E3 2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition Trailer Showcases Environments, Combat

At Microsoft's E3 2014 media briefing, a new trailer premiered for Bioware's upcoming role-playing game, Dragon Age: Inquisition. The trailer didn't offer any new information about the game, but instead showcased the game's combat and some of the landscapes you'll traverse in its open world. A dramatic voiceover, presumably that of the playable character, the inquisitor, dramatically intoned that “the world is tearing itself apart” and that “chaos has left its mark upon me.”

We see a woman with a bow strapped to her back, strolling through a field of grain, with barren trees and fog-shrouded hills in the distance. Brief glimpses of a variety of other environments and other characters follow, and later we see a party take on an exotic beast in the desert, with a well-armored figure wielding a flaming sword and an agile hunter flipping backwards away from the monster. At various times in the trailer, a glowing green mark is visible on the inquisitor's hand, and the mark seems to both be a source of power and a source of pain for the inquisitor.

Perhaps the most impressive moment in the trailer comes when a party faces a massive fire-breathing dragon. If the trailer is any indication, combat animates in a way that is fluid and varied, though presumably in actual gameplay you'll be pausing the action regularly to issue commands to your party members.

So the trailer was short on details about the game, but was an exciting demonstration of the diversity of the game's world and its combat. Dragon Age: Inquisition will be released on October 7.

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