Dragon Age: Inquisition

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Dragon Age: Inquisition for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[ashman86]

There aren't many games in my past that I have waited on more impatiently than I did for Dragon Age: Origins, which BioWare originally billed as a spiritual successor to their Baldur's Gate games. That game, for the most part, lived up to the promise they had set and felt like it trailed a path forward for cRPGs in a day and age that had largely set them aside.

I love Origins. It's one of my all-time favorite RPGs, but I never got fell in love with Thedas like I did with BioWare's other worlds (original or otherwise), and there's a strange shadow that hangs over the series for me like a bitter aftertaste that's hard to explain. DA2, in particular, really disappointed me, but I mostly came around to that game by the end of it due, in no small part, to its cast of characters.

Inquisition looked like it would be a return to form, and I remember being particularly excited about the tactical camera they were adding to the game, which I'd hoped would enable the same kind of tacitcal real-time with pause gameplay I'd loved in Origins and its spiritual predecessors. It looked like it would be bigger, better, and more cinematic in nearly every way but remain a true-to-heart RPG with tons of gear to find and/or craft, new class specializations, and a massive world to explore.

And Inquisition largely lives up to those promises. It's an incredible game in many ways, but it does a few things that I think mar the package overall. First and foremost: this game is too big for its own good. The influences of WOW and Skyrim are both apparent as soon as you're set free in the Hinterlands, and while those are great games in their own right, I think BioWare excels when they build their games around depth, not width.

On the other hand, Inquisition's streamlined in some bizarre ways that feel like steps backwards from its predecessors. Combat feels pretty punchy at first, but encounters drag out for far too long as you whittle down damage sponge elites and bosses (at least on Nightmare). Playing as a mage, I should feel like I command all the power of the elements, but even my best spells are just little icons on cooldown. It can be satisfying in some ways, almost like playing a rhythm action game, but it's ultimately not fulfilling. And the tactical camera is all but useless in most encounters.

Atop that, they stripped companion AI customization to a bare minimum, whereas its predecessors had taken healthy inspiration from Final Fantasy XII's clever gambit system, and building your own character just feels a little, I dunno, blah.

I've put nearly 200 hours into Inquisition, and I still haven't finished it. I like the game a lot, and I intend to finally button it up before DA:D (now DA: The Veilguard) launches, but, man, do I wish this game weren't so bloated.

[MauricioMM]

Back when Dragon Age: Origins released, I was totally unfamiliar with BioWare’s catalog of games. That, I think, helped me feel pleasantly surprised with that first game in the series and, even though I wasn’t (and still am not) too interested in the second game due to several reasons, I was hugely interested in trying the third one, Inquisition, specifically because of its setting, its open-world approach, its improved combat, its art direction and, of course, its cast of characters.

Well, after having spent easily between 200 and 300 hours on the game and its DLCs a few years ago—a bit after the GOTY edition launched—I can say that, yes, the actually-not-so-improved combat (due in no small part to its mediocre tactical camera), the excessive filler content featured in pretty much all the larger regions and the meh-worthy main villain were my biggest disappointments but, besides that, the time I spent on it was wonderful Thanks hugely to the other aspects that hyped me about the game, notably:

• The regions and the art direction: I regret not having taken enough screenshots back when I played it because most of the game’s regions, even the dull ones, had wondrous vistas, impressive architecture, really lovely interiors, beautiful artworks and interesting locations that deserved a few spots in a museum’s wall... or at least in the walls of my room My favorite ones were the Emerald Graves, the Western Approach, the Frostback Basin, Val Royeaux and, of course, the gorgeous Winter Palace.
• The characters: I missed playing a party-based game where its members actually interacted both with the main character and with each other in deep, intriguing and even funny ways. Thankfully this game filled that need back then, especially with characters as (mostly) well-written as Dorian, Solas (

  Spoiler: show

  more fleshed out in the Tresspaser DLC by the way, so much so that he’s become the main reason I’m (slightly, mind you) hyped about The Veilguard

  ), Varric, Cassandra (discovering her being

  Spoiler: show

  a fangirl of Varric’s romance books

  was a highlight of the whole game ), Iron Bull, among others.

I so do not look forward to trudge through the filler quests again but I do plan to play the whole game again in the future


My three word review:
Filler Yet Killer

[TheEmailer]

I rolled into this just after the Witcher 3, itching for more RPG. The comparison is probably unfair but wasn't favourable. it felt archaic, slow combat was hard to grasp and the story never hooked me.

[Alex_117]

Inquisition gets a bad wrap, and there are many fair criticisms against it. But the one thing it did do successfully was give Dragon Age a true personality. Every previous game had seemed stuck between two worlds but Inquisition finally stood apart. Also the fact it has been 10 years since BioWare managed a game of this quality (remasters not withstanding) makes me look back on it fondly. Truly the end of BioWare as a power-house studio but a game the team could be proud off.

[Adam Forrester]

I love the majority of things Bioware and have a long history with Dragon Age in particular. This game to me just after the birth of my first child and in the awkward generational change over period between xbox 360/ xbox one. Being a late adopter of the latter I got about halfway through the subpar 360 version and coupled with having to go online to import the dragon age keep; I bounced off this initially and it say on my shelf until I picked up the complete collection for the current generation bundled with all the DLC.

My second go around I absolutely loved it and played a female elf who romanced Solas to try and get the fullest experience. The level design may leave a bit to be desired in terms of being too large with a lot of bloat in the smaller activities; and the time limit to war table missions can get a bit frustrating and the inner completionist was pulling his hair out.

It was good seeing return characters from Origins and Two make an appearance and it was also sad to see some characters who i had built a great fondness for leave (bye bye Hawke); however i was quite satisfied to with the overall outcome of the story and the new characters were all at least better than Ogren. It is always difficult when you have choices that constantly expand across multiple games and I feel in this instance bioware did the best they could with the situation. Is it perfect by any means; no. But the combat is fun and satisfying, the characters are more than passable and the game took me back to the world I had grown to love. I look forward to diving into Thedas once again in a couple of months for Veilguard.

[Doctor Raphael]

I do not think I have ever been as hyped for a game leading up to its launch like I was for Inquisition. Origins was my first experience with BioWare and CRPGs as a whole but I got sucked in and became very invested in the world the Dragon Age team created. After the DAI announcement I wasn’t just making a point of staying abreast of online coverage, I was hoovering up every little morsal of new information I could get for months, almost to the point of in being a tad unhealthy. “Doomscrolling” the same google searches and fan forums daily was fairly unhinged because the information hardly ever changed. I read the Dragon Age Novels in preperation, I bought a map for Thedas for my wall, I even booked a week off work at the time of its release planning to do nothing but play. This is all highly uncharacteristic of me and looking back now it feels really weird and a tad uncomfortable, like for a brief period I was a stalker but for a video game. My expectations were high. Inquisition did not disappoint.

What Dragon Age Inquisition did really well is what the whole series has always done well; making you care about its world and the people in it. The characters, their stories and their interactions are great. Nearly every member of the core group of companions is a fleshed out and complex mess of being. I found I wanted to learn more about all of them, rotating regularly and did not fall into a pattern of only bringing along favourites (Cassandra doesn’t count). Even the companions I disliked it was because they were created to be dislikable. Plus they give you the option to punch Solas in the face. The broader story in itself is fine, but it is elevated by how invested you get in the companions you experience it with. It’s not the journey but the friends you make along the way.

The way player choices are handled within the game, and from the series as a whole, I found satisfying. Whole story sections being missable based on your choices gives them a real weight. Being able to bring back my prior protagonist in Hawke and have them feel ‘right’ was impressive. I also liked the numerous tiny nods to less important actions I had taken in DAO and DA2. The world the team had built was fleshed out nicely in this game. Even though there must be several novels worth of new lore in Inquisition it still managed to build in enough new mystery to keep me excited for more and I am starting to get excited for The Veilguard for that reason alone.

While I do not come to these games for the visual novel/ dating sim elements alone they are the bits that stick in the mind the longest. Playing through again recently I’ve been feeling combat is fairly tepid. It certainly looks flashy when flinging elemental doodads from a mages staff or doing the lightening in a bottle skill Sera has, but it feels weightless a lot of the time. I feel like the attempt to straddle action with real time + pause tactical combat is a worst of both worlds affair. Half the time you can just run up to a mob, hold down the attack trigger and everything is dead in seconds, and the other half there is a single damage sponge enemy that requires tedious amounts of micromanaging of the whole party to get everyone through the periods between the barrier spells cooldown resetting. I enjoyed the combat more in the earlier games and I think where a lot of encounters fall flat in Inquisition has to do with the large areas the fighting happens in, especially in the open world, meaning tactical elements like positioning your tank or archers produce less predictable results and your party and enemies are often forced to be too spaced out for area of effect skills to work well.

The visuals are also a mixed bag. I remember being impressed by it at the time but it doesn’t all hold up. The environments are a standout, with a decent diversity of fairly natural looking mini-open worlds. Each area is beautiful in its own, often melancholic way and everywhere is filled with interesting environmental storytelling. I love the architectural designs, which culture a ruin or statue belong to being easy to read and where they are placed being deliberate from a story telling perspective. While the key characters look good, and I think the decision to keep their armour appearance specific to them works well at maintaining their identity and looking cool. Outside of that group though almost everyone else looks weird, with uncanny valley faces, ill fitting hats and the worst hair imaginable. The inquisitor looks like they have rickets when they run and often seems like they are the wrong height for every cutscene.

Where inquisition just hasn’t held up is in its side content. I went along with the collectathon when I first played it, although even then it felt like a slog. I just skipped it when I replayed. The games spaces are too big, and the team must have felt they had to fill I the gaps somehow. Exploring is great fun when it happens organically but walking 10 minutes across a map to get from one shard to the next certainly isn’t. There were so many of the kill 10 of X type quests. The Witcher 3 was the next big game I played after this, and it was good at presenting side quests with diverting stories and twists and turns that by comparison DAIs quests seemed so empty and uninspired, adding little but busy work.

I still consider DAI a great game but I think so much of my positive feelings comes from my investment in the world and the story. It would be hard to vigorously recommend it as a stand alone experience to someone who has not played, and enjoyed, the first 2 games. It has lots of brilliant aspects but I do hope that the team at BioWare have learnt that less is more when it comes to map size and side quests for DA:TV.

[Alex79]

Sorry to jump in the thread without having anything to say about Inquisition, but I really enjoyed Dragon Age Origins back on PS3 but never fancied the second game, with it all taking place in the same city. Would people say it's worth playing Inquisition if I skip the second game? Does the story carry over or is it, much like Witcher 3, perfectly playable without having played the others in the series?

[loren95]

I’ll keep it short and sweet! I absolutely loved Dragon Age: Inquisition. The world feels massive, and the different areas are stunningly designed-from the snowy peaks to the lush forests, every setting just pulls you in. What really hooked me was the character relationships and choices; they actually felt like they mattered. Some choices I made came back to bite me, but I loved that. And let's be real-meeting the Inquisition crew was like making friends with this odd little family.

I found myself genuinely invested in what happened to them. The combat could be a bit repetitive sometimes, but the variety in classes and abilities kept things interesting enough. Overall, Inquisition was such a satisfying RPG experience, one I think about every time someone brings up a great fantasy game.