The Director's DA: Inquisition Review

Dragon Age: Inquisition

A Review By

The Director

Before I begin with DA:I I am going to give you my opinions of other releases in the Dragon Age series. I greatly enjoyed Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age Awakening. Origins played amazingly and had an interesting and in-depth story that gripped a player to the very end. It also had a massive amount of replay value, as nearly every choice you made changed the outcome of the story in one way or another. Dragon Age Awakening is to this day still considered the best DLC of all time by many who've played it. Then came Dragon Age 2, which was highly anticipated but fell short of expectations. To me it felt like a very, very limited version of Dragon Age Awakening even though it was supposed to be a full sequel. So I was understandably trepidatious about Dragon Age: Inquisition when it was first announced. So all that said, let's get to the review!

Dragon Age: Inquisition was awesome. The main storyline is interesting and intricate, offering players a plethora of choices that effect the ending of the game. Some of the choices are obvious, but others are rather subtle and easy to miss how they effect the story. The side quests range from short and sweet to long and drawn out, and some even feel like main storyline quests. The primary storyline takes about 40+ hours to complete, but trying for 100% quest completion will easily make it past the 100 hour mark.

The replay value of this game is great as well, for the same reasons that Origin's was great. Multiple character species, different storylines, etc.

It also has a multiplayer, and it's better than you'd think it was. The multiplayer gets a little bland, but the unlocks and such keep it entertaining.

The only detractors I can think of is that you get locked into some choices that are messed up and there's no way to prevent them from happening, the storyline is a bit predictable at a certain point, and there are blatant political statements left and right. Looking past those is really easy though.

Overall, I would have to say that Dragon Age: Inquisition is what I was personally expecting out of Dragon Age 2. It feels like a more 'grown up' Dragon Age: Origins. Better late than never.

Rating: 9/10

Hopes for the Future: I would like to see some awesome DLC for this game. I hope they spend most of their time on DLC for the single player, but give a little bit of time to the multiplayer to keep it interesting for those who play it.

A question.....

What about the side missions?

That is the meat of Dragon age inquisition, there is only so many times you can interact with the characters until your forced to go back our of Skyhold/Haven and do side quests ( to do the next main story mission or just for fun )

Problem is most of the side quests are bland and boring like, Go get my durfflo or go here and find something, go here kill a boss.

Problem is there is no dialogue options in these side quests so it turns into a grind of boring missions really fast.

I played Dragon inqusion side quests the other day for around three and a half hours and yes I was not in the Hinterlands. Not once during that three and a half hours did I ever get one dialogue option.

Problem is when I do in other side quests I only get two, to do the quest or not.

You could argue Origins did the same thing, true but Origins had depth. For example.

I think there was mission where a man tells you to go look for his son, once again two options to do the quest or not.

You go look for the son and find him, tell him to come home and he does after only briefly explaining why he ran away.

Go back to the man and get a power point.

Here is an example of a similar Origins quest.

A mother tells you to go find her son in the deep roads. There are many options available such as asking for a reward first. After choosing your response you can choose to go or not.

If you do you find her son in the deep roads who has become a Golum like creature who while in the Deep roads killed his friend by accident rather than face trial he fled into the Deep roads and everyone presumed him and his friend with victims of a Darkspawn attack, after many years of living in the deep roads he ate darkspawn, and that blood slowly corrupted his mind,  several options are presented to end the quest.

Mercy kill him and tell his mother

Mercy kill him and tell his mother he died a hero

Lie to his mother and say you never found him

Keep him alive and tell no one

Keep him alive and tell him mother

Five different ways of ending a small side quest, now that depth Inqusion does not have, it needs to remember its not a Skyrim clone its a Bioware rpg.

 

A question.....

 

What about the side missions?

 

That is the meat of Dragon age inquisition, there is only so many times you can interact with the characters until your forced to go back our of Skyhold/Haven and do side quests ( to do the next main story mission or just for fun )

 

Problem is most of the side quests are bland and boring like, Go get my durfflo or go here and find something, go here kill a boss.

 

Problem is there is no dialogue options in these side quests so it turns into a grind of boring missions really fast.

 

I played Dragon inqusion side quests the other day for around three and a half hours and yes I was not in the Hinterlands. Not once during that three and a half hours did I ever get one dialogue option.

 

Problem is when I do in other side quests I only get two, to do the quest or not.

 

You could argue Origins did the same thing, true but Origins had depth. For example.

 

I think there was mission where a man tells you to go look for his son, once again two options to do the quest or not.

You go look for the son and find him, tell him to come home and he does after only briefly explaining why he ran away.

Go back to the man and get a power point.

 

Here is an example of a similar Origins quest.

 

A mother tells you to go find her son in the deep roads. There are many options available such as asking for a reward first. After choosing your response you can choose to go or not.

 

If you do you find her son in the deep roads who has become a Golum like creature who while in the Deep roads killed his friend by accident rather than face trial he fled into the Deep roads and everyone presumed him and his friend with victims of a Darkspawn attack, after many years of living in the deep roads he ate darkspawn, and that blood slowly corrupted his mind,  several options are presented to end the quest.

 

Mercy kill him and tell his mother

Mercy kill him and tell his mother he died a hero

Lie to his mother and say you never found him

Keep him alive and tell no one

Keep him alive and tell him mother

 

Five different ways of ending a small side quest, now that depth Inqusion does not have, it needs to remember its not a Skyrim clone its a Bioware rpg.

 

Okay, firstly, the quest you're mentioning in Dragon Age Inquisition you're way off. The quest is called Shallow Breaths and was actually that the guys kid had joined the cult, which believed that the Maker had forsaken the world and were attempting to regain his favor with praise or somesuch, and the guy's wife was having a relapse with her breathing disorder. What he asked you to do was to find him and get the potion he used to make for his mother.

When you finally track the kid down he explains that he didn't think it would be a problem because his mother had not had that issue in a very long time. He then gives you not only the potion and the recipe for it. You then give the potion to his father SO HIS WIFE DOESN'T DIE.

And that's just one quest.

There were dozens of side quests that were very detailed and had back stories to them. I can think of two that were very similar to quests in Dragon Age: Origins. 

The Ballad of Lord Woolsley and The Mercenary Fortress/Deep Trouble.

In The Ballad of Lord Woolsley a man in Redcliffe asks you to find his ram. Pretty easy to do because it's very, very differently colored from other rams. Also, he says that the Ram has given his family advice for generations. It sounds like he's crazy, but then you go find the ram. Now, the game doesn't tell you this, but you actually have two options here. You can just walk near the ram and tell it to go home and it does. Or, you can attack the ram. If you attack the ram, it transforms into a Rage Demon. After killing Lord Woolsley, the quest ends saying the owner 'must never know'. This is an example of a quest with a very subtle extra story that made Dragon Age Origins a classic.

The Mercenary Fortress/Deep Trouble are two separate quests that are literally tied together. You wander along the road and a scout tells you to watch out for some very odd bandits. You fight your way through them and find orders from their boss and go to their 'fortress'. You find out along the way that the bandits were actually mercenaries hired by a Dwarven Carta to keep refugees and your own forces away from their Red Lyrium mining operation. Thus begins Deep Trouble, where you find some old Dwarven Ruins and a nice little Carta that you have to fight through. You find out that they've been monitoring you as well as mining red lyrium all over the place. You also have your (potentially) first encounter with the darkspawn in the game, and a vault full of goodies.

Seriously, there are dozens of quests as good if not better than these two, but the thing is you have to actually EXPLORE THE WORLD to find them. Just like in Dragon Age Origins, they don't throw themselves at you. YOU DO NOT SEE THE DEPTH OF THE GAME IF YOU STAY IN THE KIDDIE POOL PART OF THE GAME.

^

Well how about this?

I played Dragon age inqustistion for about three and a half hours ( only side missions ) and no it wasn't just the Hinterlands, but not once did I see any dialogue options besides. "I will do the job" or "I will not do the job" the side missions are grindy and serve no purpose besides advancing the story.

The story missions are the only real good missions to be honest where you have actual character interaction, you get to make choices and you have cinematic camera that is absent everywhere else.

^

Well how about this?

 

I played Dragon age inqustistion for about three and a half hours ( only side missions ) and no it wasn't just the Hinterlands, but not once did I see any dialogue options besides. "I will do the job" or "I will not do the job" the side missions are grindy and serve no purpose besides advancing the story.

 

The story missions are the only real good missions to be honest where you have actual character interaction, you get to make choices and you have cinematic camera that is absent everywhere else.

You must have been pressing the skip button then because only the mundane side quests don't allow additional dialogue. There are those in Dragon Age Origins as well.

Also, you seem to be confusing what side quests are. Side quests are nonmandatory quests that you can do for extra experience points, money, or gear. The ones you have to do for the storyline are main quests or 'subquests'. At the beginning of the game these are usually 'fetch quests', quests that require you to go find something/someone and bring something/someone back somewhere.

In Dragon Age games side quests tend to start out dull/easy (i.e. find me some trap components, kill some bears, find the kid's mom's body, etc all from DA: Origins) and then get more complex and allow you to question the person giving you the quest to find out more information.

A good example of this in Dragon Age: Inquisition is the Lord Woolsley quest which allows you to question the guy giving you the quest because he sounds crazy. Most of the quests given by NPC's allow you to ask the NPC a couple of questions to get more background about the nature of the quest. The only ones I can think of that don't are the ones at the beginning of the game which primarily serve as a tutorial. 

As far as why you didn't see any, well I simply don't know. I'm the type of RPG player that looks in every nook and cranny, so it's possible I got side quests that you didn't get. Which is the nature of this type of game, as well.

What I mean by two options is.....

Go up to the quest giver and he will explain his problem, in some side quests you may have the option to inquire more. Once that is done then choose to accept the quest ( even if you don't want to for some reason or another )

It is quite rare for side quests to have different endings, in contrast to Origins that had side missions that has many different endings and had different ways to start the quest.

Dragon age inquisition side quests also lack depth in dialogue, because your character is voiced, when your character wasn't voice you had lots of depth simply because your character was not voiced, so no auto dialogue.

Like for example you inquire more in Dao the mother sais, he went missing you can respond in different ways such as....

Are you sure he is still alive?

This is a waste of my time  

I will go look for him right away

Sure it gets you to roughly the same outcome but it gives the quests depth.

It also does not help that Dai LACK THE CINAMATIC CAMARA!

So basically your complaint is that they don't have the cinematic camera in every interaction and they don't pretend to have more options than are actually there? Honestly I prefer the way it is in Dragon Age Inquisition because it feels more immersive to me. Being able to look around while talking to someone is something you can do in real life, so why not be able to do it in a video game as well?

As far as your complaint against a voiced main character, in my (and quite a few other's) opinion the 'strong and silent' type of main character has been done to death. Pretty sure it makes up over 75% of RPG's that are out there.

I also fail to see how SUBTRACTING a voice can ADD to the 'depth of dialogue'. Kind of opposing thoughts there. What you are saying is that by having scripted lines (which the non-voiced characters also had) with emotions, words, and actions it somehow detracts from the depth of the conversation. You might as well get mad because someone added 1 and 3 together and came up with four when you think they should have come up with 2.

The NPC's still have the same reactions to what you choose to say and still have as much depth as they did in Origins, but now instead of it being a one sided conversation your character actually participates in it.