Dragon Age: Inquisition, Bioware’s smash-hit RPG of last year, is set to release its first piece of single-player DLC tomorrow, just over four months after the game’s initial release back in November.
Entitled Jaws of Hakkon, the news was confirmed on Twitter after a lot of speculation online. Not much has been revealed about the content so far, other than a collection of screenshots and a few Xbox achievements which were leaked earlier today.
Take caution, there’s some big spoilers discussed below.
The achievements on offer include Firestarter, worth 15G, which is awarded to the player upon destroying all Winter Shards and lighting all the fires in a new location entitled the Old Temple.
Another, Legend-Marked, is worth 30G, and is awarded to the player when they impress the Avvar tribe of Stonebear Hold and gain their friendship, a similar mechanic that occurs with a Dalish clan in the main game. Unlike the Dalish, the Avvar haven’t had a particularly big impact on previous Dragon Age games, despite having quite a lot of lore surrounding them. They did make a very brief appearance in Inquisition, however; after the son of Movran the Under - an Avvar tribe chieftain - is killed in battle, he attacks the Inquisition’s base… with goats.
The third achievement revealed is called Historian, again worth 30G, and requires you to uncover secrets of a legendary figure. But who could this legendary figure be? You can see an elf in the screenshots below that hasn’t been featured in the games before. This could then be taken a said legendary figure… but what if we look deeper into the lore?
As previously mentioned, the name of the DLC is entitled Jaws of Hakkon. The name Hakkon first appeared in Dragon Age Origins as part of a codex entry regarding the tribe. Hakkon Wintersbreath is the name of one of their Gods - the son of Korth the Mountain Father, who is said to have created the mountain stems and everything in them, including the Dwarven race - who is the Lord of Winter, whose powers are regarded as being able to give the Avvar the strength to make it through the long winters. Could this be the legendary figure we end up meeting? Or could it be the tale of Tyrdda Bright-Axe, the lady we were fed so much information about in the Hinterlands. Seriously, read the codex. Is this a case of fantastic product placement, or merely coincidence? Only time will tell.
The final achievement revealed is the final reward of Winter’s End, worth 90G, and rewarded to the player upon completing the DLC and “dispel a myth on ancient days”. There’s been some fan speculation as to what this myth could be. Some believe it could be the truth regarding Skyhold and how it came to be. Dispelling the myth could also point to the clearing of Fen’Harel’s name and possibly finding out more about what happened to the elven pantheon. Of course, this could be entirely dependent on whether the DLC takes place before or after the end of the game. If it does happen before, it seems entirely unlikely that the writers would choose to discuss Fen’Harel when it hasn’t been revealed who he is; however, if it is DLC that can only be accessed upon end-game, players may be seeing Solas again sooner than expected. Of course, this is entirely fan theory.
I reviewed Dragon Age: Inquisition for Continue Play at the end of last year and was completely blown away. I’ve always been a massive fan of Bioware game in general, but Inquisition honestly raised the bar for me, especially after the inherent disappointment that Dragon Age II was. At the time, I wrote that Inquisition was “a masterful representation of its genre and sets a new standard for RPGs to live up to” following on with “it sets itself apart from other games through its fascinating narrative and rich cast, and is easily the best role-playing game of the year.” Obviously, the rest of the team agreed pretty heartily, as we ended up naming it as our Game of the Year in our end of the year awards too.
Dragon Age: Inquisition - Jaws of Hakkon will have a trailer released tomorrow, with a simultaneous release for Xbox One and PC; sorry, PlayStation and last-gen fans, you’ll have to wait a few weeks.
