165: So How Good Is Dragon Age: Inquisition?
This week, the Escapist talks Dragon Age: Inquisition, a lot.
Watch Video
This week, the Escapist talks Dragon Age: Inquisition, a lot.
Watch Video
Yeah, that was basically my thought. Wait for some specific threshold before building from scratch.Xman490 said:Justin Clouse, you might want to wait more than a year to upgrade your PC, for when 4K becomes the standard or below $1000 or so.
I was holding off too, but my video card died so I replaced it with a 970. Now I am having a hard time justifying a new system when I can play Dragon Age: Inquisition on almost full max settings.Slycne said:Yeah, that was basically my thought. Wait for some specific threshold before building from scratch.Xman490 said:Justin Clouse, you might want to wait more than a year to upgrade your PC, for when 4K becomes the standard or below $1000 or so.
I think it can be found with many other analogues if you know the history for the issues.Remus said:Not to get political, but does Dragon Age seem like an analogue to the current war climate to anyone else, with the templars as a surrogate "F YA 'MURICA" and the mages as any brown-skinned people? So a mage blows up a chantry in DA 2, killing many and destroying half a city. As a result all-out war between templars and the more extremist mages. Meanwhile, the mages not fighting are ducking their heads while simultaneously denouncing what their more militant faction is doing, and we have the Inquisition in the middle playing NATO, gathering allies and trying to keep the situation from getting even more extreme. And hey, we even have versions of Benedict, Ratzinger, and Francis in DA's chantry - one dead divine with a liberal and a conservative vying for the chair, as well as many in the higher priesthood unwilling to compromise for the betterment of all. It's like a skewed mirror looking back at us and shaking its head at our folly.
Reaver?Jennacide said:Archers in DAO were really weird. They weren't very good as rogues, even after the bugfixes and changes; but warrior archers were great. Then Awakening added Spirit Warrior, and warrior archers were ridiculously broken. Also depressed none of them played warrior. Reaver was amazingly powerful, only thing more broken is Knight Enchanter mages, which is just because they are completely broken overpowered.
One criticism I don't understand and maybe you can clarify it for me. How are the quests in Inquisition "MMO style fetch quests" and the ones in Origins aren't? Many times it was talk to this NPC complete an action and go back to that NPC or another one. There were a few that were different, but many of them were either go find a special object or kill a specific NPC.Jake Martinez said:I really don't understand why people enjoy DA:I so much. It's obviously inferior to Origins in several ways, but the primary one being that it's really only about 4 set pieces of content that average about 2 hours long each, strung together with pointless MMO style fetch quests. Heck, even the combat is inferior - it plays like a single player MMO, down to the "Every button is awesome" play style, but without the visceral impact of the moves on the enemies other than the flash and pixels flying off the attack SFX.
I know what you mean. To me the qunari were like if spartans got introduced to muslims in history.Sanunes said:I think it can be found with many other analogues if you know the history for the issues.Remus said:Not to get political, but does Dragon Age seem like an analogue to the current war climate to anyone else, with the templars as a surrogate "F YA 'MURICA" and the mages as any brown-skinned people? So a mage blows up a chantry in DA 2, killing many and destroying half a city. As a result all-out war between templars and the more extremist mages. Meanwhile, the mages not fighting are ducking their heads while simultaneously denouncing what their more militant faction is doing, and we have the Inquisition in the middle playing NATO, gathering allies and trying to keep the situation from getting even more extreme. And hey, we even have versions of Benedict, Ratzinger, and Francis in DA's chantry - one dead divine with a liberal and a conservative vying for the chair, as well as many in the higher priesthood unwilling to compromise for the betterment of all. It's like a skewed mirror looking back at us and shaking its head at our folly.
I think you're misconstruing the criticism. It's not that mcguffin quests exist at all, ergo "go slay x and return y for z", some of this is just practical ludology, you need state flags in order to progress a plot line after all. It's about how thinly they are wrapped in plot lines and how almost none of it actually advances the plot, or advances your character and seems to exist solely to fill up time between new content areas. A constant criticism of DA:I is that it promotes the MMO "theme park" feeling of playing, and this is one of the major reasons why because this is exactly how MMO "narrative" is strung together.Sanunes said:Jake Martinez said:I really don't understand why people enjoy DA:I so much. It's obviously inferior to Origins in several ways, but the primary one being that it's really only about 4 set pieces of content that average about 2 hours long each, strung together with pointless MMO style fetch quests. Heck, even the combat is inferior - it plays like a single player MMO, down to the "Every button is awesome" play style, but without the visceral impact of the moves on the enemies other than the flash and pixels flying off the attack SFX.
I won't argue that the crafting mats are useless, though I've found there's some crippling indecision as to when to actually use them. If I'm not crafting at least a tier 3 masterwork I'm probably not touching any of that dragon materials. But there's still a feel bad moment of taking down one of the most drummed up enemies in the game and getting a bunch of gear that's at best going on secondary characters you never use.Jennacide said:Oh, and calling bullshit on killing dragons and now getting anything good. You may not have needed any of it, but you're guaranteed to get 3 uniques and fistfuls of tier 4 crafting mats. Even if you don't need any of the uniques or are leveled over them, the crafting mats are important because barring a few exceptions, all the best gear is crafted and tailored to what you want. Especially with a lot of the edge case builds, like dwarf warrior. The Legion of the Dead armor is matched by literally nothing. It's so good it made me angry it's dwarf only, and my warrior was human.
Reaver is for people that wanted to play a warrior and not be the tank. Which is good, because unlike DAO, you can't tank for with anything but warrior as templar or champion (DPS and dodge tanks were a thing in DAO). Reaver is all about running Aura of Pain to lower the cost of Dragon-Rage and lower the cooldown of Devour. You should be able to do the Dragon-Rage x3 combo, and Devour right after. With a good twohander and some +Heal Bonus gearing, you become an unstoppable murder machine that can solo most of the dragons if you wanted. If you want, you can add +Guard on Hit masterwork to your armor and then you flat out become unkillable. I went for +15 Stam on my armor and Hidden Blades +7 on my weapon, along with the epic +50 Stam ring so I had enough base stam that my below 50% mechanic and stam on damage taken could keep Aura of Pain rolling at all times.garjian said:Reaver?Jennacide said:Archers in DAO were really weird. They weren't very good as rogues, even after the bugfixes and changes; but warrior archers were great. Then Awakening added Spirit Warrior, and warrior archers were ridiculously broken. Also depressed none of them played warrior. Reaver was amazingly powerful, only thing more broken is Knight Enchanter mages, which is just because they are completely broken overpowered.
I'm playing as a warrior on my second playthrough and Reaver didn't appeal so much. Templar is abysmal yes, but Champion is leagues better than both.
Walking Fortress. 8 seconds of invincibility vs. 32 seconds of cooldown.
When upgraded, you gain guard and reduce cooldown times whenever an attack connects, and yes, it reduces it's own cooldown time. I'm actually more effective soloing than as a team because of this.
While it's on, you can do whatever you like, no need to build guard at all. When it runs out, you have all your guard generation abilities ready to bridge the gap for the next Fortress, if there even is a gap.
I looked into Reaver quite a lot when making my decision, and I can see how it works if you have another party member tank... but being at the HP levels required for Devour and Dragon Whatever to work, you're quite frail... also it looks stupid.
Warrior already has some great offensive abilities, and I didn't fancy being at the bottom of my health and vulnerable constantly just to do a wee-bit more damage.
On that note... What's the point of Artificer?
I don't understand how something so obviously awful could've been left like this in the release. 5% crit chance... ...great!
Aren't you assuming that the dragon won't hit you? I'm pretty sure dragons will 1-hit you through a small layer of guard and a tiny amount of health.Jennacide said:Reaver is for people that wanted to play a warrior and not be the tank. Which is good, because unlike DAO, you can't tank for with anything but warrior as templar or champion (DPS and dodge tanks were a thing in DAO). Reaver is all about running Aura of Pain to lower the cost of Dragon-Rage and lower the cooldown of Devour. You should be able to do the Dragon-Rage x3 combo, and Devour right after. With a good twohander and some +Heal Bonus gearing, you become an unstoppable murder machine that can solo most of the dragons if you wanted. If you want, you can add +Guard on Hit masterwork to your armor and then you flat out become unkillable. I went for +15 Stam on my armor and Hidden Blades +7 on my weapon, along with the epic +50 Stam ring so I had enough base stam that my below 50% mechanic and stam on damage taken could keep Aura of Pain rolling at all times.
The damage you do with that build is pure madness. I would hit for 1k > 1k > 1.5k x2 without any of them even critting, just from the Dragon-Rage combo. And for laughs you can always pop Rampage and never stop pressing Dragon-Rage until it ends.
No, I soloed the Highland Reaver (the 23 dragon) when I was lv21 as Reaver with the store bought Dragonslayer axe from Bonne (or whatever her name was in Skyhold) Dragon-Rage hits so fast you will max out guard consistantly, and being a warrior you naturally have a lot of armor anyway. With my +20% Heal Bonus ring, and my armor having an addition +27% Heal Bonus, Devour gives me way more health than Dragon-Rage uses in the 3 swings to reset it's cooldown. So even if the dragon can burst me (they can't) Devour does absurd healing. I'm like 99% sure Reaver is the highest dps spec in the game because of how fast you dish out constant 1k+ attacks. Dragon-Rage doesn't factor swing speed of weapons, so you can use it like every half second.garjian said:Aren't you assuming that the dragon won't hit you? I'm pretty sure dragons will 1-hit you through a small layer of guard and a tiny amount of health.
I can output similar damage using Whirlwind with it's gradual power increase, and I'm completely invincible during it!
While it's true that I am technically tanking, I'm not actually playing defensively... I'm constantly using skills and being on the offensive. The only difference between what you and I are doing is that the enemy is actually attacking me, but I actually benefit from that... having enemies attack me makes me able to go even further on the offensive.