We've waited a long time for BioWare to start spilling the beans on their long-in-creation PC role-playing game, Dragon Age. After treating us to a somewhat disappointing teaser trailer, EA and BioWare waited another four days until finally releasing concrete details about the game, as well as the first in-game footage.

Hardly a fair game ol' chap.

Volunteers?

BioWare admits that for the past several years, their attention was devoted strictly to Mass Effect. At the same time, their wish is not to lose their reputation as a devoted PC developer. "We're still a PC developer and we're serious PC players," they said. The game is PC-exclusive - for the time being, that is. Console editions were mentioned during the E3, albeit the programmers and designers at BioWare are putting all of their energy into the PC version, which is going to hit the market some time in Q1 2009. "It's a clearly a PC game," they said.

Having changed the title to Dragon Age: Origins, BioWare finally uncovered their intentions. This "dark heroic fantasy" RPG, as they call it, represents the company's effort to return to its roots, featuring classic Baldur's Gate style mechanics, an epic storyline, party-based gameplay, all wrapped neatly in what appears to be a well-polished graphics engine, which they claim was built from the ground-up. Let me tell you right now that it looks wonderful. The world is gritty and dark, with highly detailed surroundings shown.

Dragon Age is mixes a variety of elements from some of BioWare's top games. Apart from Baldur's Gate, games like Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic and even Mass Effect have clearly provided solid groundwork for DA. Essentially, you could say that the combat and some of the RPG stuff is very much like in the original NWN. When character interaction begins, we noticed that the dialogue sequences are very much different from the highly-interactive and cinematic conversation system in Mass Effect. Your character never speaks and leaves all the chatting to his comrades. So, dialogue wise, the game resembles KotOR and NWN. Yep, there are plenty of dialogue trees, you can be sure of it, although that won't be the heart of the game.

If you've caught some of the early media, you probably noticed a predominant over-the-shoulder perspective. It gives you a chance to zoom in on the action. The moment the action starts, however, that particular point of view may not be the best solution. Once the battle commences, you're gonna want to have a decent overview of the area, which is where the tactical, NWN-style, top-down view comes in - enter another BioWare trademark; the "pause and play" routine. You freeze the action, issue commands, queue attacks and then watch how it all plays out. Hit points appear once your characters attack, letting you know how much damage you're causing or if your actions have any effect at all (again, very much like D&D inspired Baldur's Gate and NWN). We were told that the game allows you to have a maximum of four characters in your party.

Keep in mind that it's not all retro gameplay. BioWare seasoned the proceedings with some pretty huge enemies and epic battles. An impressive battle was demonstrated as our party encountered a colossal ogre. Putting such a beast down appeared to be a great challenge and required a skillful use of each one of the characters in the group (you may check out the footage of that battle in the recently published gameplay trailer.

The only thing we regret is that the creators of Dragon Age weren't ready to showcase two very important aspects of the game - character development and customization, as well as the classes. The game will have classes (you can bet on it), although it's going to be some time before they talk about them.

We have been waiting to find out more about Dragon Age ever since its initial announcement back in 2004. Now, that we've finally witnessed it in action, it's safe to say BioWare has set a very clear goal for itself. They are gearing the project towards traditional RPG gameplay mechanics and at this stage it all appears to be fitting neatly into place.