Zero Punctuation: Dragon Age: Inquisition - Fantasy Commander Shepard

PirateRose

New member
Aug 13, 2008
287
0
0
Saviordd1 said:
Ferisar said:
Not true for all playthroughs, afaik.
Depends on who goes into the well. If you do then you have to fight the dragon, if Morrigan does she becomes your dragon
Um.....
You can't defeat Cory without defeating his dragon. I didn't have my inquisitor go into the pool, morrigan became a dragon. Still had to fight that Cory's dragon.
 

rgrekejin

Senior Member
Mar 6, 2011
267
0
21
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
To be fair, this is basically the book on Dark Souls as well, and a lot of people (including Yahtzee) seemed to really enjoy that game.

Personally, though, I'm with you. Any game that requires you to sink enough time into it that you could have beaten an entire other game before it gets good is probably not a game worth playing.
 

Gridlock

New member
Feb 8, 2010
20
0
0
DSK- and Joccaren i agree SO much with what you just said allow me to put a few further complaints in.
The Mounts, they are hailed as this big important thing it´s imperative that you get to the horse master in Red Cliff.
And you can even buy a new mount for 10.000 gold pieces in Orlay so surely they must be important and play a big role.........nope they really don´t they can be used as fast travel and that´s that, but you can already do that with landmarks and camps.

The Requisition Table: Okay so you need new coats to handle the winter here and then some dwarfs in the Orleasian academy wants some rock samples.
Okay so i get those coats, rock samples and even some new tents, does it help anything? Perhaps it changes the tents, give the scouts these new coats and maybe even unlock some new ways of using the metal i just handed over for analysis.

Nope it gives you influence points and power nothing else.

The War Table is a bastard in its own right, Yes the idea behind it is solid, you are the Inquisitor the leader of the inquisition, you will need to lead your armies around the world.
So far so good
Now for the bad stuff.
ALL the missions takes place in real time, which wouldn´t be so bad if YOU could play them and get a reward that fitted, plus have it have some consequences in the game.
Nope instead they are all done automatically with a time so this mission takes 32 hours to complete that´s 32 ingame hours i take it?
Not a chance its 32 hours in real time....thanx so for the next 32 hours i can´t do shit but twiddle my thumbs.
What are the reward for such patience, surely it must be epic a staff of mighty proportions stronger then anything i have?
You get 30 influence and zero consequences in the game.
Thanks you know next time i´ll just let the venetori take over that region, fuck all if i care.

As for the influence i get more influence by completing requisitions at least there i get a 100 influence per job done.
Or i can just buy it in Skyhold

Oh but you need Influence to get inquisitorial perks yes all 20 of them, we´ll ignore the fact that it wasn´t said ANYWHERE in the game i would only get 20.
So i just filled Leliana´s tree and most of the ambassadors tree which left me no points for Cullen´s and none for the inquisitor.

Skyhold you know what the first thing i thought was when i got that keep which was mine and not something rented from the local lord? Hurray now i can get my own fortress i bet it will be awesome to upgrade it, by getting new upgrades all the time.
By the end of the game i will have a fortress worthy of the Inquisition.
...Yes a Fortress i can upgrade 3 times in total and seem to do fuck all.

So yeah i agree DA:I is a disappointment for the reason you put forward plus my own.
I would say it´s 3 steps forward 2,9 steps backwards.
There are small improvements here and there but none that really counts for anything in the big picture.
 

Saviordd1

New member
Jan 2, 2011
2,455
0
0
PirateRose said:
Saviordd1 said:
Ferisar said:
Not true for all playthroughs, afaik.
Depends on who goes into the well. If you do then you have to fight the dragon, if Morrigan does she becomes your dragon
Um.....
You can't defeat Cory without defeating his dragon. I didn't have my inquisitor go into the pool, morrigan became a dragon. Still had to fight that Cory's dragon.
Not what I'm talking about.
If the Inquisitor goes into the pool Morrigan doesn't fight the dragon so instead you have to go tame an ancient elven Dragon by fighting it
 

DSK-

New member
May 13, 2010
2,431
0
0
Gridlock said:
DSK- and Joccaren i agree SO much with what you just said allow me to put a few further complaints in.
The Mounts, they are hailed as this big important thing it´s imperative that you get to the horse master in Red Cliff.
And you can even buy a new mount for 10.000 gold pieces in Orlay so surely they must be important and play a big role.........nope they really don´t they can be used as fast travel and that´s that, but you can already do that with landmarks and camps.

The Requisition Table: Okay so you need new coats to handle the winter here and then some dwarfs in the Orleasian academy wants some rock samples.
Okay so i get those coats, rock samples and even some new tents, does it help anything? Perhaps it changes the tents, give the scouts these new coats and maybe even unlock some new ways of using the metal i just handed over for analysis.

Nope it gives you influence points and power nothing else.

The War Table is a bastard in its own right, Yes the idea behind it is solid, you are the Inquisitor the leader of the inquisition, you will need to lead your armies around the world.
So far so good
Now for the bad stuff.
ALL the missions takes place in real time, which wouldn´t be so bad if YOU could play them and get a reward that fitted, plus have it have some consequences in the game.
Nope instead they are all done automatically with a time so this mission takes 32 hours to complete that´s 32 ingame hours i take it?
Not a chance its 32 hours in real time....thanx so for the next 32 hours i can´t do shit but twiddle my thumbs.
What are the reward for such patience, surely it must be epic a staff of mighty proportions stronger then anything i have?
You get 30 influence and zero consequences in the game.
Thanks you know next time i´ll just let the venetori take over that region, fuck all if i care.

As for the influence i get more influence by completing requisitions at least there i get a 100 influence per job done.
Or i can just buy it in Skyhold

Oh but you need Influence to get inquisitorial perks yes all 20 of them, we´ll ignore the fact that it wasn´t said ANYWHERE in the game i would only get 20.
So i just filled Leliana´s tree and most of the ambassadors tree which left me no points for Cullen´s and none for the inquisitor.

Skyhold you know what the first thing i thought was when i got that keep which was mine and not something rented from the local lord? Hurray now i can get my own fortress i bet it will be awesome to upgrade it, by getting new upgrades all the time.
By the end of the game i will have a fortress worthy of the Inquisition.
...Yes a Fortress i can upgrade 3 times in total and seem to do fuck all.

So yeah i agree DA:I is a disappointment for the reason you put forward plus my own.
I would say it´s 3 steps forward 2,9 steps backwards.
There are small improvements here and there but none that really counts for anything in the big picture.
Yep, I can pretty much agree with what you just said, too :)

I dunno. Maybe the game would be more enjoyable if I imported my DA:O and DA2 tapestry settings into another DA:I playthrough *shrug*
 

Gridlock

New member
Feb 8, 2010
20
0
0
DSK- said:
Yep, I can pretty much agree with what you just said, too :)

I dunno. Maybe the game would be more enjoyable if I imported my DA:O and DA2 tapestry settings into another DA:I playthrough *shrug*
You would think so wouldn´t you, but Nope all it does is have the characters reference a few of the things that happened and you would have a few more missions on the war table.

So got Morrigan pregnant? Her son shows up have 1 line at that´s that.
Got Alistair to be king? He shows up in red cliff after completing the Mage mission.
Got Loghain into the wardens? He´s Hawkes contact and he will reference some of the events from DA:O
Did you spare the Architect and have the Warden go through the mirror with Morrigan? Congrats you get a reference to those events and that the Warden was a part of his son´s life, before he set out on a quest to find a cure for the calling.
That is if you do the mission to locate him, you get a text from him and a worthless amulet (After waiting for a little over 34 hours)

What about Anders, Varric and the red Lyrium shard? Well if you spared Anders you are later given the option on the war table to send agents to Sebastian take over Kirkwall or help Aveline keep him away.
And if you let Varric keep the red Lyrium shard, he will eventually be posed by a demon and you will either have to kill him or keep him around and get some mayor disapprovals from the rest of the party.

So in short, even if you painstakingly go in and carefully Edit the Dragon tapestry, it won´t change the game much if at all.
 

hentropy

New member
Feb 25, 2012
737
0
0
Joccaren said:
The operative criticism of 'big world' is 'lack of focus'. Some people enjoy that, a lot of people also don't. With Bioware being a brand that has been synonymous with linear story driven RPGs, with plenty of focus, even if they have had their faults, the change is similar to if Skyrim's sequel was a corridor RPG with a fixed path you couldn't deviate from, small maps and a very focused story with good dialogue. Its the antithesis of what the series is known for, and that's probably why a lot of people have problems with it.
I'm not really sure what you mean by 'focus'. I never felt focused in the previous Bioware games. If that is supposed to be the emphasis, then I've never really seen it. DAO and ME1 were both very unfocused, story-wise. Hey, the darkspawn are ravaging the south, killing countless innocents and blighting the very ground they walk on. But no pressure, go on and run around an entire country (the size of England? Who knows?) doing completely unrelated quests like killing deserters or doing... you know, petty fetch quests where you kill generic enemies. Same with ME1, I believe there was a quest called "Race Against Time" because you were trying to stop Saren, but apparently you could go to about 12 different systems and do unrelated quests.

This is a basic feature of many RPGs, and something we're used to whether it be DAO or Skyrim. I feel like DAI has plenty of focus, it just has a different focus. The things you do all contribute to the main storyline: your job is to gain power for the Inquisition through securing areas, closing rifts, and helping people. The mechanics blend well with the story, and it's well-focused, if not perfect.

Additionally, its a special type of optional crap. In Bioware RPGs, that optional crap has a habit of actually being core story, but you don't HAVE to do it.
What? It's hard for me to even dignify this. It's just willful misremembering. Very little I did in DAO outside from the actual main story- which was rather meaty- affected the main story at all. And I did everything there was to do in that game. In certain cases it may have affected the "world" that resulted at the end. Most side quests were still short and repetitive. Go to this area, kill a bunch of Loghain soldiers, then go to this downed caravan and kill darkspawn.

I'm a little hesitant to go into side quests because it doesn't sound like you've finished the game or have gone to every area or really done all that much outside of The Hinterlands, but there have been some genuinely interesting quests in places like The Hissing Wastes and the Fallow Mire. Really I can name a variety of major side quests which aren't just "go here kill these come back".

You took over a grand total of one fortress in DAO, which you did not use even a little. In DAI, there are many fortresses that you can actually conquer, raise your flag above, with new quests as a result and new merchants and people. Even Varric's thing about Red Lyrium ends up revealing something quite interesting about the nature of lyrium in general. The companion quests could be better in the beginning, but it makes sense that you have to earn their trust before the real companion quests kick in.

As for your "That goes for any game really", Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins and even Dragon Age II which I hated, I did that and enjoyed myself. Go for ALL the side quests before doing a major quest, just in case one locks out. Even the grindy collection ones. It was never as much a drag as Inquisition made it.
It's a matter of volume. There's so much to do in DAI compared to those games, so it makes sense. The only thing I can compare it to is ME1 where it was somewhat of a tedious drag to try and do everything before moving on, especially on multiple play-throughs. When one area has 5-10 hours worth of sidequests and there's 8 areas, then yeah, trying to do it all will be dull, no matter what you're playing. Doing the animal and bandit killing quests in Lothering before moving on doesn't really compare.

Big things among it were the lack of auto attack and auto loot, that made normal gameplay a button mashing pain, the fact that if you attacked a character, your character wouldn't walk over to them - he'd just stand there swinging his sword at thin air
I'm playing the PC version and all I have to do is hold down R and W for melee attacks. I'm not sure why they saw that as necessary but it's not that hard to get used to. People who criticize it for having to click a lot didn't pay attention at all to the tutorial pop-ups in the very first area. I'm not sure how it works on consoles. It wouldn't be surprising if they just brought back auto-attack at some point. Still, it doesn't change the mechanic of the game that much.


Additionally, the tactical view is useless where it was near essential for Origins.
I played on the higher difficulty levels regularly with different classes and I barely ever used the tactical view in DAO. It made it HARDER to do most battles for me because it only made the enemies smaller and harder to tell between them. I was never really sure why people put so much emphasis on it. Is it the circles around your character? Because that's the only thing that's terribly different in Origins. You realize you can move the camera around in the normal camera, right? It doesn't point in one direction? In DAI I almost never used it either but it has more usefulness, as you can see each enemy's resistances and weaknesses, which is particularly helpful for a mage. I can see how people might not like the tactical camera if you're relying on it, but I simply don't see why someone would need it to play the game, and yet some people seem willing to throw it in the trash bin over it. If you just want isometric play so much, there's Divinity: Original Sin.

1. Most of your stats come from gear, the rest come from abilities. Previously you had stat points to assign, now that's gone in favour of gear and abilities that alter your stats instead of letting you do it. Some MMOs even let you do that actually, but the major ones don't.
That's fair, though in Origins the default attributes were really bad for companions. Sten and Alistair died so often because their default Constitution was set at 13 and you had to wait some time to level up and pull those up. The stats-through-equipment does allow the game to stay balanced at all portions in the game. With a lot of Bioware RPGs and other older RPGs, the start of the game was by far the hardest part because there wasn't even an attempt to properly adhere to a standard difficulty curve.

2. The quest styling. As said, in Origins side quests were these big things that you went and did, and could take several hours, or were things that were found inside of a main quest that you could do if you wanted.
Again, I think you're misremembering, willfully or no. I played both previous games in their totality before the release of DAI, and I can't think of a single DAO side quest that took more than a half hour or so to complete (unless you're doing the same area over and over), and that includes the DLC areas. Return to Ostagar was the longest of those and it was maybe 45 minutes to an hour (only because it had "long hallway" padding full of darkspawn). Pretty much all of the side quests found on the Chantry Boards, Mage's Guild, Blackstone Irregulars, etc. were all very simple, short quests with simple components. Kill these guys or collect these things or talk to these people and then come back. Just like DAI.

If you want to criticize the game for simply having too much little side stuff to do, that's at least a fair criticism I can understand. But don't play make-believe and say that DAO had these long, intricate side quests that were all unique and interesting. They weren't. The meat is story missions, most of which were stuffed full of padding.

3. The world styling. In Origins, EVERY, SINGLE, THING was put there for a purpose. Nothing was randomly spawned [Ok, there was the random wolf encounters on the road, and semi-random loot in chests], and everything was planned from the beginning.
Origins was a static world where Inquisition is dynamic. I prefer dynamic worlds that resemble the real world where they can, but I can see the appeal in a static one, because you know when you've killed everything you possibly can. But forests don't tend to run out of wolves and bears and real life, so I have no problem with them spawning (not to mention the bear pelts are valuable for crafting early in the game, whereas crafting was almost nonexistent in Origins and loot was only used for gold).

There's also the whole disjointed open world thing, where you have a few large maps, tied together by loading screens, like most MMOs have, and a ton of other similarities I could state, but that seems to be the most of it. The main emphasis most people talk about is the side quests though. They are way too MMO like, and its just boring grind.
Again, it's because of volume, not the actual content or mechanics of the quest. There was just less in Origins so it didn't feel as grindy.

Origins had plenty of exploration. It was all completed in one playthrough, sure, but I'll never forget the moment I first set foot in Orzammar, or wandered around the Korcari wilds following Chasind hunter tracks. I'll never forget capturing the Warden's Keep, exploring Lothering and the surrounding area, setting foot in Denerim, or entering the fade.
DA:I has a lot more land, sure, but its exploration is relatively meaningless in comparison. Too many fetch quests that distract from the story of the actual area.
It depends on how you define exploration I guess. Sure, going places you haven't been before can be exploration. I loved Origin's locales, but they were confined and not great, just a bunch of merchants crammed into an area with just enough space to put in other quest markers.

I do have major gripes with Inquisition, and one of them is the lack of a big city to truly explore. Val Royeaux would have been a great place to really flesh out beyond a market area. Denerim was supposed to be this major city with lots of people and yet there was never really a chance to explore it, to talk to people whether or not they're related to a quest. To simply being able to explore the place at will- that's what I'm talking about, ultimately.

Skyrim had a good amount of exploration but I can't honestly say it's terribly different, each region has its own feature and Skyrim is mostly tundra with a swamp and some really cold areas. Inquisition has a lot of varied regions, and it's really quite beautiful.

Origins also had far more connectivity than Inquisition in my mind, and II even more so. I honestly don't get how you can say they don't. As someone else has said in this very thread, in Inquisition I can go, start conquering a Citadel, then go "Oh, my inventory is full, better fast travel back to Skyhold, sell everything, then go explore some lost ruins instead".
That never really happened to me, but mainly because previous Bioware RPGs taught me to keep a track of how much I'm carrying. If you start conquering something and you're near your limit, that's sort of your fault, not the game's. Even when I did forget to sell off my excess before setting on a bit area or fortress, I would just keep going with it anyway.

When I talk about connectivity I think about one area flowing into another within a place. In Origins, a loading screen separated me and The Pearl, along with every other destination in Denerim. Sure, I got to see blood droplets walking there, but it's not really the same thing. In ME1 they accomplished this well with the elevators- you actually got the sense of how the Citadel was organized, even if the elevators themselves weren't too popular. I got the sense that Redcliffe wasn't just a small town, but a part of a larger region. I like that, I just wish they would have applied it to large cities and towns. In Fallout/Skyrim they did this, but the cities were universally small and very sparsely populated. DA2 was of course one big city which was rather refreshing to me at least, but it still felt like there was so much you weren't seeing. Hightown and Lowtown look so different, it doesn't feel like one is really right next to the other. Is there really nothing of note going on in that part of town?

And, again, I found it very easy to tell how large a place was.
Then tell me: what is the square mileage of Ferelden? Of just Denerim? How many people live in Orzammar? The point here being that it's hard to tell the scope when it's just a few small areas connected only by loading screens. If the Hinterlands is meant to represent the entire Hinterlands described on the map, then it gives me a good sense of how big the world is, or at least lets me visualize it more.


Additionally, what you didn't like about The Deep Roads, or the Fade, are what plenty of people loved. THEY ACTUALLY HAD CONTENT.
One person's content is another person's padding. They are synonyms, really. The Deep Roads was room after room of enemies to fight, you could have easily cut half of it out and it still would have been a nice long dungeon with plenty of unique content. It was as long as it was for one reason and one reason only: to pad the game length. Unlike Inquisition, it was required, not an optional side quest or a lot of optional sidequests. Not to mention that whole plot line was frustrating in story as well. Oh, you already won the proving AND killed the city's crime leader, but that's not enough to flip one vote in the Assembly? The Anvil of the Void was interesting story-wise, it's just unfortunate it takes so long to get to it.

In Inquisition, we have these big large areas, and a lot of collectible quests, but beyond that, fairly sparse content.
I disagree. That's spoken like someone who is building their opinion based solely on the Hinterlands or Storm Coast. Even the Shards, which is the main thing people are complaining about with collectibles, has an interesting payoff. There's plenty of interesting areas to explore and thing to do, even beyond little side quests and collectibles.

The real difference is where they chose to distribute their content. Origins chose to do a relatively small amount of simple, short, "while-I'm-here" side quests and put most of the padding in the mandatory story missions. Inquisition makes the padding those simple, short side-quests and made them optional. They're both content, and they're both padding in ways, as neither truly fills the world with entirely unique and uniquely interesting content. Personally I'd trade the long hallway filled with Darkspawn for the Astrariums (which I love for reasons I can't fully explain), and a mountain of sidequests in interesting locales.

My main problem with the Fade was how it made you literally retread every other area to complete it. It may have been an interesting puzzle the first time I played it, but on play-throughs it was just... the most tedious thing I have ever been forced to do in a game. There's a reason why "Skip the Fade" is one of the most popular DAO mods, it's NOT because that part was universally popular.


I guess I'll just have to get used to people crying until they get their precious DAO2.
Well, yes, because it was a certain style of game many people liked. These new games aren't "Better" than it, unless you count mass appeal like CoD has as better in which case CoD is the best game ever made.[/quote]

There's not much in DAI which goes for mass appeal, really. Just trying to be grumpy and say it's like CoD doesn't really lend much to your argument, just makes you look like "popular = bad" type.

I loved DAO (though I thought Awakenings was better put together despite being shorter). I didn't hate DA2 as much as most, but it certainly had its major problems. I have a lot of problems with DAI, and I think Yahtzee was spot-on with many of his criticisms, and I could add more to it, having already put quite a bit of time into the game. I might even disagree with Yahtzee and say that DAO/A is still my favorite game.

There's just no doubt that DAI is getting a lot of shit from people who are still boiling over with rage because of Ghost Child/DA2 Ending/Jennifer Hepler and are flinging quite a bit of undeserved shit at a pretty good game because they are so emotionally invested in that hatred.
 

Nixou

New member
Jan 20, 2014
196
0
0
This is a case where PC Master Race has a huge advantage (if you have the $$$ to burn up front)

In other words, this is a case where being a rich kid offers a huge advantage over the proles. Thanks for reminding us of this obvious kink of human civilization.
 

4Aces

New member
May 29, 2012
180
0
0
I love how they still cannot be bothered to render proper maps for everything. Some were given nice 4Ks, while something that is physically 10X larger were given 1Ks. I can just hear their board room discussion on how this is more of engine to create more DA movies, and less a game. Worth $30 at most due to the meaningless choices, and non-replayability alone (unless you are a shut-in with only this one game). Another fail from EAware after all the hype and advertising campaign which is leagues more impressive than the actual game. I think they should just quit this gaming fad now, and make CG movies.
 

Joccaren

Elite Member
Mar 29, 2011
2,601
3
43
hentropy said:
I'm not really sure what you mean by 'focus'. I never felt focused in the previous Bioware games. If that is supposed to be the emphasis, then I've never really seen it. DAO and ME1 were both very unfocused, story-wise. Hey, the darkspawn are ravaging the south, killing countless innocents and blighting the very ground they walk on. But no pressure, go on and run around an entire country (the size of England? Who knows?) doing completely unrelated quests like killing deserters or doing... you know, petty fetch quests where you kill generic enemies. Same with ME1, I believe there was a quest called "Race Against Time" because you were trying to stop Saren, but apparently you could go to about 12 different systems and do unrelated quests.

This is a basic feature of many RPGs, and something we're used to whether it be DAO or Skyrim. I feel like DAI has plenty of focus, it just has a different focus. The things you do all contribute to the main storyline: your job is to gain power for the Inquisition through securing areas, closing rifts, and helping people. The mechanics blend well with the story, and it's well-focused, if not perfect.
Well, as an example, I get to the Exalted Plains. My goal, upon reaching the Exalted Plains, is to deal with the undead and Freemen of the Plains. Instead I spend a few hours dillying about helping some elves, searching for Veridium I can craft with, defiling some temples, setting up all my camps, clearing out a few rifts, building a bridge and opening a cave, hunting some wolves - ect. I ended up actually ending my main mission by accident when I stumbled across a fortress and killed the final boss. I didn't even know who he was until I started finding these letters lying around that told me. There was no focus to my activities. In a semi-linear game like Origins, I would have gone and cleared out the forts first, with pacing that led me to discover who the final boss was before I'd killed him. At the safe zone at the start, or mid way through, I would have met people like the Elves, who would have given me their quests. These quests would have been along the way, and part of my adventure to solve this undead problem. It would have turned into a short narrative with focus and pacing. As is, whilst yes I was technically helping the Inquisition with my actions, all it was was just dicking around in the countryside, and by luck solving the problems of the area.

As you've noted, having other things to do and places to explore is a staple of RPGs. Generally each of these areas at the very least has some focus. You follow the story line, and do these other things on the way. Inquisition, like most open world games, has a habit of turning the focus from 'Lets finish the story' to 'lets go see what that big thing over there is'. Whilst only completely linear games are fully focused [If well written], games like Inquisition end up as unfocused as you get. Yes, you may be gaining power for the Inquisition. I had enough power to conquer the world before I even tried to seal the breach. That's an issue of pacing that arises, as it gives you too many things to distract you from your main goal. And that's what they're there as. Distractions and padding to justify the 'open world'. No meaningful content, just random stuff for you to go and do to distract yourself.

Its the same problem many complain about for Skyrim. "Oh no, Alduin is ending the world. Lets spend 99.99% of my game time doing something totally unrelated 'cause fuck that shit". Inquisition IS more focused than that, but it still suffers the problems of open world gaming.

What? It's hard for me to even dignify this. It's just willful misremembering. Very little I did in DAO outside from the actual main story- which was rather meaty- affected the main story at all. And I did everything there was to do in that game. In certain cases it may have affected the "world" that resulted at the end. Most side quests were still short and repetitive. Go to this area, kill a bunch of Loghain soldiers, then go to this downed caravan and kill darkspawn.
Ignoring Sten's side quest, as that was a side quest - it wasn't core story to recruit him. You have Shale. You have the hardening of Leliana and Alistair which, whilst not necessarily long quests, had some dialogue that would change their attitude, and the outcomes of some choices. You had recruiting Zevran. Warden's Keep. Return to Ostagar. Saving people throughout the game, whereby they'd all come and join you in the final fight. The same went for Redcliff, and getting everyone together to defend the town, resulting in more people being in that fight. The quest chain related to Flemeth. Then there were the puzzles to solve in some of the major quests, like the one that summoned that demon in the Circle Tower. Not exactly a long quest, but something different from the norm. This is without going into the Standalones, like Lelianas song or Golems of Amgarrak, as they are more expansions than extra content. There was Isabella at the Pearl, and the game of cards with her - again, not intensive, but something different. That's what I think Inquisition is missing most, is something different. Instead it drowns you in fetch quests, and short 5-10 minute dungeon stints. Were sidequests in Origins as long as their main ones? No, but the side quests in Origins have, generally, been equal in length to the main quests in Inquisition.
I also did acknowledge there were a few small, mini things that you could do - though most of them were interwoven with some main quest, like all the Orzammar side quests, conveniently tying in with my focus point above. There were a handful of pointless fetch quests, a number of short quests interwoven with a main quests, which gave you some interesting dialogue, and a handful of involved side quests with some actual content. Those involved side quests are what is missing from Inquisition mostly, IMO, as it just disperses all its content as generic enemies throughout its normal maps. We need to hunt down these tomes from the Circle of Magi. Of course, they're just lying around on the ground randomly in the strangest places, rather than having me need to go to a black market to find them, and either intimidate the merchant or just purchase them, or raid a venatori fortress where they're hidden. Same goes for Red Lyrium, same goes for Venatori agents, same goes for dangerous criminals - its all just randomly located in these larger maps. Becoming a champion, I duelled for Heraldry. Who did I duel? 3 random people I found walking around the countryside. I didn't enter a tournament, I didn't go to a town and challenge the Lord's champion. I just fought 3 randoms I happened to find in random places. The side quests have no substance to them in Inquisition, and all of them are basically just random fetch or kill quests in environments filled with more random fetch and kill quests, at least so far.

I'm a little hesitant to go into side quests because it doesn't sound like you've finished the game or have gone to every area or really done all that much outside of The Hinterlands, but there have been some genuinely interesting quests in places like The Hissing Wastes and the Fallow Mire. Really I can name a variety of major side quests which aren't just "go here kill these come back".
I've been through the Hinterlands, Fallow Mire, Storm Coast, Exalted Plains, Forbidden Oasis and utterly finished them [At least as far as you can finish them without doing the 'And here the Abyss' or whatever quest, don't know if more unlocks after]. Done some Emprise du Lion and Hissing Wastes, planning a trek into the Emerald Graves and Western Approach soon too. I certainly haven't done everything, but I've done a fair bit still, and not much of interest has appeared yet. Maybe its there, buried in a sea of collectables, but that's a lot of the problem - the sea of collectables and fetch quests. If there truly is better content buried somewhere, they would have done well to showcase that more, and put the collectibles as a small side thing - like Mass Effect 1 - rather than making collectibles the focus of the game [And yes, not just the shards, but fade rifts, landmarks, 'Go kill X of Y' quests, 'Go find me Z' quests and the shear volume of quests without any soul].
I got exited when a quest with Sera took me to a loading screen, meaning somewhere unique [Or so I thought] where it might have an actual side quest. It was then kill 3 people, recruit random ass. SO much more could have been done with that.

You took over a grand total of one fortress in DAO, which you did not use even a little. In DAI, there are many fortresses that you can actually conquer, raise your flag above, with new quests as a result and new merchants and people. Even Varric's thing about Red Lyrium ends up revealing something quite interesting about the nature of lyrium in general. The companion quests could be better in the beginning, but it makes sense that you have to earn their trust before the real companion quests kick in.
Whilst you didn't use it, that Fortress had its own story and soul [And I think an item storage box, don't remember fully, in which case it was used sometimes, as well as when you wanted to forge the star sword]. You met Avernus there and discovered about the blood power given by the Blight, you had a Moral choice to make with the Demon inhabiting Dryden's body, and learning the history of how the Grey Wardens originally lost trust in Ferelden, thanks to her using her forces as a political army, rather than a world saving one. Apparently there will be keeps to capture in the future, however from what the game has shown me so far, all that'll consist of is stumbling across one, murdering everything nearby that moves, then right clicking a flag icon. No story to the keep. No atmosphere. No soul.
If PROPER companion quests become available later that'd of course be nice, but I don't think it should take until 90 hours in before you get them. Even then, its hardly even 'earning their trust' thus far. From my experience, and what I've read online, its similar to DAII, where its just main story based as to when they'll bother giving you new dialogue or missions. God knows, all the "Greatly Approves" in the world and I still can't get more than one or two conversation options per character, which I've already exhausted. I guess Cassandra has had more, but I get the feeling that's because I'm romancing her more than anything else.

It's a matter of volume. There's so much to do in DAI compared to those games, so it makes sense. The only thing I can compare it to is ME1 where it was somewhat of a tedious drag to try and do everything before moving on, especially on multiple play-throughs. When one area has 5-10 hours worth of sidequests and there's 8 areas, then yeah, trying to do it all will be dull, no matter what you're playing. Doing the animal and bandit killing quests in Lothering before moving on doesn't really compare.
Well then here we have the answer that it's not a problem with all games.
Yes, all games with bad design will be unenjoyable thanks to that bad game design. That's pointing out the obvious there. Not all games have the issue though. Not all games are designed around a thousand fetch quests. Most actually try and keep some deep, interesting quests, spread throughout so the player doesn't get bored, as well as sizing their areas to what they need for gameplay, rather than making them massive for the sake of it. The exception being TES, but you get these complaints of TES as well.

I'm playing the PC version and all I have to do is hold down R and W for melee attacks. I'm not sure why they saw that as necessary but it's not that hard to get used to. People who criticize it for having to click a lot didn't pay attention at all to the tutorial pop-ups in the very first area. I'm not sure how it works on consoles. It wouldn't be surprising if they just brought back auto-attack at some point. Still, it doesn't change the mechanic of the game that much.
W is for a melee attack?
R maybe is a keyboard instead of mouse shortcut, but W? W is move forward.
I use W and left click, and if I spam press them, then I'll step forward one step and attack, and repeat that until I finally reach my enemy, but if I press and hold I just attack thin air as the attack command overrides the move command. You technically can click and hold to continue to auto attack, but if your enemy moves a centimetre, you need to release, move, re-initiate attack, and the things it does to the camera when you do that are ungodly. If the enemy is to the left of you, and you click and hold, your camera jumps as click and hold is camera control, and you've clicked and held to the left so you must want to centre your view there [Stupidest thing. Should centre mouse rather than centre camera on the mouse. Its a pain in the ass trying to get my mouse dead centre before I try and look around, as otherwise I end up having my camera jump all over the place].
The PC controls are absolutely horrid. They're not unplayable bad, but they are 'would rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon' bad, thanks to all stupid things they've done with it.

I played on the higher difficulty levels regularly with different classes and I barely ever used the tactical view in DAO. It made it HARDER to do most battles for me because it only made the enemies smaller and harder to tell between them. I was never really sure why people put so much emphasis on it. Is it the circles around your character? Because that's the only thing that's terribly different in Origins. You realize you can move the camera around in the normal camera, right? It doesn't point in one direction? In DAI I almost never used it either but it has more usefulness, as you can see each enemy's resistances and weaknesses, which is particularly helpful for a mage. I can see how people might not like the tactical camera if you're relying on it, but I simply don't see why someone would need it to play the game, and yet some people seem willing to throw it in the trash bin over it. If you just want isometric play so much, there's Divinity: Original Sin.
One of the main things is being able to issue orders effectively to your whole party in a short time. Never had the issue of not being able to see individual characters, though I guess that's the advantage of a high res screen, and going into tactical view gave me a good overlook of the whole battle in an instant, convenient for when you wanted to actually issue those orders, and target certain things, rather than constantly scrolling around the battlefield to do things.
In Inquisition, you struggle to issue orders to characters. Not the least of which because its jumping to the view of other characters is inconsistent, or you can't move your view anywhere where there's impassable terrain, or there are a ton of trees/rocks/shit in the way preventing you from seeing your party and what's going on, or the the issues with party commands in general where they simply won't follow some orders you give them. "Hold position here" I said. Next minute, they're halfway across the map because "I can attack a thing!". FFS.
Honestly I feel the need it to play the game comes partially from the fact it went hand in hand with a functioning paused, tactical control interface for your party, which Inquisition also lacks thanks to aforementioned issues. The two kind of blend together when you used it all the time.

That's fair, though in Origins the default attributes were really bad for companions. Sten and Alistair died so often because their default Constitution was set at 13 and you had to wait some time to level up and pull those up. The stats-through-equipment does allow the game to stay balanced at all portions in the game. With a lot of Bioware RPGs and other older RPGs, the start of the game was by far the hardest part because there wasn't even an attempt to properly adhere to a standard difficulty curve.
Yeah, Origins wasn't the best balanced, and I've been through it with other people where assigning stats in Origins generally came down to a really obvious choice between 'Am I a mage, warrior or rogue', however the ability to actually customise your character more would be nice. Being able to choose his looks and abilities is one thing, his innate focus and equipment choices [Not sword and board or two hander, but the ability to dual wield or be an archer too, like in Origins] would be appreciated, though I will concede both choices have their upsides for that.
As for difficulty... Varric. Never keep him in your party, 'cause he's useless. Bianca is a POS. Even with crafted upgrades, far less DPS with less bonuses than normal bows, which he can't equip. Played with him most of the game, 'cause he's Varric and I dislike Sera with a passion. Eventually conceded and put Sera in my party instead. Dear god do enemies just drop like flies now.
The problem's still there. Its more isolated, but nothing can truly cover for a properly balanced game.

Again, I think you're misremembering, willfully or no. I played both previous games in their totality before the release of DAI, and I can't think of a single DAO side quest that took more than a half hour or so to complete (unless you're doing the same area over and over), and that includes the DLC areas. Return to Ostagar was the longest of those and it was maybe 45 minutes to an hour (only because it had "long hallway" padding full of darkspawn). Pretty much all of the side quests found on the Chantry Boards, Mage's Guild, Blackstone Irregulars, etc. were all very simple, short quests with simple components. Kill these guys or collect these things or talk to these people and then come back. Just like DAI.
Eh, I tend to take my time with dialogue each playthrough, and talk through everything, so the more dialogue heavy quests like Shale's recruitment, or Warden's keep, took me a while. In saying that, 45 minutes was what it took you for return to Ostagar, a side quest, in Dragon Age Origins. I think that's the longest I've spent in a main quest in Inquisition, with most taking far less. The Val Royeaux one took maybe 5 minutes. Halamshiral took the longest due to trying to maximise court approval, as I thought it might actually mean something, but fighting for Haven was another 20 minute one, cutscenes included, the intro sequence took maybe half an hour as I was figuring out how to play the game, and the mage questline around 45 minutes, maybe up to an hour if you include the pre-ambush part too. I've heard the next quest is the longest, and by god I'm hoping its a 2-3 hour stint, or else I'm going to be thoroughly disappointed with Inquisition's main quests.

If you want to criticize the game for simply having too much little side stuff to do, that's at least a fair criticism I can understand. But don't play make-believe and say that DAO had these long, intricate side quests that were all unique and interesting. They weren't. The meat is story missions, most of which were stuffed full of padding.
Not all the side quests were long or intricate, most were some level of interesting, and only a few were generic fetch quests. Maybe if you cut it all down to purely gameplay, sure, but what makes these games is intertwining the story and lore, something that thus far Origins did far better than Inquisition has.
As for too much little side stuff to do... Its not even that. Its that thus far there hasn't been one bit of meaty content outside the main quest line. In Origins, I had Shale. I had Warden's Keep. I had the Return to Ostagar. I had, whilst not long, the Flemeth side of things. I had finding people's relatives and returning them to their families.
In Inquisition, anything that starts to get even remotely long doesn't feel like any of them, it just feels like what people complained about the Deep Roads for - pointless grind. I mean, there's the bandits thing in the Hinterlands, but there's never really any confrontation, never any story to it beyond 'Some dwarves are mining stuff. They've hired mercenaries to deflect people. Kill all of them'. In Origins, someone would put me onto that, their relative would have been kidnapped by the bandits. I'd get to the fort, and I might be able to persuade, intimidate or bribe the guards into letting me in. I'd be able to talk to the Carta leader, and either look the other way, or fight him, and here his reasons for doing things, and what his offer for letting him continue is. And I'd find the lost relative somewhere in the castle, and get to release them. At the VERY least, there'd be a cutscene. In Inquisition? Nope, just generic enemies, go kill them all.

Origins was a static world where Inquisition is dynamic. I prefer dynamic worlds that resemble the real world where they can, but I can see the appeal in a static one, because you know when you've killed everything you possibly can. But forests don't tend to run out of wolves and bears and real life, so I have no problem with them spawning (not to mention the bear pelts are valuable for crafting early in the game, whereas crafting was almost nonexistent in Origins and loot was only used for gold).
I like the dynamic side of the world, I don't like the grindy, repetitive and annoying side of the world. What is the point of spawning literally 400 wolves for me to kill in the Exalted plains? They give next to no XP, so it doesn't help me level up. They're not fun or interesting to fight, they don't add to the atmosphere or make the place feel alive when I have butchered 400 and every 3 steps I run into another pack... It takes it to a whole other level.
I like the world adapting to what I've done, that dynamic side of things. In the Hinterlands, I like that now I don't come across any Templars, Mages or Wolves, or Demons, and only a few Red Templars and Bears. Because I cleared out the major threats, and now the place feels safe and normal. The exhaulted plains? Yeah, cool, demons keep popping through. I don't mind that too much, as I don't run into those demons that often, and it makes a lot of sense for a fade-thinned warzone. Running into a pack of wolves literally every 10 steps, even after I have performed wolf genocide and culled half their species from the planet? That's inane. Forests don't tend to run out of wolves and bears, as we generally protect them to some extent if its their natural habitat. If you let hunters go wild and take them down, then yes, they do run out, and the species goes extinct if only present there. See Tasmanian Tiger.
Even if they don't utterly disappear, performing an extermination effort on islands with farms to try and clear out foxes greatly reduces the number and frequency of fox problems. Killing a lot of wild animals has an effect, and I'd love it if the game wouldn't just spawn them every 10 steps. Every 10 minutes is fine.

Again, it's because of volume, not the actual content or mechanics of the quest. There was just less in Origins so it didn't feel as grindy.
FAR less of the 'no convo, go kill' type. What made the rest in Origin's not grindy, was in the actual content, whereby I'd at the very least get to talk to people, and it would feel important for something, rather than literally having 2 lines for the quest: "Oh no, we need wolf pelts or else people will freeze". "Wow, thanks, you got us some wolf pelts. This'll stop people from freezing".
Adding story and atmosphere to the quests would have gone a long way to making them feel not-grindy.

It depends on how you define exploration I guess. Sure, going places you haven't been before can be exploration. I loved Origin's locales, but they were confined and not great, just a bunch of merchants crammed into an area with just enough space to put in other quest markers.

I do have major gripes with Inquisition, and one of them is the lack of a big city to truly explore. Val Royeaux would have been a great place to really flesh out beyond a market area. Denerim was supposed to be this major city with lots of people and yet there was never really a chance to explore it, to talk to people whether or not they're related to a quest. To simply being able to explore the place at will- that's what I'm talking about, ultimately.
Personally, I'd call that more free roaming than exploration. It is nice in moderation, but if you go too far it has the 'lack of focus' effect and can negatively effect gameplay. If you had to walk through streets filled with pretty, but pointless, housing for the Val Royeaux population for an hour before you got to the shops, it'd get old, fast.
Honestly, if you're going to have a large, sprawling city, I think you need the content to fill it, rather than just having it as padding. And I don't mean pointless collectibles, I mean actual quests and content, like in Orzammar. It wasn't that large a place to explore, but it was filled with things to do. Markets, nobles and casteless looking for help with something, fights breaking out - ect. Even Denerim had a reasonable amount of stuff to do in it, it was just all separated by the blood drip map to try and convey that it was a large city.
There is a happy medium to be reached, with enough room and randoms for you to talk to so that the city feels alive, but also so there's enough content that it doesn't feel like padding, with just a long walk to anything you would actually want to do.

Skyrim had a good amount of exploration but I can't honestly say it's terribly different, each region has its own feature and Skyrim is mostly tundra with a swamp and some really cold areas. Inquisition has a lot of varied regions, and it's really quite beautiful.
It is the comment I always make; Inquisition is Skyrim, but better. The game feels more like Skyrim than it does Dragon Age. It does it well enough, but any problems you found with Skyrim, I probably still find with Inquisition, even if to a lesser extent most of the time.

That never really happened to me, but mainly because previous Bioware RPGs taught me to keep a track of how much I'm carrying. If you start conquering something and you're near your limit, that's sort of your fault, not the game's. Even when I did forget to sell off my excess before setting on a bit area or fortress, I would just keep going with it anyway.
Even when I had emptied out my inventory, the shear number of spawned in enemies in some places just filled it back up again in no time. I would finish what I was doing if it would just respawn if I left before I'd finished, but otherwise it was just more convenient to empty out my bag all at once, rather than spend ages trying to find the least valuable items to get rid of every few minutes for however long it'd take me to finish what I was doing.

When I talk about connectivity I think about one area flowing into another within a place. In Origins, a loading screen separated me and The Pearl, along with every other destination in Denerim. Sure, I got to see blood droplets walking there, but it's not really the same thing. In ME1 they accomplished this well with the elevators- you actually got the sense of how the Citadel was organized, even if the elevators themselves weren't too popular. I got the sense that Redcliffe wasn't just a small town, but a part of a larger region. I like that, I just wish they would have applied it to large cities and towns. In Fallout/Skyrim they did this, but the cities were universally small and very sparsely populated. DA2 was of course one big city which was rather refreshing to me at least, but it still felt like there was so much you weren't seeing. Hightown and Lowtown look so different, it doesn't feel like one is really right next to the other. Is there really nothing of note going on in that part of town?
The elevators in Mass Effect were nice, but they were still just glorified loading screens. Its the equivalent of the blood trails in Origins. Both give you an idea of where you are going, and the layout of the area, and both are there to show your motion whilst hiding your actual motion and the loading process.
I think a large part of peoples' complaints with the elevators were that they had slow computers, and thus it took them a minute or so to travel through the elevators, whilst for me I hop in, have one line said by someone, and before they finish I'm done.
Hightown and Lowtown don't necessarily need anything between them. Slums aren't always separated from the decent part of the city by some middle class. In fantasy like this, its often just a wall. Its what happens when the rich exploit the poor, and isn't too different from real life in some regards. In most cities, if you take a wrong turn, you can turn into the slums. In my home city, its right next to the centre of police enforcement, as well as some of the more high class streets, and I've been to other cities where things are similar whilst travelling. Its something that happens.

Then tell me: what is the square mileage of Ferelden? Of just Denerim? How many people live in Orzammar? The point here being that it's hard to tell the scope when it's just a few small areas connected only by loading screens. If the Hinterlands is meant to represent the entire Hinterlands described on the map, then it gives me a good sense of how big the world is, or at least lets me visualize it more.
Without Googling, what is the Square Mileage of your home country, and what is the population of the last city you went on vacation to.
Either you've researched this before, and know, or you're researching it now to find out. They're stupid questions, as they're asking very specific information, which you really can't judge from looks.
Nothing about that changes with DA:I.
What's the population of the Mage Rebellion/Templar Order? From Codex statements telling you about it, you might get some idea, but from the game itself where you meet maybe 10 representatives?
You can't tell.
After Inquisition, what's the Square Mileage of Orlais? Again, you won't have any idea.
What you CAN tell, is that the Deep Roads are big and vast. You can tell Orzammar is a large place that is well populated [100,000 ish dwarves from memory]. You can tell that Ferelden is a country, rather than a small state. Whilst what we see of it is segmented, you can tell that Denerim is a large city, and Ostagar a huge fortress.
You get a sense of scale, often a better one in non-open world games [Redcliffe in Origins felt like a fairly mid sized, bustling town. In Inquisition it feels like this tiny hovel that apparently manages to house 200 people in 5 houses] as you aren't limited by what you have time to build. Want to show its a big city? Put in a Skybox, and some scenery at the edge of the map. In an open world game, you've got to build it all up, which takes time and resources, so often you just downsize everything so you can get it done.


One person's content is another person's padding. They are synonyms, really. The Deep Roads was room after room of enemies to fight, you could have easily cut half of it out and it still would have been a nice long dungeon with plenty of unique content. It was as long as it was for one reason and one reason only: to pad the game length. Unlike Inquisition, it was required, not an optional side quest or a lot of optional sidequests. Not to mention that whole plot line was frustrating in story as well. Oh, you already won the proving AND killed the city's crime leader, but that's not enough to flip one vote in the Assembly? The Anvil of the Void was interesting story-wise, it's just unfortunate it takes so long to get to it.
As I said, yes, you could cut out a fair bit of the grind in the Deep Roads, but even doing that it would have been a fairly long quest, dredging through these underground tunnels and finding out the secrets of the Dwarven Empire. Thus far, nothing in Inquisition has compared.
To be fair, I don't think beating some champions and outsing a crime lord in Cuba or Mexico would have you be able to influence their next elections. What that did was likely get some people to like you, and get the attention of the nobles you wanted to support, but being an outsider [Or casteless by virtue of going to the surface] I'd be very surprised if the Assembly let you influence them. They wanted a Paragon, and whilst its a bit painful, that's politics, whilst also letting you decide whether you wanted the Golems or the Dwarves - a choice which became a bit less relevant after Shale got introduced.

I disagree. That's spoken like someone who is building their opinion based solely on the Hinterlands or Storm Coast. Even the Shards, which is the main thing people are complaining about with collectibles, has an interesting payoff. There's plenty of interesting areas to explore and thing to do, even beyond little side quests and collectibles.
Eh, I find the Shards temple to be kind of lame TBH. Its just padding in the collectible quest to prevent you from progressing and killing 3 more generic enemies. It feels more like its there as a half hearted attempt to justify the shards, rather than the shards being there to add content to it. You could easily have accomplished the same, but better, if each zone had 1 shard, and each door took 1, 2 then 3 shards to unlock. As is, 90% of that is pointless padding.
I've been through the areas I've explored, and thus far I'm not hugely impressed. Its starting to feel more and more like Skyrim - oh look, a big cool thing. I'm sure that'll take me 10 minutes to do, and be only skin deep padding, adding nothing to my experience. That's not a good thing. Dragon fights are at least fun.

The real difference is where they chose to distribute their content. Origins chose to do a relatively small amount of simple, short, "while-I'm-here" side quests and put most of the padding in the mandatory story missions. Inquisition makes the padding those simple, short side-quests and made them optional. They're both content, and they're both padding in ways, as neither truly fills the world with entirely unique and uniquely interesting content. Personally I'd trade the long hallway filled with Darkspawn for the Astrariums (which I love for reasons I can't fully explain), and a mountain of sidequests in interesting locales.
The major difference for me, is that Origins put all these short, simple, side quests in, and gave them character. Inquisition is very much "Look, a thing. You want to do the thing right?".
The shards, as an example. In Origins you would have met someone who was researching them, who would tell you about them and point you to the temple after you'd gathered enough. There would have been conversation with the person, and those shards would have just been found during normal gameplay, rather than as a distraction off to the side with Super Mario Brothers gameplay to get them.
It would have made them more personal, interesting, and less of a grind to get them. No, not every quest in Origins was like that. There were maybe 4 or 5 Chantry board quests per major town [Denerim, Lothering, Redcliff are all I'm pretty sure], and a couple of on the side things like finding the soldiers on some battleground or W/E from the civil war. Most of the smaller quests, however, had some personality to them - Dagna, the guy wanting to found a Chantry in Orzammar, the Shaperate, finding the elf woman's werewolf husband, the Blood Mages in Denerim, Isabella - plenty of stuff that had story to it, rather than a note "BROTHER, I CHALLENGE THEE TO THE DEATH". Go to place. Kill Templar. Done. For every side quest around.
No dialogue, no real story or explanation to it, just a small note that basically sums up to 'Some guy is being bad', then going and killing him.

My main problem with the Fade was how it made you literally retread every other area to complete it. It may have been an interesting puzzle the first time I played it, but on play-throughs it was just... the most tedious thing I have ever been forced to do in a game. There's a reason why "Skip the Fade" is one of the most popular DAO mods, it's NOT because that part was universally popular.
Whilst it could definitely do with improving, at least there was something to do. In Halamshiral, defending Haven, Assaulting the breach, getting the mages - everything I've done so far, its been a short 20 minute stint of walk down very linear corridor, kill a small number of enemies, use an item, kill boss, done. I would greatly appreciate something more than just that, plus a cutscene, for most of my gameplay. At the least give me something new, and cool to see and explore. Thus far its been ruins, town I've been in for the whole game, dungeon, palace interior. The palace interior has been the best of the lot, but even it is let down by the fact that I really have no idea what Halamshiral looks like. I didn't get to see it, itself, and I only got to see a small amount of its interior as looking around was discouraged by the game.


There's not much in DAI which goes for mass appeal, really. Just trying to be grumpy and say it's like CoD doesn't really lend much to your argument, just makes you look like "popular = bad" type.
TBH, yeah, it does a lot for Mass Appeal. Fancy cutscenes and short, actiony gameplay to pull in the masses, having turned the whole series into Action RPG instead of the more Old School RPG for Mass Appeal when DA2 came out. They've taken it a step further in this with pumping out the actiony stuff. Open world simply to follow Skyrim's template 'cause it sold well, not because they could properly fill the areas with meaningful content. Further Simplified RPG mechanics so you can focus on just killing things. Distinct lack of persuade, intimidate, and conversation options for methods to get through missions - its all just 'kill' as talking is too boring.
I'm also not saying its like CoD, I simply misjudged your position. Generally the "People just want Origins 2" comment is followed up by "Even though Inquisition is the better game", which it really isn't, using the fact that more people like it as their evidence. I was simply countering that before it arose, though it seems I misjudged your opinion on this one.

I loved DAO (though I thought Awakenings was better put together despite being shorter). I didn't hate DA2 as much as most, but it certainly had its major problems. I have a lot of problems with DAI, and I think Yahtzee was spot-on with many of his criticisms, and I could add more to it, having already put quite a bit of time into the game. I might even disagree with Yahtzee and say that DAO/A is still my favorite game.
I'll agree with you on Awakening. It did cheapen specialisations, by just making them books, however it did what DA2 really should have done - it had you focused on a small town/city/fort, and going on adventures in the nearby area. It also did what Skyhold should do, though I hear it doesn't, whereby your upgrades affect the outcome of the game. It felt contained, personal, focused, and well made. It fixed the things that were problematic in Origins, but kept the same core gameplay at its heart. The sequels should have followed its example, rather than trying for "Push button, something awesome happens" [What was that about not going for mass appeal?] gameplay.

There's just no doubt that DAI is getting a lot of shit from people who are still boiling over with rage because of Ghost Child/DA2 Ending/Jennifer Hepler and are flinging quite a bit of undeserved shit at a pretty good game because they are so emotionally invested in that hatred.
Well, I'm not one of those people. DA2 was a letdown, and ME3 a major disappointment, but that's just led me to not expect anything of Bioware.
In regards to Inquisition, I'm actually impressed. Bioware have done well, and made a great game. It doesn't feel like a Dragon Age game, and I'll stick to my statement that its more Skyrim, but better, than Dragon Age, but its still a good game. It does have its flaws though, and I'm not at all shy in pointing them out. There's a lot of improvement to be done, but the fact that I'm actually playing it rather than just giving up - as I did after my first playthrough of ME3 - shows that I'm actually enjoying myself. Its a little disappointing, and the more I play it the more I'm feeling that, but its by no means bad, and is definitely the best game Bioware have made in about half a decade. Its the Mass Effect 2 of the Dragon Age series - drastic change in direction from the first game in favour of more mass appeal actiony content, but still a great game that is well worth playing.
 

Joccaren

Elite Member
Mar 29, 2011
2,601
3
43
Nixou said:
This is a case where PC Master Race has a huge advantage (if you have the $$$ to burn up front)

In other words, this is a case where being a rich kid offers a huge advantage over the proles. Thanks for reminding us of this obvious kink of human civilization.
Or saving your money and putting it towards building a PC instead of other things. I use my money on necessities, going out with my partner, and building my PC. I'm not a rich kid, and my parents are so far in debt its not funny. I don't earn a lot of money either. But, I put it towards what I enjoy. No consoles, don't even need a TV, I buy only a few games as most jump out at me as worthless. All that saved money goes towards my PC instead.
 

JennAnge

New member
May 15, 2012
86
0
0
garjian said:
It's a shame you didn't get into the crafting system.

Fade-Touched Crap can make a character quite interesting. I was barely into the game before I found 2 Fade-Touched Blue Vitriol (10% change to cast Chain Lightning on hit) and put it on some AoE Daggers, which paired with Spinning Blades was proccing several times every fight.
Later on, the same combo with guard generation materials also proved useful.
Oh you are so right. I found some fade-touched something or other that casts Walking Bomb at a very decent chance. My Knight Enchanter is now a humongous badass Tal-Vashoth whacking critters one-handed with a spirit sword until they die AND EXPLODE. It just made the game 110% more awesome.
 

tzimize

New member
Mar 1, 2010
2,391
0
0
Aiddon said:
sounds like it just has a bunch of STUFF in it. That's the problem with sandboxes at times; they're so concerned with making them BIG, but actually loading them with substance is really, really hard so they just fill it with STUFF. Padding. Fluff, something that is there solely to make things seem more epic than they really are.
Yep. If its one thing I've thought when playing this its MMO.

Dragon Age: Origins might have felt "smaller", but everywhere I went I felt I was doing something meaningful for the story, and the conversations, even the side-quests were great. DA:I suffers from MMO-sickness. I have to dig into the pile of shitty quests to find the gems. And there arent a lot of them in DA:I imo.

Also, the loading times. God.

I'm getting so tired legging around the world already (and I more or less just got my stronhold) that I think I might not even bother finishing it. Probably the last drop of lifeblood spent on the DA saga for me.

Ah well. At least there is Pillars of Eternity, and Torment: Tides of Numenera to look forward to.
 

hentropy

New member
Feb 25, 2012
737
0
0
Joccaren said:
Before I say anything else I want to address the controls bit. On the PC, holding down R continuously attacks. So does holding down left-click, but that's a bit wonky. Holding down W moves forward, but holding them both down at once while you have an enemy targeted makes sure you follow that enemy as they move, so you don't have to move up to them every time or keep clicking. I've tried it out on both Warrior and Rogue, and it both works for up-close attacks. I would be endlessly annoyed as well if it really were a clickfest, myself, but I figured it out pretty early on. It didn't seem necessary, to have an attack button, but I do remember in DAO there was this whole thing with having to time talents to fit in between basic attacks.

I think I understand your point of view more clearly, now. It might just come down to a matter of taste, I guess. I suppose the quests in Origins were more "self-contained", but I think it felt different because the areas were smaller and there was less quests, but there's certainly a feeling of fatigue that can some with so many quests. I feel that using "content" might be erroneous, I would probably say some of the quests lack character. Part of the reason for that, I think, is how impersonal some of the quests feel, due to the dialogue system which is just the two people standing and talking to each other with the camera zoomed out. DAO certainly felt different, even if most of the quests really weren't that different.

I can't necessarily blame Bioware for mixing it up. If the succeeding games were just clones of DAO with updated graphics and locations/stories, then I'd probably still enjoy them, at the same time I don't think we should expect that or even want that. Going in different directions and incorporating different play styles is a good thing, I don't like arguments that amount mainly to "boo too much mass appeal". I don't see it in DAI, partially because the lore is so thick and hostile to new players, and even the larger battle system is somewhat complicated (needlessly complicated in parts), DAO in comparison felt simplistic. The thing about DA2 was that they tried to be like DAO- but cut out many of the features and things that made it good.

As I said, there's a lot to gripe about with DAI, but it seems like many of characterizations of it have been unfair.
 

CosmicCommander

Friendly Neighborhood Troll?
Apr 11, 2009
1,544
0
0
hentropy said:
the Deep Roads was just room after room of Darkspawn and it felt much more like padding than anything I did in DAI, and unlike DAI, it was linear with very few side quests (there was that one with the sword, I guess). Brecilian Forest was the closest it got in DAO, but it was still small and not that interesting. Not to mention that story thread was the least interesting and the game pressured you into the one right answer. Don't even get me started on the Fade, AKA 2 extra hours full of tedious PADDING.
You realise they were basically massive dungeon-crawls, right? Bioware was basically revisiting classic RPGs in those and giving players dungeons to navigate to get to their goal.
 

hentropy

New member
Feb 25, 2012
737
0
0
CosmicCommander said:
hentropy said:
the Deep Roads was just room after room of Darkspawn and it felt much more like padding than anything I did in DAI, and unlike DAI, it was linear with very few side quests (there was that one with the sword, I guess). Brecilian Forest was the closest it got in DAO, but it was still small and not that interesting. Not to mention that story thread was the least interesting and the game pressured you into the one right answer. Don't even get me started on the Fade, AKA 2 extra hours full of tedious PADDING.
You realise they were basically massive dungeon-crawls, right? Bioware was basically revisiting classic RPGs in those and giving players dungeons to navigate to get to their goal.
A long hallway really isn't a dungeon crawler. I mean, it is, but there's not much... crawling. Granted, Caridin's cross had like, one optional chamber to go into that was decently sized. I just don't get why people fling a bunch of (sort of deserved) crap at the Final Fantasy series for having "long hallway" linear dungeons but are unwilling to admit that the Deep Roads is essentially the same layout, just not with random encounters.

The Fade had a few more optional chambers where you got the permanent attribute boosts, but it was just tedious as a whole. DAI has a better Fade experience by far.
 

CosmicCommander

Friendly Neighborhood Troll?
Apr 11, 2009
1,544
0
0
hentropy said:
A long hallway really isn't a dungeon crawler. I mean, it is, but there's not much... crawling. Granted, Caridin's cross had like, one optional chamber to go into that was decently sized.
The Deep Roads had loads of optional parts. The Dead Trenches, Ortan Thaig, and all the other parts had optional areas to explore and a lot of lore to see. There were sidequests to get ahold of Legion of the Dead armour and all that stuff. And the atmosphere of descending deeper and deeper into the centre of the darkspawn was unforgettable for me, anyway.

The Fade had a few more optional chambers where you got the permanent attribute boosts, but it was just tedious as a whole. DAI has a better Fade experience by far.
Fade is recognised to be the weakest part of DA:O. Almost everyone I know uses the Skip the Fade mod. It's a bad dungeon overall.

Complain about linearity all you want. I recognise that DA:O does rail-road you. But that rail-road is a way to set up some pretty challenging combat encounters; if you play on Nightmare, you find a lot of fun in actually having to use the tactics system.
 

Nixou

New member
Jan 20, 2014
196
0
0
if you play on Nightmare, you find a lot of fun in actually having to use the tactics system.

Or you'll get pissed at the console's version's shoddy interface
 

Sacman

Don't Bend! Ascend!
May 15, 2008
22,661
0
0
ZippyDSMlee said:
The tactical command is not as good as DA:O..... and its much to much button mashy focused....
I've been playing for a good 10 or 12 hours so far and the combat is probably the worst in the series and maybe the worst combat I've played in a long time, honestly. I barely feel like I'm in control or doing anything 99% of the time, just sitting there holding the autoattack button until everything in front of me died, or I had died like 20 times because I had very little control over what anyone in my party is actually doing, and any amount of strategy is constantly undermined by the character AI. I mean attempting any strategy beyond collecting up all your guys and fighting those other guys is basically impossible. Micromanaging during combat is basically impossible because I'm never sure what my teammates are going to do next, one moment they're right in front of the big bad punching him to death, the next they're standing there while I run around the arena being swiped at by the only enemy in the room. even worse half the time they'll run straight into enemy traps and die before I can do anything.

just compared to the other Dragon Age games you have an insanely loose control over what's happening in combat. in the first dragon age it was entirely about tactical strategy, using the right skills at the right time, having your characters placed exactly where you need them to be, doing exactly what you need them to do, and you had the controls to do that. Even with Dragon Age 2 combat was all about synergy between characters and their abilities, you had to actually get everyone to work together in different ways with different skills, and it had a large focus on crowd combat so character positioning for proper crowd control was important, and even if you don't have the same amount of total control as the first game is possible. Dragon Age 3 I haven't been able to use a strategy more complex than attack the closest enemy until they're all dead, because trying to get anything done is way too finicky, and your skills are much too samey or useless, Stuns and freezing and knock downs just aren't the table turner they were in previous games, they barely matter at all, and that's really how the entirety of combat felt anything I did barely mattered at all. <.<

TL;DR: Combat sucks.
 

ZippyDSMlee

New member
Sep 1, 2007
3,959
0
0
Sacman said:
ZippyDSMlee said:
The tactical command is not as good as DA:O..... and its much to much button mashy focused....
I've been playing for a good 10 or 12 hours so far and the combat is probably the worst in the series and maybe the worst combat I've played in a long time, honestly. I barely feel like I'm in control or doing anything 99% of the time, just sitting there holding the autoattack button until everything in front of me died, or I had died like 20 times because I had very little control over what anyone in my party is actually doing, and any amount of strategy is constantly undermined by the character AI. I mean attempting any strategy beyond collecting up all your guys and fighting those other guys is basically impossible. Micromanaging during combat is basically impossible because I'm never sure what my teammates are going to do next, one moment they're right in front of the big bad punching him to death, the next they're standing there while I run around the arena being swiped at by the only enemy in the room. even worse half the time they'll run straight into enemy traps and die before I can do anything.

just compared to the other Dragon Age games you have an insanely loose control over what's happening in combat. in the first dragon age it was entirely about tactical strategy, using the right skills at the right time, having your characters placed exactly where you need them to be, doing exactly what you need them to do, and you had the controls to do that. Even with Dragon Age 2 combat was all about synergy between characters and their abilities, you had to actually get everyone to work together in different ways with different skills, and it had a large focus on crowd combat so character positioning for proper crowd control was important, and even if you don't have the same amount of total control as the first game is possible. Dragon Age 3 I haven't been able to use a strategy more complex than attack the closest enemy until they're all dead, because trying to get anything done is way too finicky, and your skills are much too samey or useless, Stuns and freezing and knock downs just aren't the table turner they were in previous games, they barely matter at all, and that's really how the entirety of combat felt anything I did barely mattered at all. <.<

TL;DR: Combat sucks.
*cries* The truth. DA:O was not a whack a mole game like the rest of the DA games are...which is a shame because I only buy stuff I really like...even if its a decade after launch for 5-10$ ><.