Dragon Age: Inquisition

[Taurian Patriot]

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.

Huh... so I'm not the only one to feel that way.

It's been a long time since I set the game aside, and I don't quite remember how I far I got in the first place, but I do very much remember the sense of tedium that made me quit. DA:O had a lot of combat options and some interesting tactical situations, and DA2 at least let fights wrap up fairly quickly, but I don't remember DA:I doing either. I'm also an obsessive explorer in games like these, and DA:I seemed pretty empty of anything interesting off the beaten path, except for more rifts to seal and more of the same fights I've had for the last few hours.

I suppose that's a good reason to look forward to Chuck's playthrough though - it'll be good to see whether the game gets better if I just squash my usual instincts and blitz the story as best I can.

[RobbyB1982]

I suppose that's a good reason to look forward to Chuck's playthrough though - it'll be good to see whether the game gets better if I just squash my usual instincts and blitz the story as best I can.

The actual story stuff is good.

The giant empty open worlds is not, even though they're really pretty. But they mostly made it big for the sake of making it big, which is a trap a lot of open world games fall into.

It comes to a head when you get to the Hissing Wastes and Mire areas and there is NOTHING to do in them except a couple demon gates and some shard hunting. They very clearly ran out of time to do anything in it. But they'd already made the map, so... Seriously, they have maybe 5 quests in the entire giant map, compared to the first area which had 40 or 50 things to do and could hold you for days. *And the areas you likely get to second and third have maybe 10-15 quests in them.)

If they'd taken all those early quests and spread them around it would have paced the game a lot better. You wouldn't spend the first half the game in one zone, and then just briefly hop through the others.

It's just super clear where they put all their time and what got crammed at the end.

[hammerofglass]

The part that gets me is that the big interesting environments they clearly spent a ton of time on are the ones that have so little to do you might as well skip them. The one you spend the most time in is also the most bland and generic in the game.

[CharlesPhipps]

The part that gets me is that the big interesting environments they clearly spent a ton of time on are the ones that have so little to do you might as well skip them. The one you spend the most time in is also the most bland and generic in the game.

I'd argue that the game should have just included BOTH the Templar and Mage stories.

I don't see a reason not to other given how little content the game has in places.

[RobbyB1982]

I'd argue that the game should have just included BOTH the Templar and Mage stories.

It does actually. Depending on the choices you make early on you get a very different mega quest. One of them involves timetravel and the other doesn't. One introduces Dorian as a main support and the other has Cole. Whichever one you don't do, the other character just sort of walks up to the castle later with no real introduction.

It's kind of neat that they had a great big chunk of content you guaranteed miss unless you play the game twice, rather than your decisions having very little overall affect on the game, but at the same time... most people aren't going to play it twice. And as empty as some of the later areas are... (they clearly ran out of development time.)

Still, generally the BIG multi-hour setpieces and cinematics aren't left as something optional that you're guaranteed to miss and if the entire game had been able to do that at a few spots it would have been pretty insane. Most of the time though they just swap out which NPC gets dialogue because that's much easier to do.

[CharlesPhipps]

I'd argue that the game should have just included BOTH the Templar and Mage stories.

It does actually. Depending on the choices you make early on you get a very different mega quest. One of them involves timetravel and the other doesn't. One introduces Dorian as a main support and the other has Cole. Whichever one you don't do, the other character just sort of walks up to the castle later with no real introduction.

It's kind of neat that they had a great big chunk of content you guaranteed miss unless you play the game twice, rather than your decisions having very little overall affect on the game, but at the same time... most people aren't going to play it twice. And as empty as some of the later areas are... (they clearly ran out of development time.)

Still, generally the BIG multi-hour setpieces and cinematics aren't left as something optional that you're guaranteed to miss and if the entire game had been able to do that at a few spots it would have been pretty insane. Most of the time though they just swap out which NPC gets dialogue because that's much easier to do.

Yeah, I'm saying the game would be less empty if you could play both in one playthrough.

[RobbyB1982]

I *like* that a major choice has major ramifications and blocks off an entire story path.

Just not a fan of the fact you have no actual way of knowing that, because its so unusual and nothing else in the game follows suit to really encourage you to try it again, its always just a dialogue branch for an NPC.

[Riedquat]

I suppose that's a good reason to look forward to Chuck's playthrough though - it'll be good to see whether the game gets better if I just squash my usual instincts and blitz the story as best I can.

The actual story stuff is good.

The giant empty open worlds is not, even though they're really pretty. But they mostly made it big for the sake of making it big, which is a trap a lot of open world games fall into.

And what they did put in was grindy stuff - I ended up exploring for tick boxes to complete rather than for finding interesting stuff. There was no real sense of "I wonder what's around that corner?" that I had with, say, Skyrim or The Witcher 3.

[Ranadiel]

I did like the mosaic collectables as you get a codex with some interesting commentary, which may have lore implications, for each one you complete. They always bugged me since I think they were more reliefs than mosaics, but the reward was interesting.

It has been so long that I can't even remember what the other collectibles were. Oh right there were the shards that gave you access to the Solasan. Shards were boring. The Solasan seems interesting in concept as it appears to be where 10 elven dreamers once slept during their journeys to the Fade...or possibly something pre-veil used by whatever dreamers were called before the veil. However since they didn't go into its history beyond one of the 10 being corrupted into a Pride demon, it is at most just something to speculate about.

[Poipoi]

I am very happy that more is coming out in January, the month of my birthday. Every year my birthday gets more and mores stressful/depressing. I cling to things to make it through. Watching him play will help distract me.