. There are also rifts between the physical world and the veil which need to be systematically closed to shut down the agents of chaos that are causing all of the problems. Closing the rifts feels a bit similar to Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion but Dragon Age has done a good job in the past of skewing expectations even when tackling well-worn dark fantasy tropes so I am fairly sure that this game will be no exception.

The political aspects of Dragon Age 2 look to be returning here in a pretty big way as the name of the game here becomes building up your forces to be able to exert political power and influence over other factions to keep them in line. One of the ways this is done is through recruiting allies. This is apparently the largest cast of allies ever assembled in a Dragon Age game and each of the companions are leaders in their own right so you aren’t just picking up them but also whatever forces and influence they control.

Because character interaction is going to be such a big deal again the conversation wheel returns and the player character is completely voiced. Judging by the conversations that we saw in the demo, it looks like the conversations and larger game choices are as ambiguous as they were in Origins. This is one of my favorite aspects of Dragon Age, your choices aren’t necessarily binary good and bad but rather are qualitative to the way you want to play the game and operating in a big sea of gray. In the demo we saw the consequences of a choice the player made earlier to send a companion into harm’s way which in turn led to her being tortured. When you come to save her, the relationship is different and there is a cost for having asked so much. These sorts of moral dilemmas have always made this series great and I am happy to see them return even if it makes the game more morally difficult.

Combat was a big question mark for me because the combat system in Origins suffered from being ported from the PC version and not ported particularly well. In DA2, the combat was much more one to one action oriented and worked pretty well but seemed to be at the expense of some of the game’s depth (the two may have nothing to do with one another but that is how it shook down). What we saw here were two distinct ways to play the action which are able to be swapped between as you play. The first is an isometric view of the combat that allows you to dial in strategic commands and watch them play out while inputting new commands. The second is the action oriented combat in which you can cycled through direct control of your companions as you take a more active role. I like the choice here as sometimes you want to look at the battlefield with a more measured eye and sometimes you want to be right there in the thick of it.

One of the battles shown was against a dragon, who are apex predators in this game, and on the dragon players could target specific body parts to attack. This allows players to go after weak spots and gain strategic advantage against the enemies. I am not certain if this only holds for the larger characters or if this happens across the board with all enemies but as far as dragons go it is a welcome addition.

Overall this game looks like pretty much exactly what I want from the next iteration and I am very hopeful that all of these elements come together to make something really special. If they can successfully marry the things that worked in Origins with DA2 then I think that it will be. With an October 7, 2014 release date on PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360 and PC we thankfully don’t have to wait too long to see how this all shakes down. I for one cannot wait.