Okay, who the hell was praising Dragon Age Inquisition?

Zhukov

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Dec 29, 2009
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Holy fucking fuck what the fuck were those fuckers fucking thinking?

Yeah, yeah. I'm late to the party. I've always been more of a Mass Effect guy. Dragon Age just felt like Fantasy Game: The Game. Adequate at best and completely lacking in identity. So I didn't bother with Inquisition until relatively recently when I saw the complete edition going for $20.

And it's kinda shit.

I mean, it's not all bad. For the first time Bioware have managed to make a world that feels somewhat alive and lived in. There's some fun characters and the voice acting is top-notch. The plot is, uhh... actually, y'know, the plot is a bit shit too. At least so far. Oh look, it's an Ancient Evil! What a fucking shock. And what's this, I've been recruited into an elite militant order with no oversight which constitutes the world's only hope of salvation? You don't say!

But the big issue, the big red infected pimple festering away right on the game's nose, is the... well, I suppose you'd call it the 'content'. Endless trudging through large open levels gathering 15/25 medicinal flowers, collecting 7/18 crystal shards and killing 2/3 rogue templars. Every time some spark of interest or creativity manages to surface it's immediately buried beneath a fucking avalanche of this low-effort filler garbage. All so they could claim that their game is "big" with "100s of hours of content". What's more, you can't even skip it. The game gates progression in the main missions behind score quotas that are filled by performing the side mission busywork bullshit.

This shit is making me retroactively appreciate The Witcher 3 more, which is a bizarre feeling.

It also shares an issue with that game in that the combat is nowhere near meaty enough to sustain a game this bloody long. Hacking your way through one lot of red health bars isn't notably different to hacking your way through another. Plus the controls are a bit shit. Not intolerably so, but it's a bit of a piss-off considering that the previous games, for all their faults, controlled fine.

The infamous Bioware Face phenomenon is back in full force. I found it bearable in previous games but the switch to the frostbite engine and the more detailed and textured faces just makes it stand out all the more. I realize that the use of dialogue trees prevents them from motion-capturing entire conversations a la Naughty Dog, but the end result is still an eyesore.

It's left me very apprehensive of Andromeda. People were praising this crap when it came out. Knowing Bioware and their responsiveness to feedback I won't be surprised if they add all this single-player-MMO collect-a-thon timesink bullshit to that game too. We already know it's going to be open-world to some degree. Christ.

I'm counting this as more evidence that open world games mostly need to fuck right off. This shit is worse than the modern military shooter plague, at least that crap only affected one or two genres. Bloody Skyrim seems to have infected the whole damn industry with its shallow, diluted mediocrity.

Bleh.
 

Bob_McMillan

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Praising? This game won multiple Game of the Years.

Anyway, yeah. This game has left me not very optimistic for Andromeda. I have always wanted a more open Mass Effect, but not the way Inquisition went about it.
 

Potjeslatinist

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I'd say Inquisition's mediocrity has been well covered, actually.

I do agree with all your points though (except about TW, pistols at dawn).

Positive note: the soundtrack. Some amazing pieces in there.
 

EbonBehelit

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I've never played an MMORPG that would be able to stand on its own as a single-player RPG. Quite amusing then, is the fact that almost everything I've heard about DA:I makes it sounds like a single-player MMORPG.

Mind you, this is just what I've heard: I never actually got around to playing it, since I more-or-less had my fill of Bioware after playing Mass Effect 1+2. No desire to play any more of their titles.
 

Darth Rosenberg

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I kinda hated DA:I initially, but a few playthroughs across 360 and XB1 later, and I've come to enjoy it - even love elements of it (I've always preferred DA to ME, btw, so unlike you I'm biased towards BioWare's fantasy as opposed to sci-fi sci-fantasy), and I do want to go through it a couple more times at some point.

A couple of key things shaped that change of opinion: 1) the Big Bad's always a pathetic joke, but the 'story' really isn't about what he's up to. He's just a background excuse, and he's actually an impressively incompetent panto villain who fails more or less throughout the entire game. Yeah, yeah, world in peril and all that, but DA:I's story is really of the Inquisition's rise and possible/inevitable fall. The Trespasser DLC is the real end to the story, and it closes out themes introduced at the very start.

2) 90% of the 'content' is shit, and can be gleefully ignored. Entire zones can be skipped, so irrelevant are they to the main story progression [or anything remotely interesting... ]. This isn't praise, clearly, but some people can be OCD'ing in the Hinterlands for longer than many other games last in their entirety, and that's a self-destructive habit. It makes a first run quite hard to enjoy, but once you know just how much of the 'content' you can ignore, there's more focus and it turns into a much more enjoyable experience.

But yeah, I share your bemusement at how DA:I reviewed so well on release, and I'm still not quite sure how that happened... Either games 'journos' have a different idea of what content really means, or they're just dazzled by shiny graphics and a big world. Not everyone fell for it, though; Kill Screen's review [https://killscreen.com/articles/dragon-age-inquisition-all-business] was rather scathing.

Zhukov said:
All so they could claim that their game is "big" with "100s of hours of content". What's more, you can't even skip it. The game gates progression in the main missions behind score quotas that are filled by performing the side mission busywork bullshit.
Whilst it's technically true the core progression is gated, the early justification in the Hinterlands makes sense, and beyond that point the game tosses out Power like it's confetti.

Every time some spark of interest or creativity manages to surface it's immediately buried beneath a fucking avalanche of this low-effort filler garbage.
That's a choice you make, though. Only do the task/s in an area that Scout 'why wasn't she an LI' Harding addresses when you enter it, and ignore as much of the rest of it as you can. There aren't many mainquest events in the story at all, and if you focus on that the game's quite brisk [for an RPG].

As for Andromeda? In a way I don't care about how BioWare keep mass-market screwing up gameplay... As long as they give me interesting characters in an interesting world, I'll likely buy every [SP] game they make. DA:I is fundamentally flawed (its combat is puddle-shallow nonsense, too), but I still love DA's world, and I still cared about and wanted to get to know the cast. Solas, in particular, is a wonderfully written and performed character - I'd say one of BioWare's finest.

Potjeslatinist said:
I'd say Inquisition's mediocrity has been well covered, actually.
True, but it did receive a rather peculiarly positive reception (so much so it seems like ignorance or dereliction of analytical duty... ) on release.

Positive note: the soundtrack. Some amazing pieces in there.
Ditto'd. The start screen main theme trumps Skyrim's for me, in terms of often just wanting to let it play through before I load a save.

I hugely admire how BioWare used music throughout, actually; it isn't afraid to leave you with the superb environmental sound design. Most games could shove 'mood music' on in the background of most character narrative scenes, for example, but DA:I allows the characters and the place to breathe, so to speak (e.g. Skyhold's plentiful chitchats).

Often whilst exploring it can seem as if the score is scoring your own wanderings and admiration of the scenery (it is a gorgeous looking and sounding game), with subtle cues and motifs rising as the sound effects level drops, before returning to normal. It can be an incredibly beautiful game at times, and so regardless of the game's systemic and conceptual issues, a lot of talent and love went into crafting it.
 

Gethsemani_v1legacy

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Darth Rosenberg said:
A couple of key things shaped that change of opinion: 1) the Big Bad's always a pathetic joke, but the 'story' really isn't about what he's up to. He's just a background excuse, and he's actually an impressively incompetent panto villain who fails more or less throughout the entire game. Yeah, yeah, world in peril and all that, but DA:I's story is really of the Inquisition's rise and possible/inevitable fall. The Trespasser DLC is the real end to the story, and it closes out themes introduced at the very start.
This is just utterly stupid. I bought DA:I on launch, plowed 100+ hours into it and got a rather bland, poorly told and paced story out of it. BUT APPARENTLY (all caps intended) I can get an actual story with actual themes and closure... if I just put down another 20 dollars for the DLC. Gating the main story behind DLC is the lowest kind of scumminess, and I say that as someone who's generally appreciative of DLC.

If this is the thing that makes DA:I's story better, then the game deserves criticism for its' shitty story and its' shitty DLC practices.

Darth Rosenberg said:
2) 90% of the 'content' is shit, and can be gleefully ignored. Entire zones can be skipped, so irrelevant are they to the main story progression [or anything remotely interesting... ]. This isn't praise, clearly, but some people can be OCD'ing in the Hinterlands for longer than many other games last in their entirety, and that's a self-destructive habit. It makes a first run quite hard to enjoy, but once you know just how much of the 'content' you can ignore, there's more focus and it turns into a much more enjoyable experience.
This is also fucking stupid. Filling a game with so much shit content, that has no appreciable value or meaning beyond padding, that a first time player can't avoid it and can't filter out what's important to continue the story is incredibly poor design.

Darth Rosenberg said:
But yeah, I share your bemusement at how DA:I reviewed so well on release, and I'm still not quite sure how that happened... Either games 'journos' have a different idea of what content really means, or they're just dazzled by shiny graphics and a big world. Not everyone fell for it, though; Kill Screen's review [https://killscreen.com/articles/dragon-age-inquisition-all-business] was rather scathing.
I was pretty smitten with the game for the first 40-50 hours, but the game didn't end there. And the longer the game wore on, the less I cared for it until I reached a point after I finished the game where I never wanted to pick it up ever again. The reviewers probably never got past that first hump, after which the fatigue that killed people's excitement set in.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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A lot of these issues could've been overlooked if DA:I had Bioware's usual good characters.

The best characters in the game are holdovers from DA 2, namely Varric and Cassandra. None of the newer characters are anything more than mildly interesting; Blackwall had a neat personal quest, and Solas was interesting, but beyond that, I can't really say that I liked any of the new characters.

I liked DA 2 a lot simply because the cast of characters was so strong, not necessarily because the story was good (it was okay) or because the gameplay was good (I actually kinda liked it). The colorful cast of characters is what sold DA 2 to me, and DA:I just failed to live up to that completely.
 

Sniper Team 4

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Darth Rosenberg said:
A couple of key things shaped that change of opinion: 1) the Big Bad's always a pathetic joke, but the 'story' really isn't about what he's up to. He's just a background excuse, and he's actually an impressively incompetent panto villain who fails more or less throughout the entire game. Yeah, yeah, world in peril and all that, but DA:I's story is really of the Inquisition's rise and possible/inevitable fall. The Trespasser DLC is the real end to the story, and it closes out themes introduced at the very start.
That's actually the thing that bugged me the most about the game. I was really looking forward to finally getting some answers, especially about the Darkspawn. Old boy Cory was there when it all started. I thought that I was finally going to get some closure to stuff that had been hinted at since the first game.
And then the game just sort of...forgets about him. You go to Skyhold, and you don't really encounter him again--or even seem to concern yourself with him--until the end of the game. At which point, the game makes a hard left and starts telling the story that the writers clearly wanted this game to actually tell: the story of the elves.
Look, I get it. The elves are ancient, and there is clearly plenty we don't know about them, but this was supposed to be about the Darkspawn and what started their corruption. This would be like reading The Hobbit, and then just before the dragon, the story switches to The Lord of the Rings.

Now, do I think that the Darkspawn, their corruption, the ancient elf gods, the Fade, and all that are connected? Yes, especially after The Trespasser DLC. I just wish the game had been able to tell its original story correctly.
Speaking of Trespasser, I can't help but feel that it was, much like Dragon Age II's DLCs, a glimpse of what Inquisition should have been. It was much tighter in focus in terms of story, and the game world.
 

Dansen

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Yeah, the story is a bit silly, but to be fair I think that DAI has been Biowares best attempt at the rising paramilitary trope that Bioware is so obsessed with. It genuinely felt like I was growing my forces and influence. Much of it was superficial but it still worked for me. The cast is great except for that stupid elf chick, in an attempt to make an quirky likable character they made an unpleasant genuinely bad person.

The MMO design philosophy both helps and hinders the game. By using it I think that they wanted to give a sense of constant progression, to reinforce the building an army fantasy. Start of as a small illegitimate group into a world power. And while I think they were on to something, the opportunity was squandered on bloat that didn't satisfy the growing army fantasy. There are good ideas that can be refined, but since we are talking about EA, I doubt my hopes will come to fruition.
 

Darth Rosenberg

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Gethsemani said:
This is just utterly stupid. I bought DA:I on launch, plowed 100+ hours into it and got a rather bland, poorly told and paced story out of it.
Criticism of pacing need caveats - DA:I's a game where the player ostensibly sets that pacing. It can be a meandering narrative where you forget what's happening for 10hrs of filler, or it goes from story beat to story beat. That's the player's choice.

I disagree with it being poorly told, though. I felt the presentation throughout and quality of writing/voice acting was mostly excellent.

BUT APPARENTLY (all caps intended) I can get an actual story with actual themes and closure... if I just put down another 20 dollars for the DLC. Gating the main story behind DLC is the lowest kind of scumminess, and I say that as someone who's generally appreciative of DLC.
Did I say it was a good idea? No, I just explained that DA:I's ultimate focus isn't really on the bland 'beep me when the apocalypse comes' end-times arc at all. It uses that as a means to explore the formation and rise of an organisation, and on top of that are far bigger things going on behind the scenes. It's just a fact that Trespasser gives you the final credits and a narrative resolution, as well as the possible/probable lead-in to DAIII. I didn't make a value judgement.

That said, aren't people always grousing about how pointless most DLC is? If a company release one which improves and makes more sense of the core game, isn't that a positive [if DLC has to exist at all]? DA:I wasn't a small game in any sense of the word at launch, and Trespasser added another considerable quasi-The Citadel-esque final furlong. I don't think it's fair to see Trespasser as just another typical cynical cash-in (neither was the Frostback DLC, which is arguably the best individual zone in terms of meaningful gameflow design in the entire game, and an example of how all their zones should've been handled).

If this is the thing that makes DA:I's story better, then the game deserves criticism for its' shitty story and its' shitty DLC practices.
Eh, I am a fairly major DA fan so I was always going to get everything released for it. I ended up playing Trespasser and the other DLC on a GotY edition on XB1, so I had to buy the damn thing twice to get the best - and complete - experience.

(if we're talking scummy business decisions, then abandoning support for the 360/PS3 community was probably their most egregious act. oh, that, and having the tea lady and a passing cleaner develop the catastrophically awful last-gen versions over a spare weekend... )

This is also fucking stupid. Filling a game with so much shit content, that has no appreciable value or meaning beyond padding, that a first time player can't avoid it and can't filter out what's important to continue the story is incredibly poor design.
Did I say this was a good call on BioWare's part?

However, subjectivity's worth remembering; different people have different tolerances for collectathons, and some even enjoy them.

I was pretty smitten with the game for the first 40-50 hours, but the game didn't end there. And the longer the game wore on, the less I cared for it until I reached a point after I finished the game where I never wanted to pick it up ever again. The reviewers probably never got past that first hump, after which the fatigue that killed people's excitement set in.
Perhaps, and yes, games like this may expose the inherent idiocy of game review's financially competitive nature. However, I still think it's mostly a cultural problem, i.e. a dire lack of critical thought/genuine critique.

...and you probably won't like me saying this, but as I said above; if you ignore most or all of DA:I's filler, it's not a long game at all, and that ensures you spend your time on only the stuff that matters to the story. Is it a badly designed game? I believe so. Can its non-content filler be greatly mitigated/almost negated? Also yes. Even if a new player is made aware of that, it'd help significantly (hell, I've listed zones to new players - even if they don't skip them entirely, they go in knowing that nothing in a given map area is essential).

As for never wanting to pick it up again: I intend on at least another two runs at some point. I might never get around to it, but I've still never played a rogue Inquisitor, and there are a couple of LI/romance arcs I'd like to see for myself, as opposed to just watch 'em on YT.

DA:I does make me rather nervy about Andromeda, though. But then so did all but one of the game's own trailers...

Sniper Team 4 said:
Now, do I think that the Darkspawn, their corruption, the ancient elf gods, the Fade, and all that are connected?
Yes, especially after The Trespasser DLC. I just wish the game had been able to tell its original story correctly.
Spoilers edited in, because, y'know, spoilers... Zhukov's not finished it yet, and he might care about stuff like that.

I didn't mind it, and as time's gone on I've come to appreciate how it all unfolded. Ostensibly DA:I presented a story of a dreary special snowflake Chosen One, up against a dreary, vapid Big Bad. Did DA:I cleverly deconstruct Chosen One narratives? Eh, I wouldn't quite go that far... but I now quite admire how they at least tried to do something a little different. On subsequent runs when I knew of the big picture stuff - and how ultimately [thankfully] unimportant the Inquisitor and the Big Bad were - I found I could better enjoy the story of the Inquisition itself, and what it represented/could represent in Thedas.

I was a little disappointed it spent so little time on that theme directly, as well, i.e. the Council and the politics between Ferelden, Orlais, the Divine/Chantry, and the Inquisition. Though I did still enjoy the options it gave the Inquisitor at the very end, even if they'll likely never amount to anything re continuity (which doesn't bother me at all, btw).

Speaking of Trespasser, I can't help but feel that it was, much like Dragon Age II's DLCs, a glimpse of what Inquisition should have been. It was much tighter in focus in terms of story, and the game world.
Hm, I dunno about that. DAII's story DLC was excellent (particularly Mark Of The Assassin. it's worth noting I still adore DAII in general, btw, flaws and all), but Trespasser was a bloated, often attritional mess when it came to the combat. DA:I's core combat is a major weakness, and I'd have enjoyed playing through the entirety of Trespasser far more had it cut back on the action; I barreled through the enemies as quick as possible, and barely stopped to explore---
I didn't give a toss about the qunari - I wanted to catch up with Solas. Those last scenes with him are generally superb, but I still wanted more.

Still, like ME3's Citadel (but not nearly as good given it didn't have three whole games and a massive cast to play with), it had some damn fine character scenes; I loved seeing how their various stories had or had not progressed, as well as having the chance to bid farewell, as the Inquisitor as simply as the player (which reminded me of DA:O's great final hall sequence, should the Warden survive the Battle of Denerim).

Trespasser and The Descent contain some phenomenal orchestral themes, too, so kudos on the composer/s for the new scores.
 

meiam

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Well a lot of stuff has already been said, so I'll just re-iterate that the game was pretty mediocre and take the opportunity to air a few of my somewhat nitpicky complaint/weird observation of the game.

Its clear that the writer just loved Leliana and wanted her to be the main character of the game, first of they revive her if the player killed her. Then when you go to the future if you side the mage at some point all your character have to defend you to the death, but the game just kill them off screen, yet Leliana get this long heroic death that's more impressive than even Hawke death. Plus she's such a ***** in it, if you ask her what happen (ie get information about the future to prevent it) she just tell you not to ask.

Speaking of mage v Templar arc, the huge focus on non linearity means that its never properly develop, which retroactively makes DA2 ending even worse.

Actually every arc of the main story was improperly develop, your told everything about the civil war in the same mission where you have to decide who's going to win the war, but the game doesn't develop either side so there's just interchangeable stooge.
 

Danbo Jambo

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Couldn't agree more with the OP. DA:I is not an awful game per say, it's just not in any way shape or form either a patch on DA:O, or enjoyable. And it's also a massive insult to RPG lovers that a dumb, MMO style slogfest is even classed as an RPG IMO.

I hated my time with DA:I, loathed it fully. But what grated me the most was those who claimed that it took a step back in the direction of DA:O - it didn't. It took all the failings of DA:2 and added some more.

This bit is also bang on.......

Zhukov said:
I'm counting this as more evidence that open world games mostly need to fuck right off. This shit is worse than the modern military shooter plague, at least that crap only affected one or two genres. Bloody Skyrim seems to have infected the whole damn industry with its shallow, diluted mediocrity.

Bleh.
I love GOOD open world games like Morrowind which are hand crafted, full of depth, and a joy to unearth. But Games like Da:I just needlessly cram open world elements into them just to tick a few marketing boxes. It's pathetic.

And what have we now? Bethesda cramming Minecraft elements into the likes of Fallout 4 in the same futile quest to please everyone lol.

There's some really fucking backwards people making stupidly short sighted decisions at some game companies now. The desire to make a game fit a marketing niche as opposed to just include what makes it as good as possible is way to rife.

And I also found that with The Witcher 3. It was done far better and I can see why it did well. But again a lot of the filler in there could have been removed (Kingdoms of Amalur anyone? what a game that could have been had it been made properly and not with the MMO/filler overload aspects).


Samtemdo8 said:
There is no Dragon Age Inquisition or 2.

There is only the Origins.
Agreed *cheers*
 

Casual Shinji

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There's a part of me that really likes Inquisition... and then I actually play it again.

It's so run of the mill it makes even the mills blush.
 

BloatedGuppy

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Everyone shit talking the game by comparing to to MMOs, but I was playing WoW's most recent expansion shortly before DA:I and I can say with some authority that DA:I might have aped some MMO-like conventions but it did so EXCEPTIONALLY poorly. If it was "an MMO" it was a horrendously naff one. Frankly, the "MMO" aspects had more in common with cow-clicker mobile games than actual MMO propers.

Anyway, OT...DA:I is a terrible game. It makes me very worried about Bioware's design philosophy moving forward. Apparently they've "learned" from experience and are promising a game closer to Witcher 3 in design ethos with Andromeda, but we'll see. Fool me three times, Bioware...
 

G00N3R7883

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Speaking as someone who rated Dragon Age Origins as my favourite game of all time until it was overtaken by Witcher 3, I was disappointed by Inquisition. Its better than DA2 I guess, but still average at best.

I thought the story and characters were alright. This has always been Bioware's strength. The villain needed more screen time though. I can't actually tell you his name as I type this, but I'll never forget Loghain or Saren. I'm supposed to either hate or fear the villain and I actually feel nothing.

The combat was terrible. I'm not exaggerating when I say I had to stop playing a couple of times because I was literally falling asleep. Its all just hack and slash and hack and slash and hack and slash as you slowly grind down each enemy's mile long health bar. DA:O's combat was fantastic. Very tactical. Positioning of your party and using abilities at the correct times was very important. I really hope the rumours from a few months ago of a Dragon Age "tactics" game with an Xcom style combat system are true.

And the open world was also terrible. Among the very worst examples of the Ubisoft style pointless side quests. "Take 4 extremely basic types of activity and copy/paste them 20 times each all over the map to make it seem like the game has so much content". This is actually my biggest fear for Andromeda. Hopefully Bioware can learn from how interesting and unique Witcher 3's side quests were.
 

DrownedAmmet

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When a game that I didn't like gets rated well, it usually doesn't bother me. Different strokes for different folks you know. And I can usually at leas see why they liked it, even if I disagree.

But Dragon Age: Inquisition really baffles me how so many people liked it (it even won the Escapist reader choice GOTY if I recall correctly)

The only theory I have is that reviewers are under some obligation to finish the game, and maybe because they were able to spend so much time on it they had a better time of it

And honestly if I did have eight hours a day to play it, I probably would enjoy the game more. It's just, I sort of have a life, and I can't justify spending so much time doing boring things like collecting minerals or tracking down landmarks, or walking some asshole's buffalo a hundred godamn miles at a snail's pace, just to grind enough power to do the things I actually want to do
 

sageoftruth

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Casual Shinji said:
There's a part of me that really likes Inquisition... and then I actually play it again.

It's so run of the mill it makes even the mills blush.
I've experienced that before. Often I end up re-playing bad games because the idea of the game is much more appealing than the game itself, and I keep forgetting how bad the execution turned out to be.
 

Asita

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Gethsemani said:
Darth Rosenberg said:
A couple of key things shaped that change of opinion: 1) the Big Bad's always a pathetic joke, but the 'story' really isn't about what he's up to. He's just a background excuse, and he's actually an impressively incompetent panto villain who fails more or less throughout the entire game. Yeah, yeah, world in peril and all that, but DA:I's story is really of the Inquisition's rise and possible/inevitable fall. The Trespasser DLC is the real end to the story, and it closes out themes introduced at the very start.
This is just utterly stupid. I bought DA:I on launch, plowed 100+ hours into it and got a rather bland, poorly told and paced story out of it. BUT APPARENTLY (all caps intended) I can get an actual story with actual themes and closure... if I just put down another 20 dollars for the DLC. Gating the main story behind DLC is the lowest kind of scumminess, and I say that as someone who's generally appreciative of DLC.

If this is the thing that makes DA:I's story better, then the game deserves criticism for its' shitty story and its' shitty DLC practices.
Eh...it's complicated. For all that it's a major release in the Dragon Age franchise, it's more there to set the stage for the main plot than actually progress it, much like ME2 was evidently supposed to. The plot is there principally to introduce the player to ancient and powerful magics (and ancient and powerful beings) and to give them a better idea of spirits/demons and just how dangerous a world without the Veil would be. It's like...FLCL or Half Life where the story is largely told in the background and the viewer/player has to piece it together, only not nearly as well done. It's like they decided that the elvish backstory was more interesting than the blight story and realized that they really hadn't expanded upon it enough to make it the primary focus of the franchise, and thus designed Inquisition as an info dump.
 

Saetha

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Darth Rosenberg said:
No, I just explained that DA:I's ultimate focus isn't really on the bland 'beep me when the apocalypse comes' end-times arc at all.
Well, that isn't entirely true. It just turns out to be focused on a different "Beep me when the apocalypse comes" end-times arc.