'Dragon Age Inquisition' Details Emerge From PAX: Bioware Discusses Companions, Romance, and Dragons

Bioware revealed a few interesting Dragon Age: Inquisition details regarding the companions, romance options, and dragons at their PAX East panel, Eurogamer reports.

We learned from the panel that the game will feature nine companions for the player. The party characters are meant to be masters of their various fields, giving you access to an effective, flexible squad.

There will be more ways to get involved in relationships with party members and other characters than we've seen in the previous entries, and some specific characters that will play a role in Inquisition have been named. Cullen, the Templar who has appeared in small roles in every game, and Cassandra Pentaghast (who interrogates Varric throughout Dragon Age 2) have been confirmed as love interests.

You will be able to get involved romantically in more ways than the traditional falling in love mechanic, including a sort of "hate-filled forbidden love" with a rival character, or getting together with a character who's just been a friend.

We should expect to see familiar faces from the past Dragon Age titles, possibly including the playable characters--the Grey Warden and Hawke--as well as Morrigan's mother Flemeth (who happens to be a dragon, if you recall). Other dragons will reportedly be scripted, significant confrontations, ones that you cannot just waltz into and win.

The Fade (the series' magic realm) won't feature in a major way, and supposedly only your character will be able travel through Fade rift portals and close them--but this will be infrequent. You can choose which Fade rifts you want to close, and what areas you want to bring into your Inquisition. The player is able to send scouts ahead to gather information about a region and report what the benefits of controlling it would be. In addition to being able to send soldiers around the game world to repair and secure towers, but taking a region will be challenging.

Dragon Age Inquisition will be out this fall on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. You can watch the latest great-looking trailer below.