It's important that I state here that I do not think Inquisition is a bad game. I think it's a good game that suffers from issues that can be directly traced back to the source: an industry that is trying desperately and struggling just to keep it's head above water.
1. The [sort of] open world - I think this was unnecessary for a story and character-driven Dragon Age title. The decision to make the game semi-open world, in my opinion, had less to do with what was best for the game and more to do with Skyrim's amazing sales numbers. A little over a month after Skyrim launched, BioWare co-founder, Ray Muzyka, had this to say about the next Dragon Age title:
"[The next Dragon Age] is gonna have the best of features from the prior Dragon Age games, but it's also gonna have a lot of things I think players are gonna find compelling from some of the games that are out now that are doing really well with more of an open world feel," he said.http://www.eurogamer...ut-aggressively"We're checking [Skyrim] out aggressively," he added. "We like it. We're big admirers of [Bethesda] and the product. We think we can do some wonderful things."
2. The fluff - In Origins, we had small zones that felt really big. The reason that they felt really big was because of the nature of the content that existed in those zones. This is fundamentally different in Inquisition, where the zones are much larger, but with much less meaningful content. In other words, the game is absolutely bursting with filler. I stopped playing Ubisoft games because of this practice.
Basically, the idea is to make large open areas and populate them with super simplistic quests that amount to almost nothing and tie them directly to some sort of arbitrary progress bar. Go here, kill this guy, take his ring, and bring it back. I hate this ****. What's worse, is that if I don't do them, I still have them on my map or quest log every time I open the menu screen. Oh, and it's also tied in to your overall military strength like Mass Effect 3, except now it's affecting single-player. Great!
I stopped playing the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry games because of this crap. It doesn't matter how amazing your open world is if it's populated with worthless content. It's just garbage game design that really needs to stop. I would have been much more satisfied with smaller zones like Val Royeaux that are populated with meaningful quests and interesting characters.
Anyway, moving on...
3. The Inquisitor - The voice actor sounds just as bored delivering his lines as I do while listening to them. As stupid as Hawke sounded most of the time, at least she made me laugh occasionally or feel something. Listening to the Herald of Andraste drone on while everybody else in the party seemed far more lively and more invested in what was going on, well... it got me thinking. Was Andraste herself this boring? How is the Herald able to lead and inspire whole armies with the charisma of a brick? Does he have a pulse? 
4. Bugs - Otherwise known as the year of 2014, bugs and glitches of all sorts seemed to be running rampant in today's games... or at least this year's games. I understand. Games are very complex and hard to make. But I have one question. How is it that I'm able to find dialogue bugs and replicate them several times even after restarting my machine, but QA somehow missed them? What's going on here?
5. Combat - It's boring. In truth, the Dragon Age games have never had combat that kept me on the edge of my seat, but I did really enjoy taking down really strong enemies with the right tactical approach in Origins. Dragon Age 2 ruined this to a large extent and Inquisition sort of fixes it but also manages to add more problems. So, the issue here is that BioWare couldn't decide between real-time combat and turn-based. So, they try to do both and they're... serviceable. But in a game that is likely to last 60-90 hours, and with large open zones that are actually kinda boring, combat satisfaction becomes really important.
I think this is actually a small part to a really big problem with BioWare right now. What I mean is, the company tries to satisfy both camps and ends up failing to satisfy either because the mechanics feel under developed or they conflict with each other. This would be like Rainbow Six trying to appeal to the CoD audience. Add a little bit of this and that, you know, stuff that audience goes for. And that might not sound bad on paper. But in practice, it ends up ruining the game. Rainbow Six vets are pissed because it plays like CoD, and CoD players don't like it because it doesn't play exactly like CoD. In the end, no one is happy.
So, in conclusion, these are the five things that really bother me with this game. And like I said, most of it can be traced back to an industry model that is quickly going the way of the dinosaur. I haven't even touched multiplayer yet but I hear it has micro-transactions. Because paying $60 upfront isn't enough anymore to keep the lights on.
Retour en haut
