Dragon Age: Inquisition says ‘Hi, Vivienne’

Bioware has released what I have to assume is the start of a series of short videos introducing players to the companion characters of Dragon Age: Inquisition. First up is Vivienne, the gloriously sardonic Orlesian mage. I only managed to collect four companions in my recent five-hour hands-on, but she was comfortably my favourite. Read the piece to find out why. (Clue: It involves enchanted choking.)

I can confirm being ripped apart socially is the worst option. Judging from the final few frames of the video (and this Wikia page) there will be nine potential companions in total, so it might well be that I’ll ultimately come to like one of the others more. But they have their work cut out for them.

Our own Phil Savage has played considerably more hours already, and his review will be going live on 11 November. The game comes out a week later on the 18th. We’ll soon have some extended thoughts on it before then though, in the form of moving pictures and audible words, which I understand the youth are calling a videograph. So keep an eye out for that. Meanwhile, here’s a plug for our round-up of the best and worst Bioware companions.

[Edit: fixed the game release date which had become muddled with the review embargo date.]

With over two decades covering videogames, Tim has been there from the beginning. In his case, that meant playing Elite in 'co-op' on a BBC Micro (one player uses the movement keys, the other shoots) until his parents finally caved and bought an Amstrad CPC 6128. These days, when not steering the good ship PC Gamer, Tim spends his time complaining that all Priest mains in Hearthstone are degenerates and raiding in Destiny 2. He's almost certainly doing one of these right now.