Dragon Age: Inquisition

[Thebestoftherest]

Continued in January? Chuck you tease! But if it's worth doing then it's worth doing right.
Interestingly, a lot of Chuck's characters in Old Republic and Dragon's Age all have a bit of an ego to them. They know that they're awesome and just love to revel in that. The fact that Harold seems to have some low self-esteem and is generally unsure of his position is a bit different.

I was thinking that.

[hammerofglass]

My guess for why he didn't finish the story is the same as my guess for why it's so long before the next part. Act one is prolog, meet party members... and then hours and hours of mindless grind getting enough power to trigger the end of act one. It gets good after that, but it's a TERRIBLE first impression.

[Senko]

Oh goody I like these game reviews and look forward to seeing where he goes.

Amusing to see the Rimmer defence employed "I can't be hold responsible for this as only a yogurt would put me in a position where I had any actual authority or responsability."

I do think come up with a plan that doesn't involve could have been better phrased as come up with a plan that doesn't involve unleashing demons on the world but that's just a matter of taste.

Now to wait for January.

[RobbyB1982]

Yeah, if DA2's problem was being too "narrow but deep" than DAI's problem is kind of the opposite "wide but shallow". Though overall I still like the game more than DA2, I wish we had less seemingly pointless sidequests, herding that stupid Halla in the exalted plains and the specialization fetch quests in particular annoyed the hell out of me.

The first time I played the game I did all the sidequests and 100%ed the damn thing. It was not a great experience. Especially nonsense like collecting all 100? of those stupid shards for what was ultimately a really lousy reward.

The second time I played it (when I got the PS4 and the final DLCs...) I just did the side stuff I wanted and it was a much, MUCH better experience overall, and also a much shorter game.

That's the problem with most open world games. They pace themselves where they don't *expect* players to do every repetitive side quest... but all the side quests are there to do all the same and some players want to do everything and get all the stuff and mark off every spot on the map. And then they throw it onto a giant map for the sake of having a giant map.

Smaller meatier maps are way better than empty continents in my experience.

[RobbyB1982]

The eventual DA4 I'm not excited about becaue it'll be almost a decade later, and because everyone that was involved with old bioware including the writers has left. Maybe it'll be good, but I can't be excited about it. Shame as I used to love the franchise.

However, I find the Inquisitor to be boring. As far as I can recall, the Inquisitor was overall fairly monotone and unemotive. I imagine this was a result of them pulling back from as many DA2 design decisions as possible considering that Hawke tended to be very emotive in most of the dialogue (likely a result of the personality system in DA2). The end result of the design decision to make the Inquisitor line delivery flat though is that I tend to want to go to sleep if I listen to his dialogue too much.

The voice actor you picked made a big difference there. Same deal as mass Effect where fem Sheppe is the only good choice.

DLCs

I got the DLC years after I played the base game because they didn't release it on PS3. Yeah there was lore there but they were areas that were inserted in a way you could play them at any time during the campaign, so the challenge wasn't great and it didn't do much for the characters.

And now its been years since even that play so I remember diddly about it.

[Dargaron]

The first time I played the game I did all the sidequests and 100%ed the damn thing. It was not a great experience. Especially nonsense like collecting all 100? of those stupid shards for what was ultimately a really lousy reward.

That's basically the opposite of how I tend to play games like Mass Effect or DAI. The first playthrough is the "canonical" one, where I go in blind and don't concern myself too much with doing literally everything on the map (after all, there's usually something you're supposed to be doing, and running off to kill some unrelated mercs is kind of out of character when the threat of The Collectors is hanging over everyone's heads). I do companion stuff and plot objectives, and maybe a few sidequests that look interesting. If the gameplay is interesting enough to justify more, then the second playthrough is when you optimize and scour the map, and if it gets boring before you've 100%'d the game, then that's okay.

The "canonical" playthrough is very important, because you end up with unexpected results like my Mass Effect playthrough, where Ashley died at Virmire and I ended up rescuing Liara too late to start her romance, so my Shepard was a much more angry Shepard going into ME2 than at the start of ME1. It wasn't what I would've chosen if I'd been planning the whole run from the start, but independent choices in the moment led to that outcome anyway.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see who SF Debris ends up befriending this time around. IMO, the companions in DAI are a lot easier to work with than the ones in Origins or DA:II. For example, you can disagree with Cassandra or Solas or Bull, and as long as you aren't a jerk about it, they won't hold it against you, while companions like Morrigan or Andurs will resolutely disapprove if you aren't "on their side." Solas can even gain approval if you challenge him gently.

[stryke]

This will be interesting not only have I not completed it but haven't even played at all.

After DA2 I just couldn't do it. ME3 and that were a double whammy that burned any likelyhood of me ever buying another title in those series or indeed from that publisher period. I say that too as someone who honnestly thinks that ME the first is one of the finest games ever made worthy of being mentioned along side BG2, and the original UFO, and thought that Orgins was damn excellent if not being quite in that illustrious league.

One thing that surprised me though was Chuck mentioning how well that Inquisition was recieved. See, I don't remember that all. Obviously didn't play it myself so going purely on what I heard, but I'm sure I remember it being pretty mixed with a lot of comments that it felt very much like a single person MMO in terms of design.

[Ritchian]

It's funny this is coming out now. A couple weeks ago, I got it in m head to start a new run of DA: I. I had played it when it came out, but never finished it. I don't remember why. I think it's just such a long game, I got distracted and just never came back to it.

I went with a Dalish elf mage as my character because honestly, outside maybe a Qunari, that seemed like the most hilarious race/class combo to be turned into some sort of religious figure for the humans. My character has spent the entire game adamantly denying at every turn that they're not the Herald, but that they do want to make everyone calm the hell down and try to fix things (because, let's face it, nobody else is going to manage to do so).

I've been having fun despite how much I despise some of the game's systems (the inventory system drives me insane, for example), and I'd like to think i'll stick with it this time enough to finish it this time. But if I don't make it, at least I'll eventually have Chuck's far more streamlined version to watch.

[Robovski]

My guess for why he didn't finish the story is the same as my guess for why it's so long before the next part. Act one is prolog, meet party members... and then hours and hours of mindless grind getting enough power to trigger the end of act one. It gets good after that, but it's a TERRIBLE first impression.

It's why I never finished the game. I had other games to play that didn't turn into tedium.

[Asvarduil]

Continued in January? Chuck you tease! But if it's worth doing then it's worth doing right.
Interestingly, a lot of Chuck's characters in Old Republic and Dragon's Age all have a bit of an ego to them. They know that they're awesome and just love to revel in that. The fact that Harold seems to have some low self-esteem and is generally unsure of his position is a bit different.

Knowing what I know about DA:I, I suspect that Chuck is going to - at some point - discuss player agency in games. In some ways, Chuck's protagonist is like a lot of gamers. They're a person who just muddles along, isn't all that important, and is used to not being important. But then, stuff happens...and all of a sudden they matter. All of a sudden their decisions aren't just worth acknowledgement, but carry a weight in lives.

It matters to Herald Harold, because he knows he's a very fallible person. But it also matters to the person on the other side of the fourth wall, too. And, DA:I does put a lot of effort into telling the player by way of the Herald how important they are.