Dragon Age: Inquisition First Impressions

Finally!  After a false start yesterday in anticipation of the release of Dragon Age:  Inquisition it became available at 9:00 P.M. last night.  I was able to start my new adventure in Thedas--albeit very briefly (I was only able to play for a little over an hour--work the next day).  One hour was enough to get me even more excited about returning to the fragile world that is Thedas.

My first task was to create a hero to be my inquisitor.  I resisted the urge to roll a qunari and settled into an elf mage.  The character creation tool in Inquisition is amazing--you can alter the look of your hero in almost infinite ways.  I knew I had limited time to play so I chose a preset face and only slightly altered it, but you could realistically spend hours perfecting your hero.  Finally ready to play...

The opening sequence is nothing like the previous games, there is no revisiting of lore, you're just thrust right into a confusing situation.  Your hero appears to be in a strange place (the fade?) being pursued by ravenous spiders when a mysterious glowy figure reaches out to pull your hero up onto a ledge, out of reach of the skittering horrors.  The next scene shows your hero falling out of a green flash of light and being surrounded by soldiers.  Immediately it becomes apparent that you have been arrested and are in trouble.  Your hero finds himself/herself in a prison, handcuffed to the floor, with strange green light emanating from his/her hands.  The door slams open and Cassandra Pentaghast and Leliana enter the room.  Cassandra immediately starts questioning your hero while Leliana assists.  Your hero is clueless about what is happening, but Cassandra knows more.  She decides to take your hero out of the cell and release them.  Somehow she has pieced together that your flashy green hands are an important tool in closing mysterious rifts that are appearing all over Thedas.  She agrees to accompany you to the location of the first rift, near the temple of Andraste.

Once you have left the starting area you have a chance to try out the new combat system.  Combat doesn't appear to have changed drastically from previous games, but it is slightly different.  You must press and hold a button to perform basic attacks and you use special abilities (spells for my mage) by pressing the numbered hotkeys.  One big change--there is jumping in this game!  I kept hitting spacebar to pause combat only to watch as my willowy elf jumped around like an idiot.  I'm still not 100% certain which key pauses combat.  The combat is as detailed as in Dragon Age 2--my mage twirled her staff around in a fantastic fashion while hurling fire spells and lightning bolts.  One thing I noticed that was different was a much higher level in detail when it came to status effects related to spells.  Fire spells cause a target to panic and lightning spells reduce defenses.  In my brief play time last night I made it to where I could control my party, but didn't get a great feel for their abilities.

One of the major bragging points from DA:  I pre-sale was an "open world."  This was somewhat evident in my initial explorations.  Rather than following a narrow set path I found myself climbing up snowy mountains to look for loot.  This wider world is very detailed and beautiful--the graphics are amazing and I am awed by just the small zone I am currently playing in.

Cassandra and Varric--totally not friends.

My favorite moment so far came when my combo of Cassandra Pentaghast and my mage ran into an elf mage named Solas and none other than Varric Tethras (who is even sexier in Inquisition) fighting off demons.  As Varric introduces himself and adds in some color commentary about being "ass deep in demons" Cassandra can't help but cringe with total disgust.  It's obvious that these two aren't over their past differences and aren't going to be BFF's any time soon.  I have to work late tonight but am anxious to explore more of the chaos plaguing Thedas.