22 réponses à ce sujet

[TheWinstitute]

Cliffhanger title for 10 journalism points! Points redeemable at the nearest liquor cabinet.

 

Anyways as we all know Dragon Age: Inquisition suffers from a small handful of technical issues, none of which are game breaking, but they are somewhat annoying. I could relist the technical issues for the sake of referential material but I'm sure if you're reading these forums you're already aware of them so why restate the obvious?

 

Anyways...here on the BSN and even on non-BioWare forums all over the internet, everyone seems to be complaining about "them gays". And thats a problem for me, because I can't really understand how I live on a planet where people can spend so much time and effort agonizing over the fact that certain love interests are gay when its patently obvious that the biggest problem of Dragon Age: Inquisition isn't the juxtaposition of sexuality, racial tension and belief systems....because done right thats a hell of a story.

 

The biggest problem of Dragon Age: Inquisition is that the "hell of a story" that it could be, is no where near to its potentials because the entire process of the games narrative is intrinsically rushed and forced. Its hollow because there is no time to develop the arc of the heroes journey.

 

Let me explain using a common denominator. In Mass Effect, Commander Shepard goes from Alliance Navy, to N7 Special Operative, to Freelance private military operator and back to N7 Special Operations to then moves on to save (or destroy, depending on your point of view) the entire galaxy.

 

Shepard was given three games and tens of thousands of man hours in development of their story and all the scenes and writing and assets behind them to make them what they became over the space of three games. Everything about the Mass Effect series was written almost perfectly....with some arguable exceptions that I won't get into here.

 

Anyways, Shepard had organic relationships that developed over time. The characters that you spent the three games with felt real because they made themselves real and part of your game world experience from long term exposure.

 

And Shepard's "hero's journey" was also organic, sure the Shepard that stepped foot on Eden Prime was a futuristic military badass, but it wasn't immediately thrust upon Shepard on Eden Prime that he was going to save the entire galaxy....he didn't even know what had really happened other than the Geth were somewhere they shouldn't be, and some kind of weird alien technology was involved.

 

Three games later Shepard saves the galaxy....arguably. And all the space in between that futuristic military badass and the eventual canon saint of the entire galaxy is filled in with organic relationships and character development.

 

In Dragon Age: Inquisition....you go from Murderer, to Savior of Thedas in about 20 minutes. And that character development largely just inflates exponentially and non-organically over the course of the game. You go from a pretender organization that is being actively disputed by previous authorities to...OMG the Inquisition is going to save the world...literally in the space of like maybe three or four cutscenes.

 

Why are people complaining about the gender orientation of the characters when the truly enlightened should be complaining that it appears that BioWare is yet again trying to make a Dragon Age Shepard (since that whole Hawke experiment didn't really go to plan) by tacitly allowing the player to believe the character is their own, but then attempting to develop said character along an extremely rushed character development arc which is barely believable.

 

As stated, it is the biggest problem of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Who cares who is gay and who is straight, who cares whether you find your gender preference assigned LI's to be acceptable...why should you care? You don't even know who your character in DA:I even is and within half a minute of starting to figure it out, you're thrust into being the savior of Thedas (cause apparently no one else wants the responsibility and the HoF is busy with other matters) and regardless of anything, its okay...because "someone" in this little handcrafted party of heroes loves you....doesn't matter if you're gay or straight because someone will love you, as long as you <heart> them.

 

Anyways...long winded, but legitimate criticism...far more legitimate than "Cassandra looks like a man" and "Dorian is gay and it bothers me because I really like him but I'm a straight dude and liking a gay man as a straight dude might mean I'm gay".

 

Gaider can sing the praises of Dragon Age: Inquisition all day long as he likes..and people can feel free to refute this post with supportive tweets that show that the writers of Dragon Age all feel its an outstanding accomplishment....but seriously, this story wouldn't make it to press if it was put on an editors desk at a publishing house that had even a marginal concern for the products it was printing.

 

Disclaimer:

 

The above statements do not indicate that mechanically or systemically that Dragon Age: Inquisition is a "bad game". Its a fairly pretty game with some good mechanics behind it and other than a few technical issues, its fun to play...but this writing is bush league at best and I'm not going to sit here and say "I'm a professional writer so I know these things"....I'm a life time consumer of stories, and I know a bad story when I see it..and this one isn't so good.

[TheWinstitute]

The one thing that can be said about an opinionated post that sees no responses in a typically contentious forum is that the post is either hidden or, the points made are so accurate that they cannot be contested even with an unreasonable rebuttal.

[Xd2delo]

I see your point, but I think they did as good a job as they could given that there is not a single recurring protagonist.  That's a HUGE advantage that the writers of ME were able to leverage very successfully.  Although DA2 did, writing-wise at least, and to my mind, a great job.  The key there was, I think, the time jumps between Acts made the interaction between the characters feel organic and well developed in a way that DA I, for all the interesting characters it has, never quite gets to.  But that installment also had the benefit of a single central tension that defined the way most characters interacted with each other.  DA I has less of a focus like that, except for the issue of your character's alleged divinity, and ergo less of a chance to get into more morally ambiguous discussions that highlight a particular character's personality.

[TheWinstitute]

I see your point, but I think they did as good a job as they could given that there is not a single recurring protagonist.  That's a HUGE advantage that the writers of ME were able to leverage very successfully.  Although DA2 did, writing-wise at least, and to my mind, a great job.  The key there was, I think, the time jumps between Acts made the interaction between the characters feel organic and well developed in a way that DA I, for all the interesting characters it has, never quite gets to.  But that installment also had the benefit of a single central tension that defined the way most characters interacted with each other.  DA I has less of a focus like that, except for the issue of your character's alleged divinity, and ergo less of a chance to get into more morally ambiguous discussions that highlight a particular character's personality.

 

I agree, its actually easier to find the writing of DA2 acceptable when faced with what they've attempted to achieve with DA:I. DA2 did feel more organic in story because of the way it was paced and parceled up and presented.

 

DA:I has a distinct problem with communicating the passage of time. So even though you're traveling all over the map, you never really feel like another day has gone by until the next major cutscene...and that can definitely be identified as part of the problem.

 

You can't feel like a character that is developing an an environment that largely seems to be frozen in time around you until you decide to act on it, and there is nothing organic about the nature of how you go about proceeding in the game.

 

Even going back to DA:O...there were points in the game where certain levels of impulse were applied to the character to drive them towards a different direction because of how the story was shifting around your decisions...though in all fairness they weren't major shifts..but they were there.

 

So in a very simple one sentence summary, the "hero's journey" of DA:I isn't a journey, because regardless of you going to all kinds of places, you never feel like you're moving at all.

[Yinello]

So you're complaining about other people not complaining about what you're complaining about. A bit silly, no?

 

To actually get to the gist of it (seriously, all the padding about complaining is really confusing), you didn't like the main story. You thought it was rushed and didn't develop character arcs. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

 

Now I disagree. I thought the story had enough for me to discover everyone's personality. I learned Varric has huge problems with moving on. Cassandra is a romantic. Sera had a difficult childhood. And so on. I felt the main story might have been a little short but I was allowed to make it as long as I wanted to while doing either my friend missions or sidemissions.

 

I would have liked to develop my inquisitor more but given that we know they were planning on doing Humans only first, I think it's quite nice. You get to decide what your past was like with interaction with your companions, you just don't see it played out.

 

You're using the example of Mass Effect to show a good story but you said yourself that story spans over 3 games. Wouldn't your argument be that the Inquisitor should be featured in more games to flesh them out better? So if anything, it simply means we're not done yet. I'm hoping BW does bring out a lot of DLC to give us more insight of it all because I am so very into this game.

[TheWinstitute]

So you're complaining about other people not complaining about what you're complaining about. A bit silly, no?

 

To actually get to the gist of it (seriously, all the padding about complaining is really confusing), you didn't like the main story. You thought it was rushed and didn't develop character arcs. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

 

Now I disagree. I thought the story had enough for me to discover everyone's personality. I learned Varric has huge problems with moving on. Cassandra is a romantic. Sera had a difficult childhood. And so on. I felt the main story might have been a little short but I was allowed to make it as long as I wanted to while doing either my friend missions or sidemissions.

 

I would have liked to develop my inquisitor more but given that we know they were planning on doing Humans only first, I think it's quite nice. You get to decide what your past was like with interaction with your companions, you just don't see it played out.

 

You're using the example of Mass Effect to show a good story but you said yourself that story spans over 3 games. Wouldn't your argument be that the Inquisitor should be featured in more games to flesh them out better? So if anything, it simply means we're not done yet. I'm hoping BW does bring out a lot of DLC to give us more insight of it all because I am so very into this game.

 

My direct argument is that they're trying to achieve what they achieved with three games...with one game. Which cannot be done...its simply not possible.

 

The lack of a central hero in Dragon Age has been more or less its staple feature. HoF to CoK, CoK to INQ, and from INQ..who knows, probably OGB..cause why not. The major contention is you cannot develop a character of this kind of weight based on the simple proclamation...by other characters in the environment, of how important that character is.

 

Especially when the person playing the character can't make any analysis of whether they should be important in the first place.

 

Taking DA:O as an example, the HoF was one of many different people of different races that starts out with varying levels of social importance, but eventually, through the process of the hero's journey presented in DA:O...you eventually believe that...yes, you can slay an Archdemon and stop the Blight. You are the hero the world needs right then and right there.

 

In DA2, Hawke's journey as a fleeing refugee to become the eventual Champion of Kirkwall is also fairly well established, at the beginning you don't feel as if the weight of the world is on your shoulders, by the end, you believe that the world has been altered, for good or for ill, but at least you played a part in that alteration and by the time you get to the end of it...you feel as if your journey has justified your place as the hero in that particular chapter of Thedodosian History.

 

In DA:I you are a generic <of race> with a <random minor point of character developmental importance to backstory>, who is captured after a <insert horrendous act of mass destruction here> and then after a brief tutorial, proclaimed to be <insert whatever messianic term you want to use here> that is going to save the world.

 

This isn't a story its a Mad Lib.

[EBC4N]

I agree with you, game is meh, story is meh, characters are meh and they are telling you everything about themselves in asylum.

Gay joke was meh too.

Over all meh/10

 

except graves quest it was cool.

[Primula Nightfall]

OGB

 

Orzammar's Great Badass?

I can dig that.

[TheWinstitute]

Orzammar's Great Badass?

I can dig that.

 

Sure why not. Though I was referring to the Old God Baby.

[TheWinstitute]

I agree with you, game is meh, story is meh, characters are meh and they are telling you everything about themselves in asylum.

Gay joke was meh too.

Over all meh/10

 

except graves quest it was cool.

 

There was a gay joke? I must not have noticed. Dorian was a constant party member, I don't recall him making any outstanding jokes that made me go....oh wow only a gay man could pull off that joke.

[Kantr]

Dorian is a man with a supreme confidence in himself. He's great

 

So your complaint is, what next powerful person will we be?

[TheWinstitute]

Dorian is a man with a supreme confidence in himself. He's great

 

So your complaint is, what next powerful person will we be?

 

My complaint is the story pushes the level of importance of the Inquisitor and the Inquisition way too fast and doesn't give the character enough time to feel like its earned the power people say it has.

[Kantr]

It's a chaotic and turbulent time

[Vandicus]

My complaint is the story pushes the level of importance of the Inquisitor and the Inquisition way too fast and doesn't give the character enough time to feel like its earned the power people say it has.

 

I don't think a character gaining great power and influence all of a sudden through unexpected circumstances is a bad premise to a story. Characters don't need to earn their power for a story to be good.

 

I think the reason it feels rushed is that the quests that directly address significant events are relatively short. Sure you can roam around and fight bands of freemen or do generic side quests, but the actual quest where we see discussion and deliberation as to who should be ruler or get to influence the outcome of the conflict? About two hours long. There's no payoff to the sidequesting nor does the side questing sell itself well as involving meaningful decisions.

 

Likewise with the mage-templar rebellion, the Inquisitor's roaming around the Hinterlands makes no difference to the outcome of the war.

[Sardoni]

Thedas needed someone to focus on the immediate threat and solve the big picture.  Every other established organization has failed because they are either too busy stuck in various pissing matches or can't be bothered because reasons.  You exist only because no one else exists.  You only exist as long as you get the things done that everyone else is ignoring.

 

I do agree that the main plot did feel a bit rushed... if all you do is rush the main plot as much as possible.  If you do other maps "just because" and spread out the main plot it does flow better, but semantics.  Sadly the "alternate maps" (or whatever we want to call them) don't feed into anything plot related... not even anything epilogue related.  Your choices and getting any of that stuff done really has zero impact on the rest of the game (which is the source of my disappointment... you'd think after ME3 Bioware'd realize the importance of peoples choices).

 

In mass effect 3 with the right save import you can negotiate a truce between the krogan and turians, cure the genophage, get the quarian and the geth to work together, and take out 3 reapers on foot one with just a laser pointer and another by ringing bells.  A practical person would call trying to wrap all that up in one game to be more than just a slight stretch.  Lends credence to the indoctrination theory only because the impractical implications of getting all that done in such a short time.  It did flow better but I did take a step back and go "they're kinda phoning all this in to wrap up the series."

 

However in Mass Effect 3 every mission had a point.  Strip mining the galaxy even had a point to trying to find war assets, but ultimate if you went on a mission there was a reason that fed directly into the main plot or subplot.

 

Those connections are missing in DA:I.  I should go help the Emprise du Lion... why?  Because it's there.  Will it help the war effort?  Maybe.  Will it give me a better or worse ending?  Nope.  Will it impact my ending at all?  Nope.  Will it help bolster the inquisition?  Yes you'll get more power and maybe an agent or two.  But I have 400 power and nothing to spend it on and most of my war table missions are done... so I don't need agents?  Oh. Well you should still go totally check out that map.  Three high dragons man.  Lots of loot!  I see.

 

114 hours on my first play through.  I regret nothing.  It was a lot of fun.  Hindsight tells me that doing every map really is pointless.  If there was even a nod in the epilogue I would've appreciated that.  It doesn't have to have long reaching implications into the next game.  They could've just bundled up this game with a pretty bow.  Even commenting that all 10 high dragons won't pester the people anymore.  Not asking for miracles ._.

 

I don't think a character gaining great power and influence all of a sudden through unexpected circumstances is a bad premise to a story. Characters don't need to earn their power for a story to be good.

 

I think the reason it feels rushed is that the quests that directly address significant events are relatively short. Sure you can roam around and fight bands of freemen or do generic side quests, but the actual quest where we see discussion and deliberation as to who should be ruler or get to influence the outcome of the conflict? About two hours long. There's no payoff to the sidequesting nor does the side questing sell itself well as involving meaningful decisions.

 

Likewise with the mage-templar rebellion, the Inquisitor's roaming around the Hinterlands makes no difference to the outcome of the war.

 

Funny enough I did all of Hinterlands before siding with the templars or the mages on my first playthrough.  I chose the templars on my second playthrough as soon as they were available and the missions resolved themselves.  There were no apostates in the cave.  There were no more templars and mages warring in the map.  There were no templars idling in the templar encampment.  It was almost depressing lol.  So that makes me wonder the main story choices effect some of the apparent dynamic questing that might exist in some of the maps.

 

I am enjoying the templar centric main plot twists (I sided with the mages on my first play through) and I like seeing Ventori every where now instead of red templars.  Although I did feel like the Ventori sort of fizzled out on my mage playthrough.  Now I guess I'll feel like the red templars will!

[Vandicus]

The side maps are fun in a, go out and be an adventurer sense(makes me think of Skyrim or Baldur's Gate), but aren't very choice-driven or meaningful to the plot. Nor are the side quests character defining like they were in BG, KoToR, JE, or NWN(where alignment and moral choices are a thing). 

[Bayonet Hipshot]

I am of the opinion that Bioware should have cut out most of the pointless side quests and lengthened the main story.

 

That is why the game we have now seems to have a very short main quest. 

[renfrees]

The game might be fun to play (for a time), but it's extremely boring to watch, that I can say. All that meaningless exploration and tons of fetching really sucks out excitement and the feeling of story's importance.

[Linkenski]

ME Trilogy amounts to 75-90 hours of fleshed out character-driven moments and storytelling (and a lot of it is good... and not so good)

 

DA:I is 60-80 hours of barely even a memorable plot. It could've been 3 Bioware games in one with this game-time but more than 50 hours of it is spent purely on boring time-sink quests and non-story filler and the rest of the gametime is spent on the plot which is merely a series of loose subplots that aren't introduced properly with buildup or elaboration, and they end hours after you discover them, even the original central conflict: The Breach ends up being largely forgotten in favor of a villain with zero character and his threat to the world is hardly ever felt.

 

IGN was so right about this game having a "weak plot" and sadly even the characters were... not necessarily underdeveloped but they really lack screen-time, all of them.

[LolaLei]

My complaint is the story pushes the level of importance of the Inquisitor and the Inquisition way too fast and doesn't give the character enough time to feel like its earned the power people say it has.

 

I 100% agree with your posts. I get what they were trying to do with the Inquisitor's story, but (for me) it just didn't work as I think they'd intended.

 

Had the prologue at least started off with us running around the conclave prior to the explosion getting a feel for the new protagonist and establishing some of our motivations it would've been easier to develop some sort of connection with him/her as a person before sh*t hit the fan. That aside, there's quite an odd pacing to the main story, I wasn't expecting to close the breach before hitting mid-game, let alone for our fade wound to stop being a problem for us within the first 30 minutes of the game... I'll stop there before I end up going off on a tangent, lol.

 

What I find interesting is that they've been more than capable of creating a heroes story that builds up and establishes the protagonist and his/her plight/cause in the past, DA:O being the perfect example of that, so it's not like it's only something that can be accomplished by having a returning hero across multiple games ala ME.

[Linkenski]

I feel like some of the problems of the Inquisitor's development is tied to bad story-gating. Sometimes, I could trigger 3 cinedesign conversations with the same character in a row, just because I boosted his approval and the latter two conversations felt like they assumed I had been playing much more of the main plot.

[TheWinstitute]

I feel like some of the problems of the Inquisitor's development is tied to bad story-gating. Sometimes, I could trigger 3 cinedesign conversations with the same character in a row, just because I boosted his approval and the latter two conversations felt like they assumed I had been playing much more of the main plot.

 

Again this ties back to the games poor lack of communication in regards to the passage of time. The is really only one quest (Solas, All New, Faded, For Her) where the narrative of the quest forces the player to stop powering through side content and its only because Solas is like...f-this I'm out of here and he doesn't return til you physically go to the Skyhold to get that scene.

 

All other scenes have no direct stimulus to encourage the player to switch their gears because the story might want to have a chat with them...so I go out and do a bunch of stuff in a zone for a whole days worth of gaming...then end up coming back to the Skyhold to craft some new gear and suddenly everyone in my party has a list of crap they want to talk to me about...except if I didn't actually go check with them I'd never know that except in a few very minor circumstances.

 

And again thats all down to poor communication of the passing of time, in a story that seems like its being advanced too quickly for the players character to be believable.

[Sup3rKitties]

Hello I've been playing Dragon Age Inquisition for the past 4 days, after I reached Skyhold the game started acting funny, wouldn't load the detail, hair, ground not loading etc... I've been playing it on the console so I thought hey it might be over heated so I stopped playing it and started back up today and it's even worse! When I talk to someone to do a quest it won't load up what I can say back to them, the cut scenes are all screwy and so much lag. I need help, I don't know what to do and I am already addicted to the game!