BioWare's ambitious RPG sequel gone open-world enjoyed another showing at the PAX Prime festival over the weekend, and the occasion also signalled a new round of press preview articles, more gameplay footage, and another batch of screenshots and concept art.

The horned-humanoid Qunari race was officially confirmed as the fourth option for player character selection, along with Human, Elf, and Dwarf, and tactical mode during combat was heavily featured. Here's a few bits and pieces from around the Internet:

Eurogamer:

"We always wanted to do it," producer Cameron Lee told Eurogamer of the decision to include tactical mode, "since we had the right amount of time to do it. Having the console generation change and the new technology with Frostbite 3 meant pretty much everything was created from the ground up. Every piece of code, everything was brand new. So you have the opportunity at that point to look at what you want to accomplish, look at feedback and try and find a common ground in a way that strengthens both of those things.

"You take what the players wanted, which could have just been, well, just give me Origins, right? And we could have just done that, but we wanted players to feel like they were controlling the battlefield and battle space through things like some of the destruction, smarter AI, which we've been able to write, and some abilities the characters have for barriers and area of denial and traps.

PC Gamer:

BioWare seem to be really proud of their dragons. There’ll be a fixed number of these in the game, and it sounds like they’ll act as massive boss fights at the culmination of certain areas. They seem a little bit clumsy – they have a tendency to fly leg-first through pieces of tactically scattered ancient ruin, sending bricks and debris in their wake – but it’s nonetheless very impressive. The brief segment we were shown reminded me of the original CGI trailer for Origins, where a dragon battle was a long, mobile, multi-stage affair.

RPS:

And yes, you can relax back in your seat. The combat has its vital strategic elements back too. I’ve waited a thousand words to tell you, just like BioWare waited about 30 minutes into their presentation before putting my mind at ease. The ridiculous choice to limit the paused combat and party commands from DA2 is history, and it’s all back as it should be here.

A montage of new gameplay footage, that was presumably supposed to be B-Roll for video interviews has surfaced (thanks GamesHQMedia), and you can watch that below, along with the new screenshots and concept art.

And Finally, AllGamesBeta has a couple of cam-footage videos from the audience at the PAX Prime presentation that show about 15 minutes of more general gameplay, dialogue scenes, and the tactical combat demonstrated.