Dragon Age Inquisition was Bioware's Worst RPG to Date

[Jux]

I liked the game, though I agree with pretty much all of your criticisms. Wasn't a 'good' game, though I'm a bit of an oddball in what I find enjoyable. You could make a rock stacking physics game, and I'd play that shit for a hundred hours.

 

[Amaror]

snip

I disaggree in that it's the worst game of Bioware, i found Dragon Age 2 much more offending myself, but i aggree in that it's most certainly not a "return to old glory" and i do aggree with all your individual points.
The main Issue with the story is, that while Dragon Age Origins had just as much of a generic evil bad guy as Inquisition it also had Loghain as an easily hated, but yet deep and understandable Antagonist. Loghain as an Antagonist was what made the Story of Origins great, it's no wonder that most people will say that Origins peaked at the Landsmeet and not the actual last battle.
Inquisition doesn't have any of that, it just has it's boring, predictable, inactive bad guy.

 

[DoPo]

Shall I substantiate?

I've not actually played Inquisition and I've got little wish to[footnote]nothing relating to the feedback after launch, I just never though "Yeah, I'd play that"[/footnote], thus I don't have as much context, however, here are some musings. Not going "devil's advocate", just some extra thoughts on what you wrote

Spoiler: MECHANICS

1. How anyone could play this game for 5 minutes and not immediately divine the need for a "loot all" function is beyond my wildest imagination. Manually scooting between tiny ground colored loot pouches, one for each of the half dozen enemies you just killed, is extraordinarily tedious. And the tiny inventory size ensures you'll want to be selective about what you loot, too, meaning you'll constantly be re-pinging the same pouch you just went over a minute ago.

Could it be that they tried to promote that "send your buddies to do stuff" mechanic I've heard about? I don't know exactly how good it is (and indeed, you do mention it's not that well implemented - I'll get to that) and the way they do it may not be that good either, but this could be the intention.

2. On the subject of manually scooting, the inability to move-to-target with a click doesn't just make looting a chore, it makes melee combat a calamity. One the developers very evidently realized and tried to compensate for by including a variety of leap-to/charge-to target skills, or the ability to pull your target to you. It feels lousy.

Well, could be the reverse again - maybe they have the charge/whatever attacks and in order to promote them, they've crippled the "move to" function. And again, it's not really that good of a promotion, but it could be the rationale behind it.

Difficulty scaling is accomplished through the tried and true "bag of hitpoints" method, made truly ridiculous when armor and barriers are added in.

So, it's like playing ME2 on Insanity. Where the combat wasn't "more difficult" but just "way more tedious" because everybody has at least one other health bar of some sort of protection (armour and whatever the energy shield was called. Just "shield"?)

6. The War Table was an interesting idea with an absolutely dreadful implementation. World of Warcraft is a time sink MMO designed to be played for hundreds of hours, and its "follower" missions are both quicker/easier to run and infinitely more rewarding. What developer thought it was a good idea to dispatch a follower on a 10 hour mission, only to have them return with 30 influence and a grey item?

Well, not a developer per se, but can you remember somebody doing a pretty similar thing in a game relatively recently (last year)? Where you set off a task and have to come back wa-a-ay later to see it completed? I'm talking about EA and Dungeon Keeper Mobile. I'm not saying it's done due to EA's request and it's to artificially prolong the game, however, it does seem suspiciously similar to how this was employed in the mobile DK.

Spoiler: BUGS/ERRATA

1. The load times are the worst I've seen since the 90's. That the game delights in spiriting you to a separate location for a 30 second scene, with full load times in-between, only compounds the issue.

Didn't Sonic '06 do that as well? I think the loading times there are, like, a minute long, but it did essentially load twice only to show you a "very lame" cutscene.

3. The inexplicable "drop to 30 FPS" or lower during cut-scenes, regardless of PC power.

Ah, that's clearly to make it more cinematic. Here - proof [https://www.graphsketch.com/?eqn1_color=1&eqn1_eqn=30%2F%28abs%28x-30%29%2B1%29&eqn2_color=2&eqn2_eqn=&eqn3_color=3&eqn3_eqn=&eqn4_color=4&eqn4_eqn=&eqn5_color=5&eqn5_eqn=&eqn6_color=6&eqn6_eqn=&x_min=-5&x_max=100&y_min=-5&y_max=40&x_tick=1&y_tick=1&x_label_freq=5&y_label_freq=5&do_grid=0&do_grid=1&bold_labeled_lines=0&bold_labeled_lines=1&line_width=4&image_w=850&image_h=525], I am not certain of the exact formula, however, I am fairly sure it behaves similar to this. (The X axis represents FPS, the Y axis represents "cinematicity"). It's also possible this [https://www.graphsketch.com/?eqn1_color=1&eqn1_eqn=30%2F%28abs%28x-30%29%29&eqn2_color=2&eqn2_eqn=&eqn3_color=3&eqn3_eqn=&eqn4_color=4&eqn4_eqn=&eqn5_color=5&eqn5_eqn=&eqn6_color=6&eqn6_eqn=&x_min=-5&x_max=100&y_min=-5&y_max=40&x_tick=1&y_tick=1&x_label_freq=5&y_label_freq=5&do_grid=0&do_grid=1&bold_labeled_lines=0&bold_labeled_lines=1&line_width=4&image_w=850&image_h=525] is the actual formula.

5. A handful of annoying crash to desktop incidences.

I see it hasn't quite out-Skyrimmed Skyrim, then.

 

[major_chaos]

I do actually agree with a lot of what you are saying here, particularity about the lack of companion development and the obnoxious resource gathering, but none of it bothered me enough to significantly reduce my enjoyment. I do find it a bit odd that you complain about how long it takes to kill enemies while praising DA:O which had combat pacing like an apathetic sloth on painkillers, but then again I'm also a filthy heathen who finds oldschool CRPGs like BG and Planescape absolutely unplayable.

Also:

the story sucks, the crafting's useless when you fall dick first unto better equipment every ten feet

drops were useless and I had to rely on crafting for better armour and weapons.

It seems crafting is either broken OP nonsense that totally invalidates drops, or a utterly useless diversion that can never keep up with drops, all depending on who you ask. Either the loot tables are borked or some people just don't get how to use the crafting system to full effect.

 

[suitepee7]

I'm not gonna comment on the story, because I just about reached skyhold, and stopped. But otherwise you've summed up a lot of my issues with the game mechanically, and I stopped playing before they ever fixed the cutscene lag glitch, which quite frankly was fucking unreal. It is a real shame too, because the main thing this game had going for it was the story, and putting MMO style fetch quests in the way of the story, and then making the cutscenes unwatchable, fucking ruined it for me. Eventually I'm going to give this game another go, but it is pretty far down on my list of priorities (below replaying certain titles come to think of it)

 

[Robert Marrs]

I dont think its the worst. Its got issues but I feel like its step in the right direction for bioware and its way better than dragon age 2.

 

[The Raw Shark]

I don't think it's the worst.
Am I playing a different game or is everyone else just getting leveled with different side quests just popping out of nowhere?
Because while I do have quite the handful of sidequests, I'm not getting the "tedious" feeling unless you count the requisitions thing. And fuck if that's annoying for people then I wonder how they made it past the last two games.
I've just gotten past the whole Alexius thing and the game already sunk in as Dragon Age-ish enough after a while.
I like the story mainly because I'm as bewildered as my character at everything at this point. I really do get the feeling that I'm part of this big movement resurfacing and suddenly I'm it's head.
Like how Origins was you and a bunch of random people coming together with their different backgrounds all centering to support yours for good or for ill in a strange little band of Robin Hood's merry men sort of way. All friends sure, some close friends, some close close friends but in the end all working towards one bigger goal that isn't as invested in each other as one might think in the long run. Just from a perspective, otherwise I loved everyone.
Dragon Age II is where I thought this went a bit different because it seems more like a sizeable group of friends faffing about in what seems to be Dragon Age's equivalent to Detroit, only with the law actually making progress (Hardy Harr Harr, please don't kill me).

So Inquisition's story is just fine for me.

Mechanics wise I've got no reason to complain about the sidequests since it's no different from the pointless sidequests of Dragon Age: Origins or II.
It's like if the Chantry Board actually gave me an opportunity to see plenty of sights. Or the fetch quests of Dragon Age II at least gave me the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT that they were significant. Sure I could've kept all that Blue Vitriol (Seriously, am I the only that thinks that sounds like it should be a medicine?), but at least it gave me some extra power and cash for my troubles, even if money is seemingly a non-existent problem ever since Dragon Age II.
But I will still miss all that stuff about ancient swords like Yusaris, or Topsider's Honor. But oh well, can't win em all, at least it's going in the Origins direction again.

That aside, I don't expect everyone to like Inquisition.
And that's not a bad thing either since at least the divide in opinions actually brings up plenty of reason for debate.
But that's all my opinion, have a nice day everyone.

 

[EternallyBored]

I can agree wholeheartedly, OP. It was a horrible experience, though for me, drops were useless and I had to rely on crafting for better armour and weapons.

I'd like to see what the game would be like if you removed the filler and power requirements and played the story pieces one after the other. It's be so weird and such a dull game :/

What were you doing that your crafted armor was worse than drops? pretty much anything made with tier 3 mats and a halfway decent schematic will blow 99% of drops in the game out of the water, and once you've killed a single optional dragon, or taken that perk at the war room table that gives you a crap ton of end game schematics (which you can get really early in the game) then you can craft armor and weapons that have higher DPS, more stats, and better effects than literally any drop or buyable piece of armor in the game. I spent the last 30% of the game wearing the same heavy armor trenchcoat just because there was literally nothing else in the game with a higher armor rating or more stats, with the masterwork system it even added guard to my health bar randomly just for hitting things, I was playing a two-handed reaver that could end fights with a full guard bar, which pretty much just led to soloing everything in the game since I didn't have to worry about my health bar while using the draining moves of my class.

It seems crafting is either broken OP nonsense that totally invalidates drops, or a utterly useless diversion that can never keep up with drops, all depending on who you ask. Either the loot tables are borked or some people just don't get how to use the crafting system to full effect.

The problem with crafting is that it was poorly explained, and it starts out slow, so a lot of people probably gave up on the whole endeavor before getting to the broken aspects, which usually crops up around half-way into the game when tier 2 and 3 materials start becoming more common. If you preordered the game you also got access to the same "armor of the dragon" schematics that had higher quality versions appear in your stash throughout the story, leading to being able to get some pretty high level schematics well before the endgame. Those weren't nearly as good as the stuff you got from taking the appropriate perk at the war room table, which, got you a slew of the best weapons and armor schematics in the game, including the aforementioned armored trenchcoat that when using tier 4 mats ended up being leagues better than any drop I got in the game, and even better than the purple quality gear selling for tens of thousands of gold in the shop.

The masterwork system is also somewhat poorly explained, and the first masterwork mats are fairly useless, just giving you a chance to increase stats to a piece, the tier 2 and tier 3 masterwork items though, can be gamebreakers, giving you a random chance to cast other class abilities, which is what lead to my Reaver that could accumulate guard with every hit, or a rogue that randomly casts mage abilities that sunder their armor, leading to ridiculous damage output. There were also mats that removed class restrictions on items, which lead to things like Mages in heavy armor with ridiculous constitution bonuses.

The system was slow to get anything good out of it, I was pretty much ignoring crafting until I got to Skyhold, since everything I made was either equivalent to or worse than the purple quality gear dropping, but once I got to Skyhold and started getting access to tier 2 and 3 materials, as well as better schematics, the crafting system starts to eclipse anything that drops in the game, by about the halfway point I could craft armor equivalent to most purple items. As soon as I could make things out of the Tier 4 dragon materials, that's when the crafting system went off the rails, with a good masterwork item, you could easily create stuff far and away stronger than any drop in the game, even the legendary equipment dropped by the optional dragon bosses didn't come close to the stuff you could craft at that level.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Mass Effect 3 was horrid throughout. None of this "Ruined in the final moments" bullcrap. It was ruined in the first five minutes, got worse in the next hour, picked up for the next one, and had an up down up down relationship for the rest of the game whereby it achieved peaks of mediocrity, and plummeted to lows of "CoD in Space, on a budget, directed by Hideaki Anno"].

While I have furiously contested the misguided belief that the game was "99% amazing until the ending", which I think is verifiably false, I also contest the assertion that the game was rubbish throughout. There were certainly issues, many if not all of which were overshadowed by The Issue, but I still maintain that had the ending not been the colossal shit missile that it was reception for the title would've been extremely positive. It was mechanically slick, had some outstanding missions, and great heaving dollops of fan service. Kai Leng was an atrocity, but he devoured very little "screen time", and got dispatched in satisfying fashion.

Dragon Age 2 was a mechanical mess.

It wasn't GOOD, but I maintain it was a better mechanical exercise than DA:I. I remember using tactics, however muddied they became when bonus waves of enemies would winkle into existence. I used zero tactics in DA:I, because they were unnecessary, and because the "tactical" camera didn't really allow for them.

Mass Effect 2 was mechanically solid I guess, but as deep as a puddle.

The entire ME series was a shooter/RPG hybrid, and (IMO) improved as they smoothed out the shooting mechanics. I actually found ME1 to be the worst of the game from a mechanical perspective, the combat was completely naff.

 

[Dandark]

I wouldn't call it the worst RPG they have done but it does leave me feeling kinda meh. I want to like the game but I haven't been able to play it for more than short bursts and I still haven't progressed past Skyhold.

I've started new games to try all three character types and finally settled on liking the warrior but im finding it so hard to want to play the game because the tedium is unreal. Getting through the large open areas is such a chore than I nearly always want to play something else. I don't want to explore this large empty space that has no goddamn interesting events in it.

Playing through most of the game is like playing through boring MMO grind solo. Even the dialogue interface for talking to people is boring now, I didn't realize I would miss the cutscene style dialog but their current dialog system is incredibly boring even if im talking to companions.

Im a bit torn on the combat. On one hand I see it as a downgrade from Origins. On the other hand I somewhat enjoy it so far and like some of the new mechanics it has to make it feel more like it's own separate kind of combat.
I've been really enjoying the guard mechanic so far and the mages can be kind of fun if not just for the pretty spell effects.

 

[ecoho]

Even from an SSD the loading times are ridiculously high. I pretty much built my rig anew a month ago but it still takes far too long to load anything. Also I love how they show you those cards you can read while loading happens only to then switch to a black screen to load for another eon with nothing to do.

This game made me really glad the good games guarantee of Origin exists. I played for a day and realized that it's not really for me.

I pretty much agree with all the points Guppy made but would like to add some more:

1.) Playing a mage I found pretty much every skill to be totally boring. Statical prison was kinda creative but the rest? Yeah fire explosion this, then the exact same spell but this time it's a mine! The same for lightning...this is chain lightning...this is lightning but this time it comes from above still hitting multiple enemies! With all the other characters I met it was the same. Pretty much just skill up one respective tree blind because the skills are all the same.

2.) Weird lip syncing issues. The lip movements had pretty much nothing to do with what the characters were saying. This happened mostly right at the beginning. Combined with the facial expressions some of the characters have...The smiling of my inquisitor was horrifying at times!

3.) Why did they put gloves and pants into armour modification? Who thought that it would be a great idea? It accomplishes nothing but making the interface more tedious.

4.) The auto-attack they added in a recent patch is a joke. You can't put it on a mouse button, so you always have to use another key to enable this. Also afaik it immediately is interrupted if you move.

I would say I disagree but then im one of the few people who disliked balders gate. yeah I know im a heretic for saying that but the game just wasn't fun for me.(which is weird cause I routinely play both D&D and pathfinder have a blast and like DA:O go figure)

I can understand this, even though I love BG. Was this related to the combat system? Because especially the beginning of BG1 is horrible in respect to combat. Watching a warrior and a kobold fighting it out but constantly missing and the first one to hit wins because its nearly instant death at that point. Later on I found the combat annoying because it was pretty much decided by mages alone. Although if you're playing D&D you should be used to this

I don't really know I just didn't enjoy it. BG2 was a bit better but still just wasn't fun I think its because its so much like D&D but without the social aspect that make D&D and pathfinder so enjoyable. also the story just didn't suck me in.

 

[Fappy]

I enjoyed it overall, but I can't argue with most of these points. It had a lot of problems. I felt DA2 was far worse, however.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Agreed on basically all points. I couldn't get more than 20 hours into this one.

Some additional things I hated:

- I despise this genre's continued obsession with shallow, tedious crafting systems that offer no actual play mechanics
- if the player is pressing the same button every 2-3 seconds just to ping their surroundings, you probably need to redesign something
- please give me a few dozen meaningful, impacting quests over hundreds of laughably brief and totally pointless errands
- "completionist bait" (crystal fetch) only counts as legitimate content when your target audience is five years old

Honestly, if they had completely cut 50% of the busywork from the game and redirected those resources towards enriching and fleshing out what remained, Inquisition might have been a great game. Instead, it's *astoundingly* dull. I know some people are really gung-ho about games that aren't necessarily fun, but this one crosses a line.

 

[DSK-]

I can agree wholeheartedly, OP. It was a horrible experience, though for me, drops were useless and I had to rely on crafting for better armour and weapons.

I'd like to see what the game would be like if you removed the filler and power requirements and played the story pieces one after the other. It's be so weird and such a dull game :/

What were you doing that your crafted armor was worse than drops? pretty much anything made with tier 3 mats and a halfway decent schematic will blow 99% of drops in the game out of the water, and once you've killed a single optional dragon, or taken that perk at the war room table that gives you a crap ton of end game schematics (which you can get really early in the game) then you can craft armor and weapons that have higher DPS, more stats, and better effects than literally any drop or buyable piece of armor in the game. I spent the last 30% of the game wearing the same heavy armor trenchcoat just because there was literally nothing else in the game with a higher armor rating or more stats, with the masterwork system it even added guard to my health bar randomly just for hitting things, I was playing a two-handed reaver that could end fights with a full guard bar, which pretty much just led to soloing everything in the game since I didn't have to worry about my health bar while using the draining moves of my class.

I think you misread my post

I said "drops were useless and I had to rely on crafting for better armour and weapons

I also agree with what you are talking about too.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Just focusing on one thing, I think that Bioware doesn't really understand what "open world" entails in terms of design. It's meant to give this feeling of a huge, living world with varied backdrops, interesting places to explore, and all kinds of hidden details. DA: I in comparison just gives you a commute between locations. It has space, but that's it; it's a bunch of stuff that is meant to fill out a map rather than giving this idea that you're in this unique, realized setting with a bunch of fun things to explore.

And that's before I get into the REAL big question: why are people so obsessed with "open world" or "sandbox" design? It just seems to me that all that's being done is making more games with zero discipline, structure, and pacing, thus leaving us to a bunch of games with nothing but tedium. An open world means nothing without structure; exploration means nothing without a destination which is why it feels so fun to go off the beaten path in Zelda, Metroid, Yakuza, and Batman: Arkham, but not so much in games like GTA or Skyrim. Same thing why sidequesting I found to be infinitely more interesting and rewarding in Persona, Etrian Odyssey, Final Fantasy, etc.

 

[ninja51]

Eh, after one 100% nightmare playthrough, and while currently half way through my third run, I strongly disagree it's their "worst". Kotor 1 holds up less and less for me, I really can't even touch Baulder's Gate for more than a minute, and Dragon Age 2 still hasn't managed to keep me interested past the half way point. After seeing my brother play the ending, that game is a hilarious piece of garbage forever in my eyes (all my OTHER issues not withstanding) though it DOES hold some merit by being the but of a joke in Inquisition. "Varric! This shit doesn't make sense at the end of The Tale of the Champion!" "Ah... Yes... As to the why's all I can say is he was desperate."

I've played Inquisition for close on 500 hours now and can pretty much break down every single game design flaw, of which there are many, but even after 500 hours, I can break down all the positives that still make it a great RPG.

The lighting was fantastic, seriously, like not a damn game outside of modded Bethesda games look this good. Between the stunning vistas behind every corner in like every map, having a candle as the only illumination in a room, and that room actually ONLY being lit by that candle gives me so much satisfaction. The faces sometimes didn't play nice with the lighting, but when they did, I've still yet to see a game rival the gorgeous images Inquisition can sometimes give you. And here's this, I only play new games on Consoles, I havnt the cash for a PC that can play anything past a slightly stuttery Skyrim so I do know some PC games maxed out do look this good, this is just the first game on CONSOLES to look this good.

I still love the characters, Sera was my least favorite though even she grew on me. I do conceed they didn't get enough interaction though, a lot of their character and story was told through random party chatter, and it would have been a bit cooler to have that shit come out through interactable dialogue.


I mean, I could keep going on and on on a point by point basis, but I'm already bored of writing so I'll end it here. Inquisiton is a deeply flawed, slightly repetitive Bioware RPG. Its a Bioware RPG equivalent to their classic work of ME1 and DAO however, mostly because of what it attempts, even if it doesn't always succeed. It was Bioware taking their "admittedly kinda stiff" classic RPG mechanics, and putting them into a modern open world RPG. Now they failed in some respects, though they've never made an open world RPG before so it being a bit TOO MMOish, could have even been EA demanding some of those game designs due to what "they" see as successful.

However, despite all the problems in the game, I believe it was so lauded because of what it attempts and the scope of its vision. Its the best looking game on consoles right now and is the first time many console players have ever seen a lighting engine anything like it. It's the first RPG to give the players a castle and force, really committing to a bigger world instead of only showing the crack team of 4 superheroes. It has great voice acting, music, and art design, all of which when coupled to the new things its presenting to console players, creates a great game despite all its flaws.

 

[Zeraki]

I was all set to say, "Nuh uh! Dragon Age II exists!" but then I remembered that I still haven't really even played Inquisiton, despite it sitting on my HDD for the last few months.

The PC controls are just abhorrent. I mean, genuinely, sincerely, awful.

That's pretty much my reason for not touching the game since I got it, I got the PC version because I wanted a comfortable user interface like the first two games had. What I ended up getting was a frustrating mess that soured whatever enjoyment I got out of the game. And then there is the god awful tactical camera.

 

[Sagevallant]

Dragon Age 2 was the game where they tried to do more than just "Vague Evil in the Land, wanna kill it?"

I'm not going to try and push it as the best game ever, the flaws of it being a rushed game are everywhere. But I like the Qunari arc, I like the feeling of being a guy just trying to build a life for himself and his family & friends. They didn't do enough with the narrative aspect of the storytelling, apparently it was there to facilitate the DLC more than anything else. I did like being able to wander the town and run into my party members doing things without me, it made them seem more like alive. The writing wasn't their best, the copy-pastes were laughable, the combat was still better than the PC controls on DA: I. I finished DA2 and I can't say the same about DA: I. No real desire to go back.

I'm just too fatigued with MMO quests and faffing about, I want plot. I want story. I don't feel like any of the characters in DA: I that I've talked with stand out.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

You forgot the oh-so compeling character of Corypheus.

I don't know what is with Bioware making come hither eyes to Japan lately, first with Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3 looking like some Metal Gear Solid reject, and now Corypheus who looks like he got pulled straight out of a Capcom game.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so I guess that's a alright complaint. However, I'd say the way Kai Lame and Corfy-Face look are the least important issue about their characters/rolls in the games. ;p

It's a shame because they really did his entrance in DA:I well, but the way they had him finish felt very meh.

Anyway, OP: As someone who really like the game, I'd have to say I can't argue that a lot of those problems also bothered me too. :/

Not so much the first time though, but now that they removed the exploits that cut down on the grinding (a bit anyway) I don't think I can bring myself to play though the game over again, and that's disappointing because their are parts that are worth while, but not if I have to slog through all the grinding, AGAIN. xp

I still liked the game, but, yeah. It could have been improved in a lot of ways.