Having already played Dragon Age: Inquisition, I was familiar with the combat controls, character classes and races, and the general storyline. But after sitting down to play again, I realized a feature that I had all but overlooked prior to replaying- the tactical view. The tactical view takes the diegetic action out of the combat, and instead lets you control your team of four from above. This view allows for the use of nondiegetic actions, such as pausing the action or speeding up time as you please, as well as gives you total control over the team, choosing which abilities they use and when and where they are positioned throughout the battle.
This is by all means a very cool and unique feature in DA:I. One thing that it does is it allows the combat system to be multi-dimensional, and gives the player a choice between an experience similar to a real-time strategy game or that of a third-person combat game. I frequently find games with a repetitive combat style, like Assassin’s Creed for example, to become boring the further into the game I get as all the fights are the same- counter, attack, counter, counter, etc. But with the tactical view, this goes away. DA: I allows for the in-game combat to take upon both a diegetic style and nondiegetic style, letting the player choose freely between the two as he/she progresses. The extra dimension reminds me of the lean-forward or lean-back style of play previously discussed in class, and the use of the tactical view allows for the combat in DA: I to be both. Lean forward and be focused on the real time combat, or lean back and control the whole party from afar.
While it a fun and useful feature of combat- I am not sold on how useful it will be in a difficult fight. Is it possible for it to be even more effective than controlling my character while the CPU controls the others? As I continue to play, I hope to experiment further with the tactical view, and see how it practical it is as the game’s difficulty progresses.