Poll: Has Dragon Age Inquisition out-skyrimmed Skyrim?

Just Ebola

Literally Hitler
Jan 7, 2015
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I've never considered Skyrim to be the king of open-world fantasy. I remember the moment Skyrim was ruined for me like it was yesterday, even though it was years ago. I was working my job folding sweaters one late evening talking to a co-worker, when he told me why he couldn't play Skyrim for any extended amount of time. It's shallow.

The quests are all the same, the combat is basic and repetitive and there is zero characterization to fill the massive world.

I've never played DAI but it can't dethrone something that was never there.
 

Godhead

Dib dib dib, dob dob dob.
May 25, 2009
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I would put either of the Witcher games over Skyrim or DA:I. Skyrim is shallow with little to immerse you in the world other than a great soundtrack and some pretty vistas, and from what I've seen of Dragon Age, it looks like a single player MMORPG.
 

the doom cannon

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Skyrim was fun, to an extent. The repetitive dungeons/caves and dragon battles, as wellas the ease of playing a sneaky archer left a lot to be desired. DAI may not be the best, but I honestly don't know what is.
 

Ihateregistering1

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Mar 30, 2011
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Yeah this is a complete apples to oranges comparison, pretty much the only thing the games have in common is that they fall under the VERY broad spectrum of "RPG".

Skyrim was basically an enormous sandbox to play around in and essentially craft your own story. The actual game story and character was completely secondary to the "do whatever you want" aspect of the game.

DAI was the complete opposite, emphasis is placed heavily on storyline and characters, and it isn't open world. You have set places that you may visit, and you don't have access to all of them from the get-go.

Personally, although I haven't finished DAI yet, Skyrim wins the award for simply being the better game to me, and with mods there is no question. I was really hoping that DAI was going to be a return to DA:O (which itself was essentially a return to the "Baldur's Gate" series) but instead (as others have mentioned) it just seems this big hodge-podge of various gameplay mechanics that only loosely fit together.
 

Soviet Heavy

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Casual Shinji said:
No.

And that's because Inquisition isn't an open-world adventure game where you more or less craft your own story. It's a story driven game with huge stretches of wandering around doing inconsequential side quests that totally exhaust you and break up the flow of the story.

Seriously, whenever I think of maybe replaying DA:I the thought of having to trudge through those ludicrously huge areas instantly make go 'Yeah, the hell with that.'
What, did they actually just turn the entire game into Origins' Deep Roads sequence. Fuck that noise.
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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Seeing as how the games are extremely different, I can't really make that call. DA:I has a focus on story, Skyrim has a focus on world exploration. DA:I is party based and third person, Skyrim is first person, etc. I get vastly different things out of the two games, and the similarities are only skin deep in my opinion. Comparing them is almost like comparing Duke Nukem 3D and X-Com based on the fact they both feature alien invasions...
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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Jul 18, 2009
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Soviet Heavy said:
What, did they actually just turn the entire game into Origins' Deep Roads sequence. Fuck that noise.
I think I'm one of the few who actually likes the Deep Roads. It makes thematic sense in that it feels endless and daunting. It was kind of annoying for sure, but it did help to flesh out that part of the world.

In Inquisition it isn't so much that the areas are big, it's that they're filled to the brim with fluff. I don't think any of these huge maps have any sort of large story focused set pieces. It's just running around doing rather meaningless sidequest just to stock up on Power points so you can unlock main missions in the War Room. The areas certainly look very pretty, especially the Dalish, but that loses its luster after the umpteenth rift battle.
 

Rasha M

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Feb 24, 2015
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I much prefer Skyrim to Dragon Age Inquisition. I played Skyrim multiple times and spent over 100 hours in game. Inquisition I've only finished once. It wasn't a bad game, but I'm not eager to play it again.
 

Bat Vader

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Joseph Harrison said:
Truly the best fantasy game is and always will be



Mount and Blade Warband
Mount and Blade: Warband isn't a fantasy game though. Unless you download a fantasy mod like Persino.
 

Bob_McMillan

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Aug 28, 2014
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I watched an NCIS episode (it's the no. 1 TV drama) where the dude was playing DA Inquisition. Can't recall any Skyrim references on TV or Film.

Despite that, nah. From what I've seen DA: I is a lot emptier than Skyrim and it's only advantage over Skyrim is it's choose your own path mechanics.
 

RedDeadFred

Illusions, Michael!
May 13, 2009
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Joseph Harrison said:
Truly the best fantasy game is and always will be



Mount and Blade Warband
Not fantasy so much as alternate world medieval simulator sandbox. However, even though it's not the greatest fantasy game of all time, I do consider it to be the greatest game of all time.

As Bat Vader already mentioned, if you want to actually make it a fantasy game, download mods. Perisno is definitely great, but it's not really complete. I'd recommend Prophecy of Pendor if you're looking for a finished, total conversion, fantasy mod. Just be prepared to either import a character, or die a lot in the early game.

OT: While I enjoyed Inquisition, for what I like in an open world fantasy game, nothing has really touched Skyrim for me. Wondering the world in Inquisition just doesn't feel as compelling as it does in Skyrim. To be honest, Inquisition kind of feels a little bit like an MMO in regards to its exploration. Nothing really wrong with that, but I definitely prefer Skyrim's (and all of the Elder Scrolls games for that matter) way of doing it.
 

Dandark

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Sep 2, 2011
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I am a Dragon age fan and I like Dragon age: Inquisition but it does not beat Skyrim.

I still haven't even gotten past Skyhold on DA:I because while the actual dragon age parts of the game are fun, everything else is boring.

I enjoy the combat well enough, they somewhat streamlined some of the RPG elements but they actually compensated by adding new mechanics and it ends up being fun. I also enjoy the characters and even though the main story is as generic as elves having pointy ears I still find it well done and enjoyable.

What gives me so much difficulty playing it are the large open areas where you walk around this empty landscape doing boring, grindy and time wasting MMO style fetch quests. This is the worst part of the game and is incredibly boring. They tried to ape Skyrim and although IMO they failed, the game is held up by the decent combat and the remaining DA elements but since the main game was cut in favour of large open Skyrim style areas it cannot compete with Skyrim which just does it better.

Imagine if DA:O had these boring areas(Yeah I know they already had the deep roads haha" instead of any of the separate faction recruitment questlines. Imagine if instead of the questline to save redcliff and the arl it was just a large empty area with a bunch of people waiting to give you "Kill X zombies" or "Find X bottles of zombie rot away" until you had "saved" the village, then you move into the castle and repeat it.
Imagine if the mage tower was just wandering around lake calenhad until you killed enough generic enemies rather than fighting your way up through the tower, deciding what to do with the various mages you encounter, "let them live? Kill them? Let the blood mage escape? What about this bespelled Templar?" before having to make use of new mechanics to escape the sloth demons nightmare.

These cool levels are where DA:I fails because it doesn't have enough of them since large parts of the game feel like boring filler. The actual scripted main quests have been pretty cool so far and even though I've only gotten to Skyhold before making a new character I have greatly enjoy those parts of the game so far.


Now despite all this negativity I do enjoy the game and feel the open world could have worked. What I would have liked was for them to have a slightly more instanced open world. Instead of this giant but empty world it would be nice to have slightly smaller sections but with more interesting content. If they had actual events or quests like DA:Os that were then found in the open world then I think it could be a lot more fun.

TL;DR No DA:I does not beat Skyrims open world and I hope they go back to a more traditional format for the next game or innovate their open world a bit more.
 

Lisker

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Sep 6, 2014
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Not even close. Although the environments in dragon age are indeed beautiful, plenty and varied, they still have this "instanced" feel due to the war table being your main way of travel between these area's. In skyrim you could just ride/walk anywhere you pleased, without this instancing ruining the immersion a bit.
 

Pandalisk

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Jan 25, 2009
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Something wasn't right with dragons age but I can't quite figure out my thoughts as to why, I loved Origins and DLC but for some reason I didn't really engage with Inquisition and only finished the Orlesian empress quest before I lost all eagerness to play. I played the fuck out of Skyrim however and really enjoyed the environments.
 

Adultratedhydra

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Aug 19, 2010
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You mean an overhyped, depth lacking trudgeathon with a shallow crafting system and clunky combat that only got more buggy with each patch and can only be improved with modding?

Oddly enough Skyrim and Dargonage are quite similair in the worst possible ways but TES series Larger Modding potential is what lets it stay higher than DA:I will ever be.
 

blackdwarf

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Jun 7, 2010
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Nah. the fact that DA: Inquisition isn't even the best of the series, Origins is by far the better game en RPG.

I never considered Skyrim King RPG, but think it was still a better game than DA: Inquisition.
 

remnant_phoenix

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Apr 4, 2011
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SmallHatLogan said:
I disagree with your premise that Skyrim is the king of fantasy games.

Saetha said:
To say nothing of the fact that it's kinda like comparing apples and oranges
Laggyteabag said:
Apples and oranges.
Ihateregistering1 said:
Yeah this is a complete apples to oranges comparison
Apples are better than oranges.
Only if they're Granny Smith apples.
 

Username Redacted

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endtherapture said:
Couldn't have put it better myself. Going back and replaying DA:I is actually daunting for me. The story content is interesting for sure, but half of my game time was load screens, and to actually get to the story content you have to fight so many boring trash mobs and trudge through so much open world banality that I frankly can't face going back to the game.
I've actually been having a lot of success with what I've dubbed 'Dragon Age Fitness'. Basically any time (which is quit often) I encounter a loading screen in DA:I I stand up, move my desk chair out of the way and do some combination of push-ups, squats and sit-ups until the game comes back. Over a long enough session this is actually quit a good workout and quit tiring.
Laggyteabag said:
One is an open world, fantasy sandbox in which you can run around and do whatever you want, and the game is pretty much built to be a canvas for mods (why do people play these games on consoles again? I mean, seriously? Don't they get bored?)
I'm actually more curious how the people who play these games on consoles ever finish them as, while better than Skyrim in this regard, DA:I has, according to its wiki, some near game breaking bugs and Skyrim can definitely go full Skyrim and just refuse to do what it's supposed to and without modders to fix these problems I don't see how a platform for which such fixes aren't an option is able to function. That said modding is IMO the biggest difference between these games. I'm nearly done with DA:I and I can't really imagine myself playing it again. I've been "done" with Skyrim for a while but if an interesting enough mod comes out it takes a lot less to get back into it.

I would say that DA:I has two big issues with its attempts at being Skyrim-esque. The first is that the first area it throws at you (The Hinterlands) is just too damned big for the actual quantity of content (i.e. lots of walking around not doing much). The second is that for non-story areas the game doesn't do a very good job of indicating whether or not your appropriately leveled and kitted for the area which means is you aren't you're going to get your face stomped flat before being subjected to the aforementioned interminable loading screens.