I think it's the best BioWare has done at making the game reactive to your role-playing. There are also many instances where you can simply say how your character is feeling, which was rarer in the first two DAs and borderline non-existent in Mass Effect.
The judgments are excellent; each one typically provides 4(!) ways to deal with a situation. They also allow you to express nuanced views on faith, belief, and organized religion.
@wrdnshprd:
Actually, stat manipulation through gear is something I heavily criticize. It works as a game mechanic, but since in the trio of "who you are", "what you are" and "what you have", gear belongs in the last category which doesn't say anything about you, this comes across to me as taking away the ability to define an aspect of what I am, or even worse, support the idea that what you have makes your what you are.
This only isn't a major point of criticism for me because the whole "game mechanical" dimension is less important to me and the game does the other so well.
I like western rpg becaue they advertise that your choies matter but I didn't had the choice to disband the Chantry and that's not cool.
As playing elf I would've loved to burn Orlais and the Chantry since they conquered Harmishal, which was the last city of the elves.
So no the game is not a good RP game since a lot of morals are forced upon player to be good a good human.
I like western rpg becaue they advertise that your choies matter but I didn't had the choice to disband the Chantry and that's not cool.
As playing elf I would've loved to burn Orlais and the Chantry since they conquered Harmishal, which was the last city of the elves.
So no the game is not a good RP game since a lot of morals are forced upon player to be good a good human.
It's not a question of forced morals since you can continuously express a desire for the Chantry to go away. It's more that you the Inquisitor don't have the power to declare something like that, and the other important members of the Inquisition won't go along with it anyway.
It's a very fine RPG. I get to deeply immerse myself is a great story in a great world. I can develop unique characters and fight on a spectrum from arcade to tactical. I don't care about attributes and have no interest in running off to join the circus or whatever. What I want from DA games is to play a great story in a great world and as always, this version of DA delivers. Best RPG i've played in years.
the problem is, the fans that have been with the series since the beginning also have certain expectations. we expected that the cRPG experience was going to continue with DA:I.. well i think its safe to say this game is no longer a cRPG like baldur's gate. hence the complaints.
I've been playing rpg's since Zork and I've played all the DA ones. DAI meets and in many cases exceeds my expectations thanks very much.
This game has a lot of choices - true. But almost no plot altering outcomes. I think I felt the gravity of my choices way more with Shepard or Geralt. DAI is for me exactly the same as Skyrim - clear the map and move on. Not an RPG in my books but I understand that it is a pinnacle of what an RPG should be for many.
@wrdnshprd:
Actually, stat manipulation through gear is something I heavily criticize. It works as a game mechanic, but since in the trio of "who you are", "what you are" and "what you have", gear belongs in the last category which doesn't say anything about you, this comes across to me as taking away the ability to define an aspect of what I am, or even worse, support the idea that what you have makes your what you are.
This only isn't a major point of criticism for me because the whole "game mechanical" dimension is less important to me and the game does the other so well.
and thats fine.. but for many.. game mechanics are extremely important.. almost more than the story and choices.. and for those folks min/maxing and stat manipulation is paramount when it comes to the RPG genre.. again.. i think bioware did relatively well here - though i would have preferred they didnt remove stat manipulation on level up (admittedly some of the abilities offer a small bonus to certain stats).
I like western rpg becaue they advertise that your choies matter but I didn't had the choice to disband the Chantry and that's not cool.
As playing elf I would've loved to burn Orlais and the Chantry since they conquered Harmishal, which was the last city of the elves.
So no the game is not a good RP game since a lot of morals are forced upon player to be good a good human.
That is a matter of power, not of forced morals. You can actually recommend that the Chantry should be disbanded...
I concede one thing though: the marketing lead us to expect a much wider range of choices with that video about either saving the world or leading it into ruin. We do have pragmatic options, but it did sound as if either the all-the-way evil option or the failure option would be in the game, and it isn't. That is a valid point of criticism.
This game has a lot of choices - true. But almost no plot altering outcomes. I think I felt the gravity of my choices way more with Shepard or Geralt. DAI is for me exactly the same as Skyrim - clear the map and move on. Not an RPG in my books but I understand that it is a pinnacle of what an RPG should be for many.
I dunno about that man. Quite a few of the companion decisions you need to make were making me sweat. Maybe they don't have an altering plot outcome in the long run, but in the moment it was intense. Blackwall for instance. That's where I took a step back to consider who I was as this Inquisitor and as a person in this world.
BioWare games have never been totally about plot altering story threads. They're about making you FEEL what your character feels in that moment. With DA:I, to me, they've succeeded in spades.
I've been playing rpg's since Zork and I've played all the DA ones. DAI meets and in many cases exceeds my expectations thanks very much.
im glad YOU feel that way.. but many people were disappointed with the removal of the cRPG, or Baldur's Gate mechanics. the tactical view is not what we were looking for.. all they had to do was keep the old system and this game would have been widely regarded as their best. because otherwise the game IS really good. their best since ME1 in my opinion (i like ME1 better than DA:O).
im glad YOU feel that way.. but many people were disappointed with the removal of the cRPG, or Baldur's Gate mechanics. the tactical view is not what we were looking for.. all they had to do was keep the old system and this game would have been widely regarded as their best. because otherwise the game IS really good. their best since ME1 in my opinion (i like ME1 better than DA:O).
I'm glad YOU feel that way too but I don't think many value those removed mechanics as highly as you do.
im glad YOU feel that way.. but many people were disappointed with the removal of the cRPG, or Baldur's Gate mechanics. the tactical view is not what we were looking for.. all they had to do was keep the old system and this game would have been widely regarded as their best. because otherwise the game IS really good. their best since ME1 in my opinion (i like ME1 better than DA:O).
Oh, I'm not saying I don't miss the old tactical view and in-depth tactics customization. DAI's tactical view is an insult, and I hope they'll patch it. It's just that this element is not a part of the "meaningful roleplaying" dimension, and its lesser implementation does nothing to diminish DAI in that regard.
I dunno about that man. Quite a few of the companion decisions you need to make were making me sweat. Maybe they don't have an altering plot outcome in the long run, but in the moment it was intense. Blackwall for instance. That's where I took a step back to consider who I was as this Inquisitor and as a person in this world.
BioWare games have never been totally about plot altering story threads. They're about making you FEEL what your character feels in that moment. With DA:I, to me, they've succeeded in spades.
Maybe it was intense, but I don't see me replaying the game to explore the other options because there are no meaningful other options.
Maybe it was intense, but I don't see me replaying the game to explore the other options because there are no meaningful other options.
ROFL. You can't be serious. Have you seen the different epilogues? Southern Thedas can be as different as night is from day depending on your decisions. The only constant is that you need to defeat the main antagonist, who is intentionally made that way because he's basically a plot device that allows you to define your characters by the way they oppose him.
It's not a question of forced morals since you can continuously express a desire for the Chantry to go away. It's more that you the Inquisitor don't have the power to declare something like that, and the other important members of the Inquisition won't go along with it anyway.
It seems that you need an explantion then let me re-post this : source
I noticed for the first third of the game it actually seemed like being an elf mattered in small ways, they gave me plently of dialogue options and I it felt like that character's race was actually important in the story. The weren't any major choices that had to do with being an elf, but there didn't need to be.
Then along came Orlais. Granted the Inquisition needed the support of Orlais, but the so-called "Elf" you could side with was basically an Orlaisian with pointy ears. Why would a Dalish Elf side with her? Why couldn't the Dalish Elf come in and take **** over?
The game is pretty clearly designed around a human character. Everything after Orlais makes your race dialogue options few and far between and basically just glorified investigate options. Very disappointing, but not unexpected when you consider the ability to choose your race was tacked on when Bioware was given an extra year of development time.
On a side note the Dalish clan in DAI was absolute garbage compared to the first two. Its literally an MMO quest-hub, complete with a freaking reputation system with them.
If you still saying that I'm wrong then you're forcing your opinion/moral on me when I'm just pointing out that playing elf in this game isn't really important in the game in term of RP. 
ROFL. You can't be serious. Have you seen the different epilogues? Southern Thedas can be as different as night is from day depending on your decisions. The only constant is that you need to defeat the main antagonist, who is intentionally made that way because he's basically a plot device that allows you to define your characters by the way they oppose him.
You say I can have some other quests along the way or visit new places, or meet new characters like in Witcher 2? If so - I'm game for another 130 hours I needed for my first playthrough. Or maybe you are saying that every game I will be doing exactly the same stuff, whitnessing the same events unfolding, but I can change an epilogue? If so - this is just not good enough to replay this all.
we expected that the cRPG experience was going to continue with DA:I..
I'm genuinely curious, was this communicated? I never saw anything from BW or EA saying they were returning to cRPG roots, but it's entirely possible I wasn't paying attention, in which case that sucks.
Personally, I never expected more cRPG systems but more of a blend between the DA:O offering and the changes found in DA:2, which I found in DA:I and it checks all the boxes for me.
I'm more bothered by the clunky inventory UI, but feel like I have enough to work with here for my Nightmare run for stat tweaking and gear crafting.
how many *meaningful* decisions do you make in this game, decisions that say something about who you are rather than what you are?
Go on, where is the option to tell your quartermaster to send one of the dozen soldiers to gather some bloody iron that's less than 60s march away from the camp? Where is the option to lie to a widower, or to tell him that the inquisitor has better things to do in the middle of a bloody war than personally taking flowers to one random widower's wife's grave?
every time you send a specific advisor on a war table operation that resolves some minor plot somewhere
Yes, I suppose deciding whether you want to send Leliana or Cullen to gather some bloody elfroot counts as a decision, but the fact that I have to stop exploring and travel back to HQ (enduring long loading screens) and redo the entire dungeon (since enemies have respawned) makes me hate this "feature" way more than the "meaningful decision" could possibly make up for.
At the end of the game, you can answer the question of who you are in the world of Thedas by pointing at everything you influenced with your decisions and say "I am the person who made things this way, and I am (fully/not/mostly) pleased with it"
Really now? You think DAI does it better than New Vegas? Does that mean that the inquisitor can join the elder one and take over Thedas? Because that's pretty much the minimum needed to beat Fallout's range of plot outcomes.
That's doesn't mean that you shouldn't like the game, just that the reasons for why it's good are objectively wrong.
@Matt Barthez:
By those standards, a single game would need the content of two to be considered replayable. Even so, DAI comes closer to that than any other Bioware game so far. I'd say it's replayable at least twice. Allying with the mages or the templars gives you completely different missions and half of your enemies are different for the rest of the game. This was about meaningful choices, though, and your choices can be meaningful without the game presenting you with a permanent change you can see for the rest of the game. Strictly spoken, a choice can be meaningful with no response at all, if it says something about your character, but of course that's unsatisfactory when you make the choice to have an impact. DAI goes a middle way and often gives us permanent changes to the game world it tells us about, for instance in war table operation reports, but no changes in the parts of the world we can personally explore.
@AlexMBrennan:
I did say FO:NV did this better, but at the price of a lackluster presentation with much less emotional impact. And yeah, go on and cite every minor encounter where we can't make a meaningful decision as evidence that there are no meaningful decisions. That's so perfectly objective and logical. Of course it's desirable to have more options in those minor encounters, too, and a game where everything isn't voiced can afford to make it so. DAI goes for a better presentation at the price of putting less resources into minor encounters. That's why it's not as good as FO:NV in this, but IMO the better presentation and intensity of the more important encounters more than makes up for that.
Also, for war table operations, I have specifically said the choice of advisors was meaningful if the operation resolved some minor plot somewhere, specifically to exclude things like resource collection.
I'm glad YOU feel that way too but I don't think many value those removed mechanics as highly as you do.
Bioware games dont let you role play or make any real decisions.
You make superficial decisions and the same major events happen anyway.
Whether Commander Shepard Punches the badguy, or reasons with him, no matter what, the same **** will end up happening.
Bioware games dont let you role play or make any real decisions.
You make superficial decisions and the same major events happen anyway.
Whether Commander Shepard Punches the badguy, or reasons with him, no matter what, the same **** will end up happening.
Yeah, the outcome of sabotaging the genophage cure is absolutely the same as the outcome of not sabotaging it... and I guess it doesn't matter who you put on the throne of Orlais because mysteriously the one killed in the story re-appears to make the outcome always the same. And it totally doesn't matter if you side with the mages or templars because you get the same enemies for the rest of the game anyway and the same chapter boss in the final mission.
Try again.
Yeah, the outcome of sabotaging the genophage cure is absolutely the same as the outcome of not sabotaging it... and I guess it doesn't matter who you put on the throne of Orlais because mysteriously the one killed in the story re-appears to make the outcome always the same. And it totally doesn't matter if you side with the mages or templars because you get the same enemies for the rest of the game anyway and the same chapter boss in the final mission.
Try again.
Yeah, except regardless of who you put on the throne, they still show up and say the same thing.
Regardless of if you cure the genophage, nothing changes in the actual story.
Regardless of who you side with in Inquisition, you will still stop the bad guy and be the hero.
Nothing in Bioware games changes the destination, just the decoration on the walls you pass while getting there.
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