The combat and controls are much the same as they were for the console version of Origins (I was playing on the 360) with the left analogue stick handling movement, the A button for basic attacks/interacting and the other face buttons assigned to special combat moves. Thankfully the movement of the character you are controlling is a lot less clunky and because of this battles feel more fluid and fun. Part of this fun involves seeing a defeated Darkspawn explode in a shower of blood and body parts, though the death animations did become quite repetitious after a while.

Defeating the waves of Darkspawn that tried to halt Hawke’s progress was not a very challenging affair given my extensive experience with dragon age 2’s predecessor and the quick recharging of special combat moves; even so it didn’t take more than a few hits for a darkspawn grunt to go down and for me to plow through them to a showdown with an ogre, who was a bit of a pushover as well to be honest.
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