When the sky tears open above Thedas and demons pour through the rifts left behind, the survivors need someone to blame and someone to follow. Dragon Age: Inquisition asks you to be both. You are the Inquisitor, marked by an accident nobody understands, at the head of an order that begins with a handful of survivors and has to become the only power capable of holding a fracturing world together.
Every Ruling Reshapes Thedas
BioWare builds this story out of decisions rather than set pieces. Mages and Templars are already at war when you arrive, nations are turning on one another, and a demonic invasion is spilling out of the Breach while they squabble. The Inquisition is the one body with the standing to intervene, so who you back, who you refuse and who you leave to fend for themselves settles the fate of whole regions. One wrong move can set a chain of events running that alters the physical shape of the world, which is why no two players finish with quite the same Thedas.
Skyhold and the War Table
Your fortress starts as a ruin and ends as the seat of a power the great houses have to negotiate with. Between missions you return to Skyhold to pass judgment on prisoners, court allies and send your advisors out across the map from the war table. Most operations can be handed to any of the three, and the advisor you pick shapes the kind of Inquisition people believe you are running.
- Connections
- Ambassador Josephine Montilyet works through letters, favors and quiet leverage applied to nobles who would rather the Inquisition stayed small. The slowest route to a result, and the one that tends to leave you with allies still willing to take your call when the situation gets worse.
- Forces
- Commander Cullen answers with soldiers marched to the problem and pointed at it. His troops clear roads, break sieges and hold ground you cannot personally reach, at the cost of the goodwill of anyone who would rather not see an army on their border.
- Secrets
- Leliana's agents, informants and work nobody signs their name to. This is how you learn what a rival intends before they act on it, and how certain problems stop being problems without a public reckoning that anyone can trace back to Skyhold.
Thedas, Region by Region
Thedas here is wide open and ripe for exploration, split into large regions you unlock and return to rather than a single corridor of quests. Nine companions can be recruited along the way, each carrying their own loyalties, grudges and reasons to stay or leave, and several are open to a romance if you take the time to earn it.
- Ride from the farmland and refugee camps of the Hinterlands to the sandstorms of the Western Approach, the deep forests of the Emerald Graves and the moonlit dunes of the Hissing Wastes, each with its own keeps to seize and caves to clear.
- Hunt high dragons scattered across the continent. These are set-piece fights against enemies with breath weapons, flight and enough health to outlast a badly prepared party, and none of them are obligatory.
- Gather materials as you travel and craft weapons and armor to your own specification, choosing the metals, leathers and cloth that decide how a piece performs rather than waiting for a better drop.
Fight Fast, or Fight Carefully
Play as a human, elf, dwarf or Qunari, and as a warrior, rogue or mage, then take three companions into the field with you. You can drive combat in real time, crossbows blazing, or drop into the tactical camera, which freezes the battle and lets you look down on it, read the positioning and place every member of the party by hand before time starts again. The encounters that go wrong are almost always the ones where you stopped watching the field. A separate four-player co-op mode gives you and three others a roster of dedicated characters and its own set of operations to fight through together.
The Breach is not going to close on its own, and the people arguing beneath it are not going to stop on your account. Step into the Inquisitor's boots, decide what this order stands for, and find out what Thedas looks like once it has lived with your rulings.
