Dragon Age Inquisition (first 4 hours)

Close the rift, Save the world

The storey of Dragon Age Inquisition begins in flame and blood appropriately.  Those of you familiar with the story of Dragon Age should be able to drop in and pickup the story.

But for those of you who didn't drop large portions of your life into the Dragon Age franchise finding every codex entry and searching for lost lore in Fereldan you might be at a little bit of a loss at first.

The world of Theadas has been plunged into chaos.  The Mages of the Circle have rebeled after years of oppression at the hands of the Templars of the Chantry who have been the watchers and wardens of the Circle.  Now admittedly Mages can be gateways for demons to possess and cause unimaginable carnage.  But come on, if you were locked up since the time you were 6 and told you were an awful creature in the eyes of the Maker you might be pretty pissed too.

I've included a link below to the Dragon Age Wiki if you're interested in learning more about Mages and Templars as I find the dynamic and story pretty interesting and more compelling then I can describe here in a blog post

Link to the Dragon Age Wiki entry on Mages: http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Mage

Fight the good fight as you see fit

We get to play as a new character that through the prologue eventually becomes known as the "Herald of Andraste".

After an explosion at the conclave to bring the Mage-Templar war to an end kills everyone there including the Chantry's Divine (a sort of President Pope role) through the power structure of the land into chaos.  After the explosions rifts into the fade start opening allowing demons and nightmares into the mortal world and only the Herald has the power to close those rifts and restore stability.

Which race will you choose?

I'm 4 hours in and the story was initially kinda choppy and disjointed as they tried to tie Inquisition to the events of Dragon Age 2 as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Towards the middle of hour 3 I started to feel like I was playing the old Dragon Age that I knew.  Inquisition is definitely different from Dragon Age: Origins but it has taken a refreshing step away from the bland landscapes and boring combat of Dragon Age 2.

Racial customization is back which is very very welcome since it was really boring being locked into only one origin story in DA2.  This time players can play as Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Qunari.  I'm super excited about playing as a Qunari Mage when I play through next given their races stance on Mages is even more harsh than the Chantry's.

Old favorites return along with new friends

It is refreshing when a game development company can take notes from its fans.

Bioware didn't do a knee-jerk reaction back to a older style but they went back to their roots and came out swinging with a good mix of old charm and new ideas for their game.  The landscapes are sprawling and you could literally get lost in them if you didn't have your quest map.

Repeating and bland dungeons were something that I loathed about Dragon Age 2 but that has been eradicated here in Inquisition with new areas and fresh level designs.  I could draw up a check list of everything that drove me crazy in Dragon Age 2 and Bioware would be able to check off everyone of them as improved upon or at least addressed.

As of right now I'm stoked on Dragon Age: Inquisition.