Dragon Age: Inquisition

I played it all the way through last year and ended up really liking it. When it first came out, the control scheme was really wonky to me, and I put it down. Later, with some patches (and dlc) the game was much improved. I never really did end up liking melee combat – but ranged --especially magic users – allowed for that “play one character and the others will do their thing” mechanic mentioned above. I had no real ai party fight problems, though obviously dragon fights needed more control. If I had to make one main complaint was that SOME areas are TOO large. There is a whole lot of gameplay there, that is for sure. That huge desert area --wow. I never used tactical mode, though I saw how it could be used I guess. I kept trying to fit it into the Origins combat mode (which worked great I agree) and could never do that.

ps --one of the things I also liked was after the DLC Trespasser (I think) there was a sort of variable “survival” mode that made the game a lot harder --but it also allowed for some greater rewards to drop. That really made things more fun in a game that was probably 1/3 too large.

Picked this up last night, the full edition for $20 with the 50% off coupon was just too much for me. I think I may enjoy buying games more than actually playing them.

Yeah I agree with that, there was a fine, knife-edge balance in KOTOR between tactical thinking and realtime thinking - you could adjust your queues to changing circumstances as you went.

It’s a shame nobody seems to have developed that idea further.

I’ve done the first two “milestones” and I’ve got to say, wow, this shit is EPIC. BioWare have done it again for me - I was even tearing up at points, as I’ve done with all their classics. I think this is definitely in the upper tier of BioWare games, along with the likes of BG 1&2, KOTOR, ME1 and DA:O. I almost can’t fault the game, bar the clunkiness of tactical combat (though even there, it’s not all that bad when you get used to it) and the slightly on-rails aspects of the moral choices in the dialogues (which is I suppose a cost/benefit thing re. the generous and uniformly excellent voice acting for all the well-drawn characters).

Loving the Frostbite engine in this. It was always a problem for me with the previous 3-d BioWare games that the zones felt too tiny, really more a series of corridors with vistas behind them. But the zones are gigantic here - Thedas comes alive as a real-seeming place, and that reflects back on the lore, making it feel more “solid”. My one little gripe with the graphics is that they sometimes over-use the “glistening surfaces” effect, but the overall visual impact is tremendous on all-Ultra settings.

I’ve settled in with the realtime combat pretty well, and it’s beautifully pitched for me at Hard - fights are fast, furious and sometimes hairy, but feel “realistic” in terms of TTK - not so short it feels like facerolling, not so long that it feels you’re fruitlessly chipping away at things. On really hard fights like in the milestone missions, occasionally someone will get downed, but rezzing them in the midst of the chaos is part of the fun. The choices BW made wrt limited health potions works out pretty well I think.

Digging the build system too. I’ve installed the mod that makes the respec amulet infinite use, and I’ve been toying around with the various skills on all the characters, and nearly everything works like it says on the tin and has some marked effect that’s beautifully represented by animations and spectacular effects. My main is a rogue assassin, and she’s very satisfying to play.

I can see myself playing this for quite a while. Hyped for ME Andromeda now.

I was right there with you until the mid game slog set in. The pacing ends up shit, and they unlock HUGE areas late in the game when you start to get the itch to race for the end. For a slight completionist like me, that really irked me, and took the wind out of the game’s sails. I had gotten caught up in the story, then suddenly I was exploring a couple of huge, empty areas for a couple dozen hours.

Then the ending happened, and it was fairly abrupt as well.

Basically, DA:I has an incredibly awesome beginning (I think), and the lead up to the midgame is fantastic. The main missions (and even some of the loyalty side missions) are quite good, but they flubbed the open world elements. I’m somewhat giving them a pass, as it was their first game to really incorporate those kinds of open world bits, and I’m just hoping they get it better with ME4.

I feel like Inquisition is weakest in the early game. The Hinterlands is easily the most boring and poorly paced area I have encountered and there is more of it than almost any of the others. It also hasn’t yet had a chance to really introduce you to the stakes, characters or even some of the more fun later mechanics. I was about ready to write the game off after about 20-25 mostly Hinterlands based hours, and I am glad I didn’t because it improved dramatically from there. Well, except for the combat, which remains devoid of nuance or meaningful decisions. But hey.

Dragon Age: Inquisition GOTY edition is currently $16 on the Xbox One as part as Deals With Gold.

If you own the base game the DLC pieces are 67% off.

Nice. I don’t own the base game, but I currently “have” it thanks to EA Access. But this deal does make Trespasser around $5 for me. Maybe I should bite. From upthread, Trespasser sounds like it’s worth it. If I want all the DLC, then maybe the GOTY edition is worth it, and I’ll own the game even after EA Access is over down the road.

I recently started this up and I am enjoying myself. I played the heck out of Origins and made it about a 1/3 of the way through the second one before I got bored.

I am only about 10 hours in and still in Hinterlands so I guess I have not gotten to the fun part yet but I still like it in one to two hour chunks. Hinterlands seems very MMOish but I like MMOs so it is all good. I think I need to go to some other areas before I out level them but the completionist in me is struggling to make the change. The travel system seems convoluted. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to get back to Val Royeaux. Sometimes the war table works, sometimes the world map works, sometimes only an icon on the local map works. Sigh.

Now I am realizing that I will need to start over. My Inquisitor is a male Elf and I just cannot take the walking animation any longer. It looks like his arms are coming out of his back rather than his shoulders and he stomps like a kid imitating a gorilla. I started a female Elf and it looks much better.

Alexis Kennedy, formerly of Sunless Sea and Fallen London, has officially confirmed that he is working on the next Dragon Age.

[quote]
“What I can say is I have been given considerable autonomy to work on a storyline bit of lore which is well-segregated from other parts of the game,” Kennedy teases, “which makes a lot of sense with me being remote. And yes, if you’ve seen a lot of my work before you will probably not be surprised by the choice of subject matter. It’s familiar stuff.”[/quote]

[quote]
“I don’t want to exaggerate the degree of the chunk [I’m writing],” Kennedy quickly adds. “It’s more analogous to Patrick Weekes writing [Mass Effect character] Mordin than me being told to go off and write a whole different country… It’s nothing that grandiose, but it is distinct. It’s a bit of lore which has not been addressed much to date in Dragon Age.”[/quote]

Marc Laidlaw is leaving BioWare.

At least I’m not the only person who does that.

Do what?

Sign off your letters to the public with “Ma serannas”?

Leave Bioware?

Mix up the Laidlaws.

At least he didn’t type Bob Loblaw.

Damn it! Thought he was working on something with Dragon Age 4. Hope it’s not going in the trash can.

I bought the DLC pack and have started a new play-through of this. Elven archery rogue this time around. I think I played a melee rogue in my attempt at a second round of DA:O once, otherwise I’ve not played the class.

I’ve only just begun, made it to the Hinterlands and have done some stuff there. Level 5 or so.

Some of my comments from back when this was my GOTY are starting to come back to me:

I played a mage last time, and so far the gameplay with an archer feels a bit less fun. It feels more ARPG-y than I remember. I am playing on normal this time around since hard didn’t really add much last time. The inventory and interface in general is worse than I remember.

But man, it is a gorgeous game. Looking quite good in 1440p since I’ve upgraded since last time.

I also had forgotten how much I liked the War Table. I could play an entire game made out of that! One thing is how you expend power to do many of the operations, which pulls you back into doing more stuff to build the Inquisition. Are there any other games with something similar? I guess I should return to Pillars of Eternity and see if the Keep-thing there was any fun… though, I put that on hold in wait for the 1.04 patch…

Ah - the rogue archer and the mage I think are the worst classes IMO. I played as a rogue melee as well for my first and complete playthrough, and I think that still is my favourite, even though I quite enjoyed being any kind of sword wielder. Mages and arches tend to just have to stand around continously shooting, and that quickly becomes boring. Plus you’ll have to use the tactical mode more to move around the other fellas to protect you, but with melee attacks I didn’t have to bother with that.

The Trespasser DLC has some fun extra trophys if you’re up for a few challenges, I quite enjoyed a few of them =)

I never found the archer or mage fun in any of the DA games and archer is my go-to class in most RPGs.

Rogue dual daggers all the way. Backstabbing never gets old.