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Thank the skies for the return of the tactical camera, a viewpoint harshly and unwarrantedly removed from both Dragon Age 2 and all consoles editions of Dragon Age: Origins. Its re-inclusion in Inquisition immediately helps you to think about combat as a matter requiring thought and planning, as opposed to simple hacking and slashing.
Entering the view pauses the game and gives you a chance to give orders to all four of your party members simultaneously. This means you can more accurately use one party member to distract your enemies with taunts, another can dive headlong into the fray, a third can hang back and provide healing and the fourth might place traps to harm those trying to flank you.
Of course, that’s just one basic example – the strategy you employ will be determined by the lay of the land, the abilities of your party and the quantity/quality of your enemies you’re facing. In another nice touch you can watch battle flow in real-time from tactical view, giving you a broader perspective of the battlefield while retaining the action pacing.
If you’ve played both past Dragon Age games then it’s immediately obvious that what BioWare is trying to do here is blend the speed of the second game’s combat with the tactical possibilities of the PC version of Origins.
How you initiate and grow relationships with other characters is undergoing a distinct change, with such moments no longer limited to simplistic childish antics. In Dragon Age’s past, and BioWare games in general, courting someone to the ‘fullest degree’ tended to involve showering them with cheap trinkets and/or agreeing with every word that came out of their mouth… no matter how inane they might be.
Relationships are now more strongly based on how you act and present yourself, both to individuals and to the world at large. If you act in a way that more accurately matches the morals and lifestyle of a certain other character then they are more likely to feel closer to you and want to spend more time in your presence.
Not all of these relationships need be sexual, they can simply be platonic and based around shared ideologies rather than physical attraction – a possibility that will hopefully go some way to pushing videogame ‘relationships’ beyond the point of simple sexual fantasy fulfilment and onto something more complex and varied.
It’s also possible for two characters to fall for each other without your direct involvement. Not all romances and relationships in Inquisition need to have you as a feature. Two of your party members could become close, although their actions will be largely determined by which parts of the map you visit and when, who you choose to interact with and which world-changing decisions you make. All of these choices affect those around you and how they potential view and categorise others.
Whatever the case, the possibility of those around you developing emotional bonds with one another should go a very long way to making Inquisition feel like a more natural and involving place.
