This atrocity sees a conclave of the warring rebel mages and chantry wiped out in a heartbeat, and the Chantry’s worshipped leader, the Divine, seemingly lost. Like so much of Bioware’s best work, it opens with a bang: quite literally, a magical explosion opening up a massive rift to the demonic world beyond the veil.
This isn’t a bad thing, and while it works hard to appeal to a more action-oriented crowd, it’s surprising how much you can still make Inquisition feel like a traditional fantasy RPG if that’s your thing. It’s the kind of narrative that a Commander Shepherd would find familiar, and for all that Inquisition reworks Mass Effect’s structural underpinnings in gritty sword and sorcery garb, Dragon Age has never felt more like a fantasy Mass Effect. For all its large, free-roaming areas, each one littered with numerous missions and objectives, Inquisition is primarily a game of collecting party members and forging alliances in order to combat a monstrous evil. In fact, the Mass Effect comparisons go further. It takes its time, but after the near-greatness of Dragon Age: Origins and the repetitive mess that was Dragon Age 2, Bioware’s fantasy series finally gets its Mass Effect 2: a game that takes what should be brilliant in theory and actually nails it in practice. Available on Xbox One (reviewed), PS4, PC, Xbox 360, PS3
