14 DAY TRIAL // The team at BioWare working on Dragon Age: Inquisition has been on a charm offensive recently, offering an impressive new title for the role-playing game and more information about the core mechanics, the classes and the enemies that players will face.
But the part of the complex site associated with the franchise that I love most is the overland map depicting Ferelden, which has a number of flags showing where various important events in the history of the fictional universe took place.
I have spent easily 40 minutes going from one to another and to the attached timeline in order to try and remember the lore and the events that have shaped the world I explored in the first two titles in the Dragon Age series.
The map also holds a lot of promise because it shows how big the land of Orlais, which will be featured in the coming Inquisition, and how many important areas inside the player can explore.
The attention that BioWare has paid to the official site and the way it presents Ferelden is a sign that the company is looking to offer a broader experience than the Kirkwall focus one delivered in Dragon Age 2, which disappointed a lot of players.
The studio has managed to put together such a solid fantasy universe, starting basically from scratch, that it would be a shame to only hint at its existence and confine the player to one big city and its outskirts, regardless of how content packed they are.
Inquisition is designed to be a title that encourages the player to explore the game world and choose where to act and how to influence certain locations and that’s encouraging for those who want to find out more about the world of Dragon Age and its many interesting characters.
I can barely wait to see the design that BioWare chooses for the map in the game and how it will reflect the travels of the player as he seeks to make peace between various factions in order to use their resources to close the tear in the Fade.
Good map design might seem less important than the core mechanics of the title or the story it tells, but it represents a sign of the dedication of the team and its intentions.
Dragon Age: Inquisition will be launched on October 7 of this year all over the world on the Xbox One from Microsoft, the PlayStation 4 from Sony, the PC and current-gen consoles.