EA, the publishers behind the latest entry in BioWare's RPG series Dragon Age, recently held a small press event in New York City to demonstrate some of their newest titles. One such game on display was Dragon Age: Inquisition. I was invited to play a demo featuring a large side-area, one not crucial to the main story, according to the PR rep who was on hand to answer questions. After getting past my initial wave of excitement from getting a new game in my hands, what I found was a boring and repetitive, but graphically gorgeous, hack-and-slash game.
I guess I should say a few things first. I understand that this was just a demo, and does not represent the final product. I also understand that this demo was around three months old, due to it being the same demo that was showed to press at Gamescom back in August. I understand as well that showing off an RPG is a daunting task to begin with. You are trying to tell an epic story, but not give away any details in the demo. You're also throwing the person controlling the demo into the middle of a situation where he or she has no context of what is going on. I didn't create the character, I didn't forge alliances or make friends with any of the members of my party, and I didn't get most of the story as to why I was running around in a swamp filled with undead. I'm sure if all of those things had happened, again which is just not possible with a short demo, I would be more interested in the action on-screen. Perhaps there could have been a better area to showcase, but I digress.
What I did get was my Inquisitor and her allies storming into a swampy area to rid it of the undead. The first thing to strike me was the visuals. BioWare games generally are pretty solid in the graphics department, but you can tell that extra care was put into Dragon Age: Inquisition to make it really sparkle on the next generation of consoles. Because of the swampy nature of the area we were in, water effects were on display, and it was cool seeing the ripples spread out as characters tromped their way forward through the muck. Character animations in cutscenes looked a little stiff, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are smoothed out by release.
While the graphics did their job with impressing me, the gameplay did quite the opposite. Any encounter my party had devolved into the four of us standing around an enemy, beating on him until he fell over. There was no strategy, no urgency and no skill involved. It was just mashing our basic attacks against all of the undead and other monsters who got in our way. Each character does have a few special attacks in addition to their basic attacks, but these just served as a slight break from the mashing, which you were back to immediately after you finished a special attack. You would then keep mashing the attack button until your special attack cool-downs had finished. Rinse and repeat for every enemy. Yawn.
One feature that was highlighted was the "tactical camera." With the click of a stick, all action on the screen would pause, and the camera would swing up to a top-down view of the battlefield. This grants you, as a now omnipotent being, the ability to control all four characters at once, setting up offensive strategies and other plans. This seems like a neat idea in theory, and maybe with harder enemies and bosses later in the main storyline it could be something worth using. From what I saw though, it was totally pointless. Why would I bother to try and slow down an encounter, even with the tougher enemies that popped up later in the demo, when swarming and hacking away would eliminate any possible threats. Even if one of the members in my party did fall, one of the others can just go run over and revive them.
I'm a big BioWare fan, I think the Mass Effect trilogy is one of the greatest achievements in gaming, but I'm pretty turned off by Dragon Age: Inquisition now. I understand I will enjoy it so much more when I get to craft the character I want to play as, when I create my own relationships with allies, and when I have more context for what I'm doing, but if all of the combat encounters turn into a slap fight with whoever has the most health points winning, those factors may not help. The Xbox One and PS4 both really deserve a great RPG experience, but I'm not sure that Dragon Age: Inquisition will do anything more than scratch an itch.
Dragon Age: Inquisition will be released on all major consoles and PC on Nov. 18 in the US and Nov. 21 in the EU. Are you excited about playing through the story yourself? Will you hold off to read some reviews first? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.