Improving Dragon Age: Inquisition?

[Danbo Jambo]

...you can bet that TW3's number 1 focus will be the story, whereas DA:I's story felt very much like a side-peice and lower down the priority list.

Given the vapid nature of DA:I's combat, if its story was low down on a list of priorities, feck knows what was high on that list... Music, I guess? Party [character] dynamics? Those are the only two things I think it did superbly (top notch voice acting's a given with BioWare games).

Aye, credit where credits due to the music!

From reports I've read it seems as if TW3's approach is "Let's make a great game, an open world environment could be used to enhance the experience", where as DA:I most definitely was "Open world games sell. Let's make on of those and tailor the game to fit that, and if we fit a decent story in there somehow then that's a bonus"

I didn't want Witcher to go open-world, because - to cut BioWare some slack - it's very hard to craft a good story with an open-world design. What's encouraging is that CD Projekt seem to be demonstrably good learners, i.e. the transition from the original to TW2 was nothing short of remarkable. If they can continue that kind of self-improving design trajectory, then yeah, TW3 could really be something special.

Perhaps for the next DA, BioWare can look to The Witcher - rather than dumb MMO's and Skyrim - for some inspiration.

Could not agree more and very well said. It's all about context for me and you've very much nailed it there. CD Projekt just seem to prioritize making a good game first, whereas Bioware have definitely fallen victim to the "prioritize what makes money first, and make the game fit" syndrome.

The trouble is they can't see how short term this is. People will soon tire of the Skyrim formula if it remains souless - there's only so many times they can knock out a shallow game for folk to dick about in before they get bored of the formula, and that will go for the Dragon Age series too. The tiresome MMO style errands have already been sussed, and another game with that set up won't be welcomed by anyone but the most hardened Bioware fanboy IMO.

 

[FavouriteDream]

I didn't like the amount of filler in there. There were ridiculous, MMORPG type quests. "Gather this herb" or "Deliver this letter".

I don't believe a single player game should need to have these quests. I understand that they wanted to make a game with a huge amount of side quests, but be more creative.

I would have enjoyed the game if the side quests were more like Bethesda games - creative and interesting. But instead the majority of the sidequests were just generic MMORPG quests. I hated that.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

CD Projekt just seem to prioritize making a good game first, whereas Bioware have definitely fallen victim to the "prioritize what makes money first, and make the game fit" syndrome.

In all fairness CD Projekt RED have a distinct advantage over Bioware in that not only are they not owned by their publisher but are in fact the senior division of the business group that includes their publisher (the CD Projekt Group includes CDP RED, CDP and GOG). Basically, CDP RED have way more freedom to do what they want without having to worry that their publisher is going to step on their dicks and force a shitpile of metrics-based design changes on them.

The trouble is they can't see how short term this is. People will soon tire of the Skyrim formula if it remains souless - there's only so many times they can knock out a shallow game for folk to dick about in before they get bored of the formula, and that will go for the Dragon Age series too.

In most cases, open world games either need significant (yet still relevent) sandbox content and/or a transportt system that's FUN. If getting around tthe gameworld is a massive pain then people aren't going to be arsed exploring the side content... or will do so only grudgingly.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

CD Projekt just seem to prioritize making a good game first, whereas Bioware have definitely fallen victim to the "prioritize what makes money first, and make the game fit" syndrome.

In all fairness CD Projekt RED have a distinct advantage over Bioware in that not only are they not owned by their publisher but are in fact the senior division of the business group that includes their publisher (the CD Projekt Group includes CDP RED, CDP and GOG). Basically, CDP RED have way more freedom to do what they want without having to worry that their publisher is going to step on their dicks and force a shitpile of metrics-based design changes on them.

True, but that's still a sad reflection on how other gaming companies & publishes are setup.

The trouble is they can't see how short term this is. People will soon tire of the Skyrim formula if it remains souless - there's only so many times they can knock out a shallow game for folk to dick about in before they get bored of the formula, and that will go for the Dragon Age series too.

In most cases, open world games either need significant (yet still relevent) sandbox content and/or a transportt system that's FUN. If getting around tthe gameworld is a massive pain then people aren't going to be arsed exploring the side content... or will do so only grudgingly.

Indeed. I loved Morrowind's approach to that becaue it felt as if I'd earned a form of faster traveling (the boots of blinding speed & potion mix really felt like I'd become a sort of demi-God through my own discoveries & experimentation), and that it fit in with the gaming world. It's sandbox elements were also, on the whole, very interesting and felt like they were part of the living world too, not just filler to occupy our time. The objectives & quests tended to reveal more about the world, not just have us sat atop a mountain of bear pelts or whatever.

Sorry to rant, but it's actually quite shocking how lazy some games are i ngeneral with this. "Hi I'm Dave, I need some pelts, get me some for X coin" is a dispairingly awful peice of content in any game. Even just expanding it a bit to:

"several years ago a group of creatures slain my family, and I won't rest until they are now slain" *adventurer slays creatures, only to find out the story was a lie, and that Dave was using you to make a quick profit - choice slay Dave or not, and in the process you find out how he murdered his own family for profit* etc. adds a bit more life & depth to proceedings. But instead we get bombarded with souless filler, with no thought or care having been put into it at all. That's my main gripe with DA:I. It actually feels as if Bioware are taking the piss out of me a bit for playing, like dangling a toy in front of a dog.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

I'll try to keep it brief:

- I despise the shift from active healing to potion chugging. DE-SPISE.
- If I'm not a submarine, whale, or bat, sonar is fucking stupid.
- Re: primary antagonist, flawed humans are more interesting than monsters.
- Non-MMOs do not benefit from MMO-style "gameplay" (aka timesinks).
- Focus on crafting always means more tedium and disappointing loot.
- Sanitized themes, characters, language, and imagery equals vanilla game.
- Tactical camera sucks, and combat is a cool-down spamming bore.
- Controls are inexplicably sluggish + needless harvesting/looting "delay".
- Some hair and ALL beards look shit. "Skyrim had better 3 years ago" bad.
- Game world structure is just wonky. Feels disjointed as hell.

Good stuff:

- It's a AAA, party-based RPG. This is often enough for me to buy a game.
- The graphics are mostly impressive and frequently amazing.
- Good music, sound, voice acting, etc. - audio is on point.
- It's legitimately huge. Massive improvement over DA2's bullshit.

Overall: I wish they'd stop trying to reinvent a perfectly good wheel with horrible "outside the box" ideas and just remake, essentially, DA:O with better graphics and a new story. If they want to throw DA:O stuff on the scrapheap, they should start with all the parts of rpgs that actually suck (harvesting basic resources like a peasant, fetch and delivery quests with no meaningful context or purpose, cliched villains, heroes, and story arcs, terrible AI) and maybe leave intact the bits a lot of people actually enjoy. Don't "shake things up" when your new ideas are shittier than your old ones.

 

[Saetha]

I didn't like the push towards the " Oh the poor elves and what the rotten humans have done!", I got that enough with the snow elves in Skyrim. It almost turned into an ancient SJW episode.

I gotta say, I disagree on this point. I actually feel like DA:I went to great lengths to knock the elves (And the Dalish specifically) down a few pegs. I mean, throughout the course of the game you find out that the elves started the incident that led to the fall of the Dales, that they've gotten basically everything wrong about their own history and culture, that the tattoos they hold up as a vital part of being Dalish have been slave brands all along. Both of the elven companions (As well as the elves at the Temple) write the modern elves off for various reasons. I mean, there's even a companion banter where Dorian's all "Man, the ancient elves were neat, it's really terrible that my people destroyed them" and Solas goes "Nah it's fine, Arlathan kinda sucked anyway."

Not to mention that the dude at the temple says the ancient elves destroyed themselves, humans just came along to clean up the mess.

 

[Gone Rampant]

Tighten the story, cut out the filler, make the villain a more compelling character, shrink the maps sizes, more side quests that are interesting contextually, make the assassin less obvious in the winter palace section, cut out the second to last main story quest, and make the armor a bit more varied. Anything I missed?

Change the goddamn PJs.