The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[His Majesty]

Wouldn't it be easier to just bomb Skyhold with his rocks instead of constructing some lame sky platform to 1v1 the inquisitor? I don't know, Corypheus never struck me as the honorable paladin type.

 

[Monkeysattva]

So come on dude-bro's, tell me, is this actually better than DA2? Because, as far as I can see, it seem much worse.

 

[Franny Frogpill]

So come on dude-bro's, tell me, is this actually better than DA2? Because, as far as I can see, it seem much worse.

From what I have seen on RK's videos it's DA2 XXXL. Does that make it better or worse?

 

[DragoFireheart]

So come on dude-bro's, tell me, is this actually better than DA2? Because, as far as I can see, it seem much worse.

Just admit it you want to buy this game.

 

[eremita]

Game of the Year and not a single eyebrow was raised. At first they were just casual gamers playing RPG lites, but now it seems as though the number of RPG lites and dude bros has grown large enough to displace the true role-playing genre entirely. Remember guys, the first RPG was Fallout 3 and the best is Mass Effect 2. History will remember it so.

I now have a fairly sound idea of what it is like to be Cleve.

I can't even properly google anything related to Fallout 1 or 2 without getting buried under an avalanche of Failout 3 related shit. Millions of people praising this pos over and over and discussing every single aspect of it.

...
But maybe I'm just too dumb to google, who knows. ^^


Yeah, wished gaming was still a niche activity, can't stand all the couch zombies and their awesome button games.
"But I'm in it for teh storey! It's engaging!!!"
"Go shoot yourself."

Once mainstream is created, everything goes to hell.

 

[Morality Games]

So come on dude-bro's, tell me, is this actually better than DA2? Because, as far as I can see, it seem much worse.

Aspects of it are better. I'm not sure it adds up to an improvement though.

Which is how every Bioware game since Mass Effect has left me.

Well, for example, one improvement would be the realization among the designers that they are mostly unwilling to impose serious consequences for decisions made in previous games. Therefore, the most significantly consequence-laden choice in the game (Mages or Templars?) is made in "Act 1." That choice alters a large range of encounters in the game's "open world" throughout the entire game, as well as two entirely different bosses that are mutually exclusive to each choice.

Problem is, encounter design is crap. Its just crap. Orthodox design in RPG would maintain you implement battle environments in a way that entails the player having to read the situation and make tactical choices based on positioning. Instead, blobs of enemies pretty much rush you. I guess you are supposed to "create your own openings" using ability combos, rather than exploiting terrain or formation to your advantage.

The UI (specifically the tactical mode that could elevate it slightly above action-RPG crap) is pitted against PC player instincts. Bioware says they will make some kind of change. Too late for my main (and probably sole) run through the narrative.

AVOID 95% of requisition quests. They're a bottomless pit and you need your resources for crafting. When it comes to requisition quests, just say NO.

 

[Bleed the Man]

So come on dude-bro's, tell me, is this actually better than DA2? Because, as far as I can see, it seem much worse.

DAI is basically DA2 with an actual budget and proper development time, with a Skyrim spin on it (terribly done).

Personally, I find more agravating to be incompetent when you have all the resources you need to make a great game, than being incompetent when faced with a lot of restrictions and a less than ideal development cycle.
DAI is basically Transformers, while DA2 is Transmorphers.

 

[DalekFlay]

Could someone smarter than me please explain what the hell Corypheus

Spoiler

attempted to accomplish with his one-man attack on Skyhold at the end? Did he need the player's Mark nearby to open another breach or what? Since when did he get the power to levitate rocks, and why did he decide to do that?

And did the Inquisitor even kill him, or simply banish him to the Fade? The player's autodialogue one-liner suggests "movie hero kills movie villain" death - the actual words used, the visuals and the player's ability to control rifts suggest he sent him to the Fade. Which would be retarded, why not simply kill him?

I'm pretty certain he did kill him, although I can't remember if people go into the Fade when they die. But since when can the mark be used to straight-up murder people? I thought it was limited to tampering with rifts and screwing with Demons.

The main story made sense up until that point.

Spoiler

The ending didn't take place at Skyhold, it was a new rift he was trying to open somewhere else in Ferelden. As for the end, I took it as the Inquisitor opening a rift inside him which killed his body and sent his immortal spirit thing to the fade. His plan was to get into the fade physically, but you send him there as an impotent spirit.

 

[DalekFlay]

So come on dude-bro's, tell me, is this actually better than DA2? Because, as far as I can see, it seem much worse.

DA2 was much more like Origins. It was shitty, repetitive and had some action game elements but structurally and at the core of the gameplay it was the same type of game as Origins. This one is much more "consolized" in that there are many more action game elements and it has endless Assassin's Creed style busywork crap instead of actual quests.

I would personally take DA2 over DA:I but it likely depends on how much you like MMO style busywork in huge but empty zones.

 

[Morality Games]

One difference I will note is that DAII encounter design (like most other aspects of the combat) was a facsimile of DA:O. Positioning still mattered because you wanted to stay away/control enemies that were spawning into action as the battle progressed. Bioware did that to make up for the small environments (there wasn't enough space in Kirkwall, the Deep Roads, or anywhere to have a proper distribution of opponents like you would in the Temple of Sacred Ashes in DA:O, so they had to keep spawning from the edges of the screen.

Now, Bioware has the largest, most ornamented environments and decided the best route going forward is to clump enemies into bushels and throw them at you.

 

[Monkeysattva]

So come on dude-bro's, tell me, is this actually better than DA2? Because, as far as I can see, it seem much worse.

From what I have seen on RK's videos it's DA2 XXXL. Does that make it better or worse?

Probably worse. But I think the story, from what I've gleamed, is much worse. Oh well, guess I'll have to "play" it. Eventually. When they crack it.

 

[Morality Games]

So come on dude-bro's, tell me, is this actually better than DA2? Because, as far as I can see, it seem much worse.

From what I have seen on RK's videos it's DA2 XXXL. Does that make it better or worse?

Probably worse. But I think the story, from what I've gleamed, is much worse. Oh well, guess I'll have to "play" it. Eventually. When they crack it.

That's an issue people will disagree over. Personally I thought DA:I's core narrative was the best conceived and implemented in the DA franchise. A narrative isn't the only aspect of a story though.

 

[Space Satan]

Great is RK47 sacrifice. Yet with his painful demise, suffering and prolonged misery, we, at Codex, are enlightened and our common hivemind, our knowledge pool is replenished, spared from the horrors of Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Amen, his sacrifice will not be in vain.

 

[hemtae]

For whatever it's worth, the patch is up on Origin.

http://blog.bioware.com/2014/12/09/dragon-age-inquisition-patch-2-notes/

 

[DragoFireheart]

• Fixed case where game would incorrectly think the player has more than one race/class/gender

Trans-phobia in three... two... one...

 

[Athelas]

Someone from the writer room should tell QA that was intended, and not actually a bug.

 

[hell bovine]

Eh, I just can't believe how much they have failed to engage me over 40 hours.
I'm just doing tasks, completing it, next!
Oh? Need more power? Seal more rifts.
Continue! Kill, kill, kill.
Let's stop and talk.
OK, what's your problem? OK, fine, let's fix that.
Table missions! Do this, do that, and that. OK! See you tomorrow.
Next day, collect table rewards, walk around Skyhold, ask everyone how are you doing on this fine day in Thedas?
Got any quest? No?
OK, head to main quest.
Blah blah blah, Corypheus Blah blah, blam blam blam thousand cuts. OK Cory's on the run.
We go temple OK.
Blam blam blam blam.
We really showed him!
Blah blah. Oh my Altar will show you power.
Morrigan's Mom is vessel of Goddess! THIS IS IMPORTANT, PLAYER!
Sure, whatever. Blah blah, tame dragon, thousand cut, 50% HP blah blah mastered dragon.
Head back, click on last mission.
Blah blah. I RAN OUT OF IDEA WILL SMASH U.
Thousand cut. Oh wait bugged.
Slowly dps.
Blam Blam
O U WIN!
I am not surprised I won.
Oh ... HOW ABOUT!!!! SOLAS IS ACTUALLY ELVEN GOD! AND HE WILL RETURN AND PLAY PART IN DA4
I don't care.
REALLY?! HOW CAN YOU NOT CARE AND STILL FINISH THE GAME! COME ON LOOK FORWARD TO DRAGON AGE 4! BE ANGRY! WHY ARE NOT ENRAGED?! DO YOU NOT FEEL BETRAYED BY SOLAS?!
No I am very happy I finish the game so I can forget about it. There are no more questions I want answered in Dragon Age Universe.
Forget about it. There's nothing here worth seeing or doing . Whatever plot twists you've pulled are not even engaging.
And whatever lore rape you've committed raised little concern. It's your poo. Go build a sandcastle, whatever. I don't read your books for the lore. I read it for EXP. Table missions that did nothing but hand out candies. So amazing. So wow. So meaningless.
Thanks for the broken combat abilities so I can skip your shit action game.
This is perhaps one of the worst Bioware I have ever played.
I jumped on the Multiplayer and no, I don't see myself playing more than an hour in there.
There's just no way this is better than ME3 Co-Op.
Amazing, you have more time to get it right than the ME3 Co-Op team and you still fucked up.
I guess the Combat Engine fucked you over.
Thanks a lot. I hope you are proud of yourselves, Game of the year indeed.
I will forever remember 2014, DAI as the worst GOTY I ever played in my life.

That's what they call masochistic love.

 

[set]

You know, the way that's described... It's like playing an MMO and then seeing it "end" before your eyes. You were so wrapped up in "getting the things" treadmill and once it was finally over you could finally be broken free of that spell and say with much regret that your apathy knows no bounds now. That kind of reaction is something we'll see by the millions once WoW finally dies.

That's just indicative of what kind of game DA3 wants to be. It's the beginning of the end - truly, a AAA game that's just as banal as your typical casual funtime phone game. It just exists to waste your time. To give you things. Who cares about the story? Or the action? As long as you get a thing at the end and there's a color flashing in front of your eyes you won! And then you can win again tomorrow! A game that exists only to justify its BioWare's existence, it is not a product of love or craft, it is just a useless thing.

 

[set]

First they annihilated complexity - gone were mutliclassing, entire swappable loadouts/equipment, specializations, complex itemization...

Then they annihilated consistency - Qunari changed twice as a race, characters are resurrected, political intruigue is brief and always interrupted by DAH DAHRKSPAHWN - or whatever immature nonsense they can come up with...

Then they annihilated any sense of impact and --- what's a word for it? sensibility? - every quest is a fetch quest, every fetch quest is Y/(X*10) where X is any reasonable request, every corridor is packed with useless enemies, every button press is a ZIP ZAP FLICK FLACK BACKFLIP KABOOM... you're always covered in stupid blood and cartoony gore and you can't even remember the last time you felt anything while playing a BioWare game - shock or excitement certainly wasn't one of them.

At least Obsidian isn't afraid to throw a dialogue tree at you as a "boss". I'm sure it'd have been nice if instead of fighting shit all the time you actually resolved problems through negotiation or introspection.

The truth is, Dragon Age was meant to be a "Maure" RPG. BioWare wanted something edgy, that broke the fantasy trope -- because they wanted to break the stigma created by DND and Elves -- that people only want to buy cool games they don't want to buy nerdy games they want to buy FIFA or Call of Duty because those games are cool and not nerdy. They wanted to seem more mature. That's why DAO has that whole blood motif - blood insignia, blood splatter graphics rendering, etc. - blood is super gritty and realistic they think, that having characters NOT get blood on them when they fight just isn't mature. Fine, whatever, they do make some token efforts to be more "serious" developers, but in the same breath - ever since the beginning, BioWare has failed in this respect. Darkspawn are just power ranger villains, Qunari were the only interesting threat and look how they used them; hastily replacing them with swaths of abominations, there are no serious choices to make, no serious consequences, no serious motivations... it's just shit; all of it. Do people not wipe blood off their faces when they're done fighting? Well, in the DA universe, it's a tradition. People often go to bars like this and sit down and get a cuppa somethin' and they converse about the mysteries of the universe and the Fade while covered in blood - I did it in DAO and DA2 so I would know. It's just one of the many inherent contradictions in BioWare's schemes to break the mold or fit in with the popular guy.

Any n' all mature conflict in Dragon Age is hastily thrown to the wolves to make way for Dragons, Darkspawn, and Demons. Every mature conflict is resolved in a blow to the head. Any mature "romance" is replaced by idealized tropey blogtierwriting garbage. Any mature abilities or combat actions are replaced by flip, jumps, and pointlessly flingy -- pointlessly energy-consuming movements. There isn't a single aspect of the DA universe which is remotely "mature" (contrast this to ME, which, while at times suffering from the same issues manages to stay a little more serious thanks to its military setting... But even then, you have space ninjas in the final act).

I think the corporate culture at BioWare is partly to blame. I know they talked extensively at how Merril was seen as a cute kind of in-joke by the developers and writers. They gushed about her cuteness or whatever in their cubefarms. Meanwhile, she's shallow Tali-esque tripe who brought little or nothing to DA2, the resolution of her character arc either not making any sense or being so contradictory it wonders if BioWare ever had anything in mind. (They didn't, in-fact, save for the ocassional character like Oghren, BioWare tends to linger around with its characters until they naturally run out of shit to fling at the wall; concise is not a way to describe BioWare's writing, there's just little or no essence to any of it.) It sounds to me like they don't take anything seriously, besides listening to EA's demands to datamine your userbase, make the game appeal to the phone generation, and make sure to create as much pointless buzz about your game as possible by adding a fuckable bull.

Sera is just like Merril except maybe ten times worse. Ten times more annoying. Ten times more childish and stupidly written. Do they just have something against elves?

BioWare attempted to craft a serious medieval fantasy world but all they did was create a bunch of horrible accents, whocaresaboutem' dwarves, and uninspired ancient evils. Every step from DA:O to ME2 to DA3 has been a misstep, a critical failure which took them further from the path of success. At no time have they ever, nor will they ever, seriously evaulate themselves or their methods. Their animations still reek of 2005, so I rest my case. They will continue to pump stupider and stupider shit out until EA finally gives them the boot.

If I had to describe DA3 from watching its playthrough, it would be soulless. DA1 at least seemed to have a heart in it.

 

[DalekFlay]

For whatever it's worth, the patch is up on Origin.

http://blog.bioware.com/2014/12/09/dragon-age-inquisition-patch-2-notes/

That's actually a pretty decent patch for two weeks in.

 

[Malpercio]

Apparently the patch broke the game further, people on Gaf/BSN are lamenting few issues already.

 

[dryan]

Qunari changed twice as a race

What was their second change?

 

[set]

Qunari changed twice as a race

What was their second change?

Qunari in DA:O was basically Sten's descriptions of them.
In DA2, they are only vaguely similar to Sten's descriptions. Physically and mentally they are quite different; more alien physically to the point where they need to amend Sten's descriptions and facts covertly. I'd say play the game agin with a handbook of Sten's quotes on hand, but I don't want to cause you any mental harm.
In DA3, thye only further twist Qunari, violating Sten's descriptions AND the Qunari you experienced in DA2. None of the Qunari I have seen in DA3 resemble the people in DA2 or DAO.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Qunari changed twice as a race

What was their second change?

Qunari in DA:O was basically Sten's descriptions of them.
In DA2, they are only vaguely similar to Sten's descriptions.
In DA3, thye only further twist Qunari, violating Sten's descriptions AND the Qunari you experienced in DA2. None of the Qunari I have seen in DA3 resemble the people in DA2 or DAO.

The Iron Bull submits to no ones descriptions.

 

[dryan]

Qunari changed twice as a race

What was their second change?

Qunari in DA:O was basically Sten's descriptions of them.
In DA2, they are only vaguely similar to Sten's descriptions.
In DA3, thye only further twist Qunari, violating Sten's descriptions AND the Qunari you experienced in DA2. None of the Qunari I have seen in DA3 resemble the people in DA2 or DAO.

I'm interested in how they changed in DA:I. Don't be afraid to spoil it for me.