What was wrong with Dragon Age Inquistion

[Zeraki]

The controls on PC killed that game for me, especially when compared to Origins.

I didn't make it far into the starting area before I decided to just give up because I was finding it more frustrating than fun.

And the less said about that joke of a "tactical mode" the better.

 

[Kerg3927]

Admittedly TW3 does fall victim to the Fallout 4 situation in which you have to save someone, yet are easily distracted by card games, and helping minor people for little reason other than to be a nice guy. But I'd take that situation in a well-written form, than the poorly written "you are the most important person on the planet, go pick my fucking flowers" situation.

It's the same flaw, just better masked by CDPR. It's an inherent design flaw in massive open world RPG's, IMO. Sprawling map space means more sidequests to fill that space, which necessarily detracts from the urgency of the main story. They compete against one another.

Which is why I prefer RPG's with smaller, more confined worlds. Games that achieve a balance between main story and side content and thus preserve the urgency of main story. Games like DAO, DA2, and ME1-3. Bioware had the perfect formula, IMO, and they were the best in the world at what they did, but they threw it all away, presumably because they saw Skyrim's ridiculous sales figures and felt pressure (from EA) to emulate it.

 

[Potjeslatinist]

I'm currently replaying Dragon Age Inquisition. I recall lots of people really disliking this game. For example, "single player MMO" was I quote I remember.

The thing is, I don't find it that much worse than the Witcher 3. (well, there is a little more collecting but Witcher 3 was rife with it as well.) The writing slightly less and both bad guys make as much sense. The camera is a real detractor, though. The Witcher sense is slightly different, as it doesn't light up tracks and footprints the same way.

But, for context, I'm also a person who likes the Witcher 3 but doesn't gloss over its flaws, and think people consistently overrate its value.

Thought?

Hmmm. First off, I feel obliged to tell you that the Witcher 3 is in my personal top 5 videogames ever. I've been gaming for a hell of a long time, and this game just tickles me in all the right places. I really feel like it set a new standard for story-driven rpg's. It's certainly not perfect, because what is? But I do notice any internetboard-criticism leveled in its direction, and you, my fellow rpg-lover, have been taking a noticeable amount of potshots lately at a game you claim to like. I am even under the impression that your intention for this thread is more about The Witcher 3 than DA:I.
That being said, you have a full right to take all the shots you want, so by all means fire away.

I liked DA:I. I once played right up until the final boss, then just stopped for some reason. Then I came back later and did a completely new playthrough and beat it. So I have around 300 hours in it. It's big, and yes, there's a lot of filler. You can argue this is also the case for TW3. But where all the busywork in TW3 has lots and lots of stories with neat twists and turns, in DA:I it's all basically collecting skulls and crap and "quests" that are written thusly:

"I lost my cow."
"Neat, Imma find it" [later] "here's your cow"
"Thank you for finding my cow"
XP AWARDED

Both games may have had similar structures at heart, but TW3 did it LIGHTYEARS better.

And another thing:

Bioware/EA cut out a full chapter of the main story and sold it as DLC. Don't you dare tell me they didn't.
Trespasser would have made an AWESOME finale, would have completed an actual story arc and they just cut it out and sold it to you for a surplus. This is why the finale seems so stupid and it drags the whole story down.

CD Projekt have so much more class.

So this is why DA:I is remembered as a bit of a dud. TW3 came out shortly afterwards and really did everything better. It made an ass out of Dragon Age. Which is a shame, because as I said, for context, I really liked DA:I. I just think you're overrating its value.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Admittedly TW3 does fall victim to the Fallout 4 situation in which you have to save someone, yet are easily distracted by card games, and helping minor people for little reason other than to be a nice guy. But I'd take that situation in a well-written form, than the poorly written "you are the most important person on the planet, go pick my fucking flowers" situation.

It's the same flaw, just better masked by CDPR. It's an inherent design flaw in massive open world RPG's, IMO. Sprawling map space means more sidequests to fill that space, which necessarily detracts from the urgency of the main story. They compete against one another.

Which is why I prefer RPG's with smaller, more confined worlds. Games that achieve a balance between main story and side content and thus preserve the urgency of main story. Games like DAO, DA2, and ME1-3. Bioware had the perfect formula, IMO, and they were the best in the world at what they did, but they threw it all away, presumably because they saw Skyrim's ridiculous sales figures and felt pressure (from EA) to emulate it.

It's an outdated design flaw.

Something I think the developers of these open world games don't seem to understand, is that just because you have the space, doesn't mean you have to make every square inch important. And certainly the old school questing system of: talk to npc and get quest, go do quest, return to npc for reward: is a waste in an open world environment.

The Witcher does something pretty great that you can only really experience if you turn off the HUD. In normal gameplay, you can go to a quest board in town and have a shit load of question marks bukaki all over your map. However all of those "?" are always in the world, so if you just decided to go wander around the woods, you would organically come across bandit camps, monster nests, treasure hunts, and the like, all without ever having to deal with the back and forth you get form npc side quest givers. Now TW3 doesn't do this perfectly, and there is certainly areas in which the system can improve.

For example, what if the game procedurally generated side content on the fly from a pool of possible situations? The main quest can still be a directing guide of the player to have a direction to go, but the side content they experience is completely random and sudden. Let's say that the player is making a delivery through the woods from one town to another for a main story reason, but on the road the game triggers a side quest event where a woman in distress bursts onto the trail from the woods, and the player sees her get captured by black figures on horseback and they ride off into the woods. Now the player can follow these enemies and try to save the woman, or they can ignore it and move on to continue the main quest. Later down the road they can be ambushed by men from what appeared to be the same group of black figures, adding to the story of the woman who was taken (if the player ignored her), or perhaps the game randomly decides that there isn't a woman and these figures attack the player outright.

By not littering the map with checklists, the developers can create situations that organically lead players to cool parts of the world. Shows that treasure and adventure lies all over, if they care to look for it and that the game is more than it's core plot line.

I don't agree with you're opinions on Mass Effect. The side content was trash, and the formula for each game was exactly the same.

Mass Effect checklist:
1. Introduce big bad.
2. Gather crew.
3. Do individual crew missions (optionally)
4. Fight big bad.
-Fin-

All 3 games follow that exact path, and there was absolutely nothing memorable or interesting in any of the super minor side quests.

 

[Comic Sans]

Never played TW3, but DAI got boring for me cause it was all the same shit over and over. It was a game entirely of fetch quests and kill everything quests in their most simple forms. There weren't interesting lore reasons or side stories, just counters that filled up as you killed things or picked flowers. Unlocking new areas should be an exciting thing, instead it was just to open up a new area with exactly the same quests you were doing in every other area. There were no surprises, no interesting hand crafted quests out in the world. Just mindless grind for Power until you could unlock the next story mission.

In another big failure, the plot and characters didn't hold up well. A few characters were okay but none stuck with me. Even Varric, one of the only things I liked in DA2, lacked the magic of his prior outing. The plot was barebones, to the point of barely existing thanks to the mountain of filler content between plot points. Every time the game starts to have an interesting idea, you gotta take a break to grind Power to be allowed to do the next story mission, which sucks any anticipation right out the window. The villain is a waste as well. He doesn't even show up for several hours, then doesn't come out again until the end for a disappointing boss fight. His motives had a lot of potential for being an interesting villain, but no. He's just out doing THINGS I guess. As a more personal bugbear, I really thing that the "chosen one/most influential person in the world" doesn't really work for this type of game. If I'm the big boss of a huge organization full of artisans, soldiers, scouts and the like, why am I out doing the ***** work? Surely if I am so important I should only be going out on super important missions, not being sent into random areas to explore, pick flowers, and making all my own gear. Generals don't fight on front lines with the grunts.

The game overall felt like a committee game, designed to have a lot of content to appeal to people rather than focusing on making good content. Between it and Andromeda Bioware games have far gone from what made them great in favor of generic masses of nothing made to keep you playing in a loop. It's really depressing and I hope against hope that they can turn it around before EA buries them.

 

[Kerg3927]

Admittedly TW3 does fall victim to the Fallout 4 situation in which you have to save someone, yet are easily distracted by card games, and helping minor people for little reason other than to be a nice guy. But I'd take that situation in a well-written form, than the poorly written "you are the most important person on the planet, go pick my fucking flowers" situation.

It's the same flaw, just better masked by CDPR. It's an inherent design flaw in massive open world RPG's, IMO. Sprawling map space means more sidequests to fill that space, which necessarily detracts from the urgency of the main story. They compete against one another.

Which is why I prefer RPG's with smaller, more confined worlds. Games that achieve a balance between main story and side content and thus preserve the urgency of main story. Games like DAO, DA2, and ME1-3. Bioware had the perfect formula, IMO, and they were the best in the world at what they did, but they threw it all away, presumably because they saw Skyrim's ridiculous sales figures and felt pressure (from EA) to emulate it.

It's an outdated design flaw.

Something I think the developers of these open world games don't seem to understand, is that just because you have the space, doesn't mean you have to make every square inch important. And certainly the old school questing system of: talk to npc and get quest, go do quest, return to npc for reward: is a waste in an open world environment.

The Witcher does something pretty great that you can only really experience if you turn off the HUD. In normal gameplay, you can go to a quest board in town and have a shit load of question marks bukaki all over your map. However all of those "?" are always in the world, so if you just decided to go wander around the woods, you would organically come across bandit camps, monster nests, treasure hunts, and the like, all without ever having to deal with the back and forth you get form npc side quest givers. Now TW3 doesn't do this perfectly, and there is certainly areas in which the system can improve.

For example, what if the game procedurally generated side content on the fly from a pool of possible situations? The main quest can still be a directing guide of the player to have a direction to go, but the side content they experience is completely random and sudden. Let's say that the player is making a delivery through the woods from one town to another for a main story reason, but on the road the game triggers a side quest event where a woman in distress bursts onto the trail from the woods, and the player sees her get captured by black figures on horseback and they ride off into the woods. Now the player can follow these enemies and try to save the woman, or they can ignore it and move on to continue the main quest. Later down the road they can be ambushed by men from what appeared to be the same group of black figures, adding to the story of the woman who was taken (if the player ignored her), or perhaps the game randomly decides that there isn't a woman and these figures attack the player outright.

By not littering the map with checklists, the developers can create situations that organically lead players to cool parts of the world. Shows that treasure and adventure lies all over, if they care to look for it and that the game is more than it's core plot line.

Maybe I should try replaying TW3 one day with the HUD turned off. Because even though the majority of side content was well-done, the OCD completionist in me could not ignore all those symbols on the map. I had to do them all. After a while it became a slog, and as I said, it detracted from the main story for me. And I understand that that is largely a "me" problem. I just have a problem with skipping content. I need world confinement and limitations on side content to protect me from slogging through it all and getting bored. I'd rather the boring content just not be there.

I don't agree with you're opinions on Mass Effect. The side content was trash, and the formula for each game was exactly the same.

Mass Effect checklist:
1. Introduce big bad.
2. Gather crew.
3. Do individual crew missions (optionally)
4. Fight big bad.
-Fin-

All 3 games follow that exact path, and there was absolutely nothing memorable or interesting in any of the super minor side quests.

But the side content was minor, and not very time consuming, so to me it never felt like a slog. Just small breaks in between the main story action. For example, in the original Mass Effect, there is a grand total of 26 UNC missions, all of them optional. That's the filler, and it takes very little time to knock them out a few at a time. Compare that to DAI or TW3, which has hundreds upon hundreds. There are like 60+ smugglers caches in Skellige alone. Every time I'd touch a billboard and see another dozen question marks pop up out in the ocean, it made me want to cry. Because I knew it meant more hours spent slogging around on that stupid little boat and killing harpies and looting crap. But what if one of those question marks was actually something interesting? If I skip it, I'll never know. Bleh...

Yeah, the formula for Mass Effect was the same, but it was an awesome formula, IMO. Great characters. Fun story. Gather your team and save the galaxy against all odds. It's the Seven Samurai formula, and it's still a great formula.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Unlocking new areas should be an exciting thing, instead it was just to open up a new area with exactly the same quests you were doing in every other area. There were no surprises, no interesting hand crafted quests out in the world. Just mindless grind for Power until you could unlock the next story mission.

Oh my god, yes. This is so disappointingly true. I remember thinking "I hope this new area is smaller than the last. I just want to get it over with."

That's not something that you should be thinking when you're playing a brand new game and unlocking new content. And the longer I played the more I felt like everything was a grind. Even crafting mechanics that started off as really cool felt like a chore because I couldn't help thinking that the more time I spend crafting weapons and armor the longer I delay exploring the next area, which means it will take longer for me to get to the next story mission.

On the other hand, I'm still playing The Witcher 3. And I still get excited when I'm about to unlock Skellige. I still cherish every moment of the game more than two years later.

 

[Trunkage]

snip

The Witcher was brought up only for comparison purposes.

But I won't deny that I have a prejudice against the criticism (or lack there of) of the Witcher. Don't get me wrong, I still like even Witcher 1, and defend it. But every time I hear a critique against another game because Witcher is better, I start applying to another game, and the critique generally falls apart.

I remember NOT buying the Witcher 3 on launch - I waited a month, because reports of bugs. CDPR literally gave everyone extra dlc to counter this fact. I'm not big into being bought so this probably didn't have the effect they wanted on me. I had so many problems with bugs and crashes, it was ridiculous. Even after I deliberate waited. Even after they put out lots of patches.

A little later I play Fallout 4. I had one crash and a flying bear for about the same amount of hours. I remember on this forum and elsewhere commenting on how well F4 work (i.e. didnt crash or have bugs). But which one is deemed as a buggy mess? I call shenanigans.

People praise the ending where you talk to Ciri and that decides the epilogue. I've heard it called respectful of women and some such. I see it as disrespectful - Ciri is going to only try hard to survive becuase Geralt said something? It's as bad as having to get 'loyalty' for your party memeber in ME2 to survive the suicide mission.

Don't get me wrong. The Witcher 3 is still the better game. But it isnt miles ahead of everything. I understand that a lot of this has to do with personal experience.

I also understand how popularity works. Like the Mona Lisa was deemed a bad piece of art til it was stolen or Moby Dick was a flop until WW!, 50 years later, when it spoke to the people in the trenches. I understand that point out bad journalism and criticism of the Witcher 3 isn't going to win any friends, just like I see that this same journalism is the reason why its popular (and not the actual product. Well, the product was pretty good so that a slightly untrue statement)

I agree Tresspasser being cut out was terrible. It cut out so much potential and I still don't understand the point of Flemeth. Feels like a waste to me. I brought this up as I was surprised, since I haven't played DA:I since release, that I still liked it. Even with the faulty controls, dialogue animation, lacklustre villain (and being downgraded from 2), the collectibles and having to go back to the war table all the time.

Unlocking new areas should be an exciting thing, instead it was just to open up a new area with exactly the same quests you were doing in every other area. There were no surprises, no interesting hand crafted quests out in the world. Just mindless grind for Power until you could unlock the next story mission.

Oh my god, yes. This is so disappointingly true. I remember thinking "I hope this new area is smaller than the last. I just want to get it over with."

That's not something that you should be thinking when you're playing a brand new game and unlocking new content. And the longer I played the more I felt like everything was a grind. Even crafting mechanics that started off as really cool felt like a chore because I couldn't help thinking that the more time I spend crafting weapons and armor the longer I delay exploring the next area, which means it will take longer for me to get to the next story mission.

On the other hand, I'm still playing The Witcher 3. And I still get excited when I'm about to unlock Skellige. I still cherish every moment of the game more than two years later.

I remember when I first reach Skelliege. I let out an audible sigh. I've never done that to any game before or since. Then I find Skelliege is padding and is pretty disrespectful of my time. It doesn't help that you have to spend time with Yennefer, who is the worst. Then you get to the fishing expedient... over and over

 

[vubata454]

Amazing! I've been making $85 every hour since i started freelancing over the internet half a year ago... I work from home several hours daily and do basic work i get from this company that i stumbled upon online... I am very happy to share this work opportunity to you... It's definetly the best job i ever had...Check it out here





........... ► http://bit.do/ussdmake-hare45

 

[laggyteabag]

Single-player MMO is exactly what it was.

The environments were gorgeous, but none of them had anything interesting to do. They were big, open, and full of collectibles and fetch quests.

The story had its moments (If my choices ever led me to need to pick between Alistair and Hawke, I would probably freeze up), and the combat was certainly flashier, but overall, the game never really used its open world in any meaningful way.

 

[infohippie]

It was released after Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2, so all trust in Bioware was gone by that point.

 

[TheFinish]

Miles wide, not even inches deep. Open world filled with tons of repetitive tasks, but very few noteworthy quests. A story that was sort of alright, but it requires to have played a DA2 DLC to actually understand who the hell the villain is and where he came from, which is naff. Really unbalanced gameplay, especially if you're adept at min-maxing. Completely disregards choices you may have made in earlier games (though most of these are leftovers from 2 ignoring them, so it's not completely Inqs fault).

Oh and then they went and put the true ending behind a paywall, like greedy little piglets.

 

[Trunkage]

Really unbalanced gameplay, especially if you're adept at min-maxing.

interesting, can you elaborate on this?

Completely disregards choices you may have made in earlier games (though most of these are leftovers from 2 ignoring them, so it's not completely Inqs fault).

This frustrates me more than anything else. But I haven't met a game that does it properly. The Witcher is pretty bad, Elder Scrolls is worse by completely ignoring or making up silliness like Chim and the Warp in the West. I got more frustrated over this in the Mass Effect than the ending to 3. One of the reasons I dislike Fallout 2 is becuase it did the same thing to F1.

 

[TheFinish]

Really unbalanced gameplay, especially if you're adept at min-maxing.

interesting, can you elaborate on this?

Completely disregards choices you may have made in earlier games (though most of these are leftovers from 2 ignoring them, so it's not completely Inqs fault).

This frustrates me more than anything else. But I haven't met a game that does it properly. The Witcher is pretty bad, Elder Scrolls is worse by completely ignoring or making up silliness like Chim and the Warp in the West. I got more frustrated over this in the Mass Effect than the ending to 3. One of the reasons I dislike Fallout 2 is becuase it did the same thing to F1.

To the min-maxing point: there's specialisations that are vastly more powerful than others, the most egregious being Tempest for the Rogue (you can find videos on youtube of Tempest Rogues killing High Dragons on Nightmare in less than 20 seconds when combined with Cole's assassin abilities) and Knight Enchanter for the Mage (who are just unbeatable tanks). If you know what you're doing, the game's only challenging a bit in the beginning, and then you just blaze through it.

And yes, it's hard to find a game that does choices in between games right, but pulling what DA2 pulls by literally reviving people you killed (Leliana and Zevran) with no explanation at all just rankles. I understand the need for canonical end-states (I mean, can you imagine how much work it'd be to design a Fallout 2 taking into account every possible combination of end-states from the locations in 1? You'd be screwed even today, let alone back in 1998.)

But in Dragon Age's case, you could've just swapped Leliana and Zevran for a new character if they were killed in 1, and not lose anything. Instead they chose to circumvent player agency and have 'em alive and kicking for no adequately good reason.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

Nothing was glaringly wrong at first, I enjoyed the previous 2 games very much and was looking forward to this. But I can only squeeze in so many massive, lengthy, grindy open world games in a year. And I just had to cull this one, because it looked like a bit too much of busywork. Forced busywork, in fact. I like to really explore and get lost in the worlds of the games that I play, so between this and TW3 and other games I played that year, there was no way this one was going to fit in there.

Looking back on it, I'm kinda relieved, because it looks like it would have amounted to more frustration than reward.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Really unbalanced gameplay, especially if you're adept at min-maxing.

interesting, can you elaborate on this?

I distinctly remember beating all ten high dragons by taking Vivienne (was that her name?), putting the party far away and sending her in alone to spam that Knight Enchanter attack where she conjures a blade for a melee attack against a hind leg. Since she gained shield with every hit and the mana cost was negligible, she effectively became invulnerable because the dragon could not hurt her fast enough to deplete the shield and she could just stand there and hack away until it died. Then it was simply a matter of using the shield spell when the dragon did its' flying thing before going back to hacking that leg.

 

[Trunkage]

But in Dragon Age's case, you could've just swapped Leliana and Zevran for a new character if they were killed in 1, and not lose anything. Instead they chose to circumvent player agency and have 'em alive and kicking for no adequately good reason.

I don't know. I did a run of Mass Effect 3 where I had a lot of people killed in pervious games. It didn't have the same impact and felt like... out of place? Like the story didn't make sense EDIT: I understand your point, though

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Several reasons, in no particular order:

- SJW/Liberal Nonsense: BioWare's first Full-SJW game virtue signals up the kazoo and does so at the expense of the world's own lore and history. The violent, racist, grim world of Origins is now a 20th century liberal utopia with none of its own established rules. If you want to groan, ask Iron Bull about the transgender person in his crew.
- Single player MMO: You go to a bunch of open zones, complete a number of fetch quests, find certain collectables and score so many fuckabout points before you can proceed with the main quest. Utterly tedious, shallow gameplay.
- Characters: They pretty much sucked across the board. I can hardly remember most of them.
- Story: I finished the game, and I cannot remember anything about the story or villain except for the green hand thing. I can still tell you everything about Origins and even 2, which was pretty mediocre.
- Action Driven: Instead of a strategic, party based RPG, it was an action game.
- No

It looked pretty average and was ultimately a boring, forgettable game not worthy of sharing shelf space with BioWare's past catalogue. There were a couple of good bits. The mission at the palace was exceptional and absolutely the highlight of an otherwise very bad game. I also liked Flemeth's appearance and the lore presented in the post-credits. In summary, it's a boring, forgettable game with little to recommend it. Gone is everything unique about the world in exchange for a virtue-signalling, pseudo-open world game of busy work and nebulous "content" in lieu of actual storytelling or world building.

 

[Kerg3927]

Several reasons, in no particular order:

- SJW/Liberal Nonsense: BioWare's first Full-SJW game virtue signals up the kazoo and does so at the expense of the world's own lore and history. The violent, racist, grim world of Origins is now a 20th century liberal utopia with none of its own established rules. If you want to groan, ask Iron Bull about the transgender person in his crew.
- Single player MMO: You go to a bunch of open zones, complete a number of fetch quests, find certain collectables and score so many fuckabout points before you can proceed with the main quest. Utterly tedious, shallow gameplay.
- Characters: They pretty much sucked across the board. I can hardly remember most of them.
- Story: I finished the game, and I cannot remember anything about the story or villain except for the green hand thing. I can still tell you everything about Origins and even 2, which was pretty mediocre.
- Action Driven: Instead of a strategic, party based RPG, it was an action game.
- No

It looked pretty average and was ultimately a boring, forgettable game not worthy of sharing shelf space with BioWare's past catalogue. There were a couple of good bits. The mission at the palace was exceptional and absolutely the highlight of an otherwise very bad game. I also liked Flemeth's appearance and the lore presented in the post-credits. In summary, it's a boring, forgettable game with little to recommend it. Gone is everything unique about the world in exchange for a virtue-signalling, pseudo-open world game of busy work and nebulous "content" in lieu of actual storytelling or world building.

Can you imagine Sten from DAO in the same room with Iron Bull? I don't think it would go over well.

It seems like Iron Bull's purpose is to retcon Qunari society, in order to make it more 21th century Earth politically correct. To transform them from bad communists into "good" communists.

I understand that video games and other art forms have always contained political messages. But DAI was so heavy-handed about it that it is immersion-breaking. Instead of becoming lost in the fantasy world of Thedas and its story, I found myself constantly snapped back to reality, thinking about the thinly veiled political motives of the writers.

 

[Rangaman]

The problem was the side questin' stuff is fucking tedious in DA:I. Other than that, I'm not as negative as I used to be (though I'm only slightly less consistent than Stephen King movie adaptations, so be aware that I might hate it again next week). The gameplay is definitely better than The Witcher 3 and I prefer the fantasy epic, generic as it is, to the poor man's GoT that was DA:O. It's also visually stunning (well, the landscapes are at least) and it sounds great.

But the side stuff, for me at least, always boiled down to either fetch quests or killing all the dudes in an area. While that type of design works in, say, your average Action-Adventure fare, I expect more from an RPG. Particularly a Bioware RPG. And in an open world, where side stuff is incredibly important, that shit will not fly.

The Witcher 3 has clunky-er gameplay, but the story and sidequest aspects are also much stronger (though slightly undercut by Geralt's voice acting). It's kind of like comparing Icewind Dale to Planescape: Torment. Or comparing Chrono Trigger to Final Fantasy VI.