DA:Inquisition - In Praise Of Long Games

Couchpotato

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Frobes has a new article from Contributor Dave Thier who praises DA:Inquisition for its huge open world, and game length. I agree with him but what about all of you?

The game has been criticized for being too long, but I think that the length is exactly what makes this game so successful. Dragon Age is a silly game in a lot of ways. The villain is basically a stick figure with an angry face painted on it. Neither the world nor the characters are as engaging as other recent fantasy epics like Skyrim or Divinity: Original Sin, or Bioware’s other major franchise, Mass Effect. The combat is fine, mostly, but far from exceptional. It does what it needs to do in a workmanlike and competent fashion. But it’s this sprawling, unmanageable structure that gives it the feeling of completeness, lulling you into that rare spot where you actually feel like you can live in a different world. You come to know the characters not like you would your closest friends, but like you would your co-workers: the intimacy that comes with just sort of being there, all the time.
More information.
 
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When I started playing the game I rated it 7/10. After 55 hrs I would give it 8.5/10. Strong points for me are the characters and the story is also not too bad. I kind of enjoy the openness and exploration but the collect 10 of this and 1000 of that is sort of wearing on me now. The only "quest" parts I really enjoy is the main plot and the character parts. I have sort of gotten used to how combat is played out. I mostly ignore what my companions do and just try to utilise my own skills optimally, its just too fast paced for me to micromanage them too.

The length of the game is obviously kind of overinflated by all the collection quests which would drive any rpg vet kind of crazy as we all have some minor form of ocd where we need to complete everything. I am however enjoying the length of time I have spent despite all the lite quest content. The game is beatiful so its still nice to run around and see the environment while youre picking up 100 elfroots.
 
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In my opinion DA: Inquisition is a superficial game. The main quest is good. There is only one real main divergence in the way things pan out, and that is a big failure. They said it was going to have multiple significant choices, yet there only feels or appears to be one important choice.

The length of the main quest is fine. If you want to hang around for the other pointless quests, you can. But without any real depth to character progression or variety of character development, I have found no point to hang around. I enjoyed the crafting.

It is a beautiful game, but the depth of a true RPG is not there.
If I had a choice between Wizardry 8, and DA:Inquisition, I would choose Wizardry 8 due to the many options of classes and class and character development.

DA:Inquisition is a reasonable start at a good RPG, with good graphics, sounds, with reasonable optional inner circle character stories, and a reasonable crafting system. The trouble is that class development and ways to play are not deep or varied enough to make a "Good" RPG.

Given time, and a lot of add-on / DLCs, it might come good on that aspect.

But that is only my opinion.

Also, I find it interesting how everything is pretty.... In a world like that, things are dirty, and gritty... more like the Witcher's world I would think.
 
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DA: Inquisition is a very good game.
But some game elements just get repetitive (closing rifts, finding shards, broken fragments,…) after 70 hours.

It doesn't help that combat is way too easy - I'm playing on hard and I never had to use the tactical combat interface even once. Auto-leveling of stats is also an absolute no-go for a true CRPG fan.

Dragon Age: Inquisition still feels like a well made single player MMO Adventure for me. Great story and exploring and some unique characters, but some design decisions are just … awesome-button-like ;)
 
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I haven't read the article, but I think it's a fantastic game - though I'm not done with it.

It's vast and open - but a lot of the collection stuff is completely optional, which is why I can't see it as an issue. It's there to give you extra reasons to explore and stay in favorite areas.

I understand why such a thing could be seen as "shallow" to people who feel compelled to do everything (OCD) - but to people who're capable of skipping it - the game is still at least 40-50 hours of primary non-filler content.

How can that be a bad thing, if the content is good? I don't really understand people sometimes.

Is it perfect? Most definitely not. The combat is kinda awkward, the UI is pretty bad, the crafting is extremely fiddly, and there's plenty of over-the-top Bioware characters.

That said, I think the writing is much better than DA2 - and some of the best I've seen from Bioware, though that's not saying much, as I'm not a big fan of their style. But it's at least on par with the first Mass Effect - which I quite liked.
 
I still don't understand why so many of you thinks DA:I is a good game. I'm just not having much fun with it.

I haven't done much crafting because it just doesn't seem fun in DA:I. I much preferred BG2 (finding pieces to build legendary items) or MotB (rename items and choose attributes).

Main quests were interesting so far, but you just can't avoid filler quests/combats because of respawns and in order to gain "power" to unlock new quests. I don't like adviser system as well, you just randomly assign them for some tasks and log off. I know rewards differ depending on your choice of adviser for each mission, but I don't think it makes huge difference to game in general.

And ofcourse, there's the superficial C&C.... I don't think much of your choices actually do make that much difference from what I've read.

Still, I think it's good enough game to play through once. I don't think I will be keen on replay.

I still haven't finished the game because I'm crazy busy with work until by end of March....
 
Why… I guess we're comparing it with DA2.
While good, I don't think it's the best game that came out last year and stated it many times. The major reason I can't consider DA3 in top3 RPGs last year is exactly those shitte respawns.

Advisor system is probably copypasted Dungeon Keeper phonecrap stuff. Felt like it was supposed to be microtranstactions thing where EA eventually postponed the game to remove pay2win part and avoid raging community. But that disbalanced power as everyone will finish the game with hundreds of unused power. And rewards do depend on advisor asigned, but there are also mission chains that depend on what you do in the actual DA3 world. Also, every inquisitor race has it's specific missions.

If you're not after killing dragons, IMO you can completely skip crafting. At least till the ending mission.
But if you want to kill those dragons easily, crafting is of the uttermost importance. The loot you'll get from dead dragons is better than anything you can craft, however crafted stuff can be better than equipment you'll find while exploring. I like that system.

And I want to replay the game. But only if and when endless respawns are stopped.
 
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I thought the main quest could have used some work. Also it is hard for me to put my finger on it but it really didn't work for myself - I thought the combat was utterly lame and didnt' really require much umph from the player. The interactions were mostly decent and there were a few really good moments like the bit about the book but overall I was glad to be finished and cant' really see myself replaying. Having said that i did not find it nearly as grindy as a few other games so something must have been ok soemwhere but whatever.
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Btw I'm not a fan of kindom of almur (sp) which a lot of people compare to DA:I.
 
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Comparing DA3 to Amalur is unfair. But not surprising because of a certain glitch.
Amalur is designed to respawn not only trashmobs but also trashchests with loot endlessly.

While mobs do respawn constantly, DA3 doesn't respawn chestloot per design - it's an abuse of a bug (if you leave just one item in a chest, the engine will respawn all items inside on area transition). Dunno if this bug is fixed yet.
 
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Neither the world nor the characters are as engaging as other recent fantasy epics like Skyrim or Divinity: Original Sin, or Bioware’s other major franchise, Mass Effect.
I disagree, especially in case of Skyrim. Skyrim (and TES games in general) have some of the most shallow 'cardboard characters' I have ever seen in an RPG. Comparing DA:I characters with those of Skyrim is absurd.

As far as item collecting goes, it is a good excuse for exploration, so I actually enjoy them.


I was very skeptical of DA:I at first, but after playing it for 85 hours, I am very satisfied with my overall experience. The game has two major failures: the PC controls and the tactical camera are a nightmare to behold, especially at the beginning when the tactical combat has not been introduced and your only option is to hold down the left mouse button.

The second huge flaw is its RPG system. It is needlessly streamlined (dumbed down, in fact). Especially considering the fact that the attributes are there, but you can't alter them directly. It takes away my control over the character. The skill trees are broken too, because unrelated skills are arranged in the same branches, meaning that I MUST pick an irrelevant skill in order to be able to pick a skill that I need for my character build.

Other than that, it is a very enjoyable game (at least for me). The exploration is its best feature, but the characters are also better than previous BioWare games (especially DA2 and ME). The dialog has also improved over DA2 and ME games, and although I still miss DA:O's attribute/skill based dialog options, DA:I's perk based dialog options are the second best thing.

P.S.
I'm half way through the game and I have started to feel that bad feeling again: when you are doing something really enjoyable and you know it is going to end soon, and you don't want it to.
 
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I am almost at the very end of the game, and I enjoy it a whole lot.

Freedom of choice is at work here, and I am all for that.

1) Choice A = short or medium-sized game
2) Choice B = medium-sized game which has a whole lot of optional areas which could make the game long or very long such as DA:I

Why on earth would I choose anything but #2? Just ignore the optional stuff for those who want a medium-sized game.

Personally, I have done just about everything within the game, 150 hours, but I could certainly understand those who want only a 50 hour game and skip much of the optional content.
 
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Yeah, I've chosen to ignore the optional areas as much as possible for now, since I am going into Wicked Hearts, Wicked Minds at level 15 now. Crafted more goodies since the Fade and I am probably now over powered even without gaining more XP, etc…

Leaving things undone totally goes against my completionist nature. Which does goad me sometimes. So, maybe I should complete more of the inner circle quests before progressing the main plot? I'd hate those to be disabled because I went to far in the main plot. All dragons are still untouched.
 
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Thrasher, not sure if this helps, but I have a bit of the OCD/completionist mentality at times as well, and what I find helps me is if I just try my hardest to forget about it and focus on the fun factor I'm having with the game. If I want to explore everything, I do, but if I want to advance the main quest and feel I'm getting a bit bored being a completionist, then I advance the main quest and don't look back. Try to keep in mind that all these things will be there for a possible future playthrough, and you're more focused on having the maximum fun you can with the game right now, rather than just being a completionist for the sake of having an obsessive desire to be one. Hope that helps. :)
 
I too have the OCD issue a bit, but fortunately I will stop something if I'm not enjoying it. I agree with the approach of focusing on fun, if something becomes unfun (such as trying to complete sub-quests) then moving on seems like a good approach.
 
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Well, getting past DA in particular and long games in general….

Yeah, I definitely like long games way more than short ones. In fact, I like long books more than short books, too. Heck, I'll even take a symphony over a short song. The reason is the same every time: more time means more room to develop more complex content. Long games can really flesh out the world by explaining the culture(s), getting deeper into why characters act like they do, explaining why the magic works the way it does, and so on. If you took a 60 hour RPG and split it up into three 20 hour RPGs you could no longer do that simply because you would be spending so much time in the last installment trying to explain what's going on to the people that don't remember (or never played) what went before.

I can see why a lot of people are complaining, though. They're used to games that take 20 hours and, because they only play a few hours on the weekends, a long game like DA:I is going to take them so long that they'll start forgetting the early parts of the game before they get to the end of it! Others games will come out that they want to play, too, but they are "stuck in" DA:I because they know how hard it will be to pick up again.
 
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The thing is I am not getting bored by doing the side quests, in fact I like them. But I don't want to be overlevelled for the main quest. A bit of a conundrum I've never faced before in gaming.
 
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Hmm, interesting. Well, if you're having fun, keep doing what you're doing, but that definitely is a sticky situation. I would probably try to advance the main story a bit, then do some side questing again, and try to balance the story progression with the side exploration as best as I could. Good luck! :)
 
I disagree, especially in case of Skyrim. Skyrim (and TES games in general) have some of the most shallow 'cardboard characters' I have ever seen in an RPG. Comparing DA:I characters with those of Skyrim is absurd.

Neither the world nor the characters are as engaging as other recent fantasy epics like Skyrim or Divinity: Original Sin, or Bioware’s other major franchise, Mass Effect.

I'm pretty sure he was referring to world when he said Skyrim is more engaging than DA:I :biggrin:

And I personally agree with the author. I don't see what's the big fuss about exploration in DA:I. It is definitely more limited than TES games. So many areas you are forbidden to explore.... ;) So many times, I think I can climb that rock but nope! Have to go a long way around~

The exploration is its best feature, but the characters are also better than previous BioWare games (especially DA2 and ME). The dialog has also improved over DA2 and ME games, and although I still miss DA:O's attribute/skill based dialog options, DA:I's perk based dialog options are the second best thing.

Everyone will have different opinion but I think characters were better in ME than DA:I. I just don't have any attachment to most of characters in DA:I. I find Josephine very interesting, but she really doesn't talk that much after her personal quests are done. I was severely disappointed with Cullen. He is the character I was interested in from DA:O and really liked his development throughout trilogy, but you just don't get to talk to him enough. (I just happened to like advisers more than companions! WHY LESS DIALOGUES FOR ADVISERS?!)

/end rant.
 
Reading reviews about this shortly after it's release, all I was hearing is how bad this game sucks on PC. Is that still the case, or have they patched it and fixed the reportedly terrible control problems?
 
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It is still awkward, but you get used to it after a while, and it's entirely playable. The mouse is contextual, so you have to be careful over what it's hovering for the other controls to work properly. Clumsy. No z-axis explicit (i.e. zoom) controls. They did add a run/walk button so that helps in crowded taverns and short ledges. Don't know if they fixed the journal crashing the game if you use mouse clicks to navigate. Haven't braved trying. :)
 
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