Dragon Age: Inquisition’s Skyhold is a Home Away from Home

Explore Dragon Age: Inquisition's Skyhold, your crew's home away from home and base of operations.

This preview on Game Informer details some information about the castle that will serve as your home base in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Though you'll travel far and wide, you'll always come back to Skyhold to regroup and recover with your party. Creative director Mike Laidlaw and producer Cameron Lee provided info on the castle and said that you don't even utilize it at the beginning of the game, instead hanging out with your young party in the village of Haven. And when you do get access to Skyhold, it's in pretty bad shape.

Laidlaw said, "When you first reach Skyhold, it’s not in good shape. There are holes in the roofs, it’s wrecked, you can’t even go to the entire castle because they haven’t cleared out the rubble yet.”

But as you gather more members and grow your Inquisition, the castle will improve and provide access to more features. “It goes from ‘kind of wrecked castle’ to ‘your castle.’ The walls are fixed. Your soldiers are patrolling. You see your support staff growing in number. Merchants come to set up station. You get that feeling of it becoming a grand, central hub," said Laidlaw.

One neat aspect about Skyhold is that you can tweak its overall look and customize the decor. If you wanted, you could deck out your crib in furniture with Dalish Elf motifs. The choice is yours and serves to provide aesthetic differences, so you don't have to worry about specific decor providing buffs or bonuses.

Skyhold also serves as your base of operations and your Inquisitor can plan out his or her next moves on the war table. You'll also be able to expand your Inquisition's growth and influence the world. In fact, "influence" is a resource that you can track and acts as your experience. There's also power, which you can use as currency and unlock areas as well as advance the story. Then there's time, which always ticks by but is used up by special operations that you can undertake. Operations allow you to send agents out into the world to complete a task in real time, since your Inquisitor will be busy enough.

Of course, not everything is about business in Skyhold. You can wander around to see your party members hanging out. And if you're romantically inclined, then Skyhold is where you'll do most of your wooing. Better make sure your game's on point!

Lastly, Skyhold is where you can participate in judgments. By sitting on the throne, you can witness scenes in which you'll have to act as a judge and decide someone's fate. Laidlaw said, “Judgments serve two purposes. One is feeling in command, but they also provide a way for us to wrap up some of the loose ends. They’re never just arbitrary. Because you did X, or because you dealt with Y, then the characters are brought before you. As a result, you already have the context. You have been dealing with these guys – or opposing them in many cases – and now they are brought before you.”

Look forward to hanging out at this nifty base when Dragon Age: Inquisition is released on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on Nov. 18.

Ya know... Skyhold looks roomy enough to hide a body. Just sayin'.