Dragon Age Inquisition is almost a great game. It has scope, size, good dialogues and some memorable moments. It also has boring quests, a serious case of consolitis (plaguing menus and controls) and is terribly optimized (meaning not optimized at all).
But people seem to like it and with good reason I would say, although nobody loves it more than Greg Tito.
In any case, the game has a function that has no merit whatsoever, a baffling design decision that gets in the way and does not makes the game more interesting.
Don?t get me wrong, every great RPG needs useless functions, like a walking toggle, to appreciate the view (wink, wink), a coloring system, so I can display my ultimate armor in glorious pink and several other stuff that are there to add to the immersion and to the roleplay aspect of an RPG.
That said, the jump button of DAI is just an embarrassment to whoever implemented it. Here is why:
1. Nobody wanted it. Of all things people wanted in a Dragon Age game, I?ve never seen anyone ask for a jump button (there might been a few, though since this is the internet). But, seriously, you can easily make gorgeous vistas and memorable exploration without a jump button. But, hey, what do we know, right?
2. It actually breaks immersion. Jumping around is dumb and the animation does no help. Trying to awkwardly navigate some mountains or minor obstacles is ridiculous and not fitting for the inquisitor (also, it is kind of ridiculous have the inquisitor piquing flowers and minerals too, but I digress).
3. The game does not need it. You can actually reach almost everywhere without jumping (and sometimes you have to jump just because they added an obstacle to justify the feature). There are very few secrets accessed only by jumping and all of them would be more interesting secrets if revealed in any other way (a hidden stair, a hidden path, a clue, a door only opened by an NPC and so on). The level design makes little use of the feature and when it does use it, it is forced ? Dark Souls it ain?t (and even in that game the jump is almost completely optional). The game already has a secret discovering mechanism and it is sub-utilized. I would rather prefer to press the search button to find a hidden dungeon then to use it to find plants.
4. It took an inordinate amount of time to implement. The devs even said that in some note, and that?s time that could have been well spent in improving combat AI and combat features (the most bare bones part of the game) ? and both those things would have been much easier to implement without the jump in the first place.
5. And they did not implement it flawlessly. The jump means that we can fall, get stuck and make weird shortcuts and the companion AI is not capable to follow us, introducing the teleporting companion (and, in some immersion breaking moments, the falling from the sky companion), which completely breaks the pathfinding in the game, making more difficult to make your followers to be positioned the way you want them (remember the formation settings in old RPGS? Mages and archers on the back and so on?).
You can cheese some encounters in funny ways with the jump feature but that?s it.
It is a single feature that permeates the whole game and without it, I can only visualize a better game. Sometimes less is more, indeed.
I do not understand why they added the feature and, honestly, I don?t think Bioware knows either.
But people seem to like it and with good reason I would say, although nobody loves it more than Greg Tito.
In any case, the game has a function that has no merit whatsoever, a baffling design decision that gets in the way and does not makes the game more interesting.
Don?t get me wrong, every great RPG needs useless functions, like a walking toggle, to appreciate the view (wink, wink), a coloring system, so I can display my ultimate armor in glorious pink and several other stuff that are there to add to the immersion and to the roleplay aspect of an RPG.
That said, the jump button of DAI is just an embarrassment to whoever implemented it. Here is why:
1. Nobody wanted it. Of all things people wanted in a Dragon Age game, I?ve never seen anyone ask for a jump button (there might been a few, though since this is the internet). But, seriously, you can easily make gorgeous vistas and memorable exploration without a jump button. But, hey, what do we know, right?
2. It actually breaks immersion. Jumping around is dumb and the animation does no help. Trying to awkwardly navigate some mountains or minor obstacles is ridiculous and not fitting for the inquisitor (also, it is kind of ridiculous have the inquisitor piquing flowers and minerals too, but I digress).
3. The game does not need it. You can actually reach almost everywhere without jumping (and sometimes you have to jump just because they added an obstacle to justify the feature). There are very few secrets accessed only by jumping and all of them would be more interesting secrets if revealed in any other way (a hidden stair, a hidden path, a clue, a door only opened by an NPC and so on). The level design makes little use of the feature and when it does use it, it is forced ? Dark Souls it ain?t (and even in that game the jump is almost completely optional). The game already has a secret discovering mechanism and it is sub-utilized. I would rather prefer to press the search button to find a hidden dungeon then to use it to find plants.
4. It took an inordinate amount of time to implement. The devs even said that in some note, and that?s time that could have been well spent in improving combat AI and combat features (the most bare bones part of the game) ? and both those things would have been much easier to implement without the jump in the first place.
5. And they did not implement it flawlessly. The jump means that we can fall, get stuck and make weird shortcuts and the companion AI is not capable to follow us, introducing the teleporting companion (and, in some immersion breaking moments, the falling from the sky companion), which completely breaks the pathfinding in the game, making more difficult to make your followers to be positioned the way you want them (remember the formation settings in old RPGS? Mages and archers on the back and so on?).
You can cheese some encounters in funny ways with the jump feature but that?s it.
It is a single feature that permeates the whole game and without it, I can only visualize a better game. Sometimes less is more, indeed.
I do not understand why they added the feature and, honestly, I don?t think Bioware knows either.
