At a preview session in Melbourne last week AusGamers had the opportunity to ask Mike Laidlaw, the Creative Director for Dragon Age: Inquisition, about the presence of Blood Magic in BioWare's upcoming game. He told us no, and went on to explain why.

"So we aren't actually doing Blood Magic in Inquisition as a specialisation, in part because I made myself a promise -- if we went back to Blood Magic we would do it up real good,” he said. “I felt like we were undercutting its significance, because in the Dragon Age world it is the ultimate temptation. I think think that to do it right it almost needs to be the Malkavian option from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. And it's something we need to explore, but in a game where we were also exploring open world and five platforms and multiplayer it seemed like perhaps we had enough irons in the fire.

At some point I'll go back to it huge, because it's an absolutely fascinating part of the world that I want to do more with. If you read Dragon Age: Last Flight though, you get to see Blood Magic as it's supposed to be. It's gruesome and horrible, yet highly effective.

I guess it's disappointing to some people because they kinda dig it, but again, there's the Blood Magic you imagine it could be, and looking at what we had I don't think we were going to deliver that. So I said ok, let's get some other specs down, one of the biggies for me for mage is getting back to the combat mage, which is Knight Enchanter. They're frankly almost the cleric of the DA world because they have very good protective spells and inspirational buffs and stuff, so they're very good front line fighters too. They can be right up there swinging, like the Arcane Warrior kind of fantasy. I decided we would get some of those in that don't have this massive story overhead like Blood Magic does."

Read our full hands-on preview here, and head to the Games Page to see the rest of our Dragon Age: Inquisition coverage.