DA:Inquisition - Another Game of The Year Award

Venture Beat has awarded DA:Inquisition another Game of The Year Award. So I guess congratulations Bioware as this makes I don't know how many awards.

Here are the details form the website.

For its many compelling moments, its depth of choice and consequence, its welcome and colorful personalities, and its willingness to let you experience a fantastical world on the brink of calamity on your own terms, Dragon Age: Inquisition is the GamesBeat 2014 Game of the Year.

More information.

I really don't get it. While my opinion might change later in the game right now this is definitely NOT game of the year; not even close. I would rate it somewhere between a 6 and 7 (wasteland 2 was a 7 for me and dinviity 8; banner saga 8.5 and dragon fall director somewhere in the 7.5 8.5 range).
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Heck I thought wolfenstein game was a better rpg than DA:I.
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Anyways as I said my view might change but so far this game has a lot of issues both technically and structure. I never felt like this with DA:O or DA2 (DA2 had crappy maps and reused maps but it wasn't this confusing of a mess nor did it have these tehcnical issues). DA:O only flaw (imho) was combat and weak but ok maps.
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Ok so what do I dislike abuot DA:I - technical - slow as a dog (load times); I don't care if it is due to DRM, texture or whatever it still takes forever to do loads and I have a decent system with decent disks. the @(#)*@()# keys on the keyboard and right button on the mouse constant remap to other functions while playing. I have no freaking clue why but i'll be in combat and all of a sudden the right button will stop attacking and switch to some other context function. I've had the escape key swith into open console command and then I can't exit those devices used to see shards and I've had the journal fall into a cpu loop that require task manager to escape.
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From a story perspective about the only thing that really makes sense so far is that we are trying to figure out if the chantry leader is still alive and the mages/templar are still creating havock against each other - oh and the wardens are a mysteries.
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The rest of it just feels like filler - pointless filler. Oh and there is a side issue of what is going on with the elves.
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Anyways I haven't finish yet and I will probably finish if i don't grow old waiting for loads but this game is really not that great IMHO.
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On the bright side child of light is only $6 so I might give that a try afterwards - i hear it is decent but short.

Originally Posted by you
I really don't get it. While my opinion might change later in the game right now this is definitely NOT game of the year; not even close. I would rate it somewhere between a 6 and 7 (wasteland 2 was a 7 for me and dinviity 8; banner saga 8.5 and dragon fall director somewhere in the 7.5 8.5 range).
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Heck I thought wolfenstein game was a better rpg than DA:I.
-
Anyways as I said my view might change but so far this game has a lot of issues both technically and structure. I never felt like this with DA:O or DA2 (DA2 had crappy maps and reused maps but it wasn't this confusing of a mess nor did it have these tehcnical issues). DA:O only flaw (imho) was combat and weak but ok maps.
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Ok so what do I dislike abuot DA:I - technical - slow of a dog (load times); I don't care if it is due to DRM, texture or whatever it still takes forever to do loads and I have a decent system with decent disks. the @(#)*@()# keys on the keyboard and right button on the mouse constant remap to other functions while playing. I have no freaking clue why but i'll be in combat and all of a sudden the right button will stop attacking and switch to some other context function. I've had the escape key swith into open console command and then I can't exit those devices used to see shards and I've had the journal fall into a cpu loop that require task manager to escape.
-
From a story perspective about the only thing that really makes sense so far is that we are trying to figure out if the chantry leader is still alive and the mages/templar are still creating havock against each other - oh and the wardens are a mysteries.
-
The rest of it just feels like filler - pointless filler. Oh and there is a side issue of what is going on with the elves.
-
Anyways I haven't finish yet and I will probably finish if i don't grow old waiting for loads but this game is really not that great IMHO.
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On the bright side child of light is only $6 so I might give that a try afterwards - i hear it is decent but short.

Sounds to me your issues with DA:I have more to do with a slow, outdated rig and user error.

Well user error is kind of broad; perhaps you could narrow. As for 'outdated rig' I've not played a game with issues in the past 3 years and several of them are quite intensive (metro last night; wolfenstein, far cry 3/4, …) so it there might be newer options but I'm not sure it can be classified as 'outdated'. For the record it is a 4ghz I5 and 7950 with medium range ssd and 7200rpm disk; since the actual graphic rendering is fine i doubt it is the 7950; and the difference in performance between stock haswel i7 and overclocked sandbridge I5 is measurable it is not that signficiant but since you seem to be the expert I will take your word that it must be the outdated hardware; though I'm not about to upgrade it for the sake of a extremely poorly written game.
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conversely you might just be clueless - perhaps if you could add more details it I might feel you actually know what you are talking about but for now I have to assume you don't.
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In an attempt to be fair to the above poster; I went to bioware forum to see which user mistakes I was making and all I can find are complaints similar to mine (and others) SO since the above poster is aware that I am making user mistakes can they please be helpful instead of snotty and explain the mistakes and how to fix ?

Originally Posted by you
Well user error is kind of broad; perhaps you could narrow. As for 'outdated rig' I've not played a game with issues in the past 3 years and several of them are quite intensive (metro last night; wolfenstein, far cry 3/4, …) so it there might be newer options but I'm not sure it can be classified as 'outdated'. For the record it is a 4ghz I5 and 7950 with medium range ssd and 7200rpm disk; since the actual graphic rendering is fine i doubt it is the 7950; and the difference in performance between stock haswel i7 and overclocked sandbridge I5 is measurable it is not that signficiant but since you seem to be the expert I will take your word that it must be the outdated hardware; though I'm not about to upgrade it for the sake of a extremely poorly written game.
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conversely you might just be clueless - perhaps if you could add more details it I might feel you actually know what you are talking about but for now I have to assume you don't.
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In an attempt to be fair to the above poster; I went to bioware forum to see which user mistakes I was making and all I can find are complaints similar to mine (and others) SO since the above poster is aware that I am making user mistakes can they please be helpful instead of snotty and explain the mistakes and how to fix ?

Sorry you're having tech issues. I'm using an outdated GTX 670, SSD on an i7 X79 board and I'm not having any excessive loading times, or really any performance issues at all. I've crashed once in over 100 hours.

There are a lot of loading screens tho, unnecessarily-long hallways before doors (preloading), etc, but I'd think that has to do with having to be optimized for consoles. Reminds me a lot of the first Mass Effect game, minus the elevators.

Originally Posted by you
For the record it is a 4ghz I5 and 7950 with medium range ssd and 7200rpm disk; since the actual graphic rendering is fine i doubt it is the 7950; and the difference in performance between stock haswel i7 and overclocked sandbridge I5 is measurable it is not that signficiant

I'm surprised you're having issues, but I will say that video RAM and clock speed does seem to make a huge difference with this game. I started playing on a slightly OC'd 7850 and upgraded to a 970 GTX (for this and for Far Cry 4) and the loading times were substantially better.

I think it is taking the engine a long time to paint in the landscape and fauna, which is also why the game does that weird thing occasionally of dropping your characters into the scene right after load… which, to be honest, looks kind of buggy. So, I think the game is definitely not optimized currently and could possibly be improved with some patching. I think they pushed the Frostbite engine pretty hard (maybe too hard), as it's primarily an FPS engine.

That said, your 7950 is a solid card by today's standpoint (running even with a 970 in some tests) and should perform well. And you have an SSD…. So, not sure what the problem would be. My performance since upgrading has been excellent. Load times are fine. Game is pushed out to max settings and running at a solid 40 - 45 FPS, which is great for a game like this. What resolution are you playing at? I'm playing at 1080p currently.

That game IMO does not deserve GOTY - on PC.
On consoles among mediocrity crap it might be the best thing this year. On PC, it had a proper competitors.

What really matters here is that it's RPG. Good or bad, who cares. Whenever GOTY goes to RPG, no matter which one, it's actually good news. We win.
Yes I wish it was D:OS, TSoT or another one, but well… EA had more cash for grease.

I'm having similar issue to you as well. loading time is painfully slow, I lag a lot after hour or so into game, I have to restart my PC otherwise the game will eventually crash. Sometimes loading zone is slow, I fell into some empty pit in sky hold so many times XD lucky I quick save a lot. I play skyrim with fairly high graphics detail with no probs but I've put down graphics to worst in DA:I and still lags like hell.

But you, I can tell you things do pick up after yiu arrive at skyhold, well, at least for me it did. There are so much to do, I'm exhausted, and some interesting things are keeping me going.

I have not yet reach skyhold so I should wait before judging the game. The long load I speak of are the ones during world travel. Walking a zone is fairly quick.

So far I'm loving the game, but I do agree that it has some issues.

The loading thing is a minor issue for me. Initial game loading is sometimes nearly two minutes, which is frustrating. Though once in game it runs great.

My biggest issue with the game is the PC controls, which are irritating, especially when trying to use tactical mode. With a controller it works fine. I hear they may be fixing it, so I guess we'll see.

Love the characters, dialogue and story though.

I experience what I would consider long load times on DA:I, but once an area is loaded I am not having performance issues. It can take over a minute to load an area, and I do not enjoy waiting all of that time (it adds up), but the game is great and worth the wait in my view. And worth the GOTY awards, as well.

I will say that the game becomes a bit lackluster after many 20-30 hours, when I was staying in a certain early area which had a whole lot of side quests. I then read advice to quit out of that area and advance the main storyline, and then the story picks up and the side quests become more interesting. I'm up to 120 hours and enjoying every minute, with probably another 80 hours to go.

I have some longer loading times too, especially the initial load of the game into the Hinterlands . After that it's close to 20 seconds depending on how large the area is. I've CTD'd a few times for no reason and not while in combat. Mainly it was when I went from standing around town or in the wilds and then clicking my inventory or character screen hotkey. Unfortunately the Frostbite engine isn't really known for it's optimization.

There is a lot of filler, it's everywhere. Sometimes it's nice to just jump in and do a few quick quests to feel like you've accomplished something and other times the lines and lines of quests in my journal are irritating because I can't find what I'm looking for.

GOTY? I don't know yet. After 12 hours I like it but I don't looooove it.

Originally Posted by NFLed
I was staying in a certain early area which had a whole lot of side quests. I then read advice to quit out of that area and advance the main storyline, and then the story picks up and the side quests become more interesting. I'm up to 120 hours and enjoying every minute, with probably another 80 hours to go.

Yeah have to get out of the first area and start exploring and doing main mission stuff and the game really picks up. I was also fairly neutral at first but once things got going I got hooked on it. I'm close to 100 hours now and nearing completion. And I'm already planning my next character.

It's a great game, but it probably should have been about half the size. As it is, it's still a GOTY contender for me though, which is impressive considering how much I disliked some of the random filler stuff.