[Dragon Age Origins Camera Mod
Addison Mauldin
I looked into many guides and videos about the tactical camera in dragon age inquisition. Often the "advance time" function is mentioned, and in videos where a game pad controller is used, there is a specific button to advance time. How do I do it with keyboard and mouse? I could not find anything on that...
I believe, though I tend to ignore the tactical setup, that you can do so via the Ctrl key. It will toggle between paused and live. Or you can click on the icon (an hourglass inside an eye) in the center of the toolbar.
I'm not worried, playing Dragon Age: Inquisition with one of the game's creators, using characters loaded up with abilities, weapons and an endless cache of power means that the most blundering of adventures should be able to finish off massive dragons.
The creature spews flames at us, snaps at our shields and staffs, stuns our characters to a standstill with deafening roars and then, inevitably, dies, its corpse resting on some distant perch, the victim of a swarm of arrows and magic missiles.
Early on, Mike Laidlaw, creative director of the game, pointed out that the dragon was so massive that it had individual hit points for different parts of the body. Those body parts could be, essentially destroyed, and the dragon would react.
So I set about attacking the dragon's right hind leg. Freezing it over and over again and then pounding into it with a stone fist. Eventually the creature roared, and then it buckled, its leg limp, and collapsed on its side for a moment.
What that means is that the game world lives around you and that while there is still an important narrative, big story beats as Laidlaw called them, the game allows, even encourages, exploration, adventuring and play.
Players will take on the role of an Inquisitor, a character they shape themselves. You can choose one of three classes, one of four races and a gender. Each gender, I'm told, has the option of having either a British or American accent.
My hour or so with the game took place in the world's Hinterlands near the Red Cliff Village. The Hinterlands, Laidlaw told me, are so big you could "pour all of Origins into just this region and it would fit."
The game's world is made up of more than eight "enormous regions" like the Hinterlands and many smaller ones. And these locations are packed with choices and consequences, all governed by what Laidlaw called the World Master.
"It's a content manager that is constantly checking the world state and what's happening," he said. "Seeing where the player is and populating the world around you as you move through it. It also keeps track of what the player has done.
The world reacting to players is an important part of both gameplay and the story. The concept behind Dragon Age: Inquisition is the notion that you're the underdogs, helping to form what will be, in Star Wars parlance, the rebel alliance.
"We thought what if instead of joining the rebel alliance, what if you can found it?," Laidlaw said. "What if from the beginning you were there and the old establishment saw you as kind of threatening?
One of the big changes Inquisition introduces, or reintroduces, to Dragon Age is the tactical camera. In Dragon Age: Origins, the PC version of the game allowed players to zoom out of the action, seeing a battle from an overhead view. That option was completely dropped for Dragon Age 2. A refined, more robust version of it returns in Inquisition.
At any time, in every version of the game, players can go into tactical view. Tactical view pauses the action of the game and zooms the camera out to an almost top-down perspective. You can then select a character and issue a command.
In the version I played, I used the controller's back button to freeze time and then the direction pad to cycle through the characters in my group. Moving the thumbstick let me push a targeting reticule around on the ground to place where I wanted a specific character to move, or who I wanted them to attack. Laidlaw told me that the latest build of the game drops a chess-like piece which looks like the character, on the ground where you have them moving, to make it easier to remember who you have doing what when in tactical view.
I was able to hold the right trigger to restart time, allowing me to move the action forward in spurts so I could micro-manage the battle from above if I wanted to. I was also able to flip back and forth easily between tactical view and the game's standard third-person perspective. That's how Laidlaw plays the game.
"My personal play style is to start a battle, then use the tactical camera to set things up and then let AI-control the team while I control my character," he said. "Some people play through battles entirely top down."
During my battle with the dragon, my jump to tactical view froze a massive fireball in mid air. As I figured out how to place my units, I realized that I was placing one of the characters directly in the path of the fireball, so I pathed her around the danger and to a safer location.
Once I set up my basic commands, I tended to use the right trigger to move everyone to their positions in spurts. This afforded me the ability to rethink my commands or react to enemy movements. When the character I wanted to control in battle got into the fray, I usually jumped back to the standard third-person perspective and played through the encounter that way.
The game also allows players to quickly jump between any one of the group instantly by tapping up or down on the direction pad. I didn't use this that much in battle, but it was nice to, for instance, jump between the tank fighter I had placed in the thick of combat, to the archer I had placed up on the stairs.
Combat was frenzied, colorful and rewarding. Each character I controlled was loaded up with abilities, so many that I could use both the face buttons to use attack and hold a trigger to get to a second batch of abilities.
Laidlaw said that everyone, both the main character and your followers, can have their armor customized. The game also features crafting, driven in part by killing the many wild creatures you see around the world.
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