Dragon Age Inquisition

[ManMachine]

Fuck yeah...

Who else got this for Xmas? Or before, I guess, if you don't have to wait for Santa.

I thought I'd give some first impressions, as I'm only 25 hours in so far.

(Rant below, possibly contains spoilers, I also say a few things that kind of assume you know the characters/story. I was bored as fuck when I wrote the following too. Okay?! I pretty much wrote a whole fucking review basically, so uh... read at your own peril. It's fucking long is what I'm trying to say.)

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I'll get the bad stuff out the way first:

My only real issue with it is that I'm playing on ps3. I can really tell it's not meant to be played on this system. 90% of the time the graphics look like utter shit. Textures are fucking awful. However, the other 10% of the time I can just get a glimpse of how absolutely gorgeous this game must look on the new generation of consoles (and PC for you supremacists). I'm currently exploring an area called the Western Approach, and it's easily one of the most colourful and beautiful game settings I've ever seen. The environments are fantastic. A real step up from the previous Dragon Age at least.

The other downside to playing on ps3 is that it's spazzy as fuck. It's locked up on me about 6 or 7 times. Usually about an hour after I've fucking autosaved too. Which is great.

But I guess that's not really the game's fault. Although it kinda is. I don't get why they released it on the previous systems if it runs so poorly.

Meh, it's not such a big deal.

There's only been one other minor issue I've had so far, and I guess it's just a gripe I have because previous bioware games were pretty good at this sort of thing. Some of the recruitment for companions seems a little lacklustre. I've recruited all companions and none of their recruitments was at all memorable. This isn't like Mass Effect or even KotOR where you'd encounter people on the way, or you'd help them out and they'd be indebted to you, or you'd do something to make an impression or inspire the person to follow. Nah. In this game, your companions just sort of show up out of the blue and are like "yeah, I'll join you". Not really much reasoning or believability when recruiting them. They're just, there. That kinda makes it harder to get involved with them, at least initially. I'm starting to have my favourite characters as time goes on, and judging by what I've already seen, there's surely enough time to get to know them all properly, like on the level of what Mass Effect achieved perhaps.

A similar issue I had was when the Inquisition just happens to stumble upon some seemingly perfect fucking fortress in the middle of a mountain range. Wtf. Was there any reasoning whatsoever given? No not really. Just a case of "yep, here's some kick ass fortress because your old place got burned down, have fun".

And it is fun. It's probably the best 'home base' in a bioware game. But it just didn't make much sense the way you're just suddenly moved in there.



Onto the good shit anyway...

As I said I've put in about 25 hours so far, and it just continues to boggle my brain how much effing content they've put in. Bioware usually makes pretty deep games in terms of content, but never when I play one do I become so overwhelmed by it. Dragon Age Inquisition however? Damn. This thing just gets bigger and bigger. I read some reviews and heard some shit beforehand about this game having a lot of content, and man, they did not lie. I dare say this game has more content to it and things to do than any other bioware game to date, and I've not even seen half of the environments or even half the main story. It's crazy good.

The customization is also great, I might have an issue with how the Skyhold was introduced but it's fucking great that you can customize the shit out of it. The armor and weapon customisation is pretty good too, and the character creation is pretty damn awesome. I've probably created one of the best looking characters I've ever had the chance to create.

Literally she looks like this:

I found this model on reddit and used the sliders to create a character who looks exactly like that. I mean damn. That's impressive considering most other character creation systems lead to your character looking like this:

Everything else so far is on par for what I expect from a bioware game. The story is interesting enough and the characters are slowly but surely coming into their own. The music is also pretty awesome, as you'd come to expect, and it's given me my favourite bard song ever:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Zkun0tJc4

Speaking of Sera. She's the most interesting character so far, at least for me. I know she's supposedly like marmite, some people love her some people hate her. Solas is cool too, but he reminds me of that guy from the mummy for some inexplicable reason:






Dorian is funnier than I was expecting too. He's come out with some hilarious one liners. Leliana is a lot more whinier than I remember, annoying bitch. Everyone else is kind of forgettable, for now at least. I'm probably not giving a fair shout just yet.

Overall, after 25 hours, this is shaping up to be the best Dragon Age yet.


Those are some of my thoughts anyway. Thank ye for letting me waste your time with mindless drivel.

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Discuss.

I've not played it yet but one of my colleagues has recommended it to me. I just dumped ESO as they ran out of solo content and I got bored.

MM