The game will be released on November 18th so I hope that giving suggestions isn't too late by now. You guys are probably just fixing bugs and polishing it at this point in time. I doubt that you'll actually add content / features, or do any significant changes, but do correct me if I'm wrong (it surely just depends on what is being suggested, of course). Well actually this isn't exactly a suggestion per say (well, it could be, potentially), because I simply don't know if there's already such an option in the game. But we never know, so it could potentially be considered a suggestion if it had not been considered by the development team.
So...
I've been playing Skyrim lately, it's my first full "completionist" playthrough (I played Skyrim before, but none of my games-in-progress ever got past level 10 because I couldn't stop modding it, yeah, first world problem). I love exploring Skyrim, it's big and the physical size of the map is certainly part of the game's content. I mean that exploring and discovering locations and treasures is just as vital content as doing scripted quests. I'm certain that DA:I won't be different.
I had a problem, however, in my current Skyrim playthrough: Point of Interests.
I find that, usually, they're not exactly "interesting".
It's a problem to a certain extent. In terms of immersion it's a big no no in my book (but, yeah, that's subjective). I know, of course, that if there were no POIs at all that I would actually get bored after some time exploring "aimlessly", without direction, especially in such a sizable game. I remember the very first time I got out of the sewers in Oblivion (anyone else remember that?), facing the mountains on the horizon, and the ruins just the other side of the lake in front of me... my mind was blown away thinking "holy mother of mercy, I have this world for me, where do I start this...". It's kind of intimidating, until of course you realize that there's 50% exploration, and 50% direction. You approach a ruin, temple, shrine, abandoned farm... anything that happens to be a location that will pop-up on your map after its "discovery" also appears on your compass within reach. You're... say... about 300 meters away from a "nearby fort", it's on the other side of a cliff, hidden from actual immediate view by a range of trees and tick vegetation BUT... it's on your compass. Ahh, yes, the marvel of fantasy worlds-based technology. All you have to do is "move toward it" in a relatively straight path if you can and there... you "discovered" the fort, hope it wasn't too exhausting!
It's a problem for immersion because when I role-play my character I tend to believe that he or she never actually set foot "there" and doesn't actually know that there's a fort to be discovered about 300 meters away because... well because it has to be discovered, right? And, side note, yeah I do tend to role-play my characters in games like Skyrim. That's because... well because it happens to be a role-playing game (you know, a game in which you play the "role of" you characters). But yeah I admit I also have "non" RP'ing saved games in which I just mess around spawning hordes of Bandit Highwaymen and Frost Atronachs in Whiterun for the heck of it). So normally your character gets thrown in that world (whichever game we're speaking of), could be DAO, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim... heck even Just Cause 2 or FarCry 3 (etc.), but you shouldn't "know" that there's stuff "over there" to be discovered. Well ok in a game with a modern setting I GUESS that it'd be more... say... "plausible", but not necessarily acceptable or always fun it terms of game-play. Take FarCry 3, it's a modern setting, so I GUESS that having pretty much everything shown on your map is more... well... possible, could be GPS, right? Yeah...
In a game like Skyrim or Dragon Age: Inquisition, however...
Ok... ok, this is already past the TL;DR mark for many, sorry.
So where do I want to go with this, well if it wasn't clear already here's the main idea, BioWare: Give us an option to disable OR reduce the number of Points of Interests in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
1) DISABLE: That would be somewhere in the game's options, probably in "Gameplay" options, or something accessed from the main menu. It'd say something like "Points of Interests: Enabled / Disabled". See? Everyone is happy.
OR
2) DECREASE: Again, most likely an option in the game's menus somewhere. But, instead of merely disabling POIs it would KEEP the "important" POIs intact, you know, for important cities / towns / settlements / forts / camps, etc. That's the part above when I talked about 50% exploration and 50% direction (to avoid getting bored at some point because you're exploring aimlessly without direction, some people just can't stand moving around not actually knowing why they're where they are). Those locations most likely linked to by quests (I guess that's probably a good 50% of the entire game's locations if not more than that). BUT... it would disable POIs for locations that just happen to be there to add to the sense of exploration and discovery. Places like an abandoned blood mages-controlled camp in the middle of a forest that has absolutely no link to any quests whatsoever... or a "branching" tunnel in the Deep Roads (there's going to be Deep Roads in DA:I, right?) where you'd discover a long-forgotten Thaig filled with Darkspawn and a treasure chest or two... etc.
I mean, I really don't mind if my teammates accompanying me happen to comment on the entrance of a cave, you know something along the line of "Inquisitor, there's a cave over there, perhaps we should take a look in to make sure that the Templars / Blood Mages didn't take control or are using it as a secret base of operations...". Yeah that's fine... it's alright IF I, myself the player, also happens to be close enough physically to the entrance that I also see it with my own eyes (which would also be why one of my teammates would comment on it, and not because it appeared on my magical Fade-made compass). What I DON'T want is something along the lines of me on my mount galloping up a road with a greyed-out cave entrance icon on my compass indicating that "it's there" 150 meters away and I'm just missing it because I'm on a quest... not because I actually MISSED IT... you know... because I wouldn't have actually veered off the road "over there" to actually explore the region.
I said early in my post that this isn't actually a suggestion, potentially, because I might not know but maybe ALL of this is already in the game. The thing is I don't know if it is the case. So I guess I'm going to ask the question directly then, BioWare: Will we have Points of Interests in Dragon Age: Inquisition?
If so (and I'm sure there will be, in a big world like that) then (to reiterate) my "suggestion" is to give us the option to disable them or "reduce" them to a minimal degree so that we HAVE TO explore to physically discover locations and THEN, of course, once discovered it pops up on our map, becomes fixed and memorized there, and also becomes available for fast travel. I just don't want to be spoon-fed and pampered with obvious POI "hints" when I role-play my exploration of an entire continent.
So thanks for reading, if you did, and thanks for considering this BioWare, if it ain't already the case in the current build.
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