Dragon Age 3 Inquisition: Skyhold Details Surface

The latest issue of PC Gamer UK, a print magazine (yes, they’re still around), has a rather lengthy preview of BioWare’s upcoming role-playing game, Dragon Age: Inquisition. The preview goes into no small amount of detail about Skyhold, a feature not unlike Mass Effect’s Normandy—serving as base of operations for the protagonist and his or her crew.

Skyhold is described as “detailed, cavernous, but more importantly, there’s more stuff you can do in Skyhold than on Commander Shepard’s ship.” There’s a tavern, stables, courtyard, kitchen, a dungeon for imprisoning and interrogating people, and a War Table that serves as a command room for the missions you, the Inquisitor, decide to undertake. You can complete these micro-quests entirely through the menu, which grant you modest benefits, such as gold, loot, resources, or adding more ‘agents’ who join the Inquisition.

Interestingly enough, there’s an aspect of personalization to Skyhold—you can decorate the place manually, selecting everything from the windows and throne, to the banner, heraldry, and drapes. 

As a result of your quests, you can “pass judgment” on certain characters that alter the story in the game. 

"Some operations, like this one, are instantly resolved, but others ask you to pick which of your three advisors – Josephine (political), Cullen (military), or Leliana (spying) – is the right fit for the job, making them temporarily unavailable. You can visit with all three of these support characters inside Skyhold.

“Also nestled into the War Table (but separated from operations) are Inquisition perks, which draw on influence that you gain from exploring Thedas and completing quests. (If power is ‘Inquisition gold,’ as Darrah puts it, influence is Inquisition XP, effectively.) There are four perk types: Forces, Secrets, Connections, and simply ‘Inquisition’, the first three of which are tied to the aforementioned advisors. A Forces perk might increase your potion capacity by four; a Secrets perk might increase the XP you earn from picking up codex entries; one Connections perk grants better merchant offers on rare items. Skyhold changes as a reflection of which perks you favour, although I wasn’t told how."

From the sounds of it, Dragon Age: Inquisition shares a number of features with Larian’s politic-heavy RTS Divinity: Dragon Commander.