Dragon Age: Inquisition Pre-Release Thread

[serch]

Dunno about BioWare's combat, but Eurogamer's bank account certainly found the right balance, eh, eh, guys?

We need a drum kit codex troll emoticon for this kind of puns

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Dunno about BioWare's combat, but Eurogamer's bank account certainly found the right balance, eh, eh, guys?

(needs more cymbal)

 

[DragoFireheart]

Eurogamer doin' some shilling:

That music sounds like LotR Micheal Bay music.

 

[Zeriel]

Oh god, the disease is spreading. It is now de rigeur to name videos the same useless and obfuscating way they label articles: Does <X> do <Y>?

 

[Jools]

Oh god, the disease is spreading. It is now de rigeur to name videos the same useless and obfuscating way they label articles: Does <X> do <Y>?

The circle will soon be complete. Soon videos will be names after the fashion of "X or Y, which is better and why? Discuss!".

 

[nikolokolus]

It just dawned on me. Bioware has gone full retard, Square Enix, Final Fantasy style, except in real-time. Hopefully Spoony will do a proper series on it, so I can really get a good laugh.

It's just now dawning on you?

I haven't been paying that much attention for the last six or seven years. I went RPG cold-turkey after DA:O

 

[Zeriel]

It just dawned on me. Bioware has gone full retard, Square Enix, Final Fantasy style, except in real-time. Hopefully Spoony will do a proper series on it, so I can really get a good laugh.

It's just now dawning on you?

I haven't been paying that much attention for the last six or seven years. I went RPG cold-turkey after DA:O

Everything post BG2 was shit. Where are your gods now?!

 

[curry]

Eurogamer doin' some shilling:

"Dragon Age Origin's tactical approach was too slow"

Yes, it was such a slow game for someone with no attention span.

 

[Zeriel]

Eurogamer doin' some shilling:

"Dragon Age Origin's tactical approach was too slow"

Yes, it was such a slow game for someone with no attention span.

I don't even know how to respond to that. Dragon Age: Origin was already watered down MMO combat. 2 SLOW

 

[Ascensa]

At this rate DA2's horrific awesome button combat will be considered too slow eventually.

 

[Martius]

At this rate DA2's horrific awesome button combat will be considered too slow eventually.

Well, despite faster animations it was too slow because enemies usually have few spare copies. I wonder how that balance (or lack of it) will look in Inquisition.

 

[titus]

Can it be that they've removed invisible walls forever? I see AJ jumping around like it's the circus.

 

[Zeriel]

Can it be that they've removed invisible walls forever? I see AJ jumping around like it's the circus.

Well, it is Frostbite. Having incompetent engine restrictions on a brand new engine designed for FPSes would be pretty dumb.

They talked about having to add RPG infrastructure to Frostbite, which implies most of their take on the engine is brand new rather than being retrofits from Aurora days.

 

[Carrion]

DA:O's combat was like watching paint dry. Not that the "tactical approach" was exactly slow or anything, just the actual execution of the combat.

 

[Delterius]

DA:O's combat was like watching paint dry. Not that the "tactical approach" was exactly slow or anything, just the actual execution of the combat.

Define 'tactical approach' and how is it different than the execution of the combat?

 

[Carrion]

Define 'tactical approach'

Whatever it means in that Eurogamer article. I have no idea, but I'd guess it's related to giving orders to your party members whereas the execution part is watching your warrior hit a dragon with a sword for fifteen minutes.

 

[Delterius]

Define 'tactical approach'

Whatever it means in that Eurogamer article. I have no idea, but I'd guess it's related to giving orders to your party members whereas the execution part is watching your warrior hit a dragon with a sword for fifteen minutes.

Which is why it sounded so weird. Of course issuing orders is quick, that's obvious.

Though your open an opportunity for an interesting distinction. It is often common for people to claim that DA:O felt too slow and DA2 felt too fast.

Interestingly however, it is DA2 that has boss monsters with inflated HP pools and whom are even complete with HP dependent rotations that basically guarantee that the fight will last an X amount of minutes. Boss monsters in DA:O, on the other hand, though they still had a lot of HP to grind, were still rather quickly murdered (relative to DA2). Their rotations were also the same across the encounter and they never broke pace. This is of course comparing both games on Nightmare difficulty.

Which is to say that the 'feeling' of pace isn't so much 'real pace' as it is a cosmetic issue. In the IE games animations were rather quick, in DA:O they became more elaborate and much slower. In DA2 they went off the charts.

 

[Zeriel]

DA2 didn't feel fast to me, it just felt empty. You press your 1-4 buttons, combat happens, things die, there is no decision-making and no challenge. Can't say it is an outlier in modern gaming, though, just the same as every other 10/10 title released these days.

 

[Delterius]

Personally, on Nightmare (which was bonkers) and with a more limited camera, I felt difficulty with keeping pace on DA2. DA:O did feel slow but that sure wasn't an issue -- which is why I'm looking forward to the slow-mo option on PoE.

 

[Sergiu64]

DA2 didn't feel fast to me, it just felt empty. You press your 1-4 buttons, combat happens, things die, there is no decision-making and no challenge. Can't say it is an outlier in modern gaming, though, just the same as every other 10/10 title released these days.

Hmmm... I don't know that I can relate. I distinctly remember murdering my own party with my own AoE's. Also some boss fights felt like goddamn MMO boss battle. With the minus of having to control all of my characters on my own.

The re-spawning mechanic was destroying a lot of the tactical elements of the combat. Having extra waves appear out of thin air rendered a lot of the original positioning useless. I even remember pulling the original spawns halfway across the map so that the reinforcement waves wouldn't come or would at least give me some time to prepare. The combat alternated between being boring and being chaotic, it was almost never fun.

 

[Strayed]

Bossfights were MMO fights. I practically gave up on the game after kiting the Arishok for ten minutes to whittle down the massive amount of HP he had. It was ridiculous.

 

[Delterius]

I don't know anything about the Arishok but the Demon Red Rock Wraith even had phases and 'don't stand here' zones. Would make WoW proud.

 

[eremita]

I don't know anything about the Arishok but the Demon Red Rock Wraith even had phases and 'don't stand here' zones. Would make WoW proud.

Nothing wrong with that imo as long as abilities/spells are vast and complex + party composition meaningful. I would argue that if MMOs gave us anything good, it's "phased" boss battles. Love it the same way I loved puzzle integration in Blackguard's combat.

Also, kiting Arsihok is a cheesy tactic...

 

[Delterius]

I don't know anything about the Arishok but the Demon Red Rock Wraith even had phases and 'don't stand here' zones. Would make WoW proud.

Nothing wrong with that imo as long as abilities/spells are vast and complex + party composition meaningful. I would argue that if MMOs gave us anything good, it's "phased" boss battles. Love it the same way I loved puzzle integration in Blackguard's combat.

Then again its not quite the same, is it? In Blackguards there's puzzle and environmental interaction, there was that in WoW too. But what the Demon Red Rock Wraith does are the more boring things that WoW did too: it lights up danger zones and gives you adds to kill within a timelimit.

Worse, this sort of design quickly becomes repetitive. Its a real danger in these games that boss fight mechanics become a staple, a sort of very specific form that is twisted and spun in crazy ways to fit all kinds of scenarios. I remember there were many times in WoW that instead of designing things with the sort of monster you are fighting in mind, they just copied an old boss and changed the cosmetics.

Is it necessarily bad? No, but it is derivative. And since I openly plan to play DA:I, I hope they were creative with it.