Dragon Age Inquisition

[Fidel_Castronaut]

The choices in DA open up a lot more dialogue and adventure options or indeed close them off. I've just picked up literally 10 additional quests, most minor but some major, on the map from 'getting to know' my allies and picking the options that get their support. One of my character's icons has changed because of the decision I made about another character a while back which I thought was neat.

Whilst it's true that you can plough on through the main campaign without really doing anything, I've found that the majority of side quests are influenced (from subtle to integral) based on the combination of characters I've taken with me.

Taken as a whole the ME franchise did allow for some cool variations depending on choice, but overwhelmingly I found they stemmed mainly from ME1 and who you kept alive in ME2. Other than that I found the whole cliched 'We've already dismissed that claim' inconsequential dead ends for decision making aside making Shepard a goodie or a baddy (baddy, naturally). Maybe with the exception of the Geth decision making in ME3, oh and mordin, God rest his soul.

[Napoléon]

And sadly EA too, which shows by tagging on multiplayer to make some additional dimes. I wait a bit with my purchase until it goes down to something like 40 or 30 dollars, which should happen later this year.

Multiplayer in ME was pretty good I thought, could of maybe had some additional game types but it was addicting nonetheless. Dunno about Dragon Age though.

The in game payments piss me off though, it's becoming more and more like MMO's where you either grind forever for one sword, or pay 5.99 and get 20 of the things.

[abaris]

The in game payments piss me off though, it's becoming more and more like MMO's where you either grind forever for one sword, or pay 5.99 and get 20 of the things.

That's EAs handywork. Does that mean, you can't pick up cool stuff without real world money?

[Napoléon]

That's EAs handywork. Does that mean, you can't pick up cool stuff without real world money?

I meant only for multiplayer, there's no payments for the single player, which is all I care about.

[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.)

---

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.

---

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

[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...

---

He's so integral to the end game. Also this entire game feels like it should be played as an elf. A lot of the story revolves around Elven history and in general just seems to play better from an Elven point of view. I'm kind of sad though that Dwarves are largely ignored in this game. I used to love their lore but they get nowhere near as much love as the elves.

---

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.

[abaris]

After having watched a lot of videos and having read a lot of reviews, positive and negative, I won't buy this game. At least not at full price. Let's see what's the deal in a year or so.

You're on the console, Napoleon and one of the main issues with PC players are the lacking controls with mouse and keyboard. Most describe it as a chore. Also as far as I've seen and read, they removed the party strategy option completely. Which was one of my favorite parts of DAO, since you didn't have to micromanage real time combat.

I can't say much about the story, but this game is obviously tailor made for console users. And that's not me. Right now I stay with old school. When watching the video reviews, someone mentioned Divinity Original Sin being exclusively produced for PC and Mac. And I bought it, after giving it a try in a not totally legal way. Have to say it's the first time in years, I really got addicted again.

[Napoléon]

You're on the console, Napoleon and one of the main issues with PC players are the lacking controls with mouse and keyboard.

That's fair enough. I did read myself that the PC version is shit for controls.

Most describe it as a chore. Also as far as I've seen and read, they removed the party strategy option completely. Which was one of my favorite parts of DAO, since you didn't have to micromanage real time combat.

Uh, you can still select party tactics so that they use certain powers etc on different conditions. It's not entirely the same I don't think but it's still there.

[Violet]

PC version, wait a while, and modders will fix the all the shit portions of a wonderful game.

... hopefully.

[Silver]

I tried figuring out how to pirate games, especially the Dragon Age series, but there are never any clear step by step instructions on what to do. Would be nice if there were actual guides available.