The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[Coma White]

It's too bad Inquisition was actually alright, and we were getting to a point where discussion was actually happening again and then in came the gamergaters to remind us we all hate bioware again.

That's a nice straw man you're building over there.

 

[Frozen]

The only saving grace of this abomination is last DLC trespasser? because it tries to patch all the lore and put it in some direction. I doubt that it will go anywhere good but whatever.
If you are a storyfag like me there is no reason to play through main game. Bad guy blows shit up, everything happens out of chance, he has no real plan just waiting for a game to end-then you fight because it hits that 200+h mark-game over.

 

[Wayward Son]

It's too bad Inquisition was actually alright, and we were getting to a point where discussion was actually happening again and then in came the gamergaters to remind us we all hate bioware again.

I'd say it was better than Dragon Age 2, if you ignored the incredibly boring side quests. I mean, if you did everything in the first area it was like a 25 hour experience. Ridiculous.
But I don't know if I'd call it alright. I'd say below average and not worth 60, or 40 dollars.

Luckily, I convinced my brother to shell out the dough for the PS3 version and so I had less glitches and no buyer's remorse.
:kwafuckyeah:

 

[Tom Selleck]

Oh shit I forgot this buttblast was on the PS3. I could probably get it used for like $10, should I get it ride the bull?

 

[Rahdulan]

Don't. Last-gen ports weren't even done by Bioware and they dropped DLC support half-way through. I'm sure you can look up comparison videos.

 

[Wayward Son]

Oh shit I forgot this buttblast was on the PS3. I could probably get it used for like $10, should I get it ride the bull?

No. It wasn't the $0.00 I paid for it. I can't force myself to play it for that long. Luckily, I have a popamole brother who plays these games for me and let's me watch.

 

[Morality Games]

So this thread is at the top of the Bioware forum. Then is Dragon Age: Inquisiton redeemable yet? It seems like every time Bioware releases a bad game we grind around a couple years until people start saying, "its not so bad. efficient design, really."

 

[Wayward Son]

So this thread is at the top of the Bioware forum. Then is Dragon Age: Inquisiton redeemable yet? It seems like every time Bioware releases a bad game we grind around a couple years until people start saying, "its not so bad. efficient design, really."

No. It wasn't the $0.00 I paid for it. I can't force myself to play it for that long. Luckily, I have a popamole brother who plays these games for me and let's me watch.

 

[Coma White]

No. It's tripe. The people advocating for it in this thread are really just advocating for the DLC, which is really just as bad and will require you hand over MORE money to BioWare and EA.

 

[Frozen]

So this thread is at the top of the Bioware forum. Then is Dragon Age: Inquisiton redeemable yet? It seems like every time Bioware releases a bad game we grind around a couple years until people start saying, "its not so bad. efficient design, really."

Gameplay is terrible, its unfixable.
DA2 gameplay looks deep compared to this.
Only thing last DLC does is gives a lot on lore of the world, it answers a lot of question.
So, if you are into Dragon Age lore and want to know more about origins of the fade, old gods, golden city, what created darkspawns etc. there are lot of answers or hints.
Not that answers are great, it all comes down to elf faggotry again.

 

[HoboForEternity]

DA2 gameplay looks deep compared to this.

2 years ago, i won't believe i would say this, but after playing inquisition i can safely say: DA 2 is better than inquisition.
aside from grapgics and dungeon design, inquisition is horrible. the side quests, the gameplay, the story, etc.

not saying that DA 2 is good. if DA 2 is turd, than I is turd's turd

 

[Coma White]

2 years ago, i won't believe i would say this, but after playing inquisition i can safely say: DA 2 is better than inquisition.
aside from grapgics and dungeon design, inquisition is horrible. the side quests, the gameplay, the story, etc.

not saying that DA 2 is good. if DA 2 is turd, than I is turd's turd

Seconded. Dragon Age II is the dumbest of the dumb, but it's not literally painful to play. Playing Inquisition is actively uncomfortable.

 

[imweasel]

DA2 is the better game.

The combat was dumbed down from DA:O, but it was still quite tactical and could be pretty challenging on hard. DA2 was a disappointment, but despite all of its obvious faults I actually kind of enjoyed it.

 

[Konjad]

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a great game, I recommend giving it a try.

 

[Roguey]

Seconded. Dragon Age II is the dumbest of the dumb, but it's not literally painful to play. Playing Inquisition is actively uncomfortable.

I've played RPGs that were uncomfortable, and DA:I isn't one of them. It's just mindless, like Knights of the Old Republic.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I've played RPGs that were uncomfortable, and DA:I isn't one of them. It's just mindless, like Knights of the Old Republic.

Nah, KOTOR doesn't have MMO/mobile games design where you need to collect bear arses and wait in real time to progress. And largely empty areas. And combat is not inspired by MMO mechanics either.

 

[Roguey]

Nah, KOTOR doesn't have MMO/mobile games design where you need to collect bear arses and wait in real time to progress.

You don't "need" to do those things in DAI either.

And largely empty areas.

Its level design is significantly better than kotor's, which was nothing but small cramped corridors on account of original xbox memory limitations.

And combat is not inspired by MMO mechanics either.

I don't see how this makes much difference. They're both incredibly mindless games with only a few fights that demand more from you than autopilot.

 

[Coma White]

I've played RPGs that were uncomfortable, and DA:I isn't one of them. It's just mindless, like Knights of the Old Republic.

I maintain KOTOR had better quest design than Inquisition. As in, somebody actually sat down and wrote a little story and how the quest could progress. There were often at least two solutions (as dumb as they might have been) to each which accounted for the morality system. Quest design in Inquisition was downright abominable. And as I've said before; side quest design is IMO THE most important thing when it comes to world-building in RPGs. I don't think the claim "well you don't NEED to do them" is really relevant.

 

[Roguey]

I maintain KOTOR had better quest design than Inquisition. As in, somebody actually sat down and wrote a little story and how the quest could progress. There were often at least two solutions (as dumb as they might have been) to each which accounted for the morality system. Quest design in Inquisition was downright abominable.

I'm going to quote myself.

Speaking of Witcher 2, I was amused by how their response to that was to include a minor branch in the prologue and a single main quest branch near the beginning. Of course most reactivity is narrative/cosmetic, though there are some welcome opportunities to bypass combat later on in the main quest.
...
This series-of-open-levels structure was a great benefit for the main quest endgame. Too many Biwoare games (and RPGs in general) end with overly-long combat crawls, but that isn't the case here. The last crawly level is one where you can just run past enemies while your army takes care of them, solve a few "puzzles," then ally yourself with a group who will take you straight to the boss fight without fighting anything else. The last main quest itself is just a boss fight.

 

[Coma White]

I'm going to quote myself.

I must be slow today; I don't entirely get your angle here. Inquisition has better quest design than KOTOR because it allows you to bypass combat "encounters" (if you could even call the battles in Inquisition encounters -- though that's another issue)?

I don't understand your implied connection between open-world design (which I'm not fully convinced Inquisition actually has) and quest design.

 

[Roguey]

I must be slow today; I don't entirely get your angle here. Inquisition has better quest design than KOTOR because it allows you to bypass combat "encounters" (if you could even call the battles in Inquisition encounters -- though that's another issue)?

Not necessarily better. About the same really when it comes to quests with story content. kotor also allowed the bypassing of some combat encounters through the use of hacking resources and such.

I don't understand your implied connection between open-world design (which I'm not fully convinced Inquisition actually has) and quest design.

I guess I cut off my quote too soon.

Of course all this main quest polish came at the expense of the last two open areas. Emprise du Lion was the overly-long linear combat crawl I was expecting to find at the end (corrupted giant fights excepted), and the vast emptiness of the Hissing Wastes was only a relieving change until all that traveling wore out its welcome. Still worth it; I'd rather have two annoying optional areas near the end over an annoying endgame.

By comparison, Knights of the Old Republic endgame was a meat grinder full of nigh-forever-respawning enemies (apparently they do eventually stop). I'm saying those two areas were likely the very last things they worked on, instead of the endgame (which is how it usually goes, the content that's seen by the least amount of people gets the least amount of polish).

 

[Coma White]

By comparison, Knights of the Old Republic endgame was a meat grinder full of nigh-forever-respawning enemies (apparently they do eventually stop). I'm saying those two areas were likely the very last things they worked on, instead of the endgame (which is how it usually goes, the content that's seen by the least amount of people gets the least amount of polish).

True and fair enough. But I don't see what the design of KOTOR's end game "dungeon" (if you could even call it a dungeon -- but that's another issue as well) has to do with the overall quest design of either game. True, Emprise du Lion and the Hissing Wastes are large open areas as opposed to linear corridor crawls. But like the Star Forge; their content basically boils down to fighting lots of trash mooks -- and I guess collecting flags/berries/whatsits, if that's your thing.

I feel a fairer comparison would be Emprise du Lion to something like Ahto City on Manaan. Ahto City contains the Sunry Murder Trial quest, which is both entirely optional and probably the best quest in the entire game: replete with multiple angles, options, and outcomes. Nothing in Inquisition even comes CLOSE to the Sunry trial in terms of design.

 

[Roguey]

Nothing in Inquisition even comes CLOSE to the Sunry trial in terms of design.

Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts is the big investigation quest with multiple outcomes.

I don't know why you'd want to compare a city hub to a wilderness one. DA:I intentionally forewent city areas entirely to focus on big wilderness areas.

 

[Coma White]

Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts is the big investigation quest with multiple outcomes.

I don't know why you'd want to compare a city hub to a wilderness one. DA:I intentionally forewent city areas entirely to focus on big wilderness areas.

Is Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts the quest which takes place in the Orlesian court? I just remember a lot of that quest involving wandering around in order to eavesdrop on static NPC conversations like some bargain version of Assassin's Creed. Also a lot of killing nameless trash in hallways and courtyards. I remember feeling the conceit was greater than the execution.

Re city hubs versus wilderness areas: that's kind of my point. Inquisition has these vast open areas, but the fact of the matter is there's almost never anything of real substance to do in any of them. It's a ton of tedious collection quests, menial tasks which you cannot affect or in many cases even comment on, and occasionally a cinematic scene related to the main quest like some B-grade Game of Thrones reshoot. Compare that to Ahto City: a much smaller and humbler area -- one certainly antiquated by today's standards and arguably even back then. And yet the actual content within is quality stuff (like the Sunry trial).

For all of Inquisition's vistas, there's never anything between you and the horizon. It's a dead game that expects you to twiddle your thumbs while exploring what are for the most part dead areas.

 

[Roguey]

Re city hubs versus wilderness areas: that's kind of my point. Inquisition has these vast open areas, but the fact of the matter is there's almost never anything of real substance to do in any of them. It's a ton of tedious collection quests, menial tasks which you cannot affect or in many cases even comment on, and occasionally a cinematic scene related to the main quest like some B-grade Game of Thrones reshoot. Compare that to Ahto City: a much smaller and humbler area -- one certainly antiquated by today's standards and arguably even back then. And yet the actual content within is quality stuff (like the Sunry trial).

As far as I remember, that trial is the only quest like that in that area, the rest is just combat crawling (with obnoxious slow-moving underwater parts). Knights of the Old Republic was also short by RPG standards (Bioware refuses to release anything as buggy as Obsidian, so a few quests with greater-than-their-usual complexity will come at expense of length), and with the used game market now being what it is, Bioware can't afford that anymore.

 

[Neanderthal]

Bioware refuses to release anything as buggy as Obsidian.

Take it you never played that Awakening expansion? Bugged to buggery, six ways from Sunday.

There really no cities in this DA3? How'd they get away wi this, other games can do both easily enough.