Dragon Age: Inquisition - Preview @ Only SP

Only SP has a new preview of Dragon Age: Inquisition calling it a step in the right direction for fantasy RPGs.

Bioware is describing their main storyline as a campaign, which to me has a much different meaning than calling it a “main quest” etc. To me that means it’s not going to be another Skyrim where the narrative is shallow and uninteresting due to having to stuff the world with so much filler content. Some of the sidequests were more exciting in Skyrim than the main quest, to be completely honest. What Bioware seems to be doing with Inquisition is making the open world part of the game an accessory to the main storyline, and as with other open world RPG’s the main idea of the game is for the player to explore and create their own path. Inquisition allows you create your own path through the choices you make, but unlike most open world games, since the narrative drives the game forward these choices have a much bigger impact than deciding against doing a fetch quest for a random NPC in an open world.

Having the player feel like they’re playing a linear campaign in an open world would seemingly give the player the best of both worlds. You get a game with a directed narrative that is compelling and allows the player to take breaks when needed, but also drives them to finish the story. To me, having an open world feel like doing a bunch of different quests to get to one final goal is just tedious and uninteresting.

If Bioware can create a campaign in an open world setting similar to the likes of The Witcher 2, they may make a fan out of me yet.