Dragon Age: Inquisition - Review Roundup # 3

The biggest disappointment for me so far is the outright removal of detailed AI tactics. You can no longer precisely program what you and your NPCs do in combat, you can only configure high level behaviors about how often abilities and potions are used.

For instance, there are no "tactic lines" anymore. You can't say, "Cast Fireball when 3 or more enemies are clustered together," or, "If the enemy is elite, use *this* ability instead of wasting it on a low-level enemy", etc…

Maybe this kind of logic is now automatic because of better programming of combat behaviors. Even if that's true, its still robbing the player of the satisfaction of using HIS strategies to get through combat.

I realize there is a full pause and tactical mode where you can detail exactly what you want your characters to do. But I don't want to do that in most combat situations. The great thing about details tactics was that it allowed you a middle ground where you could still have very fine control over combat, but still have the fast pace of real time.

Maybe I'll get over it as I play more, but I just feel like a major reason why I loved the Dragon Age games is gone.

Originally Posted by lackblogger
What I would like to address is the corrupt nature of the user reviews that are currently littering Metacritic.

The game was released on the 18th, that's today, and yet hundreds of people are writing user reviews… today.

Since the game has a minimum playtime, that of the main quest, which is going to be well above 35 hours even for a dedicated, distraction free, main quest barger, it's physically impossible for any of these early reviews to be in any way meaningful to anybody. And lo and behold, upon reading many of them, they are claiming 10/10 after 5 hours of gameplay or declaring 8/10 after the intro screen.

While the reverse is also true, that it's ludicrous for people to be voting 0/10 in such a short exposure window, the only valid reason why anyone would report on a final verdict on the game within a few hours would be because they hated it and stopped playing. I think perhaps therefore that people are rushing to depress any early negativity with pointless battling.

I haven't played DA:I yet (waiting a while for the initial bugs to get worked out), but I did swing by Metacritic. Those reviews are ridiculous.

The game gets a zero and the person complains that it is the worst game they've ever played. Why? Because they feel the hair looks fake and you can't click to move. Seriously? With DA2, at least there was running themes running through the bad reviews, and the flaws were glaring. So far, the DA:I reviews just seem to be nit-picking. I'm guessing many haven't even played the game - they just saw a trailer and are judging based on that.

I'm waiting to see what people's impressions are here on the board. I'm guessing the game will be imperfect but a fun game. Probably too many MMO characteristics for some, and not enough DA:O for others. The good news is that I've yet to see anything reviews mention anything that would strike me as a deal-breaker.

Metacritic has also become unreliable. Really, this site and a few others are the only useful ones to visit.

The law of big numbers should make metacritic reliable. At least that's what I always hope

That will only work if metacritic gets a much larger number of honest and competent critics vs trolls and shills.

Well, the 10s and the 0s should normally cancel each other out. At least that's the theory.

By the way someone had complained that you did not damage to your own team (friendly fire) but I am in the options right now and there is a setting for enabling/disabling friendly fire.

I wonder sometimes how many people just don't take the time to actually read things or look at options?

I believe someone saw a "video" stream of people playing and then made assumptions without actually playing the game.

These complaints worry me:
- "they very much tailored EVERYTHING to work better on the gamepad even on the PC"
- "Keyboard+mouse option was a last minute addition so on PC controls are awkward as hell"
- "Having said that, there are some serious issues with the PC controls. It seems like Bioware completely disregarded the PC version in favor of consoles. Some examples: you can't right click to automatically move to loot, interact with, or attack things. This seems like such a simple thing but it is really annoying. You also can't auto attack unless you're in tactical mode. Tactical mode itself has a lot of problems. For one, the zoom is really weird and it is very difficult to get an overview of the battle. When I was doing the first boss (Pride Demon), I had to switch to normal view just to click on the Rift. Also, being forced to use WASD instead of mouse scroll to look in tactical view is very awkward and clunky. Also, there's no key to select all party members at once. Another really strange thing is no ability tooltips on your action bar - if you want to know what a skill does during a fight, you have to open your skill menu and read it there.")
- "No longer can you click and move because that doesn't exist on consoles. If you click anywhere your character does their attack animation which is very long so you're sitting there wasting time. No longer can you click on loot to pick them up because that doesn't exist on consoles"
- "Is not a port, but it was clearly developed focusing on console when you look at the PC controls, it does not feel like previous Dragon Ages regarding that matter"

Originally Posted by abharsair
Well, the 10s and the 0s should normally cancel each other out. At least that's the theory.

I wouldn't count on it. It's bound to be skewed one way or another because the chance that the trolls and shills balance each out equally is very unlikely.

People (PC players) are not happy on Bio boards with controls:
http://forum.bioware.com/topic/52090…eed-attention/

Here's how the game just "worked" for me just now: I'm running around, camera over my shoulder, using WASD to move and pressing space to jump over rocks. I can't move move with left+right mouse buttons like other RPGs and the previous DA game, but it's at least semi functional.

I see an enemy up ahead. So I zoom out to enter tactical mode. Camera pulls straight up into a tree, and I can't see a thing but tree branches. I readjust the camera so the tree isn't blocking the view, but it still doesn't zoom out far enough to see the enemies, just half my party, cause the other half is too far away, just like the enemies are too far away.

So now, I have a tactical view of tree branches and two of my character's heads. Which would be great if I had two people in my party. And we were fighting a tree. But we're not.

So I pan around. Not with my mouse cursor, but with the second cursor. Yes, there's two entirely separate cursors, and the mouse cursor doesn't pan the screen around when you put it at the edge of the screen, only the second cursor moves the screen. And I have to use the keyboard to control the second cursor, but instead of being moved with the WASD keys, like virtually every game I've ever played (and Dragon Age), it's moved via QWES- totally backwards from the keys I was just moving around the world with.

So now I want to move some of my characters into position and attack. So I click on a portrait, and the game recenters the camera on that character, so I have to re-drag the camera back over to the enemies, via cursor # 2. And I'm going to have to do this all for every single character, after every single attack.

So anyways, I set it all up, and unpause it. But it doesn't unpause, because spacebar isn't pause like every other realtime+pause RPG since Baldur's Gate, it's another key. And not even something that makes sense, like for example, the button that puts you into tactical mode.

But whatever. There's a fight going on, and I press tab to switch targets. Does it switch targets? Nope. I switches which enemy I'm getting a tooltip for. So now I'm attacking one enemy, but getting targeting details for another. Which totally makes sense, right?

I'm switching between characters now, slowing working through the fight, and I want to know what one of the tanking abilities does. So I mouse over it. What info does the tooltip give? It doesn't tell me what the ability does, or how much damage it causes, or whether it's an AOE, or anything sensible. It tells me what the keybinding for it is. But that's already given right at the corner of the ability slot, always onscreen. So why on earth is that the only info the tooltip gives?

Ten minutes of camera adjusting and tree branch staring later, the fight ends. I click on the loot, but my characters don't go get it, I have to manually run over to each piece of loot. And since the game doesn't enter/exit tactical mode when combat starts/stops, I'm still in tactical mode, and the camera is still stuck in place. So my characters run off into the distance, while the camera stays stuck next to a tree.


Edit: Oh, and I keep shooting randomly while walking around inbetween fights. Because in tactical mode, right click is attack, and left click is select, but outside tactical mode, left click is attack and right click activates objects. And you can't change your mouse button's keybindings to fix any of this.

Edit2: And did I mention that you can't select multiple characters? No selecting your three ranged/DPS guys or your melee characters and pointing them all towards an enemy, you have to set each one up separately, readjusting the camera every single time.

Edit3: And did I mention that you can't zoom out far enough to see the rifts and close them? This is a central part of the game, and you can't do it in tactical mode.

That's 10/10 game per Escapist? Ten, my arse.

Umm, not good for us PC players…

Oh there's one more, even longer:
http://forum.bioware.com/topic/51851…upport-for-pc/

Starts with:

No auto-attack
No moving by pressing both left and right mouse button (since MB1 is attack)
Tac cam doesn't zoom out far enough.
Some actions restricted to tac cam view.
Press F to loot, but you have to click to 'take all'.
No option to walk.
Can't bind actions to mouse.
Menus are terrible. Need to be redesigned completely to look decent on PC.
-> Skill trees much too large and no option to zoom out. You have to scroll the view because it doesn't fit.
-> There are separate screens for everything. They should just make everything smaller so we get a good overview.
-> Using mouse scroll to go down a list selects different options.

And they're selling bloody horse armor DLC for *this*?
And PC reviewers are praising the game?
This is unbelievable.

My main problem I had with DA2 and which I hope is NOT repeated in DA:I is something entirely different.

In DA2's story I always had only answers I personally would NEVER have given. The 2-3 answer choices in DA2 often where waaaay off of anything I would say, or I thought would be reasonable to say. Same with many decisions. Often all the decisions I was presented with seemed artificially limited, where I had entirely different ideas, which simply DA2 did not offer.

The limitations in DA:O felt way more reasonable. Alistair and me where the only remaining Wardens, and there was a Blight and an Arch-Demon. That setting forced us to clear necessity. Same with the alliances we needed to forge to fight the Arch-Demon. I could help one of two Dwarf Candidates, and it made sense because we needed their help. By and large my answers where my own. I could express my faith in the maker, or as Dalish I could defy the Chantry.

Not so in DA2. Here decisions and replies where often streamlined down a certain path. I felt quite disconnected to Hawke, and he never was my alter ego the same way as the Warden, because so often I was stunned how far away from my ideas the answers and choices where.

This remained my Number One critique I had vs DA2. I wonder if anyone can mirror these impressions?


=====

Concerning the UI and controls: Bioware has more and more loved the scroll down and scroll sidewards UI which is console standard. (Ironically Bethesda copied that in Elder Scrolls Online!) It puts items not in easy to sort boxes, as is the norm for RPGs, so you can sort your stuff as you want, but all things appear is lists, which take a LOT more time to navigate and which you can not sort yourself. In that way a game is playable with console controls, but the PC mouse control is much more cumbersome. It's why I loathe consoles. Not in itself, but because their cumbersome controller forces games to a much slower UI navigation for PC users. >.<

Originally Posted by joxer
Oh there's one more, even longer:
http://forum.bioware.com/topic/51851…upport-for-pc/

Starts with:


And they're selling bloody horse armor DLC for *this*?
And PC reviewers are praising the game?
This is unbelievable.

And here begins the frothing at the mouth of joxer, long awaited(by some) dreaded by others….and predicted.

For once im glad that I got the console version first!

Originally Posted by rune_74
And here begins the frothing at the mouth of joxer, long awaited(by some) dreaded by others….and predicted.

He is right. DAI PC version is a mess. And that is without going into bad conversations, no way to be non-good and bad combat, removal of RPG elements like assigning attributes and 85% of game filled with MMO quests.

Originally Posted by abharsair
Well, the 10s and the 0s should normally cancel each other out. At least that's the theory.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
I wouldn't count on it. It's bound to be skewed one way or another because the chance that the trolls and shills balance each out equally is very unlikely.

Best approach would be to just ignore all 10s and 0s and to calculate the average score with the spare scores only. So we need a Metametacritic site.

Yes, good idea. But now that I think of it. Even if trolls and shills were perfectly balanced, and voluminous, then the bogus average (5) could overwhelm the "correct" average from honest scorers. A game that should deserve an 8 might be stuck at 5, for example.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Yes, good idea. But now that I think of it. Even if trolls and shills were perfectly balanced, and voluminous, then the bogus average (5) could overwhelm the "correct" average from honest scorers. A game that should deserve an 8 might be stuck at 5, for example.

Some game that does deserve an 8 might. This is not that game.

I have no idea, but am beginning to form a JUDEGMENT!