RE: Dragon Age Inquisition
January 17, 2015 at 8:04 pm
(This post was last modified: January 17, 2015 at 8:07 pm by Napoléon.)
So I just finished my first playthrough. Took me about 70 hours and there were still two entire maps/areas of content that I hadn't even got into. Says a lot about the content of the game, but also about the actual importance of some of this content...
My opinions and possible spoilers below:
After completing the game, it has certainly gone up in my estimation since I bashed on it a while ago for a few different reasons. In terms of the characters (the most important thing in a bioware game IMO), they are a lot more memorable after spending much more time with them. Solas and Dorian remain my favourites followed closely by Sera, and Cassandra was surprisingly quite entertaining too considering your first impression of her is one of a typical, boring, butch female soldier. Varric is great just like he was in DA2 and Iron Bull is a badass character to have in your party too. Blackwall was a little boring for me, I got the sense his personality was a little shallow, but strangely he was one of the regulars in my party. As a 'tank', he serves his purpose well, and I guess it's the fact he's a stereo-typical, Duncan-like warden that I ended up liking. As for Vivienne, in the words of Sera "Vivienne's a bitch, but she knows it", and that's good enough for me. Didn't use her that much, but when I did she was a decent enough character to have in your party. I still find Cole's appearance in the game to be trivial at best, but his personal quests were quite interesting and the further on in the game I got the more tolerable he was for me.
I think that's everyone. All in all, pretty good cast as bioware games go. The advisors do a good job of providing more depth outside of your actual companions too, and Josephine's quests were a highlight.
The only real criticism I have of the game itself is that the final 'boss fight', or ending sequence felt a bit rushed. There's the whole build up of shit you have to do, you go through hell and back just to prepare for it. But then in the end it's just "oh look, the bad guy's here", and then you don't even have to chop through hordes of enemies, it's just straight on with fighting him. The fight itself wasn't bad, but I feel like there should have been something more in between fighting the baddie and him just showing up outside your door ready to fight you. I look at how mass effect did it all, and there were several 'stages' or battles you went through, all in the final sequence. When you show up in London and see the reapers destroying shit you know it's not going to be over in one single battle. That made it feel more epic and grand. Like the whole universe/world is fighting in this one place and it's important. The end of Inquisition just feels like an isolated battle that could have been fought whenever you felt like.
Aside from that the gameplay is fun and the various locations are all pretty nice to look at. The western approach is honestly one of the most jaw dropping settings I've seen in a video game. Those orange colours are fucking incredible. The problem is though, a lot of these locations, which are basically reasonably sized open world maps, are filled with an awful lot of 'filler'.
This article from Kotaku pretty much sums it up: http://kotaku.com/dragon-age-inquisition...1667277518
A lot of the time I feel like I'm playing Star Wars The Old Republic. You read that right. Not KotOR, the MMO. And it feels like a lot of the quests are MMO style quests. "Go here and fetch 10 of these", "close these rifts", "collect these shards". In and of itself, this isn't bad, but it's just not necessarily what I play a bioware game for. I mean, you don't have to do a lot of these quests. In fact the vast majority you don't. So what am I complaining about? Well, I guess it's that I don't have to do them that kind of annoys me a little bit, they're just there to give you something to do in between the actual meaty stuff. And there is actual meaty stuff in this game. But the completionist in me gets annoyed when I see entire areas filled with glowing quest markers that I know I'll probably never do.
It's only a minor point though. It's like bioware has gone away from the linear level design and tried to do the open world that everyone loves, but then filled the open worlds with a lot of stuff they just didn't need to. Or stuff they'd put in their MMO's. I'd of rather had fewer places to discover and more important quests to do, than lots of places filled with lots (and I mean lots, did I mention this game is full of content?) of inconsequential shit.
I always get the sense when I write this shit that I criticize too much. I probably do, but it's only because I love games like this so much. I'm thinking of what they could do better next time. For my next playthrough I'm going to use the same character but as a mage (I've never made such a good looking character, so why change it), and I'll probably romance Solas because...
Overall, I'm happy with this game. It is much better than DA:2, which I actually really enjoyed even though a lot of people didn't. I might even go as far as saying it is a better overall game than Origins. The only thing that might make Origins better IMO is the romance options. I romanced Sera in Inquisition, and while it had it's cool moments I didn't feel like it was as good as previous bioware romances. Morrigan for me, remains the best romance choice for any Dragon Age game, but if not for that experience Inquisition probably beats it hands down in every other aspect. The story is more grand, the cast are for the most part more memorable and the gameplay is infinitely more fun. The settings are also great, I bash on them for having too much inconsequential content but it is still fun to waste hours exploring the beautifully designed locations bioware have made.
Final score: Solid 9/10.
Anyone who likes RPG's should buy this fucking game.
My opinions and possible spoilers below:
After completing the game, it has certainly gone up in my estimation since I bashed on it a while ago for a few different reasons. In terms of the characters (the most important thing in a bioware game IMO), they are a lot more memorable after spending much more time with them. Solas and Dorian remain my favourites followed closely by Sera, and Cassandra was surprisingly quite entertaining too considering your first impression of her is one of a typical, boring, butch female soldier. Varric is great just like he was in DA2 and Iron Bull is a badass character to have in your party too. Blackwall was a little boring for me, I got the sense his personality was a little shallow, but strangely he was one of the regulars in my party. As a 'tank', he serves his purpose well, and I guess it's the fact he's a stereo-typical, Duncan-like warden that I ended up liking. As for Vivienne, in the words of Sera "Vivienne's a bitch, but she knows it", and that's good enough for me. Didn't use her that much, but when I did she was a decent enough character to have in your party. I still find Cole's appearance in the game to be trivial at best, but his personal quests were quite interesting and the further on in the game I got the more tolerable he was for me.
I think that's everyone. All in all, pretty good cast as bioware games go. The advisors do a good job of providing more depth outside of your actual companions too, and Josephine's quests were a highlight.
The only real criticism I have of the game itself is that the final 'boss fight', or ending sequence felt a bit rushed. There's the whole build up of shit you have to do, you go through hell and back just to prepare for it. But then in the end it's just "oh look, the bad guy's here", and then you don't even have to chop through hordes of enemies, it's just straight on with fighting him. The fight itself wasn't bad, but I feel like there should have been something more in between fighting the baddie and him just showing up outside your door ready to fight you. I look at how mass effect did it all, and there were several 'stages' or battles you went through, all in the final sequence. When you show up in London and see the reapers destroying shit you know it's not going to be over in one single battle. That made it feel more epic and grand. Like the whole universe/world is fighting in this one place and it's important. The end of Inquisition just feels like an isolated battle that could have been fought whenever you felt like.
Aside from that the gameplay is fun and the various locations are all pretty nice to look at. The western approach is honestly one of the most jaw dropping settings I've seen in a video game. Those orange colours are fucking incredible. The problem is though, a lot of these locations, which are basically reasonably sized open world maps, are filled with an awful lot of 'filler'.
This article from Kotaku pretty much sums it up: http://kotaku.com/dragon-age-inquisition...1667277518
A lot of the time I feel like I'm playing Star Wars The Old Republic. You read that right. Not KotOR, the MMO. And it feels like a lot of the quests are MMO style quests. "Go here and fetch 10 of these", "close these rifts", "collect these shards". In and of itself, this isn't bad, but it's just not necessarily what I play a bioware game for. I mean, you don't have to do a lot of these quests. In fact the vast majority you don't. So what am I complaining about? Well, I guess it's that I don't have to do them that kind of annoys me a little bit, they're just there to give you something to do in between the actual meaty stuff. And there is actual meaty stuff in this game. But the completionist in me gets annoyed when I see entire areas filled with glowing quest markers that I know I'll probably never do.
It's only a minor point though. It's like bioware has gone away from the linear level design and tried to do the open world that everyone loves, but then filled the open worlds with a lot of stuff they just didn't need to. Or stuff they'd put in their MMO's. I'd of rather had fewer places to discover and more important quests to do, than lots of places filled with lots (and I mean lots, did I mention this game is full of content?) of inconsequential shit.
I always get the sense when I write this shit that I criticize too much. I probably do, but it's only because I love games like this so much. I'm thinking of what they could do better next time. For my next playthrough I'm going to use the same character but as a mage (I've never made such a good looking character, so why change it), and I'll probably romance Solas because...
Overall, I'm happy with this game. It is much better than DA:2, which I actually really enjoyed even though a lot of people didn't. I might even go as far as saying it is a better overall game than Origins. The only thing that might make Origins better IMO is the romance options. I romanced Sera in Inquisition, and while it had it's cool moments I didn't feel like it was as good as previous bioware romances. Morrigan for me, remains the best romance choice for any Dragon Age game, but if not for that experience Inquisition probably beats it hands down in every other aspect. The story is more grand, the cast are for the most part more memorable and the gameplay is infinitely more fun. The settings are also great, I bash on them for having too much inconsequential content but it is still fun to waste hours exploring the beautifully designed locations bioware have made.
Final score: Solid 9/10.
Anyone who likes RPG's should buy this fucking game.