A new PC RPG called Dragon Age: Origins is due for release on November 6th.

PC Gamer have just reviewed it in their new December issue and it looks like it will be a very special RPG indeed. Created by the same people behind such greats as Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect you know it is going to be something special.

Dragon Age is a traditional fantasy RPG of epic proportions, promising at least 80 hours gameplay per play though, and with 6 alternative and very different races and character classes to play as the main character, with each placing you in a completely different starting point embroiled in the history and lore of your character's race you have a lot of unique experiences to enjoy by playing through the game as each of them.

They have also create a brilliant combat system that all RPG fans should enjoy. It contains many elements from games like Baldur's Gate and Dungeon Siege, with you able to hit the space bar at any time to pause the action abd issue commands to your party members, then hit space again to un-pause and see the actions played out. I always loved this style of gameplay as it lets you tackle combat in realtime, but pause to take a breather and manage your characters and issue commands when needed.

However the combat system goes much further than that. Now you can assign specific actions to be performed when specific conditions are triggered. You choose these from a cascading menu system, so for example you could select "Self" then "Health" and finally "<25%", so that from that point forward whenever your character's health falls below 25% they automatically heal themselves.

But you could take it further, but telling a character to use ranged weapons until an enemy is close, then automatically switch to Melee weapons, or for the Mage to cast a spell to deactivate powerful swings if enemies get too close.

A very powerful combat system that you can get into as much as you like. You could for example fight in realtime and completely forget the paused turn based command features or the conditions assignment, but then you would be missing a lot of it's power and making it very hard to win battles.

The game itself centres around an order called the Grey Wardens, who are enlisted to protect the races from the Darkspawn and the taint that they spread throughout the lands. The main story of the game is to travel to all parts of the world to convince each race to uphold their part of a very old treaty to join forces as the Grey Warden's against the Darkswarn.

The game is coming out on PC, 360 and PS3, but I think the PC version will be the best and have a longer lifespan due to the modding community as time goes on.

Visit the official site at http://dragonage.bioware.com/ to see some videos, screenshots and lots more. The videos are especially impressive.