New Previews and Gameplay Footage

I think it's time they retired the dialogue wheel. Normal options worked just fine in the first game.

I'm liking what I'm hearing. If only the game had a proper antagonist this time around. But still, looking great so far.

Looks good, everything suggests that Bioware is taking the proper steps to bring the franchise back to it's former glory, but ill be the bitter cynic so I predict that EA is still gonna stick it's festering dick in it and fuck the game up by some stupid form of DRM or selling core chunks of the game as DLC.

Non regenerating health sounds interesting. Crafting potions could finally be useful in Dragon age.

Another seven minutes. First half is stuff that is included in the 14 minutes video but the second half shows of tactical view.

Another seven minutes. First half is stuff that is included in the 14 minutes video but the second half shows of tactical view.

"We are definitely trying to make it so this game can be used as an introduction"

Where have I heard THIS line before?

I really hope that Bioware is able to pull this one off. It looks good so far, but you all know that looks can be deceiving.

Looks like Skyrim and Assassin's Creed mashed together. The lack of tactics shown worries me and feels like EA is just abandoning what I loved dearly about the Original game. Disappointing, but not unexpectedly so.

I love everything I'm seeing from this game

Nice tactical view! Good to see that.

Here's a decent cam preview with a better angle than that dailymotion one:

Parts 2 and 3 are in video description. Also, I should warn you that the recorder chose to scream directly into the mic, so have your finger on the volume control.

I guess if you look at it as a different take on Skyrim, rather than the sequel to Origins, it's not so disappointing, and looks like decent fun. Parts 2 and 3 show off the combat better than part 1.

The tactical view is pretty similar to Origins/DA2 which in encouraging, setting freeze traps for example as shown in the video.

The tactical view is pretty similar to Origins/DA2 which in encouraging, setting freeze traps for example as shown in the video.

Part 3 has a pretty good look at the tactical view for combat and the lighting in the game looks very nice.

I'm still waiting for solid reviews before I put down any money.

I'm interested, and I'm going to keep paying attention, but I haven't forgotten being burned before (and actively insulted for some reason).

This is looking good. I immensely enjoyed DA:O, albeit being quite turned off by the graphics initially. DA2 looked better but was severly lacking compared to DA:O. I liked it anyhow. Inquisition looks promising. Really hoping this would turn out as awesome, if not better, than DA:O.

@development:

Thx for sharing that. Very nice find. I don't quite get your sentiment of disappointment though. Sounds like you are disappointed that there's now a proper world to explore, rather than the teeny tiny RPG-panel-maker blocks and corridors of DA:O and DAII - as if having a bigger more open and organic and interactive world is a bad thing to you. How come?

As far as I can tell from these videos, all the classic trademark Bioware talky bits are there and accounted for, player agency is increased with real decisions to be made in realtime with real consequences (like that Village & Keep siege scenario). Gear and customization for all members of the party. Combat being both more immediate than DAII, and more tactical than DA:O - at least that's their stated goal - there's nothing in this pitch that's disappointing to me at this point.

I'm hopeful, is what I'm saying. It looks super promising and the Dragon Age team at Bioware has already proven to an impressive degree how viable their new take on the franchise, and on Bioware RPG-making in general, really is. Or at least that's how it seems to me. I was afraid of Bioware games becoming stagnant. It's reassuring to see that they make huge strides to establish a template for their future, because I really still want to get my Bioware game fix in the far future.

I'll link all 3 vids here, for increased convenience...

• -Part 1-
• -Part 2-
• -Part 3-

Oh, sorry, no. I totally loved Skyrim; even made some mods. I was saying that if you go into it expecting a derivation on the Skryim formula mixed evenly with DA 1+2, rather than expecting them to return to the more "hardcore" or "pc-game" elements of DA:O, then you won't set yourself up to be disappointed.

I'm hopeful, is what I'm saying.

Me too. I'm just not incredibly confident. Key difference.

[...]Or at least that's how it seems to me.

I'm glad you said that. I always like to keep in mind that these are PR guys doing what they do best. When they present their previews, they'll say and show as much as they can say without blatantly 100% lying (most of the time at least), but they'll definitely mislead. For example, they say you can change your party's gear, but if you look closely, they don't actually go into the menu, they just hover over it. The part they say about it that's deeper is "you can change their class weapons, as well..." Odd thing to point out, right? Sounds like you get preset "costumes" for the party members throughout the game, and can just change their weapons according to their class, but not specifically swap out their torso, legs, or helmet pieces for lootable gear you find throughout the game.

I just want a DA:O 2. I didn't care all that much for DA2 because it went so much into the action rpg side. And this seems to be a progression of that. I will most likely play it. But man, a true sequel to Origins would be nice.

This is the same thing they did with Mass Effect. As each game in the series is made, it leans more and more towards an action game, and less and less of an rpg.

I'd really like it if this game turned out well and, on top of that, could satisfy my personal preferences in some way. Damn, how much I enjoy DA:O - because of that and Morrigan (as the prime example of their cool characters) I really can't bring myself to let go of this franchise. But they really chose to advertise this game in weird ways. It obnoxiously smells like disgusting marketing bullshit through and through. I'm not even a fanatical purist that demands another DA:O-esque oldschool throwback. I'd really like that but expecting it would be insane since it's simply not going to happen. But I despise Bioware's/EA's deceiptive marketing campaigns that stop just short of outright lying more and more.

They clearly set their goal to going as far away from traditional RPGs as they can (which is somewhat sad but fine) and namedrop Planescape: Torment of all things? After the whole Laidlaw DAII PR-spiel about oldschool RPGs being clunky and shit?

They make the combat even more action-heavy by the looks of it but bring back tactical view? What for? (This is a massive concern. I can live with BW abandoning tactical combat but they need to find options to make the other party members shine. Tactical RPGs make my crew look so fucking cool in part because they pull out their crazy abilities in combat and don't just have fun dialog. Action RPGs and party-based gameplay don't go together well.)

They bring back custom characters, even add the completely alien Qunari culture, promise a lot of non-combat/ conversational stuff with far-reaching consequences and are going to voice-act all that? How is that going to work?

It's also going to be open world Skyrim now? (I'm even skeptical about Witcher 3 pulling that one off and modern BW doesn't even play in CD Projekt RED's league anymore.)

Oh, and obviously it's a great entry point for newbies just like Mass Effect 3. Also a concern since all I personally played is vanilla DA:O.

In summary, it's going to be everything for everyone. Sure. I understand this is marketing but as it is I can't take any of this seriously in the slightest. Fuck them and their dumbass schemes pandering to morons that suck that shit right up. Have the common decency and confidence to actually say what your game is going to be. I don't understand why they still try to pander to the old fans in this patronizing and idiotic fashion. All that said, even if they deliver on a fraction of these overblown promises I can see this being a very good game. I hope it is, I want to go back to that universe and talk to Morrigan again.

@baal_sagoth: @outside_potty_machine:

Combat in DAII, if you turned the difficulty all the way up, was more challenging and tactically demanding than DA:O's ever was, despite not having a topdown overview camera anymore. Immediate action and stop 'n' go tactical gameplay - you can definitely have both in the same game. It's just almost nobody went for the hardest difficulty setting, to actually experience the necessity to play that way. Sure - the tools to do so were a bit lacking, but fully functional nonetheless.

I guess it's Bioware's own fault for making DAII's default difficulty too easy on the one hand, and for tieing friendly fire to difficulty outright, instead of offering it as a mutator for any difficulty. DA:O even had a *deal half damage in friendly fire* option, which I guess is the happy medium between playbility and challenge.

There is lots wrong with DAII, but it was definitely not lacking in challenge. Tactical play was absolutely necessary to best its hardest difficulty setting. Admittedly, some encounters felt a bit off, on the unfair or overlong side of things. That said, I've never understood that specific critique, not for DAII, not for any other game this complaint has been leveled against. Stating a game is too easy and lacking in challenge, when it has higher difficulty settings on offer, without actually increasing difficulty to see if the issue evaporates - it just seems like a lazy and unfair point to make.

Just because actions are snappy and immediate in realtime play doesn't mean we won't be able to scale up difficulty to make stop 'n' go tactcial gameplay an absolute must, and the topdown overview camera an absolute blast to use. Yes - DAII felt rushed and lazy. The critiques put forth by fans and press alike were easily just as lazy, as far as I'm concerned - at least when it came to combat, and the seemingly apparent lack of challenge and absence of tactical play.

P.S. Did you guys see the part of the presentation in which they are showing off the topdown overview cam or not? It's exactly what everybody wants, myself included, so I really don't get the whole *Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire* attitude towards Bioware in regards to their commitment to deliver a classic tactical group RPG experience for those who want it. They showed it. It's there, if you want it.

Really looking forward to Inquisition. It looks really, really cool.

@seppli: Fair enough. I really do hope they pull it off. I want the game to be good. At least they're taking their time it seems. I brought it on myself by using (maybe unneccessarily) harsh language but my main point is their weird and questionable marketing not my undying hatred for DA II. As I stated, I didn't even play the entirety of it. I know the demo, played some of it with a friend (who didn't end up finishing it either) and saw various gameplay videos of it. I didn't like what I saw enough to go for it but I'm no expert on the game at all.

I didn't want to imply they're outright lying about the tactical view being there. I just can't see, and I think here we really disagree, how you actually merge true tactical gameplay and action hack & slash. As others have stated that's almost guaranteed to become an issue at least for the AI dudes you don't control at any given time. It might not be impossible or maybe I misunderstand because they focus on the action stuff so much (previewing RPGS is sort of hard) but I don't buy it at this time.

Also, I do not trust BW marketing anymore. It's that simple. These preview snippets don't proof anything about the game in my book. And they have stretched the truth so damn far so many times by now that I'll not take their word on anything anymore for now. But that's very subjective and I certainly don't suffer from the delusion that everyone will view the situation like me. That's totally fine. The game that appears in my head when they say all these fancy things is absolutely fucking glorious, don't get me wrong. But it's healthier for me to not get hyped so easily, so early.

The thing to me is that all of Bioware's previous games could have been cooler if they were sandboxes. It just wasn't possible. If they had more open, dynamic areas instead of the smaller, choked off hubs that they ended up being. Now hopefully that doesn't radically alter the game, but this can only really be seen as a logical progression, to me.

I hope it ends up in ME, then we can finally get back to the Citadel being large and maybe have it actually be a big open city area. I don't see how that can't be seen as an improvement on what they have done before.

So I'm still so confused about this... what are people saying AI can't manage to do again? This basically looks like Dragon Age II's combat, but from what we saw it just has a fancy "bring enemies towards you chain move". Other than that, it just looked like they made the combat feel more impactful. When you played Dragon Age II, your AI allies could manage to fight just fine. AI in other games, action games, being allied or enemy AI, can manage to block, dodge attack. This doesn't look like they are making it Ninja Gaiden or anything. What are we saying can't be done?

Yeah it's getting pretty tiring, especially when they show you these things.

The thing is DA II's combat was pretty much good, other than them taking out the tactical view. The only giant issue that messed it up was the reinforcements that spawn out of nowhere, which ruined tactical positioning. All this game has to do is fix that and it's in a great place.

Mindless hacking and slashing are not viable, as soon as friendly fire comes into the mix. My Hawke was a greatsword wielding maniac, who was prone to turn his entire party into pink mist with one hapless swing of his sword. He was literally capable of one-shotting most his comrades in one blow.

Positioning and timing are absolutely key, when dealing with such circumstances. I pretty such set my companion AI to do nothing without my command, and micromanaged everything - just like I did it in Baldur's Gate 2 and Dragon Age: Origins.

It's pretty damn satisfying to pull off a proper combo, like freezing a bunch of dudes with frontal cone or point blank area of effect spell, and then shattering them with a greatsword - when either could easily hit and even kill your own comrades. The execution/action aspect came into play mostly against big enemies like Dragons and huge Demons. Kiting. Actively evading huge attacks. That sort of thing. Of course I still had to micro my troops as well.

In short, as soon as a hapless push of a button can mean defeat, the whole immediacy of its action combat trappings become meaningless.

Hmm, well i hope having both options doesn't end up lowering the quality of each instead of just spending time perfecting one. I really think this "Hey lets try and make a game for every type of gamer" mentality is starting to fuck a lot of games up. You can't please everybody, action fans and rpg fans interests just don't always intersect. Take to time to make a great game instead of streamlining it to try and fit every ones tastes

What the hell did they do to Isabella's jaw? Her character models seem to grow progressively worse over the series.

Well - if they do it right, like they did (more or less) with DA:O and DAII, you'll just have to take the time to customize your game settings to make the game play and feel how you want it to.

Well - if they do it right, like they did (more or less) with DA:O and DAII, you'll just have to take the time to customize your game settings to make the game play and feel how you want it to. Outside of Mass Effect, Bioware has always been pretty good about making their experiences scaleable to one's preference - albeit they could admittedly put more effort into scaling their boss encounters, which often are a bit out of whack on the hardest difficulty settings.

I disagree with this fundamentally. I see where you're coming from but I'm personally rarely satisfied with AI behavior handling tactically complex games. Mages in DAII could not manage to stay out of trouble. Spells cast automatically by the AI only worked via the tactics slots (which are actually a very decent solution for limited AI behavior) and due to the lack of friendly fire on default difficulty. This is a flaw DA shares with many other fantastic party-based RPGs and it doesn't bother me because this is exactly how I deal with it:

@seppli said:

That is very true and I really hope that's what we'll get. But just showing tactical view being there isn't conclusive whatsoever. And them harping on the point of making combat "impactful" and more direct doesn't inspire confidence. All of that design work will go down the drain if you actually play the tactical game because you'll constantly pause and switch characters anyway and not be focussed on one character since that can't work if tactical synergies are in play. I don't believe you can design great combat for both styles at the same time. Something always has the priority. At some point either your character building choices, party composition and tactical positioning make all the difference and the game's designed around that or the action elements do. Both these styles are valid, though I vastly prefer the former, but BW keeps putting out the message that they'll make a game for everyone at the same time. And I called bullshit on that. Especially since they claimed a great number of things about their last few games and failed to deliver on a fair number of them.

I'll gladly eat my words and be content with getting a kick-ass DA3 in the end but right now I don't see it.

Well there are AI tactical slots again and the tactical view is in, allowing you to position your mages exactly as you like even on consoles. AI can handle the run of the mill attacking, defending, etc. So again, don't see what the issue is.

@artisanbreads: Well, now you're just ignoring what I'm saying. My issue is that you market an unflinching throwback RPG like they did market DA:O. You make the oldschool elements a priority of your showcase and you drop the fucking mic. Instead I get this mixed messaging about how DA3 is going to please everyone. And I'm fed up with this dancing around revealing actual information (even at a basic level). Showing a switch to the perspective I've seen in thess games since the nineties to a hollering crowd isn't going to convince me that they aren't bullshitting me about the focus of their game like they did before. I'm cool with you liking DA2, I'm cool with you being excited for DA3 based on the first previews, I'm cool with you loving Bioware but I simply think differently. Nothing more I can really say to clarify that.

So basically you're not going to believe anything they say or show?

That's fine... but I don't know what to tell you and you aren't going to add much to any conversation on what they show I guess, since it'll just be yelling "bullshit!"

Thanks for posting all this, I love Dragon Age Origins and really want this game to be amazing.

Edit: Holy shit this game looks so fucking amazing.

Wow, will i finally be able to make a black person in dragon age now? This is much more impressive than the dumb ass hack and slash trailers, i don't know why they think those things are better than showing actual gameplay.

I am officially pretty hyped for this game. That was a really great preview, it doesn't seem like I have to worry about the gameplay. I just really hope they deliver in the story and character department as well. Varric is alright, I never thought much of Cassandra, and I'm not sure what to think of this mage lady.

Loved Dragon Age II. Looking forward to more.

So yeah uh... that video looks like an action game. I saw no "tactical gameplay". There is nothing tactical about the game pausing so I can perfectly place my massive aoe, hell real time would be more tactical cause now there is a chance I might actually miss or at least have to time it right. The combat just looks like an even bigger step away from DA:O. Then again this is just a glorified trailer, we haven't seen real gameplay yet.

Also there is nothing exciting about the "save the village or save the keep" decision. It is the same shit over and over with bioware last few years. That choice is no less black and white than "kill the mages or try to save them" or "cure the genophage or repair it so it will work even better".

Don't get me wrong, I love the mass effect series. But Dragon Age was not mass effect at the start, and I liked the games for different reasons. Just let DA be a freaking tactical RPG for christ sake and let ME be the action/light RPG.

I didn't have much interest in the first two games, but this looks nice.

They said the game pauses when in the tactical view so you can issue commands to each party member and then watch those commands play out, pause again and repeat. Essentially it becomes almost like a turn based system. You don't have direct control of anyone. Or you can play it like an action game and just control one character at a time. I assume if you play on a low difficulty you can stick with just hacking and slashing, but on a harder difficulty you have to pause and issue commands. At least that is the promise. The other thing is that they have been given more time to make this game than any since they were bought by EA. A good 3+ years, compared with 1 and a half for Dragon Age 2, and 2 for Mass Effect 2 and 3.

Finally, they said it was region based not fully open world. That to me says that there will be a set of open regions that you can travel between sort of like in Fable. The way they described it actually most reminded me of the old Might and Magic games (specifically 6-8) where you had a bunch of open areas with unique art and music and enemies and such, and each run by a different faction, and you could go to any region at any time but certain regions were significantly more difficult than others. That's kind of how this seemed.

I'll just say that's how I understood what they were saying. Maybe I'm wrong, but that is what I got from it.

Isabella's only been in one game so far, right? And I think you're talking about Cassandra, Isabella isn't in these previews.

Talking about the one that has a damn-horseshoe shaped jaw. I swear that Bioware are threading into Bethesda-levels of character design with her.

@nekroskop: That's Cassandra. She was the lady interrogating Varric in the first game.

I do agree that her jaw makes her seem a little mannish, maybe that's the point. Or should I say A WOMAN'S APPEARANCE IS NOBODY'S BUSINESS ARRRRRGGGHHHH

@brodehouse ;)