Zero Punctuation: Dragon Age: Inquisition - Fantasy Commander Shepard

Aiddon_v1legacy

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Kahani said:
Very much this. It obviously tried to go for a big, open world with tons of stuff in it, and what it ended up with was a cluttered mess. Sure, there's tons of stuff, and most of it is actually quite fun and well made, but none of it really fits together particularly well. One minute you're in a desperate fight for control of a region, nexy minute your bag is too full of flowers so you pop back to your base, wander around some shops for a bit, then head out to a completely different region to do something equally sensible but entirely unrelated to the fight you were supposed to be in the middle of.

This is mainly why Origins is still the much better game. The world was partly open, but in a way that prevented you from just wandering off in the middle of a climatic battle. And while being more scripted meant smaller areas and less action overall, it also meant that everything that happened had been put there deliberately rather than just having generic bandits and bears constantly spawning in front of you. This is something many developers just don't seem to understand - the more open a world is, the less control you have over events and therefore the less focussed the story and flow can be. That's fine for something like WoW where there isn't a single plot players follow from beginning to end, but it works much less well in a single player game that is apparently trying to tell exactly that kind of story.
Exactly, and that's a problem. It's why I find the TeS series to be so overrated; these aren't rich, detailed, multi-layered worlds but just a big map full of PADDING. This is why I've come to detest people thinking that taking that as inspiration for the Zelda series. That would be HORRIFYING because with Zelda not a single polygon is wasted. It seems to me that stuff like sandboxes has become the haven for devs who don't want to craft a proper narrative or bother with making a meticulously-designed, rich world. Side quests have become another problem because, let's be honest, they AREN'T side quests. Like in Mass Effect, they're needed for finishing the cast members' arcs and getting the best ending for 2. Why should that be a "side" activity, especially due to the fact that if you DON'T go side questing you won't be bulky enough to take the next story challenge? I don't see how that can be considered ideal design.
 

Burnouts3s3

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I, for the most part, agree with Yahtzee's praises and criticisms of the game. On certain points:

>"Random Johnny"

Agreed. Big time. This is why Origins, at least to me, was my favorite of the series. It, at least, showed the Warden their individual circumstances and what they had to do to get there. The Inquisitor's rise to power seems less original though each playthrough. Yeah, there are text backstories, but they don't really say anything about their character. For all we know, they could've gotten lost to the bathroom and just stumbled upon the whole plot.

>"Default Hawke"

I guess Yahtzee didn't customize his own Hawke. Was there no option to make his own when the prompt came up?

>"Saucy Ambassador Lady showing her bum"

Sorry, Yahtzee. Josephine does not show her bum even if you romance her. You do, however, get to fence for her honor and sit on a couch with her.

In the end, I enjoyed the game and I'm glad Bioware took the criticisms to heart and stepped up their game after Dragon Age 2.
 

Redryhno

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Coreless said:
What is wrong with wandering off? This is what I love most about this game is the exploring, its the same reason why I like Skyrim as well because it allows more freedom to pursue missions in the way I want to and not have every level consist of one long hallway with a few battles and a cutscene. It sounds like this game just wasn't meant for your style of play and that is perfectly fine but I never felt once that the game lost its focus with the story.
You're comparing Skyrim and Dragon Age, that's your problem. One is from a franchise made to be open-world and a sandbox, the other a narrative-driven loosely linear RPG.
 

Coreless

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Redryhno said:
Coreless said:
What is wrong with wandering off? This is what I love most about this game is the exploring, its the same reason why I like Skyrim as well because it allows more freedom to pursue missions in the way I want to and not have every level consist of one long hallway with a few battles and a cutscene. It sounds like this game just wasn't meant for your style of play and that is perfectly fine but I never felt once that the game lost its focus with the story.
You're comparing Skyrim and Dragon Age, that's your problem. One is from a franchise made to be open-world and a sandbox, the other a narrative-driven loosely linear RPG.
Sorry I don't see the problem, franchises are what developers decide they are, its not written in stone that games have to stay a certain way. Dragon Age is still a narrative driven franchise its just now added on elements of open world games to bring in all the things that people have been wanting from their past games. All these changes are almost one for one changes that people complained about coming from games like DA2 and ME3. I guess people must have been asleep for the last 5 years when people were screaming "The game is too linear!", "The game just recycles levels","There isn't enough exploration!" or "why cant I customize my gear!" etc. Now that Bioware actually added all that, people are now complaining the complete opposite "The areas are too big!" , "I don't want choice I just want to be lead everywhere!" or "I don't want to have to gather materials for crafting" seriously they just can't win even when they listen to the feedback.
 

simmeh

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Glad to hear a well-known critic talk about the hair in this game. I must have spent (no joke) 15 hours replaying the opening scene trying to build a character who didn't look like they had plastic hair.

Also, the lack of sideburns as a facial hair option made me sad.
 

bat32391

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Christ the hair was weird, I think this is the first time I've ever gone with a completely balled character.
 

Nixou

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A game with a focused narative, well paced story and interesting characters can be just as god, if not better than a gigantic sandbox.

Or it can be Xenoblade

***

I'm glad someone else finally pointed out how much DA: I feels like an MMO, because that has been my main gripe with the game and was also the reason i did a 100% collectibles run of The Last of Us over thanksgiving rather than play Inquisition.

Then again, the cooldown-based combat system shows that they were aiming at for a single-player MMO from the beginning, which in itself is not a bad idea.

***

Why are you doing tons of side quests for? People have said this over and over again, they are completely optional and can be ignored so I don't understand the problem.

Because for RPG players completionism is a pavlovian reflex honed by years if not decades of practice. (Damn, I still remember the hours I lost trying to find every little event or cache in Exile 3, brrrrrr)

***

Creating some cosmic irony was half the fun making your character this time around
A Qunari mage as the Maker's chosen? The Maker must be havin a laugh!

That's pretty much the reason I made my Warden an elvish mage: the final payoff came in Dragon Age 2, when Hawke confront Elthina about the contradiction between the Chantry's teaching on mages and the fact that a rule-flaunting mage ended the Blight in record time, saving millions, she pretty much answers "The Maker chooses who the fuck He wants to save the world"
 

Aethren

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Darth_Payn said:
But there are still dragons in this game, right?
But yeah, it wouldn't be a BioWare RPG without the INCREDIBLY finicky equipping system.
But you got me with AC:Unity having the guy's head disappear and leave his eyes and teeth floating there.
You'd wish there weren't after you visit a certain valley in the FIRST ZONE AT LEVEL 3.
 

Redryhno

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Coreless said:
Sorry I don't see the problem, franchises are what developers decide they are, its not written in stone that games have to stay a certain way. Dragon Age is still a narrative driven franchise its just now added on elements of open world games to bring in all the things that people have been wanting from their past games. All these changes are almost one for one changes that people complained about coming from games like DA2 and ME3. I guess people must have been asleep for the last 5 years when people were screaming "The game is too linear!", "The game just recycles levels","There isn't enough exploration!" or "why cant I customize my gear!" etc. Now that Bioware actually added all that, people are now complaining the complete opposite "The areas are too big!" , "I don't want choice I just want to be lead everywhere!" or "I don't want to have to gather materials for crafting" seriously they just can't win even when they listen to the feedback.
Ok, first, mind dropping the attitude? It doesn't do much to convince me when every post you make is fangenderpronoun'ing all over it and refusing to let people have problems with it.

Yes, devs can make a franchise whatever they want, we saw that going from Battletower and Arena to Redguard and Morrowind in TES, the difference is Morrowind, for all it's faults, has alot of character in every area, and I think there's only like two dungeons that don't have some kind of story behind them. The thing is that when this was announced as going open-world a few years ago, I knew exactly the problems it would come with, and as such, I'm not going to be buying it until the price drop around February.

As for the rest of it, DA2 recycled levels, not just the same area you go back to, but the exact same layout except this time with invisible walls to keep you from places you could go in the last cave/winecellar/basement/dungeon with the exact same layout and map, that was what people were pissed about. As for customizing gear and not enough exploration, I have no idea where you got those complaints.

As for the present complaints, alot of this thread are people complaining that the areas are big and that there's nothing filling them, not that they're too big. And tell me exactly in what game gathering materials in order to get gear to survive is fun and people DON'T complain about it in some fashion? And again, I'm not seeing people complaining that they aren't being led everywhere, I'm seeing people complaining there is no drive to play past a certain point.
 
Aug 12, 2013
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Laurents van Cauwenberghe said:
I heard a lot of people saying that this game becomes good after 20 odd hours. Is it just me or is that fucking mental? If it's true however, I'd like to give it rename Dragon Age: Inquisition to Dragon Age: Stockholm Syndrome
I've heard that too, but for me was good from right after I finished creating my character.
 

Th37thTrump3t

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Jman1236 said:
I just started the game myself and not only did I roll a mage but also an elf so becoming the chosen one is kinda besare since elfs are enslaved and mages are disliked in this world.
I became a human mage myself. It's kind of intriguing how a lot of the characters treat you with either a sort of unease or just straight up don't trust you. I was curious if the same happened on any of the other classes and apparently not.
 

K.ur

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Th37thTrump3t said:
I became a human mage myself. It's kind of intriguing how a lot of the characters treat you with either a sort of unease or just straight up don't trust you. I was curious if the same happened on any of the other classes and apparently not.
My favorite was Sera after my male human mage specialized in Rift magic.
"Could you stop being scary, doing scary stuff. I don't understand magic, it's scary."

Next playthrough will be a tal-vashoth bas.
 

simmeh

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Aethren said:
Darth_Payn said:
But there are still dragons in this game, right?
But yeah, it wouldn't be a BioWare RPG without the INCREDIBLY finicky equipping system.
But you got me with AC:Unity having the guy's head disappear and leave his eyes and teeth floating there.
You'd wish there weren't after you visit a certain valley in the FIRST ZONE AT LEVEL 3.
"I wonder who Lady Shayna is?"
 

iller3

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EDIT: Zontar beat me to it

"Pop off like GabeNewell's shirt buttons"

...uh oh, HL3 just got delayed atleast 3 more months according to the rules of VALVeTIMe


I'm actually a lot more surprised Yahtz didn't take the bait to mention any Political-Social issues b/c it seems like everyone else has been taking that bait with this game and its "progressive pandering" -- to which I say GOOD, keep it that way :p
 

Sheo_Dagana

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I have to agree with Yahtzee - the game itself is pretty great but I was kind of annoyed at just how much shit gets dropped into your lap every few feet you walk in a new area. You're either spending hours hacking up bad guys or spending hours talking to your party members back at Skyhold, with not a lot of balance between the two once you get into the meat and potatoes of the game. I'm feeling a bit weighed down right now and while I want to keep playing the game, the pacing is just throwing me off. Otherwise, it's pretty good and probably my favorite Dragon Age as well.

Actually, I'm sort of surprised he didn't complain about the levels of enemies and how there's no real way to know how strong enemies will be in an area until you actually get out there and do some poking around. Hell, some of the rifts in the Hinterlands are level 12.
 

pearcinator

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I think Dragon Age Inquisition looks really good!

Although I am playing on PC at high settings so that might be the reason.
 

Keith Fraser

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Oh Maker, they still have the excess amounts of grinding combat against small groups of baddies no matter how big and epic the game gets? All the Dragon Age games are (in my opinion) massively dragged down by all the boring grinding, to the point where I usually play them on the lowest difficulty setting just to get through the repetitive combats faster. (One thing I like about the Awakening expansion to Origins is that you're usually high-level enough to roflstomp random mooks very quickly.)

Most everything about this game sounds right up my alley, because I like both strategy games and RPGs and I quite enjoyed the asset-gathering stuff in Mass Effect 3, but if grinding is still an issue, I might not bother with it on general principle.

Incidentally, for people who've played it, how does the game avoid making you feel like you have infinite time to muck about before the main plot kicks back into action? Is it something similar to the real-time-based missions, where the main enemy move forward or otherwise do something every X hours?
 

Haru17

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Interesting lore, an expansive open world, endless hours of stuff to do, a shit menu system, and janky glitches everywhere? I think we've found The Elder Scrolls VI: Thedas.
 

prpshrt

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Kinda disagree with the graphics part. Running it on ultra on a PC and by god, it is gorgeous!