I'm hearing seriously mixed things about this game including severe criticisms on the combat and tactical camera and that the whole "massive open skyrim like world" is more of a detriment then a boon and doesn't really reward thorough exploration as much as you think (if anything it makes it a chore for the completionist and is an excuse to fight tons more thrash mobs en lieu of having interesting questlines).
That said, word of mouth is it's better then DA2.
Edit: Oh well nevermind. Damnit now I wished I had a console, the "return game if you don't like it" option is fantastic, but as a pc user I don't have such luxuries and have to contend with origins too :/
Dragon Age 2, while not the coming of the Anti-christ by any means, was ultimately a game that felt like it could have been a mini-series instead, and that's not getting into the repeating environments, character derailment (Goddamnit Anders!) and the fact a certain red haired girl has miraculously reattatched her severed head if you chose to kill her (Or she had a twin that she never told us about that's wandering around just to fuck with the Warden should she run into them again...)
S
So, the question I pose to you: Is Dragon Age Inquisition a game I should by?
Is it ultimately better then Dragon Age 2? Does it clear up some of the retcons? ...Has a certain city rhyming with shmirkwall been burnt to the ground and sunk into the ocean? Does the ending/s suck? Is Bioware back quality-wise?
I want to add my two cents before you make your decision.
It sounds like you enjoyed Dragon Age II, but know it could have been better. I say that's a point in favor of getting Inquisition.
Ah yes, the infamous "Leliana should be dead!" thing. No idea how they address this, as I never killed her. However, seeing as that's a choice in Keep and you can talk to Leliana near the start of the game about how she feels about the Warden, I'm certain that she addresses this. Whether you like that answer will be up to you.
Better than II? I think so. World's much bigger, and Varric is back. Seeing as he was nearly everyone's favorite, there you go.
No idea on the retcons. I did the Keep though, and it imported correctly, so I haven't seen anything that breaks my story yet.
Kirkwall, depending on your choices at the end of II, is actually invaded by a certain character. From the conversations I've heard between my party members so far, it is not fairing well.
No idea on the ending. Won't know for a long, long, looooooooong time. I'm doing everything, and there is a LOT to do.
I never felt like the Dragon Age BioWare team screwed up that badly. They tripped, but they didn't burn the franchise down with II. Everything I've seen so far shows that they learned from II's mistakes and did their best to improve of them.
The only thing that I'm worried about are the companions. So far I haven't come across any that really "pop" for me. Of course, I only have the three starting ones and haven't recruited any others, but these three aren't really that fun yet. Varric is amusing at times, and it was a blast hearing him talk about everyone from II, but Solas and Cassandra are kind of bland at the moment.
It self-referencing hits some plot problems of DA2 at some points. (Only by talking to Varric, where your character will bring up somethings, if you choose too, and he'll respond about it.)
Otherwise... it's pretty much good all over. I don't really see too much to complain about. Plenty of talking and character interaction, your character is in some ways referred to by name. (Well, i'm a elf and so 'clan', but it's no more weirder then Hawke.)
The Side-Quests for Power can be hit or miss, some are interesting, others are short and sweet, and other's can be a drag.
Eh, but over-all i'd say pick it up. I haven't regretted it, unlike Mass Effect 2... (Game about useless characters who, asides about three additions, add nothing to the over-arching narrative.)
If your looking at the pc version I'd hold off for now, yeah it looks good but its a broken game.
It crashes to desktop complaining about directx sending dodgy commands to the graphics cards, some just get a black screen and others are having terrible slowdown in cutscenes. My latest crash just restarted my machine with no warning (something that has never happened before for any game).
I haven't made it out of the first town after the prologue due to it randomly crashing for no apparent reason. Then there's the pc controls but I won't even go into that, you can read about the pc issues here: http://forum.bioware.com/topic/521697-pc-community-concerns/
It's a shame really I took 2 days off work next week to play it but the controls are putting me off.
I'm sorry, but worse looking game in the series? Have you even played DA2? I mean yeah, DA:I constantly flip flops from looking pretty good to absolute shit, but it came nowhere near as bad looking as DA2 in terms of graphics for me.
Yup, for me Inquisition's an objectively inferior experience, graphically. I've never had any of the atrocious textures (some may just be shite, others may be failing to load) or hilariously feeble pop in on DAII, nor the screen tear, or the tedious load times. Nor did DAII ever glitch out on sound or camera angles mid cutscene.
On 360, have you seen the textures for the trees in the Hinterlands? Frankly, that's closer to last last gen, let alone just last gen. There's a consistency and cohesion to DAII's assets, draw distance, framerate, and so on. But Inquisition's a veritable clusterfuck, and right out of the gate in the prologue it looks horrendous, and proceeds to seesaw between passable and ugly-as-sin (what the hell have they done to Leliana's fizzog... ).
Edit: Oh well nevermind. Damnit now I wished I had a console, the "return game if you don't like it" option is fantastic, but as a pc user I don't have such luxuries and have to contend with origins too :/
Cheers for the info, that makes a potential purchase far less risky and I'll keep it in mind when I get around to testing it (one way or another, I know I'll eventually give this game a spin, the question is "when").
What you say about nvidia graphic cards terrifies me though. I only JUST got my desktop computer fixed from a fried motherboard and couldn't play modern games for over a month. For my gaming fix I had to rely on a pre-2000 laptop and sierra city builder games. I'm not in a hurry to break my computer again ><
AMD here and I haven't had any persistent problems. It has crashed to desktop twice, once on a loading screen and once when I went out of a door and then immediately went back in. Other than that the only issue I've encountered is the mouse not highlighting dialogue choices, which alt-tabbing out and back in fixes.
Update: After about 20 hours in I'm in love with this game. It really does feel like the first time I played Skyrim, that sense of wonder at this huge dense world to explore, but with the benefit of a more compelling plot and characters. If you like Dragon Age and Skyrim you will enjoy this game.
Cheers for the info, that makes a potential purchase far less risky and I'll keep it in mind when I get around to testing it (one way or another, I know I'll eventually give this game a spin, the question is "when").
What you say about nvidia graphic cards terrifies me though. I only JUST got my desktop computer fixed from a fried motherboard and couldn't play modern games for over a month. For my gaming fix I had to rely on a pre-2000 laptop and sierra city builder games. I'm not in a hurry to break my computer again ><
It's a pleasure to help but it seems to be more of driver update problem that bioware and nvidia need to work out.
AMD should however work great since the game has mantle support. Hopefully, the bugs will be fixed soon enough. (industry standard at this point. ): )
Drummodino said:
esserin said:
Out of curiosity, is anybody with a non-nvidia graphics card also having problems?
AMD here and I haven't had any persistent problems. It has crashed to desktop twice, once on a loading screen and once when I went out of a door and then immediately went back in. Other than that the only issue I've encountered is the mouse not highlighting dialogue choices, which alt-tabbing out and back in fixes.
Update: After about 20 hours in I'm in love with this game. It really does feel like the first time I played Skyrim, that sense of wonder at this huge dense world to explore, but with the benefit of a more compelling plot and characters. If you like Dragon Age and Skyrim you will enjoy this game.
Thanks for the info. It's good to hear they managed to combine the strengths of both series.
Also, just a warning to anyone interested in the game, the "romance" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) scenes are more explicit.
Not to the level of the witcher series but now the characters won't wear underwear while making love to you.
This comment is about the PS4 copy of the game, so I can't speak for all versions.
I'm about 20 hours in and I am loving it. It lacks some things that Origins had, the combat isn't nearly as deep, nor is the leveling system or the relationship system. However, it has some things in it that I'm glad about having and wish Origin had(or didn't have).
For instance, Origin always had this problem where it felt like a wave simulator, I just fought the same baddies over and over again to get out of a fight, and that would occasionally be broken up by a boss fight.
Inquisition, however, doesn't throw mobs at you like you threw a rock at a beehive. Yes, you'll fight some waves of enemies, but it isn't as ridiculous as Origin was. Seriously, this is something I never got about Origin fans, while the combat might be more hack and slash now, it was far far more repetitive back in Origin because you'd have a strategy down pat that could handle nearly any situation because you already fought in that situation before because the enemies never fucking stop coming. It just got boring then, but now, not only is there a higher variety in mobs that you fight, there is also less of them, and it's easier to get out of a fight that you don't care about because of the open world aspect. It isn't some hallway like in Origin where they just funnel to you and you can't escape, now you can just run up a hill or jump off a small cliff or something to get away.
This leads me to my next point, Inquisition's openish world. Yes, areas are instanced off from each other, but each area is pretty big(and the Hinterlands are fucking massive). While this does mean you have to do a bit more walking maybe to get to the next story mission, it does mean you have more freedom for roaming. There is fast travel so even the longer treks aren't nearly as bad once you have more camps established, and it also gives you an easier escape from enemies meaning getting stuck fighting waves of mobs won't be slowing you down like it did before. It's also just nice being able to jump, I don't know, that's just something I enjoy being able to do.
There is a massive amount of content. This works both for and against the game, as I'd say about half of it is actually engaging, while the other half is really just your standard fetch, kill, and exploration quests. However, as I said, the game is massive, so I'd say that playing only the worthwhile content, you'd probably end up getting in at least 50 or 60 hours out of the game(speculation, don't hold me to that). And luckily, it is entirely possible to skip most of the content that isn't actually worth slogging through. There is the occasional power grind, but I'd say it's no worse that just trying to walk through one dungeon in Origin(yes, I am going to keep going on about that, it is a major flaw in that game that combat sits at the center but in doing so outstays its welcome).
The dungeons that I have been in have been relatively short, maybe a little too short, but the over world covers up for their brevity.
The story is relatively standard, however, that's typically been the case in Dragon Age, Origin had a pretty standard story as well, so I'm no going to hold that against it. It's standard, but presented pretty well(except one part that kind of bugs me). I like the characters, especially Josephine, Iron Bull, and Sera. I also find Solus relatively interesting, but I've always had a problem devoting most of my time to the romanceable characters and forgetting about the others. However, all of this part is fairly more on the subjective side, though I feel like given enough time most people could find a character they enjoy.
The war table is interesting and allows you to garner resources without having to necessarily go out there yourself. It feels like a bit of a strategy game of sorts, though admitably it's fairly simple stuff and not much to think about. It's still kind of fun to take some time and do stuff with it.
Judging is a lot of fun. I've only had two prisoners so far to judge, but it's been a fun process and makes me feel like I'm actually a leader/inquisitor.
I've hit a few bugs. One occured when the PS4 had been on for roughly 10 hours that day and the game's audio started to mess up. It was a pretty bad spot because it was right in the middle of a fuck ton of cutscenes. Luckily I had subtitles, so I just read those until I got out of that, saved, turned it off, and booted it back up again with no problems. There was also one point where one of my party members spawned like 5 feet above the earth, but that corrected quickly. There was also a soldier taking a knee in the background of another cutscene that kept curling through the ground. Past that, the FPS isn't 60 nor always constant, but it never really dips so heavily that it seemed to be a problem to me. If you have a console, however, you probably don't care as much about FPS as a heavy PC gamer might, and from what I'm told the PC version does run 60 FPS and with the right system can do it without(or at least with minimal) dips.
Overall, if you love the Dragon Age universe, buy this game. I'd say it's worth it right now. If you don't care as much about the Dragon Age universe, but still love RPGs and Bioware RPGs, make sure you buy it at some point, even if it's a GOTY edition years down the line during a sale, it's definitely worth picking up.
THIS GOT LONG SORRY BUT I'M PRETTY RILED UP ABOUT THIS GAME.
My opinion about the game is that it's got all the many little parts that could have been great, but none of it pays off. I still generally appreciate the game, and have enjoyed my 80+ hours with it so far, but for real, it feels like the only thing they thought about when making this game was the "reused areas" complaint from Dragon Age 2.
Companions have THREE quests each, and some of them are fetch quests or search and find bullshit. It's a joke. They have about 9 or so conversations each, most of which I had blasted through without even knowing it before even making it past the first area.
Races are also a joke. One of the things that sold me on the game in the first place was the ability to play Qunari, but it changes fuck all. You get the option at the very beginning to say that you've CONSIDERED joining the Qun, and apart from that, you're basically the same as a human character minus some casual racism here and there and an altogether pitiful choice of hair/horns (especially if you play female!). I have tried all four races, however, and Dwarves are just as shit on, but humans and Elves actually have a pretty decent amount of racial interaction with the world (the second half of the game may as well be called "elves are cool").
All of the main quests end before they get interesting at all, and none of the choices have any sort of emotional context, or really, context at all in many cases. They're all "which unspeakable horror do you want to unleash", instead of something that could have been more interesting like "Do you believe in Andraste?" or other more philosophical questions. As it stands all of the choices require the fantasy context, which imo, makes them ultimately forgettable and affecting. Oh, and there are literally six main quests. It's fucking ridiculous. The first set of them up to the reveal of the main villain were AWESOME. Like, extremely inspiring. But then nearly every plot thread that wasn't generic fantasy shit was dropped immediately after.
The big commotion about Andraste supposedly speaking to you is revealed in one of the earlier main quests and it's a completely lackluster revelation that disappointed me greatly. And then nobody even really talks about it. They're just like "huh" and move on to kill the RECYCLED BIG BAD WHO WE'VE ALREADY FACED IN A PREVIOUS GAME.
From then on, the game just held no interest at all, and it just became side-quest hell. And don't get me wrong, the side quests are fun enough to do, and exploration is decent enough. But like, I came to this game looking for a sweeping story, completely expecting the promised 200 hours to at least level out to 80 or so if I didn't bother with all the sidequest bullshit. But no. I beat the game in 20, and I swept through every single area.
ALL THAT SAID, I still somehow enjoyed the game. You can jump now, which alone made the game worth it, and while a good 5 of your party members are uninteresting to the maximum (Vivienne, Blackwall, Solas (unless you're an elf too), Cassandra, and sadly, even Varric all felt like afterthoughts, undeveloped past their initial character pitches.), the remaining party members were very fun and pleasant to bring around, especially Dorian and Cole!
Romances were mostly boring except one, and this one is the shining light in all this darkness: Josephine Montilyet. They finally remembered how ROMANCE should be handled when they wrote hers! It's not just stupid little conversations where you tell each other you're cute, no! It's grand sweeping gestures! Public declarations! Chaste and beautiful kisses! Ah, I could just SWOON. Bull's was alright, Sera was fun and sweet but ultimately went nowhere, and both Cullen and Cassandra had potential that was sadly missed, but were still alright.
Ugh, I really did enjoy it but almost everything I was excited to experience ended up not being there at all. As it stands, Inquisition is Side Quest Heaven. Each area is huge, and has many things to do. It's only too unfortunate that those things rarely ever have any kind of story, or even interaction. Most of them are literally just you killing stuff until it goes away for good, and then hearing people talk about it later. As such, you'll likely get lost in the motions of running around the countryside, constantly postponing going on the main quests until you finish just... one... more. When you finally do go on the main quests, it'll all be over in half a moment, and you'll realize just how little it all mattered! #forever bitter that the big story about questioning religion was dropped. Oh, and people are hating on all the voice options, but I actually really liked the higher pitched female one, but that's to be expected, seeing as she also voiced my favorite character in Mass Effect.
Oh, and if you haven't played the first two, that feeling will be even worse. There is practically nothing in the game that doesn't require some sort of familiarity with the world in order to get anything more than generic adventure.
TL;DR -- Inquisition is a fun generic fantasy adventure simulator, and it's fucking pretty as hell. If you like fucking around in sandboxes, you'll be pleased. If you go in expecting any kind of interesting story, choices, characters, or even lore though, you will be severely disappointed. Oh, and I suppose the tactical stuff is rather shit too, but I never really cared about that so my opinion isn't so important.
That's mainly because I absolutely despised most of the art direction for DA2 and was tired with the plastic textures along with all the brown. There was also a problem with the lack of variation since it was all limited to a single boring city and there was only really 3 unique armor sets for each class.
Whilst the lack of variation was certainly an issue, I really rather liked Kirkwall and the whole game's colour palette. (as for armour types; yeah, they needed more, but with all the DLC packs you had some seriously nifty gear to play with)
When I actually can get DA:I running on high, it actually looks pretty good in comparison.
Well, we're talking about two entirely different experiences; PC, and then the misshapen debacle that is Inquisition on 360. So yeah, even on 720/60fps YT footage, it looks great on PC. But for me DA:I's by far the messiest, ugliest game in the DA series, and contends for one of the worst and least consistent/robust looking games I've played on 360 this gen.
But for me DA:I's by far the messiest, ugliest game in the DA series, and contends for one of the worst and least consistent/robust looking games I've played on 360 this gen.
Well there's your problem then, it's probably going to be a given from now on that last gen versions aren't going to be as good as current gen since they're going to be nothing more than an afterthought at this point. Sucks that they kind of stumbled with the PC version though.
Now I haven't played it myself, but just looking at the Ps4/Ps3 comparison video, I'm shocked by just how bad it looks. It's to the degree I wonder if it's been done deliberately so. The cutscenes are horrendous looking, I would be horrified to see that in Final Fantasy X on the Ps2. Seriously, the cutscene quality shouldn't be decreasing to that huge of a degree for
Also the tree quality. They can do way better than that. Once again, trees in the Ps2 generation looked considerably better than these. There's just this incredibly weird thing going on with the lighting of the trees where half of the tree is completely light and half of the tree is completely dark.
Is this some kind of marketing stunt to try and convince us of how much more powerful the Ps4 is than a Ps3 port crippled to Ps2 level quality?
I'm not even usually someone to pick apart graphic quality, this just seems too bad to be a legitimate attempt to put this on the Ps3
Although even low quality for PC has some horrendous looking stuff. Notably the glossy hair. You can't tell me that damping the specular lighting for hair eats up GPU time. They're clearly already doing it for the ground.
The first problem is the character creator. It's very details but you can't rotate your character at all, meaning you can't see the different angles. This of course means what you see in the creator isn't what you get in the game. My mage ended up looking emaciated, not a deal breaker this time around because she's been a mage on the run but I would have been annoyed for any other choice.
Animation is okay but faces lack 'life' for want of a better word, it's worse in this regard than Origins.
I'm playing on a i5-3330, GTX970, and 8gb of RAM. The loading times are terrible. Sometimes I'm waiting 30 seconds or more for the loading screens to pass.
Someone else mentioned it as well but I really do feel as if I am fighting the controls when using a keyboard and mouse. I really don't see what there is about this game that meant they couldn't use the system from Origins and DAII. It sounds strange but I'm really missing being able to move my character by just holding down the left and right mouse button.
Plug in a controller and it really (there's that word again) does make a difference. The game just feels that much smoother to play. It is quite obvious that Bioware put very little effort into making a decent PC control experience, the controller is where their attention was focused.
Cheers for that. Quite a bit of info in there of interest to me (specifically there only being 9 conversations or so per companion..wtf? Talking to companions is usually one of the best things about bioware games yet it seems like even though this game is bigger in scale there's less of them then in da or da2? I hope the party banter is at least up to scratch.) and more then any other review or opinion I've read so far, I now feel I know what to expect of this game and adjust my excitement accordingly.
Playing a qunari was also a draw as you'd think that would be a big deal but well..Guess will stick to humans then (i ain't too fond of elves even if in dragon age they ain't the usual "we are like humans only better, prettier and hippier" stereotype).
Mmmkay methinks I'll get the game next week then. Now I know what I'm in for, I'll be less disappointed with the game's faults and without cognitive dissonance just able to better enjoy the game for what it is.
In your honor I'll romance Josephine first ;P
Catchpra: Jump over. Heh even catchpra seems to think jumping is a big deal.
I voted "Yes, but..." because I've been enjoying it (I'm about 30 hours in at this point), but am also aware that is has some issues that need smoothing out.
Bugs aside, I think it's a solid game - some of the side quests are tedious, but most of those aren't required, so I'm not bothered by them - it's there if you want to kill more time in-world, but you're not forced through it all. I do think that some of the character development (which has always been a high point in Bioware's games) is weakened due to getting lost in all the open world stuff - the dialogue and banter is still well-done, but being able to wonder around for five hours in between conversations kills the pacing that the more linear games have had.
Still, I'm entertained, and that's all I ask for, so I'm happy with it (and will be happier still once a patch comes out).
Playing a qunari was also a draw as you'd think that would be a big deal but well..Guess will stick to humans then (i ain't too fond of elves even if in dragon age they ain't the usual "we are like humans only better, prettier and hippier" stereotype).
That is the greatest honor I could have ever received. Enjoy the romance!
In seriousness, I did want to comment on the Qunari thing. It's not quite as dire as I made it out to be. There are still a few actually interesting conversations about the Qun and stuff, mostly with Bull as you might expect, but they are few and far between. If you wanted to play one, I still say go for it! The racial content pops up all over the place, and it's still cool to see, even if it feels really stretched between.
The first problem is the character creator. It's very details but you can't rotate your character at all, meaning you can't see the different angles. This of course means what you see in the creator isn't what you get in the game. My mage ended up looking emaciated, not a deal breaker this time around because she's been a mage on the run but I would have been annoyed for any other choice.
Animation is okay but faces lack 'life' for want of a better word, it's worse in this regard than Origins.
I'm playing on a i5-3330, GTX970, and 8gb of RAM. The loading times are terrible. Sometimes I'm waiting 30 seconds or more for the loading screens to pass.
Someone else mentioned it as well but I really do feel as if I am fighting the controls when using a keyboard and mouse. I really don't see what there is about this game that meant they couldn't use the system from Origins and DAII. It sounds strange but I'm really missing being able to move my character by just holding down the left and right mouse button.
Plug in a controller and it really (there's that word again) does make a difference. The game just feels that much smoother to play. It is quite obvious that Bioware put very little effort into making a decent PC control experience, the controller is where their attention was focused.
You can rotate your character. Use the A and D keys on your keyboard.
The lip syncing is awful.
I'm playing on an i3 and yep the load times are awful.
I just gave up with the M&K on the game and plugged in my controller. It's much better that way. The game just flat out doesn't work with a mouse and keyboard, it was designed with a controller in mind. The tactical camera is particularly awful and the fact you can't click to move to items is very annoying.
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