Dragon Age: Inquisition review - a vast, masterful epic that you can truly lose yourself in

Xbox 360/Xbox One/PC /PS3/PS4 (version tested); Electronic Arts; £45

Welcome to Thedas, where demonic rifts have opened to a dimension known as The Fade and evil is coming through. You play as a mage, rogue or warrior and are central to the game’s plot, which revolves around your ability to seal these rifts. At the same time the Inquisition has been tasked with providing order to the area, and you have to deal with spies and wars that break out across the world as people question your authority, as you have been chosen as their figurehead.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is an action role-playing game, and the third in the series. I play as a mage flinging ice and fire at a number of different enemies, ranging from the Templar to bandits and demons. You can pause the game at any moment and issue orders to other members of your party (who you can also control directly if you want to). Combat’s visceral and fun, but also maintains a tactical element, which is welcome.

There is a moment early in the game where it clicks. I stumble across, like many reviewers and players, what will soon become an early iconic moment for the series. On Storm Coast a giant hurls rocks at a dragon. ‘Can we watch?’ Sera, the rogue who just joined my team asks. Yes, we can, and indeed most will just watch as these two behemoths battle it out. I decide, instead, after closing the demonic rift beyond them, to join them. The giant is immune to most of my mage’s spells, but Sera’s volley of arrows wound him. It’s a war of attrition, my mage teleporting away just in time as the giant throws the rock down where her head would have been. I retreat wounded but with the giant’s bounty, grinning like a schoolchild.

This is Dragon Age at its best - immersive storytelling, a Skyrim-like level of discovery. The game never really tells you to do anything - there are hundreds of quests and you can go about them however you like - but you feel compelled to wander and explore. It’s huge, and varied, going from wastelands to deserts, to shores and temple ruins. It’s a wonderful place and the new graphics look spectacular.

Anyone familiar with the series will fall quickly in love here. Bioware have obviously listened to fan feedback following the slightly dismal Dragon Age 2 and have crafted a game that’s befitting of their pedigree. The setting’s vast and the characters are memorable and there’s a bonkers amount of content that you can interact with. Fancy collecting treasure maps? Or maybe you want to unlock the mysteries of the stars and follow complex puzzles, dotted around the map for you to uncover? Of course you do.

It’s a game that exceeds 50 hours of play, and I’m currently on around 20. I can’t comment on the end-game or post-game because I haven’t reached it yet. But what I can say is that it’s a game I’m compulsively playing and despite the technical difficulties such as texture pop-in and minor glitches, I’m in awe at what I’m seeing. I keep on returning to that moment on Storm Coast when a crack of lightning fills the air just as the sea swells and a huge wave crashes against a stone stack showering the place in foam, as two behemoths battle on the shore. This is what the new generation is providing us with a year after it has begun, and it's a sign of what other companies will continue to improve on. The PRs have said that the technical difficulties of the game will be addressed with a patch soon after release. If they fix the minor gripes then consider this review a full five, and not a four.