Dragon Age: Inquisition - The Descent DLC | game review
Back to the Deep Roads again (again).
DLC summary: Enter the Deep Roads to battle monstrous darkspawn, bloodthirsty creatures that dwell beneath the surface of Thedas. Explore ancient ruins and cavernous dungeons to find the cause of worsening earthquakes. (EA.com)
Like a lot of people who have played through the Dragon Age games, I'm not really a fan of the Deep Roads - I also couldn't care that much less about the Dwarves in general. There were some interesting threads started in Dragon Age II with the ancient thaig uncovered during Hawke's expedition to find mythical lost riches, but that subplot felt like it had been almost dropped completely for the majority of Inquisition.
In all honesty, there's not really that much of a change in gameplay when it comes to the Deep Roads here either, with there being a lot of combat and an entirely new faction of Dwarves to carve your way through rather than just endless waves of Darkspawn, but don't go in expecting anything particularly fresh or exciting as far as getting through this DLC goes.
What I did like was the new lore introduced that actually made me give a shit about the Dwarves, their origins and the genuinely interesting possibilities for future story-telling that are opened up in The Descent. I did say that the plot around the ancient thaig and there being more to the Dwarves' history stopped dead in the base game of Inquisition, but there may be some pieces that end up tying in - especially when it comes to the magical resource of lyrium.
I don't really want to get into speculating what we might end up seeing in Dreadwolf or other Dragon Age games - especially as it seems BioWare are set to become a Dragon Age and Mass Effect factory for the foreseeable future - so I'll just say that if you didn't particularly like the Deep Roads or Dwarves before, then this DLC might change your mind about one or both, even if it's nothing particularly memorable from a gameplay point of view.
Dragon Age: Inquisition - The Descent DLC sets up some interesting lore for the future and actually makes the Dwarves interesting for once, even if it is pretty much just a lot of combat. There might not be a great deal of variety to what you'll do, but at least it remains fun and each snippet of extra lore is just enough to tease you to keep going. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out...
