Eye on Dragon Age: 2014

It's time for what's likely our last look at what we've learned about Dragon Age: Inquisition before the game comes out. Be forewarned of spoilers from the previous games and published materials below, but I've avoided those that have come out just this week about the game's prologue and what not; if you spot any errors or omissions, please let me know!

Here's the list of officially released material related to the game thus far:

Asunder (novel written by David Gaider, December, 2011) - focussed on the mage/templar conflict, it features Cole, Evangeline, Rhys, Wynne, and Shale (Leliana also appears); neither Shale nor Wynne (for different reasons) will be appearing in DAI

The Silent Grove, Those Who Speak, Until We Sleep (comics written by David Gaider, February, August 2012, and March, 2013) - focussed on Alistair's past (his father in particular), it also features Isabela and Varric (Sten appears as well)

The World of Thedas (world book, April)

E3 Teaser (June 10) - announcing the fall 2014 release date; shows scenes from the Crestwood demo below, along with an attack by the Inquisition on a Grey Warden keep; also the Fade tear and other odds & sods along with trailer-made shots of Iron Bull and Morrigan

A World Unveiled (August 20) - besides environmental shots (including a new dragon), it largely recycles images from the E3 trailer, as well as using camera shots from concept art and the World of Thedas book

Live Demo Play (aka Crestwood demo) (posted September 1, fan recorded)

Live Demo Play (November 12; fan recorded, as above but includes a few missing minutes) - the Crestwood demo features Varric, Cassandra, and Vivienne dealing with an attack on the village of Crestwood by Red Templars, before switching over to the same group seizing a keep in the Western Approach and fighting a dragon

Discover the Dragon Age (March 6, 2014) - a collection of environmental shots

The Masked Empire (novel written by Patrick Weekes, April) - focussed on the Orlesian civil war, it features Empress Celene, Grand Duke Gaspard du Chalons, Briala, and Michel de Chevin (Leliana also appears); takes place at the same time as Asunder

Gameplay Trailer (April 22) - features the male, British voice of the Inquisitor; focusses on the initial set-up of the game; a lot of the footage is new, but there are interspliced pieces from the previous trailers (most prominently the Grey Warden attack from E3)

Lead Them or Fall (June 9) - conceptually it's similar to the previous trailer in that it largely sets up the premise (same voice is used); footage includes a lot of elements from the concurrent E3 demo, with very little other recycled material

Stand Together (June 12) - the only female Inquisitor trailer (British voice), it's a mix of new and recycled material introducing a few of the companions (Vivienne, Blackwall, Sera, and Iron Bull)

E3 Demo (part one) (July 9; originally shown at E3 in June) - features Iron Bull, Sera, and Vivienne dealing with the Mage-Templar conflict; shows mounts in use for the first time; features the female Inquisitor

E3 Demo (part two) (July 11) - Dorian, Iron Bull, and Sera rescue Leliana from the Venatori in an optional path towards ending the Mage-Templar conflict

Gameplay Features (Combat) (July 29) - shows off combat in the game

Enemy of Thedas (August 13) - completely new footage focussed on the premise; includes confirmation that Hawke will re-appear

GamesCom Demo (August 13; this is just the portion played at the EA presentation) - features Cole, Blackwall, and Solas (female British-voiced Inquisitor) as they engage in an optional quest to free Inquisition soldiers from an Avvar faction

GamesCom Demo (August 15; a different portion of the demo via an IGN interview; the chatter covers up almost all the dialogue, sadly) - the same group as above, but an earlier part of that quest

Last Flight (novel written by Liane Merciel, September) - features Valya (in the present), along with Issenya, Garahel, and others (in the past); has the mage-templar conflict as its backdrop, but deals primarily with bringing griffons back into the world (not to appear in DAI, however); takes place a year or two after the events of DAI

EGX Presentation (September 25) - a presentation on the art direction for the game (where they reveal that the game was heavily influenced by the Northern Renaissance, specifically oil paintings of the time)

Character Creation Demo (September 29) - live stream on Twitch showing off character creation along with a short snippet of a Hinterlands-connected Deep Roads quest against the Carta

Gameplay Features (Crafting and Customization) (October 1) - briefly shows off character creation, crafting, and customization

Emerald Graves Let's Play (October 7) - this is one of a slew of videos all showing the Emerald Graves

Character Creation Demo (part two) (October 10) - another live stream on Twitch that included a different short snippet of the Hinterlands

PC UI Demo (October 13) - featuring both the PC UI, gameplay after the prologue in Haven, and then the Emerald Graves

The Hero of Thedas (October 14) - trailer with largely new footage focussed on the Inquisitor

Skyhold Demo (October 20) - Twitch stream showing off parts of Skyhold along with a brief foray into the Emerald Graves

Inquisitor and Followers (October 21) - similar to the "Stand Together" trailer, it shows off the three classes of the Inquisitor before looking at Iron Bull, Sera, and Dorian

Storm Coast Demo (October 25) - Twitch stream generically showing off DAI while in the Storm Coast (featuring Blackwall, Vivienne, and Sera)

Storm Coast Demo Redux (October 31) - Twitch stream showing off different parts of the Storm Coast (same group as above)

Choice and Consequence (November 4) - the final gameplay video speaks briefly about choices having consequences; includes some stunning visuals

We'll start in the beginning with the premise (comments about the game's design principles are further below): Dragon Age: Inquisition takes place three years after the events of Dragon Age 2; the books Asunder and The Masked Empire occur right before the game. DAI is not a direct sequel to either DA2 or DAO, in the sense that you are not playing either Hawke or the Hero of Ferelden (or even the Warden-Commander, for those who made the ultimate sacrifice of their Warden in DAO). The events of the past games impacts what occurs (more on that below), but DAI has been designed to be newbie friendly. The devs have said the major themes are faith and leadership. Cameron Lee offers a succinct description of the premise via Nerd Alert at E3:

You are at a peace conference between the mages and the templars [in Haven]...and a massive explosion happens--wipes out everyone [but] you get blasted into the Fade--which doesn't normally happen, people don't go physically into the Fade, but you do, and as a result of that you become marked. So you have this mark on your hand and it allows you to manipulate the Fade in various ways--there's a big breach in the sky between the Fade and the real world--demons are pouring through, lot's of little rifts opening up all over the place, and because of that mark, you're really the only one that can actually do something about it, but the other weird thing is that chaos is starting to spread all over the world--different nations are in chaos, different factions have been weakened, people are at war with each other--which is all very convenient. So as a player you get to form an Inquisition, which is a big organisation full of soldiers, spies, merchants, politicians, all with the goal of uncovering the truth of who is behind this, what is happening, and then bring stability to the world.

Lee was even more specific about the opening itself with AusGamers:

At the beginning of the game when the head of the Chantry and the head of the Mage's faction they're going into the Temple of Sacred Ashes to this peace talk, and they're all killed. There's this massive explosion and this breach in the sky opening up, and the Chantry's in absolute chaos. It's headless. You've got infighting between different factions, you've got people saying screw it let's all retreat back to Val Royeaux and elect a new leader et cetera. So the formation of the inquisition is kind of always like a plan B that the head of the Chantry was considering, and then Cassandra starts to bring this all up after the events at the temple. And she's doing that because she knows that the Chantry was considering it and that the Chantry is just going to run off and talk about stuff rather than taking any action. So she sets things in motion via this loophole, picking up the Inquisition.

It's worth noting that we have some evidence (E3 demo) that the Venatori (see below) are responsible for that explosion, although their culpability isn't absolutely certain. One of the choices the Inquisitor gets to make when s/he survives is whether or not to embrace a religious meaning to the event (you can see the sentiment here and more explicitly in the PC UI video). From images we've seen during the character creation demos it appears as though the game begins with us falling into the Fade, whereupon we are rescued by the figure shown above. Presumably the explosion in Haven is shown in a flashback--perhaps by Cassandra once we've been found by her soldiers (likely the origin of her narration in the Gameplay trailer).

Joe Juba (at Game Informer) adds:

You don’t start the game with Skyhold as your base of operations. For the early part of the adventure – before the Inquisition is even properly formed – you and your allies gather at the village of Haven. Even once you move the Inquisition to Skyhold, the castle isn’t exactly in prime condition. “When you first reach Skyhold, it’s not in good shape,” Laidlaw says. “There are holes in the roofs, it’s wrecked, you can’t even go to the entire castle because they haven’t cleared out the rubble yet.”

We know from images of the world map that Skyhold is near Haven, but Aaron Flynn confirms it's not in Haven.

There have been a couple of interesting things said in the various trailers about what happens in the beginning of the game. In the Enemy of Thedas a voice (which sounds like Alexius to me, the leader of the Venatori--more about them below) tells the Inquisitor:

You are a mistake. You should have never existed.

There's an implication from Dorian in the E3 demo that Alexius is directly or partially responsible for the rift:

Was it worth it? Everything that you've done to the world?

Alexius implies he's attempted to fix things and failed, but I'd take this all with a grain of salt since the dialogue is without full context. We also get an interesting comment from our Inquisitor in Lead Them of Fall:

Chaos has left its mark upon me.

This might be a metaphor, a reference to the mark on the Inquisitor's hand, or something more specific (perhaps an oblique reference to Zazikel, the Old God of Chaos who started the second Blight).

Along with the tear in the Fade and war between the mages and templars, there's a civil war in Orlais between Empress Celene and Grand Duke Gaspard de Chalons (along with an Elven rebellion) to deal with. "The Empire is falling apart" (to quote Asunder). None of the information provided by the developers has touched on the specifics of how this material will impact the Inquisition (albeit we can deduce Morrigan is involved). Some fans believe Briala from the aforementioned book is shown in the concept art below, but that's just speculation. I thought I'd read a quote from Cameron Lee who said we would decide who sits on the throne of Orlais, but as I can't find it, take that as unconfirmed. Mike Laidlaw briefly mentions the political element to Machinima, saying there was crossover from The Masked Empire, but didn't get into specifics.

I'd initially been under the impression that the Inquisitor founds the Inquisition, but Mary Kirby makes it clear that it's Cassandra who creates the fledgling organisation. In the game lore, the first Inquisition was formed with:

[the] goal of protecting the people from the tyranny of magic in whatever form it might take; blood mages, abominations, cultists or heretics. A loose association of Andrastian hard-liners, the group combed the land in search of these threats and some say theirs was a reign of terror. Others say they were cast in a negative light by history because their investigations and even application of justice, protecting both mages and common people impartially, crossed too many powerful groups. In these accounts it is suggested that the group was already known as the Seekers of Truth and that the "Inquisition" moniker was perhaps pejorative

In the real world "Inquisition" is a loaded term (something I explored awhile back), and its use here is meant to evoke a reaction (Cameron Lee said the primary meaning for the devs was a group dedicated to uncovering the truth). While your Inquisition won't be torturing unbelievers like the historical version, it can be a very harsh organisation (including abandoning innocents to their fate, ala the Crestwood demo from last year--but more about that below). Regardless, as the Inquisitor you have a great deal of political power:

you have rights and powers that other citizens don't have, and you can use those to great effect. At the same time you also have to make decisions, moral decisions, about what's going to happen. Do you want to save a village from burning, or do you want that village to burn down?

Lee added an interesting tidbit about the Mage-Templar conflict:

You can bring it into the conflict between the mages and the templars once and for all very early in the game, and you can align with one of those--you can decide who you want to bring into your Inquisition. When you make that choice you will see large pieces of content which are exclusive to that choice.

So there are branching paths near the beginning of the game--choosing a side, or (I think) attempting to mediate between the two--albeit given that there's a main antagonist the conflict is a symptom rather than the cause of all the difficulties (we know that the Elder One is our antagonist). Lee later confirmed that the Mage-Templar conflict is solved early in the game (which explains why elements of that conclusion were shown at this year's E3).

The Red Templars are an enemy faction who have made the switch from regular lyrium (supplied by the Chantry until the Navarran Accord is annulled by Seeker Lambert in Asunder), to red lyrium (the substance discovered in DA2 that drove both Meredith and Varric's brother Bartrand mad). We know Red Lyrium is an anti-magic substance, an opposite force to normal (blue) Lyrium, and we know about its destabilizing effects, but not why it is so prevalent in Thedas all of a sudden. The Red Templars were featured in the Crestwood demo, but the demo did not delve very deeply into their story (we do not know, unlike the Venatori below, who their leader is, although in the Emerald Graves let's plays we heard of a Commander Carroll).

The mage antagonists are Venatori cultists, who appear extensively in the second part of the E3 demo (including their leader, Alexius). It's not entirely clear if they have formal support from the Imperium (I doubt it), despite using Tevinter symbols. David Gaider has said neither faction is a mindless enemy, which indicates there's a way to negotiate or deal with them in a way that isn't simply killing them off (or, presumably, simply picking one side or the other, as Lee suggests above).

Beyond those two factions (and the civil war, where at least one Orlesian faction are the aforementioned Freemen), we know nothing about the Elder One or what its motives are for causing the chaos in Thedas; from the unverified leaked achievement list it appears as though Corypheus (Legacy DLC for DA2) is involved. David Gaider has confirmed there will be other factions as well, but couldn't discuss the particulars (we've seen the symbol of the Raiders in the Crestwood demo; there is a quest against the Carta via the first character creation demo; we fight Avvar tribesmen in the GamesCom demo; and face Hessarians in the Storm Coast Demo, but that's it in terms of official reveals thus far). It remains unclear if demons coming from the Fade are disorganised or (at some point) organised enemies. There's a Q&A over the approach of the writers to their villains which you can read here.

What about dragons? We know there are ten in the game (including three that are all in the same area)--they've been shown in demos and trailers ad nauseum (thus far we know there is one in each of the Hinterlands, Emerald Graves, Western Approach, and the Storm Coast). Their appearance could be a simple thematic link, or the fact that dragons are both popular and in the title of the franchise (not to mention the Age), but there might be more to it. We have a scene in the Enemy of Thedas trailer where it appears the Inquisitor is in communication with one:

And we see what is likely this same dragon fighting for us. What can we make of that? A hint might come from the comic The Silent Grove, via dialogue from Morrigan's sister, Yavana:

The Silent Grove [was] built after the fall of the Tevinter Imperium, by those who knew that dragons would need protection. [Alistair: What would dragons need protection from?] The ignorance of mankind. How many "heroes" hunted dragons over the centuries, until almost none were left? It was nearly a tragedy for us all. In destroying what it does not understand, mankind would destroy itself. The blood of dragons is the blood of the world.

Later Yavana talks about "A time before the veil, before the mysteries were forgotten," when dragons ruled. If there was ever any doubt that the breach was connected to all the dragons we'll see in DAI, this puts that doubt to bed. It also suggests simply killing all the dragons is a bad idea.

Who is the Inquisitor? The voice talent has been revealed and consists of two choices per gender (one British accent, one American): Alix Wilton Regan/Harry Haddon-Paton (British), and Sumalee Montano/Jon Curry (American). We can choose our gender and race (Human, Dwarf, Elf, or Qunari); the Qunari were initially called Vashoth (those never part of the Qun), but this concept seems to be rejected in favour of being Tal-Vashoth (see below)--I'm not sure if it's a true change or the devs switching to a more familiar term. The surnames from each race are set (the same order as above): Trevelyan, Cadash, Lavellan, and Adaar. The surname with the most direction connection to past player experience is Cadash, as that is Shale's background (DAO: The Stone Prisoner DLC). David Gaider has said there's more race-specific content in DAI than there was in the origin stories in DAO (Allan Schumacher adds there are side missions specific to your background, one of which we've seen in the PC UI video). Speaking of race, the specific benefits of racial choice have been revealed: Humans get a bonus ability point, Qunari a bonus to melee defense (10%), Dwarves a resistance to magic (25%), and Elves a ranged defense bonus (25%). The Qunari benefit was changed just recently (September), which is a very late change (originally it was +50 HP), but makes a lot more sense in terms of viability as characters level up.

The Inquisitor backgrounds have also been revealed (I've edited out repetition where it occurs), with a specific spiel for mages and another for warriors/rogues (all backgrounds hail from the Free Marches, incidentally):

Human mage: Born to the Trevelyan noble family of Ostwick in the Free Marches, you were originally intended for a life of privilege—until magical abilities surfaced at a young age and you were forced into a life of confinement within Ostwick's Circle of Magi. Protected but stifled, educated but isolated, the Circle would have been your entire future had the mages not rebelled against Chantry rule. Like it or not, you had to fight for your life against templars hunting down all "free" mages. You joined the delegation of mages attending a Chantry conclave in hopes of negotiating peace with the templars. It didn't go well.

Human warrior/rogue: As the youngest child of the Trevelyan noble house, you grew up in the Free Marcher city of Ostwick and have enjoyed a life of privilege. With close family ties to the Chantry, and many relatives among the priesthood and the templars, you were always expected to follow a similar path in service of the Maker—regardless of how you feel about the matter personally. Willing or unwilling, you were sent to the Chantry's conclave to assist relatives who sought to make peace between the templars and mages. It didn't go well.

Dwarven warrior/rogue: The dwarves of Thedas are known for their once-vast underground empire and guilds of merchants and warriors held in high esteem by the other races of Thedas. Not you. A cast-off "surfacer," unwelcome among the dwarves or most humans, you have scraped by as part of a criminal fraternity known as the Carta, smuggling magical ore known as lyrium. As part of the ruthless Cadash crime family [Shale's family], you spent your life on the streets of various Free Marcher city-states—until you were sent to the Chantry conclave as a spy and everything changed.

Elven mage: Enslaved long ago by humans, most elves still live as second-class citizens within human cities. Elves who reject this life are known as the Dalish: nomadic wanderers who strive to keep the ancient elven religion and traditions alive. You grew up in the wilderness, a member of the Lavellan Dalish clan and apprentice to its leader and guide, the Keeper. The clan wandered the northern Free Marches, and you had little need to interact with humans—until the Keeper sent you to the Chantry's conclave as a spy. What happened there, she said, would impact not only the Dalish but indeed all elves. She could not have known how right she was.

Elven warrior/rogue: You were raised in the wilderness to be a hunter, relied upon by the Lavellan clan for food and protection. The clan wandered the northern Free Marches and had little need to interact with humans—until the clan's Keeper sent you to the Chantry's conclave as a spy. What happened there, she said, would impact not only the Dalish but indeed all elves. She could not have known how right she was.

Qunari mage: Followers of the strict religious philosophy of the Qun, the Qunari appeared like a tidal wave to the north of Thedas three hundred years ago. You are Tal-Vashoth, a Qunari who has rejected the Qun and never even lived in Qunari lands. You have earned a place within the Valo-kas mercenary company as its mage, possessing abilities that would have made you a pet slave among your own people, ignoring the fearful looks you receive from those around you. Most recently the company was sent to the Chantry conclave, hired swords meant to keep the peace—a task that has gone horribly wrong.

Qunari warrior/rogue: As part of the Valo-kas mercenary company, you have earned a living by your own wits and the strength of your blade, ignoring the fearful looks you receive from those around you. Most recently the company was sent to the Chantry conclave as hired swords meant to keep the peace between mages and templars—a task that has gone horribly wrong.

We can speculate a little bit about how these backgrounds might play into connections to our companions:

-a Human mage likely knows (or knows of) Vivienne

-the mercenary element for the Qunari could be a connection point to the Iron Bull

-both Elven and Dwarven Inquisitors are spying; the racial or criminal connections might provide a link to Sera

-the Carta connection may also link us to Varric

Who joins the Inquisitor as part of the Inquisition? Enjoy the group shot, details below.

Left to right: Cullen (DAO-DA2), Vivienne, Varric (DA2), Cole (Asunder), Solas, Cassandra (DA2-Dawn of the Seeker), Iron Bull, Dorian, Leliana (DAO-DA2), Sera, Josephine, and Blackwall. There are official bios for all--every character from 2012's survey leak is present (not a huge surprise given that DAI was originally a Fall 2013 release). Not all of those listed will be companions, as there are only nine who can travel with you; Cullen, Leliana, and Josephine are NPC's. The gender split is close (7 to 5), albeit 6 and 3 when it comes to companions (not the biggest of deals, but an interesting choice given BioWare's conscientiousness when it comes to inclusiveness). We know that we start with Cassandra, Varric, and Solas, and it appears as though all other companions are optional. I'll briefly go over each character (with occasional details about their writer, the tagline given to them by DA's Twitter account, and anything else that seems pertinent):

Cullen (voiced by Greg Ellis, written by Brianne Battye): the now former Templar is a selectively popular secondary character from both previous games; I think it's due to his popularity that his potential death (in The Darkspawn Chronicles DLC) has been retconned out. I say "selectively popular" because we know from the survey leak that he was originally slated to be a companion and as such is the only one removed from that list (the survey results cannot have been kind). Cullen leads the military arm of the Inquisition, but as an advisor cannot be part of the party or controlled (although he will presumably assist in the select missions he's along for). He is a female-only romance option (race-gated to humans/elves), but more about that element below. Writer Battye comes to the DA franchise from Mass Effect 3.

Leliana (voiced by Corinne Kempa, written by Sheryl Chee): a popular character from the previous games, where again the possibility of her death (in DAO) has been retconned away. She also briefly appears in Asunder and The Masked Empire novels. Leliana is in charge of spies and assassination for the Inquisition. Like Cullen, she cannot join your party, although as we've seen in the E3 demo, she will fight on the occasions that she's present for a mission. She is not a romance option (presumably because she could have been for players in DAO). Chee has been writing for DA since Origins (she wrote Isabela, for example).

Josephine (voiced by Allegra Clark, written by Sylvia Feketekuty): a new character hailing from Antiva, she's in charge of diplomacy and merchants for the Inquisition; according to her bio she's an old friend of Leliana's and is a bisexual romance option. We first heard her speak and interact in the recent PC UI footage. Feketekuty was a writer for both ME2 and ME3.

Varric Tethras ("the Storyteller"; voiced by Brian Bloom, written by Mary Kirby): the popular character from DA2 returns (he was also featured in the comics). He is the only returning character who returns as a companion, something virtually unique to him in the franchise. We know BioWare writers like to change their characters over time (think of Anders from Awakening to DA2), and I expect we'll see some of that here. He was featured extensively in the Crestwood demo and Emerald Graves let's play. He's spec'd out as an archer rogue, but can go dual dagger.

Cassandra Pentaghast ("the Believer"; voiced by Miranda Raison, written by David Gaider): she appeared previously in the narrative sequences with Varric in DA2, and was then featured in the anime Dawn of the Seeker. As the right hand of the divine and the creator of the Inquisition, I suspect no one else will be as loyal to it. She is a male-only romance option and was featured heavily in the Crestwood demo and Emerald Graves let's play. We know from her Q&A that she see's eye-to-eye with Vivienne and Iron Bull, but not with other (unspecified) companions (likely Varric judging by their revealed banter thus far, and Sera based on Tweets from devs about part compositions). She's set up as a sword & shield warrior, but like any other character can be switched.

Vivienne ("the Ambition"; voiced by Indira Varma, written by Mary Kirby): the Rivaini-born mage was about to be appointed First Enchanter of the Circle in Montsimmard, but due to the events of Inquisition that does not occur. Not a lot has been said about her other than her ambition, but she seems to be a pro-establishment voice (eg her speech in the Skyhold demo). Our chance to recruit her will occur at a ball she throws for us. She is not a romance option, and apparently does not like Cole, clashes with Solas, and it was implied by party compositions posted by devs on Twitter that she isn't fond of Sera either. Vivienne appeared in both the PAX and E3 demos.

Cole ("the Spirit"; voiced by James Norton, written by Patrick Weekes): debuted in the novel Asunder, he seems to be like Justice from Awakening in that he's a spirit inhabiting the body of someone who died. Devs have confirmed his crisis of identity and purpose from the book is over now and he's entering a new phase. He's not a romance possibility and we know there's a recruitment quest attached to him (as seen in the Crafting and Customization trailer). He appears in the GamesCom demo, but we aren't presented with much of his banter (Cameron Lee has continually called him "weird" and other epitaphs (for example), but I'm not sure what that means precisely), while Aaron Flynn said he has some "warts" players may have a hard time with. He's spec'd as a dual dagger rogue.

Dorian ("the Redeemer"; voiced by Ramon Tikaram, written by David Gaider): the Tevinter mage is a maverick in his own land and comes to assist the Inquisition against his former teacher Alexius (and the other forces arrayed against them). I suspect he will present himself to the Inquisitor to join the effort (much like Blackwall below). He is a male-only romance option and appeared in the E3 demo.

Iron Bull ("the Muscle"; voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr, written by Patrick Weekes): the Ben-Hassrath Qunari is essentially on hiatus after suffering from PTSD from his role within the Qun; he's largely "gone native" living in Thedas, leading a mercenary group called the Bull's Chargers. He was heavily featured in the E3 demo and it appears as though his recruitment occurs in the optional Storm Coast region. He's a bisexual romance option. He and Solas will butt heads (according to the latter's Q&A), as might he and Varric (over the Bull's faith). Aaron Flynn (link above) said he has flaws players may struggle with. Iron Bull defaults to a two-handed warrior.

Sera ("the Wildcard"; voiced by Robyn Addison, written by Luke Kristjanson): the city elf is a very popular character with the devs (for example) and from her banter we can understand why (for whatever reason BioWare rogues are always entertaining). We know she's a member (leader?) of the Friends of Red Jenny, a group referenced in both previous games, but about which we know virtually nothing. She serves as a voice for the common folk in the game and I think (like Bull) she'll have a quest associated with her recruitment. She was featured in the E3 demo and is a female-only romance option. We know from Cole's Q&A that she isn't fond of him, while Aaron Flynn (link above) notes she has issues that players may struggle with. Kristjanson has been writing for BioWare since Baldur's Gate (he wrote Aveline, for instance). She's spec'd as an archer rogue.

Solas ("the Mind"; voiced by Gareth David-Lloyd, written by Patrick Weekes): an apostate elven mage who is an expert on the Fade; I think his role is in part to challenge assumptions. He was featured in the GamesCom demo and Emerald Graves let's play. He is a race-gated (elf), female-only romance option. He's one of the few characters who explicitly gets along with Cole (via the Q&A), but as an apostate likely won't get along with Vivienne.

Blackwall ("the Resolve"; voiced by Alastair Parker, written by Sheryl Chee): the Grey Warden is a highly committed person close to the end of his life as a Warden (nearing his Calling), who has worked as a recruiter for the wardens. He has an Aveline-like feel to me (ie, pro-establishment). From the Emerald Graves let's plays we've learned he presents himself at Skyhold to join the Inquisition. An odd bit of trivia, he's referenced in The World of Thedas book. He's spec'd as a sword & shield warrior.

Assembling this group happens quite early in the game and it is possible to miss out on one or two (although David Gaider said efforts have been made to prevent players from missing out on making the choice on all of them). Mike Laidlaw and Mark Darrah (first link) confirmed you can lose companions--down to one apparently if you make an effort to chase them away (I'd guess Cassandra is the core person who remains until the end), but your advisors will never leave (this also could suggest they have full plot armour within the game). The image above is suggestive of The Last Supper, but the similarities are superficial (especially given the Round Table look in the Stand Together promo shown below; I did look at the former implication which you can read via the link above--there's also this piece from Lena Drake).

Alessio Palumbo mentions that it's possible a companion could betray the Inquisitor, which is a possibility I haven't heard echoed elsewhere. I'm not sure how this meshes with companion disapproval (where companions leave the Inquisition and game entirely if they are unhappy with your choices).

Mike Laidlaw talked about the team being inspired by Game of Thrones for characterisation and storytelling:

I think that where Game of Thrones really shines, is with characters that you really care about and that are human, but flawed—and that's something that we've always strove for as well. Fantasy works well when you have people, people with all their ups and downs grounding against the wacky, you know, the mages and the demons and what have you…that's something that Martin does really well in my opinion. He makes characters that even though academically you know they're the bad guy, or academically you know they're wrong, he puts you in their head and helps you to understand whats going on with them.

I think the Architect (Awakening) is a good example of this kind of writing. Cameron Lee adds:

Everyone talks about BioWare’s stories as being what we do, but inside the studio, what we often talk about is the characters. What we think we do really well is characters, and KotOR’s [Knights of the Old Republic] characters are fantastic, and I think Dragon Age: Inquisition’s characters have that same level of backstory to them and depth and emotion and all that sort of stuff.

What about romances? There are eight in DAI (plus one you can flirt with, but not romance): Cassandra, Blackwall, Cullen, and Solas (strictly heterosexual, with the latter two race-gated as mentioned above), Dorian (for male Inquisitors--here's a great reaction to that from angelarts), Sera (for female Inquisitors), and Iron Bull and Josephine (bisexual). Cameron Lee discussed the mechanics of romance:

Romances are not about this sort of gamey approval rating; right so it's not like you can give people flowers and then sleep with them. Romance is a more nuanced and more organic and natural. There's these characters there with strong personalities with their own goals, [so] how you interact with them and how [you] may help or hinder or whatever their goals plays a part in that--a part in how your relationship builds with them as a "normal" relationship; and then from there what part do I want to take.

David Gaider adds:

In Dragon Age, party members have an »approval« integer which is tracked, and which tells us how they feel about the player. The player does something they like? The integer goes up. The player does something they hate? The integer goes down. We’ll mark certain levels of this integer as »milestones« which will prompt a recognition of the character’s growing friendship or hatred (or even romance) towards the player. Since a lot of approval is going to come from the reactivity conversations, these conversations are going to inherently be gated by requiring the player to get through the main plot in order to »develop« their relationship.

In Dragon Age: Inquisition, we also have a quest that occurs specific to the party member, a plot which initiates about halfway through the main plot which is incredibly important to the party member (presented as a »could you help me out with this?«). Depending on how the player completes it, it changes the approval integer in a large way … and, furthermore, gates the »ending« for positive approval. Meaning that, in order for the player to get to the end of the positive approval track and have the party member consider them a »true friend«, they must not only get the approval integer to a certain milestone but must also complete the plot. This has the added benefit of allowing us to refer to the events of that plot in the ending conversation.

Mike Laidlaw had thoughts about romance in general:

We’ve come to realize, however, that for many players, romances are an incredibly important feature—one in which we’ve invested a great deal of development time—and they prefer a heads-up to having their hearts set on a particular character, only to end up disappointed. To preface this information, a few words on our design goals for romances: First, we want to offer choice to our players. This doesn’t mean that all choices are available to everyone—it means that no matter what type of character you choose to play, more than one possible romance option will be available. This doesn’t guarantee that a player will find a particular character to be personally appealing—which could be the case even if every character in the game could be romanced by anyone—but it ideally lets each player know they’re not an afterthought in our development process. Second, we want our characters to be internally consistent. Every major DA:I character has a story arc, personal goals, and thoughts on how your journey together has evolved; sometimes a romance arc doesn’t make sense for them, sometimes it does. Either way, we aren’t trying to justify why a character can’t be romanced—we’re looking at how a romance with that character would make sense according to the rest of their story, and why that romance will strengthen an interesting story arc. Finally, a character being eligible for a romance doesn’t necessarily guarantee that they will be successfully won over. These characters have their own agendas and opinions, and the choices a player makes during the game have a definite impact on their affections. That’s intentional.

Interestingly enough, Laidlaw said that the romances with both Solas and Cullen were something added with the extra time the game was given (he's not referring to the extra six weeks from October to November, but the 2014 release date as opposed to 2013). I'm surprised Cullen wasn't part of the original mix given his popularity.

David Gaider said there are some romances where you can reject sexual advances but continue with the romance; however we cannot get married. CVG emphasized something that's worth remembering when it comes to companion approval and party choices:

Each follower has a set of goals they aim to achieve and consequently it really matters who you take with you on quests--manage your party wrong and they might leave.

Mark Darrah has also said the devs have drawn inspiration for relationships from Persona 4 and The Last of Us in terms of how they flow in the game. I've never played the former, but in the latter the main element is a slow evolution of feelings based on choices made.

Along with the core group of followers, the Inquisitor is in charge of a large number of men and women, the most significant of which are called agents. Cameron Lee explained the concept to gamermd83, and the essentials follow (second paragraph is from AusGamers, link above):

You earn agents as you essentially build up your Inquisition, and then from that you can use your agents and use that influence and power you built up through the Inquisition to do a variety of things: it could be, hey go and get me this rare crafting material, it could be repair this bridge...it could be I want to go and start to look into this main part of the story. ... There are hundreds of operations that you can send your agents on, and those operations will change depending on the actions and decisions you make throughout the course of the game. ... To progress through major parts of the story you have to have a certain amount of influence, your Inquisition needs to have a certain amount of strength.

All throughout the game you will slowly build up the Inquisition to be in a position of power, people recognise you for who you are and what authority you wield. The Inquisition has three main pillars right, they have a military force lead by one particular character [Cullen], you've got a secret facet with spies and assassins lead by Leliana from DAO and then you've got a political pillar [Josephine], which is all about the politics, the backroom deals and the connections you have... not just through nobles but also through merchant houses and stuff like that. And the area you decide to invest in both in terms of how you decide to grow and customise your Inquisition but also the types of content you decide to engage in is all up to the player. So if someone wants to play that kind of Game of Thrones-y political aspect they can definitely do it and that flavours the whole game and it impacts the whole game. They're still going to have to go around and kill some things themselves, but having that powerful political organisation will be reflected as well.

Very little has been said about how a politically-focussed Inquisition will work, but I'm interested to learn the mechanics of it (will it be dynamic, involving direct actions by our character, or passive?). Related to this, we'll also be sending out NPC's on various missions throughout the game (the best demonstration of this was the second part of the E3 demo and the PC UI video).

Along with the characters mentioned above, others from previous games have been confirmed: Morrigan (from DAO; apparently she'll be more mature), Flemeth (DAO-2), Alistair (DAO-2), Dagna (DAO), Queen Anora (DAO), Stroud (DA2), and Fiona (The Calling and Asunder). The Alistair inclusion will not occur for those who sacrificed him in Origins (which to my mind means his involvement will be quite limited; this restriction would also apply to Anora who, while not dead, is not necessarily queen). There will be an unidentified character from the novel The Masked Empire who can be encountered in a side mission (this could be Michel de Chevin if IMDB's listing of "Chevin" is anything to go by). We've seen what most people believe is Empress Celene in the EGX presentation and it's hard to imagine Gaspard du Chalons won't make an appearance as well (the same applies to Briala). We might see Merrill (DAO-DA2) again, if the screen shot below is on the money (this may be an optional appearance, assuming it isn't a generic Dalish elf--given that a pro-Templar Hawke can kill Merrill in DA2--interestingly, Mike Laidlaw said fixing the eluvian in DA2 is a "bad call" at 2013's PAX):

As for other companions from the previous games, it will be interesting to see who does or does not appear given the various world states that are possible (especially from DAO). I don't expect many to appear in-person, but it's worthwhile taking a look at those not mentioned above (keeping in mind the devs approach to the default world was to close loose ends as much as possible). First, here's who has already been officially confirmed not to appear: Dog (DAO), Wynne (DAO), Zevran (DAO-DA2), Shale (DAO), Anders (DAO-DA2), and I think Sebastian (DA2).

DAO

Sten (optional) - alive in the canon (comics); I think he's a possibility

Oghren (optional; can be killed in DAO or die in Awakening) - nothing has been said regarding him and I doubt he'll appear (his story seems to be over)

Loghain (optional; can be killed or die) - alive in so few world states I can't imagine he'll appear

Sigrun (can die) - given how close she was to her Calling and that she's not in the Keep I don't think we'll see her

Justice (optional; can "die" in Awakening; merged with Anders in DA2) - it's unknown what impact Anders death has on the spirit, but I don't think we'll see him again

Nathaniel (optional; can be killed) - nothing has been said of Nathaniel (who can also appear in DA2), but I doubt we'll see him

Velanna (optional) - I haven't seen anything said and don't expect her to appear

Sketch (also appears in DA2), Silas, Jerrik, Brogan, Ariane, Finn - as above

DA2

Bethany/Carver (one always dies and the other can as well) - it seems unlikely a surviving sibling would appear

Aveline - I've heard nothing and doubt she'll appear

Isabela (optional; can be given over to the Arishok) - alive in the canon (comics), but we've had no hints about her appearing

Fenris (optional; can be surrendered to Danarius) - it has been hinted he will appear

Tallis - nothing has been said, although Felicia Day (the voice actor) was at the BioWare studios earlier in the year

The only official tease about all of the above has been about Fenris, so keep that in mind.

Speaking of hints, the developers had teased that Hawke and the Hero of Ferelden (if alive) will be referenced in some capacity, but I thought we wouldn't see them in person given the huge amount of variations in appearance those characters can have--I was half-wrong. A default Hawke appeared in the Enemy of Thedas trailer (and then repeatedly in Inquisitor and Followers trailer), but we've learned our Hero will not show up in-game. I have a suspicion part of the reason the Hero is being left off the table has to do with the variety of possible game states. The Warden will still have an impact, with Steve Butts at IGN giving us a hint at the kind of thing we can expect while describing the E3 demo: "You’ll be able to claim the banner points in the game in the name of the Hero of Ferelden." As for Hawke, there's good evidence we will be meeting him or her intentionally (rather than circumstantially) in the game with grey warden Stroud accompanying the Champion--Ashe has an interesting theory we will even get to play as Hawke. I'm looking forward to a proper ending to Hawke's story; as for the Warden, I feel like DAO was already a proper send off, so I'm not that disappointed my Hero won't appear.

Returning to the question of the backdrop of DAI, what about our prior actions in DAO and DA2? These can be carried over via the Dragon Age Keep. As Lee explains:

What we wanted to do with the Keep is have that ability for people to be able to recreate their save -- particularly for Gen 4 platforms -- and that's quite a detailed list. There's hundreds and hundreds of choices in there, and most of it's narrated and there's pictures and text and stuff like that. So they should be able to recreate to the same detail their save file through that Dragon Age Keep online process, and then pull that save game down onto any platform.

In the Nerd Alert interview (link above) Lee said there are about 300 different choices to be made in the Keep (most recently the number was adjusted to be 200). Lee also said decisions made within DAI will be uploaded to the Keep to be used in future games. There is a default background for newbies or those who want to start fresh: a Dalish Elf was the Hero of Ferelden (DAO) and died ending the Blight (Alistair becomes king), while Hawke is a mage (DA2) and sided with them against the templars. David Gaider went on to clarify that their approach to the default world setting was that any time there was a choice of a character being dead or alive, or a plot being unresolved in the previous games, they always went with whatever closed the option to make the game more newbie friendly.

Images of the Keep leaked in August and about a month later the Keep was formally unveiled, but the beta was not to be opened to the public until October 29th. Set up like a tapestry, it's a decision-tree narrated by Varric with a logic system built-in to keep those choices consistent. Those who were admitted to the Keep beta early are in a unique position to know which choices will have game-relevance (given the content lock in May).

What about various dangling plot elements from previous games, like the Architect (Awakening), Morrigan's Old God Baby (DAO), or Corypheus (Legacy)? In the case of those that were purely optional (so would not exist in the default game setting), I can't imagine they will have significant impact on the storyline. However, all significant plot lines will be addressed in some way if they were involved in your story (which to me translates as Codex entries primarily). As Cameron Lee explained last September (specifically in reference to the Old God Baby):

If players did decide to have a kid with Morrigan, and not all of them did, so that's the thing--I can't talk too much about it, unfortunately--but, you know, certainly if you were to have a kid, you know, that would make you a little bit more human, I would imagine, so you might see something about that.

This seems to confirm there will be a child if we choose to have one. Children in games, movies, and TV tend to be horribly written, so let's hope if one appears that's not the case.

Mike Laidlaw talks further about the range of choices in the game:

I think that within the gaming space, we can’t offer all possible outcomes. I think it would be unrealistic to ask for that. Some people will. Let’s be fair. But what I think is important is that the choices that you offer pay off. If you’re going to go through the effort of saying, “Oh you could do this or this,” it should have a meaningful impact. So Inquisition takes a number of approaches. There is content which is exclusive to other content. If you’ve done X, you can’t do Y, which can be incredibly powerful. And then many choices have echoes. So there’s the immediate impact, and I think choices are very powerful when they have an immediate impact. But then if that impact keeps being felt, and you’re reminded of it, you’re like, “Wow, that was a big deal.” So we’ve tried to do both in equal measure. Some of that is like, you’re Qunari, and then thirty hours later, someone’s like… “Oh, you? No, no, I don’t approve.” And you’re like, “That’s really cool, just being mentioned.” We have story elements that are exclusive.

So if you play Qunari, there’ll be one that’s a message from your mercenary captain going, “Hey we’re kinda in a rough spot, and we never really got paid for that gig that we were doing.” And you can actually send agents or soldiers to go bust them out of that tough spot. And you wouldn’t see that if you were playing an elf. There are over 300 of those kinds of operations. They form chains, there’s quest lines, stuff unlocks based on them, and all of them taken together form this secondary echo of reactivity. So it’s all these big choices you’ve made, and then some stuff happened in the game. but then also, now you’re getting messages from the Count du Whatever about… “what the hell were you doing?” And you have to appease him. So you have all of these ripples through the pond, and I think that’s where the game can shine.

Nearly all (or perhaps all) the large locations for DAI have been revealed, as IGN describes:

Stretching over two nations [Orlais and Ferelden] with 10 unique terrains ranging from forests to deserts, swamps to mountains, Dragon Age: Inquisition will be absolutely massive when compared to the previous two games. “This is the biggest game in our studio’s history,” Darrah told us. “It’s the largest RPG we’ve ever made. There is more story-based content in Dragon Age: Inquisition than any other BioWare RPG." Noting that this is the first open-world game from BioWare, Mark also let us know that Inquisition “will set the bar for all of our future games.”

It's finally been confirmed that there are ten primary locations in the game. Each location is subdivided into regions, whose number I've noted in the cases where it has been revealed. Here are the locations revealed thus far (listed roughly east to west):

-The Hinterlands (29 regions; within Ferelden and includes Redcliffe, Valammar, and apparently Ostagar)

-The Fallow Mire (8 regions; it is near the Hinterlands; it also includes Hargrave's Keep; Joe Juba was told it's the smallest zone in the game)

-The Ferelden Bog (it may be in the Hinterlands)

-Storm Coast (10 regions; Ferelden)

-Haven (it's where the game begins)

-Crestwood Hills (Ferelden)

-Frostback Pass (Ferelden?)

-Therinfal Redoubt (Ferelden)

-Halamshiral (in Orlais and presumably part of a larger region)

-Emprise du Lion (16 regions; within the Dales)

-Exalted Plains (21 regions; within the Dales)

-Emerald Graves (26 regions; within the Dales)

-The Southern Desolation (almost certainly in Orlais)

-The Western Approach (25 regions; Orlais and includes Griffon Wing Keep and the Fortress of Adamant; the fortress is featured in Asunder)

-Nahashin Marshes (Orlais)

-The Still Ruin (unknown location)

-Unknown thaig (not Orzammar or Kal-Sharok; possibly Kal'Hirol)

-The Fade

The maps above are screenshots of what we'll see with the war table and I've identified (or made clear) what's shown from what we've heard, but it's not intended to be comprehensive (there's some ambiguity about the location of Crestwood, but for the moment I've left the original location noted). We know from the PC UI video that the Inquisition pins are advisor-only missions, while the tent-shaped icons represent places we can send our scouts. Other icons were revealed (via the Skyhold demo), one of which seems to represent keeps we've established while others I'm not as certain (it's possible all the differentiated icons are keeps, but represent different specialisations). The maps above are not the interactive map we'll see while travelling about in the world, as it looks like this:

The point about the size of areas is worth emphasizing. We know from the demos that the Crestwood Hills region is bigger than all of DA2 combined (15 minutes in-game to walk from one end to the other), while the Hinterlands and Emerald Graves are bigger than all of DAO combined. Interestingly, both of the latter are described as medium-sized, which suggests that Crestwood is (relatively) small and that there are much bigger environments. The girth of these areas is meant to give us the open world experience. As Mike Laidlaw explained to joystiq's Susan Arendt:

"In each level, I wanted there to be at least one cave, one dungeon, one something that no-one tells you to go to," he explained to me. He said that his design team had to "break some old habits" as they were creating the enormous open world that would become Inquisition. Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 both made sure the player knew about every last thing they could possibly do, and Laidlaw wanted to make sure not everything was quite so obvious. It meant that there might be content in Inquisition that might never be seen, but it also meant that there was a point to exploring the game's stunning locations beyond just hitting the next point of interest on the map.

Cameron Lee added this to AusGamers:

the game isn’t structured such that you consume an area, then move onto the next, then move onto the next. It’s structured so that we encourage players to go back and forward between these different regions all of the time. Some of the areas in these regions are say too high level for you to get to go there originally -- there might be a dragon there -- so it’s, like, ‘I could go and fight it; I’m going to get killed, but I’m going’, so maybe you come back to that area later on. But then, when you finish the game, you’re still in the world, so you’re still going to do all of these different things. There’s parts of the game that we’ve built that are so difficult that we would only really want players to go there after they finish the story, because it’s just that high level. So it all sort of changes as you go through the story, and we want people to, as you said, have a lot of longevity in the game.

To traverse these large areas players will have access to mounts for the first time in the Dragon Age franchise, ranging from a basic horse to a creature that looks like a cross between a nug and a water buffalo (presumably the war nug), a lizard of some kind (referenced at E3, possibly seen in the GamesCom demo), a red hart (not a halla), and bog unicorn (both via the deluxe edition)--with a total of thirty available. Lee indicates we'll have a "creature research team" at Skyhold, whose purpose may be related to mounts (among other things). There will be no mounted combat as The Examiner explains:

the feature was deemed to be out of focus with the series’ core combat systems. After all, players already have additional party members and Dragon Age’s combat emphasizes the use of tactics to properly utilize the different companion characters. The developer chose to continue to focus on party mechanics instead of adding mounted combat into the mix and potentially altering a setup that is already proven to work. Aside from game design, Darrah also revealed that the inclusion of a mount system in general was something that the developer wanted to be careful with since it is new to the series. Adding mounted combat on top of everything else would also require the new mechanics to be built from the ground up on the game’s Frostbite 3 engine. Ultimately, the time and resources necessary to accomplish the task wouldn’t have been worth the effort for a feature that wasn’t deemed to fit well inside the game to begin with.

While the Inquisitor is mounted our companions will disappear until we dismount. Not all travel will be by steed or by feet, and I had a suspicion that one of the ways we'll bounce around between locations is via Eluvians (this is not a unique thought), now that they have been re-activated (The Masked Empire), but if the E3 demo is anything to go by it seems more likely that we'll travel through the Fade instead.

To make the open world dynamic, the devs have incorporated a world master system. The emergent system will reflect the changes you make in the environment, so if you (for example) extensively hunt bears in an area, their population will be depressed or go temporarily extinct (the same goes for resources you might gather). As Cameron Lee explained:

We have the World Master system, which flows into everything from creatures to NPCs to bandits. The player has, for example, driven out a particular faction from an area – based on decisions and actions they take – and another faction may move in and take their place

The comment about factions is interesting and I'm curious to see how that changing dynamic will work in-game (Lee, in the second Storm Coast demo, said it populates locations based on what's relevant to where you are in the story). The purpose of the respawning enemies also seems in part to make the crafting system (such a dynamic part of the system) challenging.

As for resource collection, what's our motivation? To take advantage of that expanded crafting system (the deepest ever, with 400 crafting recipes from 160 materials). Lee (same link) discussed the new system:

Generally how it works is you have kind of like a template, and that template could be for armour, or it could be for weapons or other pieces of equipment. You can insert different metals, different materials, into the different slots of that template and that will keep the shape of the item, but it will change the physical characteristics of that item--so it will change the look, it will change the stats, so you can really customise how you look and how you're building your character.

This customization extends to bases--some of which are purely aesthetic, but others have game impacts. Some of these game-relevant mechanics were discussed in the PAX demo from last year, where bases can have a focus (military, diplomatic, or economic), and each has its own set of advantages (the specifics of which have not yet been fully discussed). The main base for the Inquisition is called Skyhold, and details about it are as follows:

Inside there is a tavern, stables, a courtyard, kitchens, a dungeon (you can imprison people there) and the war table. You manage your operations through the war table in Skyhold, and by doing so you get resources like gold and loot or agents, some of the operations are tied to the main plot like an operation involving the chantry in Val Royeux. You’ll pass judgement on NPCs who come through Skyhold a-la Awakening. He mentions the son of a barbarian leader you killed coming to the castle gates and chocking a dead goat against the walls which is some kind of ritualistic insult for killing his kin. You can decide whether to give him and his followers weapons and exile them, put him in stockade or a third choice. Judgment sequences as a way of getting players to reflect further on their decisions.

Lee also confirmed that when our Inquisitor dispenses justice execution is an option (as is making a mage tranquil). All of our companions will be at Skyhold (ala the DAO camp), so players won't have to travel from place to place to interact with them (like in DA2).

Speaking of dispensing, Mark Darrah tells us the tiered coin economy (gold, silver, and copper) has been changed to a single currency (gold) to help the UI. I don't have a big problem with it, although it will be interesting to see if the change is addressed in-game.

Reverting to DAO, we'll be able to change our companions' gear (the one exception being that Varric will only use Bianca if equipped for range).

Combat itself includes both elements from the previous games: the cinematic style of DA2 and the tactical camera that the PC-version of DAO offered. The devs have said (link down with the dialogue wheel) they are placing a greater emphasis on elements such as positioning, elevation, chokepoints, and preparation, with a strong focus on teamwork. There will be no level scaling, which means that you may encounter areas or enemies that are too difficult, and you'll have to come back to them when you are stronger. Cameron Lee talked about combat design:

We design the fights and the encounters, for the most part, assuming that there’s probably going to be a warrior, a mage and a rogue. So that’s three of the four [party members] that you can have. So the fourth one provides a little bit more flexibility to be whatever you want. So we generally design them like that, but that’s not to say that you can’t go in there with four mages, because you totally can. If you decide to do that, I’m sure you’ll be able to do it, but you’ve got to think about how to do it. The combat systems and the creatures and the enemy abilities, it’s so bloody complex that it’s almost impossible to create fixed encounters, so we just do it with a broad sense of assuming that there’s one of each class, and if they want to do all rogues, or all mages, or all warriors, or whatever combination, then have fun; go mental.

So what we’ve done is we’ve created almost like a playbook system for the AI, so you can kind of… in the menu you can say, for the attack play, I want my characters to be doing this type of ability, and this type of ability -- not in mega, mega, fine detail, but just generalised. So that way when you say attack, everyone goes into attack mode, and you can do the same for defence and a number of different things. You can set those up really quickly, and really easily. We wanted to make it as impactful and as hardcore as it used to be, but simple enough that newcomers can get in there and get meaning out of it; get value out of the AI system. So that’s how we kind of do it, and you can change those AI settings on the fly. That’s one of the things that we’re going to do with Kinect, is you can actually just call it out and go “Defend” and everyone will go into defence.

Friendly fire can be turned on or off. It's worth emphasizing that there are no healing spells in DAI and Lucas Krisjanson explains the decision:

A lot of people are picturing trying to play DAO/2 with no heals. Of course that wouldn't work, those games weren't balanced for that. But how well were they balanced with heals, really? I'm not a numbers guy, but I like a good fight. And here's what made it make sense for me. There's a very simple reason why this is a good decision, and it's also why the balance in DAO/2 was all over the map. It's in the question "How many health points does a player have?" Because we need to know this before we can design an encounter and know how balanced it is. So, how many HP? Well, we'd hope it starts with "somewhere between the minimum for a mage and the max for a warrior, varied based on party makeup." Okay, good place to start. That's a real number. We can build encounters that do somewhere within that range of total damage + effects. Now add in healing. How many HP does the player have? "Somewhere between the minimum for a mage and the max for a warrior, plus somewhere between the minimum and maximum number of healing spells/potions and between the min/max of their mana/potions." Okay, how much HP is that exactly? Since potions restore mana, and potions also restored HP, the actual number of potential HP was somewhere between the minimum for a mage and the total amount of gold you had available to spend on potions. And the later in the game it was, the more the top reached astronomical numbers. And so the greatest power the player had in previous games was not any one of their abilities, it was the ability to make the number of HP impossible to estimate. And to counter effectively infinite HP, "balance" meant we needed to hit the player with far more potential damage than their characters could withstand, and do it all but instantly. In effect, replacing HP damage (unknown limits) with death/resurrection (known limits). Or we had to stop them from chaining potions, meaning more enemies that put them to sleep or confused them, or otherwise made the player not able to take action. Alpha strikes and crowd control, neither of which were tactics that were fun to face again and again, because they "balanced" by removing actions, by removing control.

Now in Inquisition, by reducing healing, by actually defining HP to a range that can have real numbers in it, we can better balance encounters. And no, players can't rely on chaining potions. So what do they get instead? Abilities/gear/choices that actually have an effect on the battle that is greater than infinite health on your belt. And because your greatest ability isn't chugging potions, we need less effects that shut you down. You spend more time in control of your characters making more varied decisions to have a greater effect on the flow of the battle. You have regen from spells and potions and gear. You have effects you can craft that grant health on enemy deaths. You have damage mitigation through abilities and buffs and crafting. Limiting health and balancing enemies accordingly makes more tactical choices viable while keeping the challenge. Does this make it more difficult? On Nightmare, Well, you asked for a challenge, and you'll have one that you can overcome in many more viable ways than previously possible.

Lee confirmed to PlayStation Life that the AI in the game is more intelligent than in previous installments without going into much detail.

On another track entirely, David Gaider has confirmed that astronomy will be a factor in the game:

this will come up— at length— when you play DAI

I'm wasn't sure what this was about until the Emerald Graves videos appeared and showed an astronomical puzzle like this:

I'm not sure if the only function will be for puzzles, but it's interesting nonetheless.

As for classes the selection is familiar: Warrior (two-handed basics/sword & shield basics), Mage (the basics), and Rogue (dual dagger basics/archer basics). Each has three (optional) specialisations, where your choice will require some gameplay to acquire:

Mage

Knight Enchanter: These rare mages received special dispensation from the Chantry to serve in battle. They summon blades from the Fade and are experts in protection and defense.

Necromancer: These mages specialize in binding spirits that are drawn to death. They can put the fear of death into enemies, bring spirits to fight on their behalf, and even cause devastating explosions when their enemies die.

Rift Mage: These mages draw upon the force of the Fade, either pulling matter from the Fade to attack or twisting the Veil itself into a weapon to stagger or crush their enemies.

Warrior

Champion: These powerful defenders protect their allies from harm, standing strong against devastating blows with expert training and fierce determination. Enemies can't kill them—and usually can't survive them.

Reaver: As the battle gets bloodier, these vicious and deadly warriors get even more brutal. Hurting them just makes them mad, a mistake most enemies don't live to repeat.

Templar: These unrelenting warriors specialise in fighting mages and demons. No enemy's magic can withstand them, and they inspire and protect their allies with their righteous power.

Rogue

Artificer: These specialists control the battlefield with deadly traps. Neither they nor their explosive mines are ever where the enemy expects them to be.

Assassin: Any rogue can kill a target, but assassins make death into an art form. They specialise in quick, deadly kills that let them slide back into the shadows undetected, or indirect kills that eliminate targets while the assassin is safely away.

Tempest: These unpredictable experts specialise in using alchemical mixtures that wreathe them in frost or flame. Fast, chaotic, and possibly mad, they wade into the fight and dare enemies to face the storm.

We won't be assigning stats when we level up, but instead buying talents and equipping gear (presumably it's restricted by level). Even at the start of the game we won't assign our ability scores, although we will have a chance to change them via respec potions in-game.

One element from DA2 that has been retained is the dialogue wheel: there are three possible "wheels" that you can encounter during the game: The Tone Wheel is the "standard" option that you saw most often in DA2. You select dialogue for the purpose of conversation and exposition. Your character's choices reflect his or her overall attitude and demeanor. The tones from DA2 (Diplomatic, Sarcastic, and Aggressive) have been replaced with Noble, Clever, and Direct; the Action Wheel is for making a hard-line choice between two (or more) options. It is not tone-based (such as the Accept/Deny quest options in DA2), and all options are "neutral" in terms of tone. To avoid confusion, each option will tell you explicitly the intent of the selected option; the Reaction Wheel is for reacting emotionally to a situation. Instead of choosing your tone, you choose an emotional reaction (such as "Sad", "Enraged", "Confused", etc.). The "Stoic" option is always available for a reaction-neutral response. Conversation will also be more dynamic, allowing you to just walk away mid-conversation.

Within the game itself choice has a major impact on the story we'll experience. As Cameron Lee explains:

that whole demo you saw [at E3], in the last half of it, when you’re fighting with Alexius and Felix, not all the players are going to see that, because going into that area is the result of a branching choice in the game. So you may have picked another area and you wouldn’t be going into that castle at all, you’d be going somewhere else entirely. There’s whole sections of the game that are like that, that we branch off entirely. You can go to Redcliffe Village, and see the consequences of you picking the other decision. So we’ve made sure that any exclusive content, you can still see the flip side of the consequences as well.

We've also learned more about the war table (link above):

The War Table is where you spend the “power” you’ve earned by accomplishing deeds in the world. Killing a dragon, finishing a quest, liberating a civilian area, and many other things earn you this currency. It’s used to task the Inquisition to patrol areas, deploy agents, raid castles, and establish camps. More importantly, it’s the means by which the story is progressed in the open world.

In addition:

You manage your operations through the war table in Skyhold, and by doing so you get resources like gold and loot or agents, some of the operations are tied to the main plot like an operation involving the chantry in Val Royeux. Some operations are resolved instantly and some require you to pick an advisor (Cullen, Leliana or Josephine) to resolve them, they're unavailable while conducting the operation. There's a new resources besides power (which you spend on operations) which is called influence.

Lee adds:

There are over 300 missions and operations available on the war table, and they can change depending on your previous choices and actions in the game. There's a range of types: scouting missions to establish the first camp in a new area you'd like to explore, building missions to raise structures in the areas you've being [been] exploring, recruitment missions to bring expertise into the inquisition, treaties, resource-gathering, political assassinations, and many, many more.

So that gives us the range of mission on offer (300 is huge), although I'd guess that number doesn't represent the number we'll all make at the war table, but rather the total number of possible missions.

We know that loot in the game is colour-coded based on its rarity or strength. Mike Laidlaw has also discussed the game's level cap:

The key is to not have a cap. When you arbitrarily just stop getting experience, it honestly kind of sucks in my opinion. The way experience is granted in Inquistion is as you tackle monsters and going after things and as they get too low level for you they stop granting you experience. This is a fairly standard RPG mechanic and by the time you’re capped out and no longer gaining experience, you’ve killed some of the toughest stuff in the world,” Mike said. “You’re probably done with the game because you’ve killed almost everything, so that’s kind of our approach. It’s more of a soft-cap and there will be a point at which you stop leveling up somewhere.

As for the gameplay itself, the story can be played through in 40-50 hours for those who eschew side quests and speed through the main storyline; overall there's 150 hours of play available (granted I'm not sure how literally to take these time estimates, as this is up 50 hours from the one made back in April, with the number then jumping to 200 via Cameron Lee, dropping to 120 from Mark Darrah, while Lee dropped the story estimate to 20-30). Darrah says there are almost a million words of dialogue (or 80,000 lines, including over 2,000 per companion), more than DAO and DA2 combined. The devs don't expect you to be able to do everything in one playthrough (indeed, given that some choices close off possibilities, this seems impossible). There are a few unique endings, along with about forty major variances based on your choices (there are hundreds of minor differences beyond that). Giancarlo Valdes reports the forty variances are based on defeating the villain and closing the portal, with what you see being based on the choices you made. Also of interest, there's content intended to be played after the main plot is wrapped up:

the preview states that most of the content in Emprise Du Lion is so difficult that the player won’t even be able to experience them until the post-game, implying that there is going to be more content for the player to explore even after the campaign has ended.

As Cameron Lee told Rock Paper Shotgun:

There’s a whole area in the game – it’s one of the highest level areas in the game, we kind of designed it for people to play after they finish the story – that’s kind of a pitched battle. So you and your party come through and push the enemy back and back, further throughout the whole area. And from that, the village that’s nearby changes. Maybe there’s more merchants on the roads and stuff like that, which then affects the in-game economy as well. It’s quite a complex and dynamic system.

Moving from game-specifics, Wired posted a two-part interview with Mike Laidlaw and Mark Darrah about DAI (here's part two ) with Darrah talking about design principles:

The nice thing about when we went into this game is that we knew what our three big factors were: that we wanted to make a Dragon Age game, we wanted to make it with Frostbite, and we wanted to make something could be played on older gen consoles, new gen consoles, and PCs. The next thing is that we already have the 'PC as a powerhouse versus the Xbox' conflict already in our DNA so it didn't take a lot of mental jumping on our part. What we did, and Frostbite does this very well, is build our systems to be scalable. The number of creatures that exist in an area, how much wildlife and stuff there is, can scale dynamically based on the platform. It also scales based on what effects you have had on the environment. So if there's Fade rifts open and a bunch of demons wandering around, there will not be much wildlife about. Once you close them down, you'll see nature start to reappear. Maybe you're out hunting bears for their leather, you need to shut down rifts to improve the spawn rate for bears. The end result is that we set a target of gameplay parity across all the platforms and I think we've hit that very well, but it's the visual fidelity that can scale up and down. The older consoles are not going to put forward the fidelity of a PC, and definitely not what the Xbox One or PS4 can do. If the system scales well, and it does, then you can end up in a place where it's like "well, this is my older platform but I'm still getting the same game," which I think is very important.

This suggests that visual fidelity is the major difference across platforms (with a hint that perhaps fewer creatures, particularly background ones like wildlife, would be generated on the older consoles, but that's just speculation). Laidlaw then talked about how they keep track of lore in the franchise:

We hired a crime reporter. We actually did. One of our editors is someone we brought on initially as a contractor and then hired full-time because he's fantastic. He is a research specialist and was a crime reporter with the Edmonton newspaper. He's very dedicated and very thorough -- crime isn't something you want to mis-report -- and what he'd do is comb through everything in Origins, everything in the novels, everything in Dawn of the Seeker, the comics, all the different products. We've developed this internal wiki that tracks the states of all the characters. There are various fields for the characters: Dead, Alive, and Quantum, for characters like Alistair who may or may not be alive depending on player choice. Within the entry, it explicitly says "If Dead: This. If Alive: This". So we have that as our internal reference, and while the fans maintain a really good one, they can't put notes about what's coming, so we have to have our own. That's helped us organise things because there are a lot of products. We've announced our fifth novel [Last Flight], there are four out at the moment and a lot of the characters from the novels get referenced in Inquisition. The script-writing team will go and reference that. Being able to copy a noteworthy paragraph from a book that describes a location and then send it to a concept artist when they start to draw it for the game, that's invaluable. That's how we keep it all on track.

This is a pretty cool way for them to have nailed down what will appear in the Keep and figure out all their logic problems for DAI. It also suggests that the effort to track the lore wasn't made in earnest until after DA2. Both Laidlaw and Darrah talked about the scaling of the game:

[ML] We do still have easy mode -- it's not a pure story mode in that there's zero combat, but it's not super-challenging. We have normal mode, which is a lot like Dragon Age 2. ... [MD] We want normal mode to be a little more challenging than DA2 because sometimes that felt trivial. The problem there is that if it feels trivial and then you hit a boss, you haven't developed any skills for handling tough enemies. We want normal mode to teach you things, like to recognise when an enemy's telegraphing a move and you should not be under his giant club-arm, because he will crush you. Easy will be more forgiving but on normal you'll have to dodge, but it won't be hard to dodge. The team will also help. We took a look at some of the changes our guys made in Mass Effect 3 in terms of how characters interact, and we thought that we could make things more challenging but also keep them fair with things like telegraphs. They also go faster on the higher difficulties. If a guy roars and holds his arm up for a couple beats on normal, on hard he just goes "wham!" and you need to be dodging as he lifts. You can't afford that wait.

This gives an idea of what to expect in terms from levels of difficulty.

Ivan Jenic reported on a Russian leak that DAI would have a multiplayer mode at release (something already suggested by the 2012 survey leak), which was confirmed about a month later in August. The mode has no direct impact on the story so I won't detail it here.

Mark Darrah has said future DLC will occur after the storyline in DAI, which I think is a good decision.

Jacques Lebrun wrote about the reasons behind choosing the Frostbite Engine for the game and the technical challenges in converting it for DAI.

That's all the information I've been able to find that doesn't include specific spoilers.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

Eye on Dragon Age

Saturday, November 15, 2014

EA Early Access: Thoughts on Six Hours of Gameplay

Friday, November 7, 2014

Dragon Age Inquisition: What We Know So Far