14 for 2014 - Dragon Age: Inquisition

Okay, maybe a few bursts of info, and the studio has been quite good at teasing game tidbits so far through social media since the game was finally officially announced earlier this year - Dragon Age III had been rumoured for, well, an age, but it wasn't until August that we finally got to sit down and see Dragon Age: Inquisition in action.

The fantasy RPG once more takes BioWare's unique spin on the traditional settings and creatures you'd expect from such a genre, crafting a multi-regioned adventure in which the freedom of choice is as real and as affecting as what we've experienced in the Mass Effect series. The studio example just one, as their Inquisitor passes a village battling an invading horde, and decides to leave them to their fate. Such decisions will effect your company as well, which we witness in condemning stares from the Inquisitor's party when they travel back through the area to find the burnt-out remains of the town and bodies littered everywhere.

As with BioWare's critically-acclaimed sci-fi saga, you'll be able to import decisions made in the previous two titles, to shape the third entry by your previous actions.

"You can do that through the Dragon Age Keep website, which we just announced," said game producer Cameron Lee when we talked to him earlier this year. "So what you'll do in that is you'll pick answers, you'll have a whole bunch of questions, like hundreds of different questions and you'll be able to pick the answers to that. So that's questions from Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, all the different DLC that we've released, even some of the flash games that we've done in the past. All of these decisions that you've made in the previous games you can set it all up and you can bring that down into your console or onto your PC and that sets the world stage for Dragon Age: Inquisition."

One thing the studio is consciously trying to better for Inquisition is to make sure there's less distinction between 'good' and 'bad' answers dividing conversation branches, so as to not make it so obvious to the player which path they're leading their character down. It definitely sounds like it'll give the game a more nuanced take on its story, (and stop you reloading previous saves just to avoid the wrong choice) though it may be more difficult to see all the game has to offer come second and third playthroughs.

Since we saw the game, its creators have announced one of its milestones has been reached; the game is now fully playable from start to finish (even if it is rough around the edges and a lot of polish still needs to be put in before it launches next year), which was a goal the developers had wanted to reach before the end of 2013. It means they now can check the narrative flow and more carefully mould a better paced story through reiterating between now and when the game goes gold.

But whatever form the game takes, it'll stick to the company's RPG values - offering the player complete freedom in creating their own adventure, not just in terms of player choice and how it impacts on the characters around you, but this time we're going to see it in the world that you're exploring, as Bioware moves away from the corridors found in Mass Effect and the original Dragon Age games.

"The most important thing to me about the next Dragon Age game is probably the amount of freedom that you have in the game," Lee emphasises. "Freedom to create the character you want to create, explore the world in the way that you want to explore the world. So we really want to empower the player and give them a sense that this is their game."