Three Changes I Would Make to Dragon Age: Inquisition
Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2021 3:14 am
As I've mentioned before Dragon Age: Inquisition is my all time favorite BioWare game as I feel it has some of the best characters in the BioWare canon, one of the companies best stories and with Trespasser included one of the best endings ever made. However, even as someone who loves this game eve I will admit that it does have flaws so I'm going to cover 3 changes I would make to the game to try and fix as what I see as the biggest issues of the game starting with.
Toning Down the Time Sinks
Oh sweat Maker is this annoying. In his Old Republic videos Chuck covered time sinks in the game like the Elevators, riding a train or just running/driving to your next destination. Well, DAI also has a bad case of time sinks with picking up items, running /riding to every area on MASSIVE maps and no New Game+ so you have to level up EVERY Time you replay this game (a reoccurring problem with the series as a whole TBH).
Finding ways to tone this down would make a HUGE difference. For example, instead of needing to bend over to pick up, every. Single. Item. Or. Resource! Just remove that animation altogether so instead of taking 5 or even 10 minutes to search all the people you've killed it can now take only 30 or one whole minute.
Other things that could be done is have only one wave of enemies come out of the fade rifts so instead of waiting around for enemies to spawn you just have to fight them as soon as you get there and then you seal the rift (with faster animation) and poof, you're done.
And other things like having faster movement while running or riding a horse, have certain areas (like the hissing waste and the Forbidden Oasis) where several or all fast travel points and blocked paths unblocked. Minimize the number of "Temple Keys" you have to collect (like redusing the ones in the aforementioned Forbidden Oasis from 15 to just 7 and get rid of the ones in the hard to reach locations on ALL maps so we don't have to put up with the rather $#!t platforming of the game). And have areas that are blocked off automatically unlocked as soon as we plant our flag on the spot so we don't have to go back to Skyhold. Which leads me to my next point.
The War Table
Now I actually like the war table for it's unlockables and making it feels like the Inquisition is this massive organization where more going on then just what we ourselves but this too has an annoying time sink thanks to the clocks on the table. The it takes for a WT operation to be finished anywhere for just 3 minutes to 20 HOURS!!! To quote Sera on this point "I have things to do!"
Also, as someone who has dyslexia needing to read every SINGLE Report to try and figure out who to send and what to do was really annoying and I ended up crying at one point so I just ended up reading up the answers on Dragon Age's Wiki page and going down to results to figure out who to send so having some sort of cheat for people with dyslexia would be nice (I don't know maybe hint at what rewards we'll depending on who we send more maybe have a unlockable that lets us know who's the better option, just something to make this less of a pain).
So, just have the operation unlocked as soon as we select someone and BOOM Done. No waiting around for 20 hours and no changing the clock just to get it done. You pick a operation, you select an agent based on your advisors advise and you're done. And onto the last thing I would change.
Story Expansions for the Maps
Easily the worst parts of every map is just how little story there is to these areas which are mostly just a collectathon. This is despite the fact that almost every area has some really good ideas that can lead to some really interesting stories if given the chance.
Just look at the Hinterlands. You have a battle going on between the Mages and Templars, you have a group of bandits who are smuggling items around, you have a secret cave that leads to the Deep Roads and you are working with the people of the area to restore order. There's a story here just waiting to be told but it's just done in a few collectables you find.
Some areas, like Crestwood, would only really need some proper cutscenes and a proper boss fight at the end of all this and maybe a few extra scenes to help flesh the story out but other places like the Storm Coast or the Hissing Waste would need a bit more work as some areas are pretty much completely empty or are just to small to tell a proper story like the Fallow Mire and the Forbidden Oasis but this could be worked around by having a story that's told having a connecting plot and characters.
Like in the Fallow Mire you find a hidden Apostate who is working with another Apostate on the Storm Coast who both have a key that has been split in half that unlocks these tombs in the Hissing Waste that leads long forgotten Spirit in the Forbidden Oasis. It would take some work but having this ongoing story, told though cutscenes on collectables you find could work and (along with the removal of the time sinks I mentioned before) would make these areas so much more engaging.
This, of course, would mean recording new dialogue and writing up whole stories that weren't there to begin with but you can cut around a LOT of this by reusing assets (liking making the rage demon below Crestwood a major part of the story instead of just a enemy you kill along the way.
And that's about it and while there are other things I would change (reducing the number of fade rifts, have random items turned into something you can just by, include a mark as read button for your collectables & codex and make party banter occur more often (mainly so Dorian and Iron Bull can just get together faster) but I felt that these were the things I would want to change the most that would have the best chance of improving the game.
Again, I LOVE DAI but I can see why others have issues and these were what ultimately hurt an otherwise great game the most.
Toning Down the Time Sinks
Oh sweat Maker is this annoying. In his Old Republic videos Chuck covered time sinks in the game like the Elevators, riding a train or just running/driving to your next destination. Well, DAI also has a bad case of time sinks with picking up items, running /riding to every area on MASSIVE maps and no New Game+ so you have to level up EVERY Time you replay this game (a reoccurring problem with the series as a whole TBH).
Finding ways to tone this down would make a HUGE difference. For example, instead of needing to bend over to pick up, every. Single. Item. Or. Resource! Just remove that animation altogether so instead of taking 5 or even 10 minutes to search all the people you've killed it can now take only 30 or one whole minute.
Other things that could be done is have only one wave of enemies come out of the fade rifts so instead of waiting around for enemies to spawn you just have to fight them as soon as you get there and then you seal the rift (with faster animation) and poof, you're done.
And other things like having faster movement while running or riding a horse, have certain areas (like the hissing waste and the Forbidden Oasis) where several or all fast travel points and blocked paths unblocked. Minimize the number of "Temple Keys" you have to collect (like redusing the ones in the aforementioned Forbidden Oasis from 15 to just 7 and get rid of the ones in the hard to reach locations on ALL maps so we don't have to put up with the rather $#!t platforming of the game). And have areas that are blocked off automatically unlocked as soon as we plant our flag on the spot so we don't have to go back to Skyhold. Which leads me to my next point.
The War Table
Now I actually like the war table for it's unlockables and making it feels like the Inquisition is this massive organization where more going on then just what we ourselves but this too has an annoying time sink thanks to the clocks on the table. The it takes for a WT operation to be finished anywhere for just 3 minutes to 20 HOURS!!! To quote Sera on this point "I have things to do!"
Also, as someone who has dyslexia needing to read every SINGLE Report to try and figure out who to send and what to do was really annoying and I ended up crying at one point so I just ended up reading up the answers on Dragon Age's Wiki page and going down to results to figure out who to send so having some sort of cheat for people with dyslexia would be nice (I don't know maybe hint at what rewards we'll depending on who we send more maybe have a unlockable that lets us know who's the better option, just something to make this less of a pain).
So, just have the operation unlocked as soon as we select someone and BOOM Done. No waiting around for 20 hours and no changing the clock just to get it done. You pick a operation, you select an agent based on your advisors advise and you're done. And onto the last thing I would change.
Story Expansions for the Maps
Easily the worst parts of every map is just how little story there is to these areas which are mostly just a collectathon. This is despite the fact that almost every area has some really good ideas that can lead to some really interesting stories if given the chance.
Just look at the Hinterlands. You have a battle going on between the Mages and Templars, you have a group of bandits who are smuggling items around, you have a secret cave that leads to the Deep Roads and you are working with the people of the area to restore order. There's a story here just waiting to be told but it's just done in a few collectables you find.
Some areas, like Crestwood, would only really need some proper cutscenes and a proper boss fight at the end of all this and maybe a few extra scenes to help flesh the story out but other places like the Storm Coast or the Hissing Waste would need a bit more work as some areas are pretty much completely empty or are just to small to tell a proper story like the Fallow Mire and the Forbidden Oasis but this could be worked around by having a story that's told having a connecting plot and characters.
Like in the Fallow Mire you find a hidden Apostate who is working with another Apostate on the Storm Coast who both have a key that has been split in half that unlocks these tombs in the Hissing Waste that leads long forgotten Spirit in the Forbidden Oasis. It would take some work but having this ongoing story, told though cutscenes on collectables you find could work and (along with the removal of the time sinks I mentioned before) would make these areas so much more engaging.
This, of course, would mean recording new dialogue and writing up whole stories that weren't there to begin with but you can cut around a LOT of this by reusing assets (liking making the rage demon below Crestwood a major part of the story instead of just a enemy you kill along the way.
And that's about it and while there are other things I would change (reducing the number of fade rifts, have random items turned into something you can just by, include a mark as read button for your collectables & codex and make party banter occur more often (mainly so Dorian and Iron Bull can just get together faster) but I felt that these were the things I would want to change the most that would have the best chance of improving the game.
Again, I LOVE DAI but I can see why others have issues and these were what ultimately hurt an otherwise great game the most.