Switching over to the mage resulted in a more tactical style of combat along the lines of the first game. With the mage, we preferred pulling up that radial menu and finding the best spell to cast in a given situation. Our favorite quickly became inferno, which lets you rain fire on a radius of enemies as though you'd just called a mortar strike from the heavens. According the Laidlaw, they've worked to make sure the mage has more "wow" moments in combat like the weapon-based classes. To demonstrate, he showed a mage finishing off an Ogre by lifting him up into the air, surrounding him with a dark energy, and then exploding him into nothingness.

Overall, the combat didn't feel remarkably different from the first Dragon Age. It flowed a little more smoothly and moved at a quicker pace, but that was mostly because our talents and spells recharged quickly after using them. That could very easily have just been something BioWare tuned for this public demo--likely a lowered difficulty to help ease players back into the experience. After this admittedly brief demo, we're confident that BioWare knows what they're doing. This isn't going to be a hack-and-slash game.​