The Art of Dragon Age: Inquisition

The Art of Dragon Age: Inquisition is a large hardcover artbook that's much thicker than I expected. Although it's listed at 184 pages on Amazon and publisher Dark Horse's website, the book's actually 264 pages. That's an additional 80 pages! Collected within is a huge amount of beautiful concept art created for the game. There are designs for characters, props, landscapes, storyboards and some story scene paintings. More specifically, you'll see castles on hilltops, cavernous throne rooms and interiors, exquisite carvings that adorn the walls and ceilings, props such as thrones designed to reflect power of the rulers, faction banners, ancient ruins in deep jungles and other mysterious places imagined by the artists. Even the few screenshots of locations in the game looks great in terms of lighting and mood. The design is very cohesive. Character designs are mainly influenced by medieval warriors in armour. The book includes many variations of costumes and characters. I prefer the environment and prop art to the character designs although they are pretty good as well. There are some creatures and dragons but not much. The captions that come with the artworks talking about the designs are quite insightful but too brief. The style of art is mainly painterly, quite detailed at times to show off the architecture and history of the places. There are some rough pieces but for the most part they look wonderful in terms of textures, composition and invite you to marvel at the details. The recent video game artbooks published by Dark Horse are all pretty good, including this one. Considering the extra pages, amount of content and quality of the art, this is certainly fantastic artbook for fans of the game and fantasy art. Good value for money. (See more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Absolutely adore this book! I love looking at art concept books and I love Dragon Age Inquisition, so this is the best combination. Definitely recommend!

It's always interesting to peek behind the scenes and learn about the creative process that make the characters and world of a game. Bioware, despite their flaws in game design, always excells in creating unique characters and environments and for Dragon Age Inquisition, it's no different. This coffee table sized artbook is a real treat, with over 200 pages detailing the process that lead to life everything in this game. Separated by chapters following each of the game's main missions, it shows how the artists approached each character concept and the feelings they wanted to convey through the various environments. Some pages can be quite dark, however, so I'd definitely recommend reading through under good light. Just a minor inconvenience, but something to keep in mind. Worth the money, though, the little notes by each of the artists adds a lot to an already great artbook. Obviously, there are spoilers in this book and references to past games in the franchise as well.

One of the best Concept Art books I have in my collection. As others have reviewed, the advertised pages is far lower than what you actually get. The character designs are beautiful, and really shows the production process with varying outfits and expressions, and facial attributes. I love to reference this for my own art for ideas and as a basis on designing. The matte painting of scenes is superb how so much implied detail is created in such quick brush strokes, and is really inspiring. You can tell the influence of Mass Effect switched to Fantasy-esque (Obviously same team at BioWare), and the content created for this game, in both art and story is unrivaled. A must for any BioWare fan, for sure!

Great art book with a near perfect balance of character design concepts to background and prop concepts and storyboard panels. This book and the Art of the Mass Effect Universe book are great examples of what animation art books should be like. Some companies put too many screenshots and text into the books. The concept art and character turnarounds are the most important parts of an animation art book, with notes and commentary appreciated. Screenshots should be kept to a minimum. + At least half character turnarounds + Plenty of character art with multiple designs + Multiple pages of storyboard panel examples + Plenty of good background and prop concepts - Lack of profile and front view poses for characters and creatures - Brief creature section - No weapon section

Feels good in your hands, substantial. It feels hastily pieced together in places (Just like the game! [Rim shot]). The last few pages leave you thinking there would be more. That being said, there is a substantial amount of concept art, level designs, and story boards throughout the book. It is nice to see behind the curtain. Like always, you get mad that x,y, and a never made the cut. 'Behind the scenes" books are always fun.

First of all, fair warning if you buy this art book: there are spoilers for major plot points in the game (duh)! Pros: The book is large, just the right dimensions to allow you to really get a good look at the art offered. There's a wide selection of art, ranging from early concept sketches of characters and areas, storyboards for scenes, creature designs, and even objects. Accompanying all the art are extensive and detailed commentary from the artists, so you can get a really good idea on what was going through their minds when they chose certain elements and finalized designs. The game itself is beautiful, and the artbook lives up to it. Cons: All the pictures are dark. Incredibly dark. It's not possible to see fine details on the vast majority of the pictures. I feel like this isn't a problem with the art itself, but a problem with the printing process. Certain page finishes and inks contribute to darker images. You can really see the difference when you compare some of the promotional concept pieces provided in the book to the same pieces that were published online. It actually is a huge problem and is the whole reason why I deducted a star. The dark quality of the pictures brings down the book as a whole and is really my only big problem with the artbook. A really small problem is that the art book isn't comprehensive and can only be considered a sampler. There is a lot of material that simply isn't represented extensively in the book (weapons, armor, tarot cards, etc), and you might only see one or two examples of each category in the book. TL;DR: The book is a fine sampler of art and details the dedication that went into crafting Dragon Age: Inquisition. It is a great choice for any fan of the game, just be prepared to squint at the dark images.

The book is amazing. As a side note it's actually being 264, the cover is gorgeous and the size of the book is much bigger than I had expected. Each page is full of wonderful illustrations and accompanied by lovely little tidbits about the scenes and decisions made for them. The book is quite heavy and sturdy which I also love to pieces. As an artist and a fan of the Dragon Age series, I recommend this book to all fans~ Very much worth the price point.

かなり大きい。絵が多いので読みごたえあり。安く買えたので良かった。

It's a thick book with lots of art to go through

Veio certinho e antes da data, é perfeito, era meu sonho de consumo desde 2018 :)

It's a good book to have if you are curious about the process of designing characters and environments. It's also a nice item to have if you are a fan of the Dragon Age series or if you are looking into studying the creative process of video games.

Libro appena arrivato! Il libro in se è stupendo e pieno di immagini e descrizioni! purtroppo i corrieri trattano i pacchi come fossero sassi.. Infatti una punta del libro è veramente piegata e rovinata purtroppo 😥