Why did BioWare not do a good job with DA: Inquisition?

[pearcinator]

One word; Sidequests.

The Witcher 3 has more fleshed-out, story-driven sidequests whereas Dragon Age: Inquisition had very few memorable ones. That is where Bioware need to improve upon in Mass Effect and Dragon Age. The main quests in Dragon Age are great fun but the sidequests really hinder any chance of replayability. I just don't want to do them again.

I liked Dragon Age: Inquisition. I probably give it a 7.5/10 but Witcher 3 I give a 9/10. The main flaws I have with Witcher 3 is that there's TOO MUCH to do that replaying the game will likely seem a monumental task. I have like 50+ hrs spent so far and feels like I have barely scraped the surface. That's a common flaw I have with open-world games in general though. Once you finish it, it becomes a chore to play again. I found I liked Dragon Age: Origins much more even though the graphics and gameplay of Inquisition was better.

Mass Effect is my favourite sci-fi series though so hopefully Bioware look to Witcher 3 for what CDPR did right in regards to story-driven sidequests. I love Mass Effect because it's like 30 hrs long rather than 200 hrs. I would sooner play through Mass Effect 2; 3 or 4 times before replaying any open-world game.

 

[T.D.]

I seem to be in the minority here, but I enjoyed Dragon Age: Inquisition. I'd give it an 8/10.

My only main gripe about it was the obvious padding, though I had minor gripes about some of the UI decisions.

I also feel that it does not have the "love" TW3 has is unfair. There are plenty of call backs to previous games, both major and small decisions. The world felt consistent.

What is more if there are things you don't like about DA:I most of them can be ignored or circumvented, with the exception of side quest padding which is why I griped about it.

I would say the major difference is in the difference in combat between DA:O and DA:I. With O's focusing on planning and I's focus on action. Both are perfectly valid gameplay choices and I did not feel either was better or worse than the other, I felt just as much a badass in both games.

I don't know about The Witcher 3. I played the first one and it was crap, I've not felt any compunction to revisit the series.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I don't know about The Witcher 3. I played the first one and it was crap, I've not felt any compunction to revisit the series.

That's fine, but then you really aren't in a position to determine whether or not comparisons made between the two games are unfair.

 

[LostTrigger]

It went mainstream, mainstream is hardly ever good.

 

[happyninja42]

I don't think they "did Inquisition wrong", as I enjoy the game a great deal. It's not great, but no game is. Like movies and their sins, all video games have problems with them of one form or another.

Do I think they had room to improve stuff? Sure, do I think they "failed" with the game? Not at all.

Things I would've liked better:

Have more of the choices you make impact the actual plot. I spent like 30 minutes going through that damn Dragon Keep site to tailor the world setting how I wanted it, and found that most of the stuff only resulted in a walk on scene of the character, a vague mention of them when I walked past a few commoners chatting (something you could easily miss), or a war map mission that mentions them. This isn't really all that relevent, and I still don't know where some of the choices I made actually came into play. (Seriously that elf chick from DA 2, i set her up as "going back to her people" and "fixing the eluvian", and I still haven't seen any mention of her in 2 playthroughs, wtf?!) If you're going to have me make those choices, make those choices have weight, otherwise, who the fuck cares?

Different crafting system. Sorry but I don't like gathering hundreds of things to make stuff. I'm the head of a fucking army, and busy trying to save the world from a Big Bad. I don't have time to go mining and herb gardening to do stuff. Give me an infrastructure to do these things. Give me a finite source of manpower, that I have to delegate to do stuff over real time. Do I want to devote resources to the harvest, so that I can bring in enough resources to upgrade my potions? Then I don't have the resources to go gather metals for my new set of armor. I mean, they were happy enough to give me "content" that simply involved me clicking on a map and then just waiting for a timer to run out, why not do it for the harvesting stuff too, the stuff that would actually make sense for this. Have it be a representation of the tithes I'm getting with all of these alliances I'm making with Josephine. I choose to side with 1 group over another? Well this makes it easier for me to get the metals from that region, but not the herbs, so the yield will be lower/take longer.

Have the choices my companions make be influenced by my character, not them directly taking their lead from my choices. Sorry, I get that I'm the protagonist/hero in this story, but not every damn decision has to be made by me. They should've done like what they were hinting at with Cole. When you first meet him, he tries to kill a dying soldier, and you can either let him do it, or tell him not to. Have multiple situations like that, where you can nudge them in certain directions, but in the later choice (Like with Cole's personal story and the Templar he has history with), have his decision be colored by what you said. Not simply "Well I think this should happen this way" and so sayeth the Inquisitor, and thus it shall be. It's still their lives, let them have some agency in it. That way, if you just don't bother to interact with certain characters, what happens with them will be reflected by the fact that you didn't really involve yourself in their problems. So they will do what they want to, not simply do what you say.

I would've liked to have the "I don't believe/believe in the Maker/Andraste" stuff actually have some weight to it in the overall plot. But I get it, that in the end, they can only code 1 game, not 3 different ones. But still, aside from the really hilarious reaction Coryphenus had when I said "I don't believe in gods!" it didn't really mean jack. The look he gave my character, and the comical glare my character gave him back though, priceless. xD

 

[sanquin]

Companions to romance in a very superficial way, with a certain companion intended as 'main romance'? Check.

Wait, which Inquisition romance was intended to be the "main" one? I never quite felt like they were pushing anyone on me like I did with Liara or like...Alistair in Origins.

Was it Cassandra?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I felt like there were...'subtle' hints that they wanted you to romance Cassandra.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Yes sure... that the reason why CoD had a problem on the PS3 and 360 where it could not go 720p and 60fps. Why it looked like a Vaseline painting? Yeah... powerful PS3 and 360...
Also nice going salaries. Typical. Suddenly, them making 20 times more money (for inferior work) is somehow a fact cause... no one knows. I mean it is not as if the difference in salaries is that big between the US and lets say Poland...
Vanquish does not look as good as Advanced Warfare.

That is not something your average battlefield player can do mate. And also, interesting, do you think that arcade is somehow "inferior" to what you would call "realistic" ?
Rest is wrong. As if you read half of what I wrote.
Tell me what are these better things on the PS4 and Xbone?

I probably cant. Then again from 1.5 million pre-orders total, a bit over 500 thousand were on Steam. And Witcher 3 is a game with a real Retail following and GoG following. I'd expect the numbers being around 800 000-900 000 total. But it is just an educated guess.

Bigger or better communities. Or both. As I said, PC has more games and more players. For what it is worth, if you want to be competitive or to matter and make mods or something, then you cant do that on the consoles. There is a reason why console games just wither and die out. Mortal.

You can think what you want typical console matey. BTW, do you actually play with all the PS4 BF players? Curious, really. And how long will it last? Do they do anything productive on the forums? PC guys at least make mods...

The point is there are bunches of better looking PS3 games than COD, thus it wasn't optimized very well. And, Vanquish does look better than Advanced Warfare on PS3. The minimum wage is Poland is quite a bit lower than the US (which isn't that high). I bet the top grossing Infinity Ward employee made more for MW2 than the entire CDPR staff did for Witcher 3. Budget doesn't matter because you can make a great game with a low budget or a high budget, you can also make a shitty game with a high budget or a low budget.

LMAO, why do you think I feel arcade is inferior to realistic? Because I actually think the opposite as realistic bullet damage only makes shooters less realistic because aiming in a game is so much easier than real life. How is it more realistic (or more fun) to die faster in a game in a shootout vs real life? There's several realistic elements and several game-y elements that together make good shooters. I don't play BF because there's no lean and no slide, plus I prefer infantry vs infantry shooters (like 6v6, 8v8).

PS4/Xbone are too young, most console BF4 players bought the game on last-gen systems BTW and Hardline isn't much of a battlefield game. On PS3, Warhawk/Starhawk had better vehicular combat (those dogfights were way better than BF), MAG was a better mass player shooter than BF, and smaller team shooters have better teamplay IMO.

I don't consider any game community to be good. Over 90% of players don't even play the game properly, then 90% of the people that do play properly are assholes. Thus, there's basically 1% of players that are actually cool to play with. If the PS4 community of a game has more players than PC, then that 1% of good players is larger in number than PC's 1%. Console games don't die as quickly, you can't really play Ghost Recon FS on PC. I'm fully aware of how shitty the LoL community is, not really any different than any other game community. The online games I'm looking forward to (hoping to be good) are MGO, The Division, and Rainbow Six. All of those will have bigger PS4 communities than PC.

 

[vallorn]

People can only really speculate, so my take on it is: broadly, I think BioWare focus grouped too many damn things. As an overall design ethos they seem to have wanted to create a kind of mid-ground between Origins and DAII's more immediate combat. And THEN go [semi] open-world using a completely new engine - they bit off more than they could chew.

'Pleasing' fans and trying to cohere design principles is all well and good, but the result was that DA:I doesn't really feel like it has an identity. Like or loathe DAII (I loved it), it at least had a quite distinct structure and concept. Before that, DA:O tried to distinguish itself as a relatively core focused and grounded multi-format RPG. But DA:I? It feels like a conscious effort to somehow address/solve what came before, not a great game to play or experience in and of itself.

My list of faults with DA:I is near endless, but 'it's an SP MMO overloaded with inane filler' would be my main criticism... Or its absolute lack of a decent central story [or villain]. Or its broken loot system. Or lack of access to all unlocked abilities. Or its puddle shallow combat. Or--- Honestly, BioWare just aren't very good core game designers. They're popular, they're uber-mainstream, and their IP's sell well - they're like Bethesda, and both companies need to look around at some solidly crafted works and learn. Both companies also patronise the fuck out of their audiences, too, treating players like absolute morons.

...and yet, the characters and the various classes are enjoyable enough to draw me in for a good few playthroughs, so go figure.

To be fair, both studios have lost some of their absolute best talent, The losses for Bioware have been documented in this thread but Bethesda lost Michael Kirkbride who is, essentially, a mad god of Elder Scrolls lore and is responsible for most of the underpinnings of Nirn. If you want to read his more oddball works for ES lore, the Nu Mantia Intercepts are really good. (They also explain the plans of the Thalmor in detail if you look carefully enough).

But the loss of these talents and their lack of replacements is hollowing out both studios which results in these "Mass Market Appeal" games, and since they think that Mass Market = Lowest Common Denominator you get horrible design choices like Skyrim's UI for PC and their butchering of the game's armour and weapon variety since Morrowind.

TLDR: Bethesda and Bioware are "Men Without Chests".

 

[Kerg3927]

As a completionist, I pretty much ruined the game for myself. In ME 1-3 and DA 1-2, I did all the quests and it was great. I played through those games multiple times. But after 300 hours of trudging through DAI, turning over every rock, I will probably never play it again. After about 200 hours, I was just playing the game out of stubbornness and spite. I think that was about when I encountered Hissing Wastes...

I guess I did it all wrong. Maybe those that skipped the majority of the tedious side quests and pushed through the story had a better experience.

The game was gorgeous, and I did enjoy the crafting system. I probably enjoyed it too much. Min/maxing gear plus doing all the side quests broke the game difficulty and led to a faceroll by mid-game, even on Nightmare. Of course, that happened in DAO, too.

Overall, I'd say it was a notch below DA2, which was a notch below DAO. I know a lot of people hated DA2, but I thought that DA2 (on Nightmare) had the most fun and challenging combat of the 3, especially some of the boss fights like Duke Prosper and Corypheus. But neither of them can touch DAO overall because of the characters, and just the epic feel of it being a new world and your group tasked with saving it, and it all somehow feeling believable and not trite. Alistair, Sten, Morrigan, Leliana... in DAO, I always had a hard time choosing my party because I had to leave someone cool out. In DA2 and DAI, it was more a matter of finding 3 that didn't suck.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

It is not 20 times higher . The wages.
I did not mean PS3 version of Advanced Warfare...

What your thoughts are on arcade vs realistic are of no concern to me. As long as the topic ends at "subjectivity" or "equality" I am fine with whatever you want to say.

MAG is dead. Warhawh and Starhawk are just too small. Hardline is a BF game. A "new age" BF game, which means shit like BF3 and 4, but a BF game still.

Knowing World of Tanks and my own elitist terms on it...
95% of gamers are bad-mediocre. Of the remaining 5%, only 50% of them are assholes. Rest are decent people.

Console games die out a lot more quickly. They are mortal mate. No modding, more casual by default. No backwards compatibility or emulation...
That is how it is. People still play 10-20 year old games on PC. That is ... impossible on the PS4...
So much for games as an art form I guess...

What matters is how much it sells in a given amount of time (a year perhaps?). I know you love your toys and want to defend that luxury item purchase. But that is not the way.

Of those you listed none interest me.

Why do you constantly compare apples and oranges? You might as well say Advanced Warfare on PS4 looks better than Oregon Trail. You can't compare games on different generation of systems.

I only kinda stated a fact about being able to kill faster in a game with realistic bullet damage vs actual real life. Realistic bullet damage actually makes a shooter less realistic. And, all the greatest games (shooters or not) have a certain amount of "game-y" elements to them. Something like a baseball sim works because baseball itself is a game and inherently has game-y elements to it. Trying to make a shooter without any game-y elements (what realistic shooters strive for) does not make for a good game.

I played many more hours of MAG and Warhawk than I did BF.

People are still playing the PS2 SOCOMs...

Only the select few older PC games have a decent player base. Not every PC shooter is CS. Ghost Recon FS died on PC whereas I can play that on PS3 and still competitively. I bet there's more console players on Evolve vs PC right now. I couldn't care less about modding for MP games. Whenever the player community is allowed to affect the balance of an MP shooter, the balance just goes to shit. Any game that allows players to customize rooms equals players removing shit they don't like causing imbalances. Or the BF3 rent-a-server BS or DICE listening to the community with BF3 balance tweaks. Yeah, CS started as a mod but Valve came in and balances it.

Console games are cheaper here.

 

[zinho73]

Honestly I'd say they both have the same failings and before too long people will be saying Witcher 3 is a disappointment. Basically they're both way too long and padded to the point of absurdity.
For some reason their developers confused "Epicness" with "Lengthy". The logic seems to be: Epic games are long, you spend 10+ hours gathering flowers and craft-able/consumable items, 10 hours is a long time, therefore gathering flowers is epic gameplay.

They could have easily cut the length of both games in half without any major losses. Keep the plot but cut out the number of completely meaningless and bullshit MMORPG side quests. Collect 10 of whatever was only in WOW because it was a subscription game and it was a good way to drag out game length and thus earn more money.
Such quests are completely useless, maybe even harmful, in single player games.

So then what's stopping you from just ignoring side quests entirely and just doing the main quest?

This is a valid argument, but you have to admit you need a bit of hindsight to really just go for the main quest and do just the minimal necessary to progress. That's not how we normally play RPGs.

Playing the game for the first time you:
1. Kind of expect the side quests to improve at some point;
2. Might suspect there is a worthy reward for all this collect a ton quests.

Now that we have played them we all know they are soulless, dumb, out of character MMO quests. But Bioware had some interesting side quests before, and even the fetch quests were more appropriate or just in your way, easier to complete. And certainly they were not that many, so even the surprise quests of DAI 2 ("here, I think this is yours") were easier to stomach.

Same with dialogue. There is a lot of expository dialogue buried with some interesting dialogue in the game, but we don't know what to skip until we listen to it and see that all the talking does not have any impact in the game. I like what The Witcher 3 dis, highlighting in yellow the dialogue options that moves things along.

It is very easy to get bored with DAI.

On topic:
It was a rushed job again.
It took them 6 months after launch to make the engine stable, there are dumb fetch quests to populate the world, the tactical interface was incomplete, the animations and facial expressions weren't on the same level of the scenery, the PC controls and interface were not up to par and so on.

They released the game when it was good enough, not when it was really good.

Also, the story itself is weak and the whole production lacked focus.

 

[zinho73]

I'm going to say that probably the single biggest problem for DAI is that they tried to make the combat more like DAO whilst also preserving DA2's system and merging the whole lot into an open world MMO-type system. Which was never, ever going to work.

DAO had probably the single worst combat system of any game I have ever played. DA2's system was a huge step up (with some absolutely glaring flaws such as the "waves of enemies" thing) but a lot of people disliked it because, god knows why, they liked the system in DAO. But whatever, that's all opinions and isn't really the thrust of the point here. The thing to take away there is that they play very differently.

And the point is that rather than then trying to pick something and stick with it they tried to cherry pick bits and put it all together in a manner rather like the experiments of a certain Dr Frankenstein. Which resulted in this weird cobbled-together thing with a dodgy DAO-type tactical setup and a more poorly-done DA2-type action system. Making it the worst of both worlds and, frankly, rather incoherent to play.

Regardless of what we could personally like,

In DAO you had a combat system (that was slow and could be abused) and the arenas to use it were thought out (some were better than other, but still...). You got all the basics there to improve upon.

In DA2, you got a slight different system (with more quick animations and more gradual upgrades) which was actually good, but nowhere to use it. There were no "arenas" for combat, no setup, "another wave" syndrome and so on. The world was not built to take advantage of the combat engine.

In DAI you barely have the working system. The tactical part is a failure and the action part is weightless, sometimes confusing when in closed spaces and it is more practical, in most cases, to just control one guy and forget about your party. AND the world was not built to take advantage of the combat engine.

 

[Bombiz]

Console games are cheaper here.

lol where do you live? Console games are like $80 here with taxes. PC is $59.99 AT THE MOST.

 

[tzimize]

Disclaimer: I didnt finish DA:I. I got the castle, I upgraded it a bit, I rode around to some tomb in a desert, found it a bit cool and found out I needed about 150 shards of some kind of bullshit to "unlock" the rest of the dungeon, and completely lost interest. What a steaming pile of shit.

1: DA:I feels like an MMO. Either you know what I mean, or you dont. I got the same feeling from Kingdoms of Amalur. A big world that is completely empty and grey despite its many colors.

2: The quests sucks.

3: There are gathering missions and fucking collectible bullshit ALL over the place. If I want to collect stamps I'll do that in real life thanks very much. Its suffering from the same achievementwhore bullshit that Assassins Creed fell victim to.

4: The amount of stuff you actually need to get the piss poor upgrades is an absolute insult. Shamus' article on game size comes to mind. "Come play DA:I its got hundreds of hours of gameplay!" Sure, if you want to spend half of it picking flowers for absolutely NO good reason.

5: The amount of loading is absolutely fucking disgraceful.

6: The npcs in it and their stories didnt interest me at all. Dull dull dull.

Witcher 3 is a better game in ABSOLUTELY ALL respects. In Witcher 3:

The music is GREAT.
The quests are varied and FUN.
The choices are all over the place, and they lead to interesting/horrible conclusions.
The npcs there are many-faceted and interesting, with their own stories and motivations.
The game looks GORGEOUS.
The game is HUGE. In absolutely EVERY respect of the word. There are countless miles to cover, the areas look stunning and are all filled with exciting stuff. Old ruins cursed with elven spirits, bandits and bears in the forests, freaking boats, horse races, fist fighting, detective-like witcher missions and side quests.

Honestly, if I was working at bioware I'd have my entire staff commit seppuku. The shame would be too great.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Console games are cheaper here.

lol where do you live? Console games are like $80 here with taxes. PC is $59.99 AT THE MOST.

The US. Console games are at most $59.99 and I can usually find them $10 off somewhere on release day. Then, when I'm done with the game, I can sell it (since it's not a digital copy) and it usually only costs $10-$20 per game.

Because the only reason there is a PS3 version of these new CoD is to milk the poor people on the old, pathetic hardware.

All the greatest games by your own definition probably... Not a bad idea in general, what you are saying though. Subjective but this time logical.

And I dont even know what MAG and Warhawk are. And played more WoT than any MP game ever I guess.

An exception. One that will die out too.

The very fact that I can go online on an old Bulgarian game from 2000 and not depend on some stupid company still having servers up and running and playing with friends is damn impressive.
Not carring about modding = me not taking you seriously. Simple as.

Unlikely, but I will believe you. Still unnecessary luxury items though.

Any further discussion would be me repeating points you wont take or vice versa. You have your own "tastes" and like your toys. I have mine.

Advanced Warfare looks better than Vanquish; yeah, the PS4 version, duh!!! Just like how Vanquish looks better than any PS2 game ever made. Now, it's to milk the poor people on old hardware, pretty much every game last year came out on both PS4/Xbone and PS3/360, COD was far from the only one. The fact is Vanquish looks better than COD with a lower budget; COD can't be that well optimized if games with lower budgets look better than COD. Most of the money went to salaries, the top Infinity Ward guy made millions just for making MW2.

CS will die out too, everything dies out. Fact is a console MP is being played for over 10 years. It's not like I even care because 10+ years later, the genre will have advanced to where games that old feel archaic, much like SOCOM and CS.

SOCOM isn't played on official servers...

So PC games are necessities and console games are luxuries? That doesn't even make sense, they're both luxuries. And, you can get both a low-end PC just for work plus a console for the same price as a gaming PC. A Core 2 Duo will still run every application (and OS) that a normal person uses.

 

[Bombiz]

Console games are cheaper here.

lol where do you live? Console games are like $80 here with taxes. PC is $59.99 AT THE MOST.

The US. Console games are at most $59.99 and I can usually find them $10 off somewhere on release day. Then, when I'm done with the game, I can sell it (since it's not a digital copy) and it usually only costs $10-$20 per game.

But if you play for the multiplayer why would you sell it? Also I'm not too keen on selling games.
I live in Canada btw.