The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Not reading 400 pages, so is this

[ ] Shit
[ ] Meh
[ ] Good

[x] Citizen Kane of cRPG

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

So apparently this is such a blatant console port that you can't even click on things?

yes there is no mouse support. its either xbox controller or voice commands

Spoiler

 

[undecaf]

Sweaty and swollen. Looks like a crackwhore with too much botox.

 

[Delterius]

So apparently this is such a blatant console port that you can't even click on things?

Sad, a single player MMO could've been fun, but Bioware just cannot into RPGs.

Not exactly. Thing is that you have to be really close to things you want to interact with, probably due to the looting animation. So its quicker to just walk around with wasd and, keeping a finger ready for the 'interact' key - default F.

 

[Mrowak]

Not reading 400 pages, so is this

[ ] Shit
[X] Meh
[ ] Good

I'll be honest, despite serious shortcomings I enjoy some bits of the game enough to press on. It can be good enough for storyfags like me. If you are combatfag, however, steer clear.

 

[RPGMaster]

So apparently this is such a blatant console port that you can't even click on things?

yes there is no mouse support. its either xbox controller or voice commands

Spoiler

You could play this entire game using an usb ATARI 2600 controller.

 

[Modron]

You could play this entire game using an usb ATARI 2600 controller.

The awesome button is back? Shit, I might have to get this.

 

[DeepOcean]

What really turns me off on this combat, is that both enemies and you lack battle changing abilities. Dragon Age 1 with all its defects, if an oger grappled one of your characters (it was a big deal), a succubus cast a deadly ice cone and frozen half your party (it was a big deal), Arcane Horrors and other mages casting fireballs or freezing your characters (it was a big deal.), even on fucking Mass effect 2, some Krogan charging you, hitting him with a powered shot to make him stop was a big deal.

The companions feel so irrelevant here, there aren't ability combos that truly are fun to use and have great impact (Even simple things like DA 1, placing a pool of oil and setting fire on it), you just spam the same abilities over and over to work away on huge health bars. One has the impression they inflated the health bar of the enemies to justify why you were taking companions as if the combat is just spam abilities over and over, why the need of a group? Besides being exposition dispensers of course.

 

[Grunker]

I'll be honest, despite serious shortcomings I enjoy some bits of the game enough to press on. It can be good enough for storyfags like me. If you are combatfag, however, steer clear.

The combat is that bad, huh?

How bad on the PS:T ---> BG2wSCS scale?

 

[DeepOcean]

I'll be honest, despite serious shortcomings I enjoy some bits of the game enough to press on. It can be good enough for storyfags like me. If you are combatfag, however, steer clear.

The combat is that bad, huh?

How bad on the PS:T ---> BG2wSCS scale?

I dunno if Mrowak agrees but for me you will have to find a cRPG with shittier combat than PS:T for your scale unless it is like a temperature scale and PS:T is at 0 degree Celsius and Dragon Age Inquisition is near absolute zero.

 

[Nryn]

Hit level 15 with about 38 hours of play across 5 major zones, and I've got to say that the open-world/zone design here is a failure:

1. It is formulaic: The different zones I've encountered have these laundry-list activities associated with them: a) Unlock camps in each zone for fast travel b) Pixel hunt shards through a telescope and hunt them down c) Close numerous rifts in each zone (justifiable, yet repetitive) d) Interact with dozens of landmark sites in each area, and so on. The whole thing comes off as something out of Assassin's Creed. Normally I'm excited to go explore new zones and their associated quests, but over here, there's only one thought that pops up in my head on unlocking a new area: more tedium.

2. There is a conspicuous lack of quest hubs and cities: There is just one settlement in the entire first act, and that is a tiny village. So far, I've yet to encounter a fully realized city. Even Val Royeaux, capital of Orlais and supposedly one of the biggest cities in Thedas, is represented by a tiny closed-off section and nothing more. Every single major zone has turned out to be a combat area. Think MMOs, but go one step further and remove capital cities to get the idea.

3. Piss-poor side quest design: As a result of lacking in quest hubs, nearly every single side quest boils down to fedex quests that you stumble upon in the combat areas, often with zero interesting stories. Nearly 40 hours in, and I cannot name a single interesting side quest off the top of my head. What's the point to having 100+ side quests when they all lack any semblance of substance? I would gladly take 10% of the quests on display here in return for them being more involving. At this point, DA2's and Skyrim's side quests are probably far better and had more effort put into them -- quite a sobering thought.

4. The entire world is static: There is no day-night cycle. There are no npc schedules. There is no meaningful interaction with the world, such as sneaking, pickpocketing, picking a fight with the NPCs, etc. Once I was able to get past the initial wonder at the size of the maps and the good visuals, it became apparent that the "open world" is nothing more than window dressing. It's a giant dead world with nothing interesting to do, except for scripted events at your base. Replacing traditional quest hubs with these massive zones containing vast amounts of filler was a terrible idea on their part. I would prefer undertaking the trek through the Deep Roads in Origins numerous times over ever replaying any of DA:I's zones ever again.

The game's got numerous other issues with its horrendous combat, glacial story pacing and disjointed plot development, encounter design, dumbed-down character development, character writing, etc., but I more or less expected and was prepared for those issues. On the other hand, I would never have guessed that their zone design/open world would be yet another addition to the list.

At this point I should probably cut my losses and shelve the game, but there have been a few interesting callbacks to the events of the first two games. I'm also morbidly curious about whether the story is another DA2-style disaster in the making. If it is, I want to witness it first-hand.

 

[Mrowak]

I'll be honest, despite serious shortcomings I enjoy some bits of the game enough to press on. It can be good enough for storyfags like me. If you are combatfag, however, steer clear.

The combat is that bad, huh?

How bad on the PS:T ---> BG2wSCS scale?

DA 3 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< BG 2 vanilla.

It would be comparable to DA1 if not for fucked up controls. They are really bad. Like, epicly bad. At this point I rolled difficulty back to Normal and disabled Party Damage, because most of the time fighting was either tedious or frustrating.

 

[Delterius]

I'll be honest, despite serious shortcomings I enjoy some bits of the game enough to press on. It can be good enough for storyfags like me. If you are combatfag, however, steer clear.

The combat is that bad, huh?

How bad on the PS:T ---> BG2wSCS scale?

That scale doesn't really apply because PS:T is a bad version of BG2wSCS whereas DA:I is something else entirely. As much as BioWare likes to tout the 'STRATEGIC TACTICAL SUPER VIEW'(tm), this is a cooldown based action game. If you try micromanage things then its not just uncomfortable, it may sometimes be less efficient. Here's an example: A tactic as simple as Hold Position was made incredibly frustrating to use. It is mindblowing.

A fitting description would be World of Warcraft with fewer features, jerkier movement with several times more filler combat than even DA:O had.

 

[DalekFlay]

So apparently this is such a blatant console port that you can't even click on things?

Sad, a single player MMO could've been fun, but Bioware just cannot into RPGs.

You can't click-to-move in Morrowind, either. That's not the issue. The issue is it's not the same kind of game Origins was, it's a third-person action RPG.

 

[Grunker]

DA 3 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< BG 2 vanilla.

It would be comparable to DA1 if not for fucked up controls. They are really bad. Like, epicly bad. At this point I rolled difficulty back to Normal and disabled Party Damage, because most of the time fighting was either tedious or frustrating.

The comparison to DA:O is praise to me. I really liked DA combat. Not nearly as much as BG2 of course, but still a great deal. That's why I gave you the from PST combat (horribru) to BG2 SCS combat (awesome) spectrum. So if they're (DA:O and DA:I) comparable I'm not sure why a combatfag like myself should steer clear

 

[Mrowak]

DA 3 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< BG 2 vanilla.

It would be comparable to DA1 if not for fucked up controls. They are really bad. Like, epicly bad. At this point I rolled difficulty back to Normal and disabled Party Damage, because most of the time fighting was either tedious or frustrating.

The comparison to DA:O is praise to me. I really liked DA combat. Not nearly as much as BG2 of course, but still a great deal. That's why I gave you the from PST combat (horribru) to BG2 SCS combat (awesome) spectrum. So if they're (DA:O and DA:I) comparable I'm not sure why a combatfag like myself should steer clear

It would be decent, and tactical, but really the combat controls suck ass.

 

[fanta]

UnderRail thread: 65 pages since Feb. 2012

Dragon Age Inquisition thread: 396 pages since Aug. 2012

Fallout: New Vegas megathread located in General Gaming

Dragon Age Inquisition megathread located in General RPG Discussion

Man this thread will make you laugh and make you cry. You will encounter genuine human tragedies. Pramod Kumar, a generous and fundamentally decent man, was caught between greed of Bobby Kotick and Gaider's debaucheries. He looked into Dragon Age and saw a refund must be given, and yet he could not give it. That's when his mind broke.

The New Vegas thread is frivolous in comparison.

 

[Grinolf]

On the other hand, I would never have guessed that their zone design/open world would be yet another addition to the list.

You mean one could never guess that a company, which didn't make open world games for a whole 16 years and with their last and only open world game being full of empty filler locations, suddenly deciding to make one because of Skyrim hype, would fail miserably at that task? Yes, one really need an ability to see future for this.

 

[DeepOcean]

The comparison to DA:O is praise to me. I really liked DA combat. Not nearly as much as BG2 of course, but still a great deal. That's why I gave you the from PST combat (horribru) to BG2 SCS combat (awesome) spectrum. So if they're (DA:O and DA:I) comparable I'm not sure why a combatfag like myself should steer clear

Did you like Derp Roads? If yes, this game is your game then, it is ALL Derp Roads.

 

[Volourn]

Deep Roads was awesome. FUCK OFF.

 

[dryan]

 

[Haba]

Deep Roads was awesome. FUCK OFF.

...

Even for Volourn, that's low.

 

[Zeriel]

I'll be honest, despite serious shortcomings I enjoy some bits of the game enough to press on. It can be good enough for storyfags like me. If you are combatfag, however, steer clear.

God, I can't even...

There is the occasional glimmer of something vaguely interesting in the story (not good, just something to keep the old neurons occupied) but the story is paced out in such a terrible fashion. You go 10 hours of meaningless slog for every tidbit of story* they hand you. It's as if someone took out all the good parts of Dragon Age: Origins, made the combat in Dragon Age II worse, and then decided that DA II had too much story going on, slow that shit right down.

Outside of "they wanted Skyrim's money", I cannot fathom how this game ended up the way it is. The pacing is awful, the "strategic" combat is a pointless mess, and Bioware have managed to make the Frostbite engine look ugly. That's a real accomplishment.

I wasn't even a fan of DA:O, but Inquisition makes that look like a fucking work of art.

*(and I'm not even exaggerating here, it's literally finish 20 quests before we give you the amount of exposition that would have happened in half a quest in Origins)

DA 3 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< BG 2 vanilla.

It would be comparable to DA1 if not for fucked up controls. They are really bad. Like, epicly bad. At this point I rolled difficulty back to Normal and disabled Party Damage, because most of the time fighting was either tedious or frustrating.

The comparison to DA:O is praise to me. I really liked DA combat. Not nearly as much as BG2 of course, but still a great deal. That's why I gave you the from PST combat (horribru) to BG2 SCS combat (awesome) spectrum. So if they're (DA:O and DA:I) comparable I'm not sure why a combatfag like myself should steer clear

Oh, you poor fool. Stay the fuck away.

Edit: Just check out Nryn 's post. He said everything worth saying about this game. Except for maybe a hitpiece about how bad the combat is, but I'm not sure it's even worth digging into the whys and the hows when it's this mediocre. Just move on if you haven't touched the game yet.

 

[Goat Vomit]

I'll be honest, despite serious shortcomings I enjoy some bits of the game enough to press on. It can be good enough for storyfags like me. If you are combatfag, however, steer clear.

The combat is that bad, huh?

How bad on the PS:T ---> BG2wSCS scale?

KOTOR 2 > DAI combatwise.

I'm serious.

 

[Grunker]

Did you like Derp Roads?:

Yes. Their length and issues are overstated here. It was actually a fairly well-paced quest and easily the most interesting lore-wise in DA:O. I suspect most people here hated it because they didn't like the gameplay to begin with, and the Deep Roads have A LOT of that gameplay. However I also don't think that DA:O could have handled more than one instance of such a long, draining crawl (with regards to your "it's all Deep Roads" comment).

Zeriel and Goat Vomit: I respect your opinion but it clashes with Mrowaks. Maybe if you elaborated?