"Big levels obviously can't narrate themselves; that's impossible. The scope of that is too big. They need to give the player opportunities to tell their own stories and ultimately that's what comes from exploring this open-world gameplay." I get a feel for what Darrah's talking about in an area called the Dales Highlands, a zone that ends up being my favorite in Inquisition. The intro to the Dales is incredibly light. An arcane, malicious blizzard has grasped the area's rough, typically-thawed cliffs, icing the river that nearby Sarhnia depends on for food and trade. What I notice throughout this area, and appreciate, is the lack of heavy-handed exposition about who, what, where, and why: the theme of the Highlands, as I discover simply by fighting through it, is driving out an invader and advancing the frontline.

The Red Templars (a faction of rebel, overzealous Templars) are to blame for the magic winter, and I see their signature pocking the cliffs as I climb: red lyrium. This potent, dangerous anti-magic substance is the source of the corruption that's tainted these Templars, and huge crystalline shards of it are piercing the Highlands. I cleave and shield-bash through a fourth pack of the misguided knights in an ice tunnel; the whole screen is a glow of blue light filtered through pristine ice and unnatural, saturated red emanating from the lyrium. These colors tell the story as well as any dialogue.

Further up, I fight a Red Templar Behemoth, less a soldier and more a 15-foot-tall, faceless lump of bipedal lyrium. For the first time I have to toggle-on Dragon Age's tactical camera, renovated for Inquisition, to kite the monster and deliberately spend my party's abilities. It's here that I realize how comfortable Inquisition feels when played as a real-time action-RPG; even more than it did in DA2. Broadly, the combat isn't as demanding as a conventional action game—there's auto-attack—but it also never drifts into, say, over-generous hit detection or the disconnected ‘combat dancing' of some MMOs.

"We're going for a hybrid of Origins and Dragon Age 2 stuff," Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw says of the combat. "We want the responsiveness of DA2, that's a biggie, but the influences of Origins are undeniable. We did want to find that balance." Although I played Inquisition on PC, unfortunately I wasn't able to do so on a mouse and keyboard. Still, it was strangely reassuring how well the tactical approach to combat handled on a controller, of all things. Plotting commands was simple, clean, and helped by an interface that mostly mirrors what we had in Origins. Unlike that game, though, Inquisition uses highlights and color to make that visual information more interesting and readable. The camera behaved well throughout. Automated AI settings are preserved, too, like how much mana a mage should keep in reserve, or at what HP threshold a character should down a potion.