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[Korhiann]

Here’s my take on the game after having played through it and looking back at what I saw and heard a year ago, which made me take notice of the game.

The game that we have now is great and I felt almost compelled to keep playing. Not as good of a PC game as Origins, for obvious reasons, but that's another topic entirely. 

I am curious about one thing though, why was the final game less ambitious than the version shown a year ago? The game that we ended up with seems to be more of a standard CRPG than what I was expecting, lead to believe that we would get. Was it simply too much to expect, taking the timeframe into account? Was this the reason why they pushed the game back a year?Were they not able to tie this kind of gameplay into the storyline?

For those whom don't remember or didn't know about what we were shown back in 2013, here are some examples:

 

https://www.youtube....xJMWRI-cA#t=753

 

http://www.gametrail...-world-unveiled

 

http://www.rockpaper...ge-inquisition/

 

On to the list of design changes that I’ve noticed.

1. Regional choices were cut from the game in favour of linear progression through an area. From each area having an interactive storyline to areas serving more as standard RPG areas, that basicly just serve to level and gear up. The two examples that we know of that show this change are Crestwood and the Western Approach. In both cases we were shown the possible choices you could make. In Crestwood you had a choice between protecting a keep or Crestwood village. While Western Approach had you make stronghold choice after liberating the warden keep there, I'll get back to that later on, and opening up a new area by using your agents. I can only assume that Bioware had plans for each region to have its own storyline with important choices that would in turn have had a profound effect. "Gut-wrenching choices" as Bioware explained it.  
2. A year ago Bioware had designed the game with a larger focus on managing your forces. Different forces being able to strengthen the Inquisition in different ways and you having to choose how to best manage your limited amount of agents/power. This role was presumably moved over to your advisor missions, in its limited fashion. The changes to the Inquisition forces leads me to the next point.
3. Bioware had plans for a completely different stronghold/outpost system than what is currently in the game. As mentioned before, they showed players being able to make important choices on how to deal with captured strongholds: Have it focus on economy, military or espionage. Improve the stronghold by adding ressource buildings to it etc. As opposed to what we have now that have the keeps serve as quest and vendor areas. 

 

Now to my thoughts on the matter. 

 

Interaction

 

The previous system seemed to have been focused more on interaction  as opposed to what we have now which is a largely static experience.  By this I mean that when I played the game I got the feeling that I was the figurehead and martial champion while all the administrative decisions were left to my advisors, without my knowledge or advice. Fair enough, but other games (Neverwinter Nights 2 comes to mind) allowed you to give broad orders to your underlings whom would then do their best to fullfill your wishes. (Obviously this just amounted to them doing what you told them to, but it still seemed to give a feeling of macromanagement)

Bioware was probably planning on having the player manage the Inquistion to a far greater degree by giving the player more direct control over the direction of the Inquisition and actually watching it grow in power.

In the final version I never got the feeling that the Inquisition was spreading across a region, nor that the Inquisition was gradually becoming bigger. (The player just gets updates from time to time that the Inquisition is growing in power after doing quests and war table missions)

Another area that I found lacking was the ability to command your Inquisition or at least participate in larger scale conflicts between Inquisition forces and the enemies in a region that need clearing up. All we got are static camps and troops here and there that don’t actually do anything. The game made me feel like I was there to clear the way for the Inquisition to move in instead of helping/leading them to victory in an area against armies of enemies. In other words I missed actually seeing the Inquisition armies, why are all of the big battles offscreen? Engine limitations?

 

War Table

 

For the next part I'm going to split the missions up in forces and advisor missions.

Overall the war table isn't all that interesting, at least not to me. The missions themselves aren’t interesting nor rewarding enough and mostly seem like they are only there because they had something bigger planned, but still had to give the player some resemblance of control over the Inquistion. (Another thing that I’ve found to be a strange design choice is the sheer amount of power you’re able to gather. You will never be able to spend them all which makes the mechanic rather pointless)

The use of forces on the mission map seems to be rather pointless. For the most part you’re not given a choice between them and they seem to lead to the same result: An area being unlocked. I'm sure that Bioware had planned for forces, or agents as I believe they are called back then, to play a major part in shaping your version of the Inquisition.  

influence which is rather vague. 

The advisor missions are a mixed bag. We have the more interesting mission chains that sometimes have consequences tied to them and then we have the more standard missions that make up the majority of them, which I found to be largely pointless given the reward to time investment ratio. 

 

Customization

 

Another area that seemed rather lacking or rather tacked on was the ability to upgrade Skyhold. The three upgrades that we got seem rather pointless as only one of them actually give the player anything that can be used and the other two are simply cosmetic changes. The main customization feature is obviously focused on changing the appearance of the main keep, which is fine if not a tad limited. Of course I don’t know if they ever intended for Skyhold to be upgradeable to any real degree. The sheer amount of lumber yards and quarries makes me think that they had something more planned though.

An area that you never get to perform any upgrades are your troops. In other games, and even a previous Dragon Age expansion, players are given the ability to directly upgrade ones troops. The only instance were we see this in a requisition that doesn't directly do anything except give you a point of power. 

Neverwinter Nights 2 is a good example of a stronghold system done right. 

 

Conclusion

 

Since Bioware made the call to show important gameplay features that would never make it into the final game I can’t help but feel a bit mislead. Granted all of this was shown last year and things do change.  However Bioware did nothing, as far as I am aware of, to shown that they had indeed cut/changed said content. A case of marketing jumping the shark in order to hype the game?

What we have now is a great game that is very much in line with CRPGs, however I feel like it could have been so much more judging from what Bioware showed us last year. Having areas that would have been interactable to a far greater degree, with player choices actually changing the area, would have been far more interetesting and engaging as opposed to what we have now that feels more like a traditional MMORPG. As in they mostly serve as a leveling and gearing area before you venture deeper into the far more enjoyable main story missions. Although I should note that I have no problem with areas being static, when it comes to your choices having profound consequences, as it’s just in line with most CRPGs.

 

Is anyone else a bit dissapointed at what could have been? What are your thoughts on why they ended up backing away from their more ambitious plans. 

[Bladenite1481]

Agree with you 100%. Perhaps that is the best way to put it, yeah its on par with DAO or DA2, but it could have been something new, something so much more ground breaking and instead its just another game. 

[Helion Tide]

I agree with all of your points wholeheartedly.  The sad reality of game development is that you need to kill your children sometimes in order to meet a deadline.  They had a grand vision, and they were earnest about it when they believed they had the time and resources to make it all happen.  Unfortunately a lot of it probably needed to be cut in order to make deadline.  I'm sure that was the issue, or they were creating more road blocks and technical headaches by trying to execute such a grand system of interaction.

 

Another thing I noticed was how veil fire no longer worked in the same way as was shown.  Before, in the game play videos, veil fire revealed much larger inscriptions and needed to be deciphered by your scholars in order to find out their meaning.  Instead, that system was cut in favour of a more direct approach.  Find a rune inscription, click said rune inscription, automatically learn it.  Sigh.  The woes of game development...

[Devil's Avocado]

I believe what we saw during pre-alpha in 2013 is what would DA:I would have looked like if it was released in 2016, even four years wasn't enough time. If they added a system that focused more on building up the inquisition (such as being able to emphasize military, diplomacy and espionage and having access to certain choices based on this) something else would have been cut given their time frame.

 

Having areas change based on choices may have been taxing graphically or during testing they realized that many people only play the game once and closing people off and lessening their play time wasn't the best choice.

 

Just my thoughts.

[XEternalXDreamsX]

It makes me wonder if they would have done just humans instead of adding 3 races (6 if including genders) and focused toward the cut content during that development time. Honestly, I am glad they had added races but something tells me that took a lot of manpower and resources.

[Zu Long]

In the end I'm guessing they just ran out of time, possibly due to all the technical challenges of moving to a new platform. Hopefully, with that move completed, they'll be able to build on this experience and really go all out with some of the features they wanted to put into this game.

[Helion Tide]

It makes me wonder if they would have done just humans instead of adding 3 races (6 if including genders) and focused toward the cut content during that development time. Honestly, I am glad they had added races but something tells me that took a lot of manpower and resources.

 

Yeah, I think they made the mistake of putting too many eggs in their basket.  Game studios so often like to write up grand lists of features that are going to be amazing, but when it comes time to develop them, there just isn't the time or resources to execute them to a degree they'd be happy with.  That, and a lot of features sound great on paper, but either don't add any level of depth once implemented, create/run into more technical hurdles than they're worth, or just aren't fun or meaningful.  Hard to say, but I'm sad to see so much of their vision had to be sacrificed.

[Korhiann]

Peter Molyneux would be a great example of someone whom tends to bite off more than he can chew. 

[Nyaore]

Peter Molyneux would be a great example of someone whom tends to bite off more than he can chew. 

And never learns from it at that. You'd think he'd have learned to keep his mouth shut at some point.

[Anuka]

"Word babies" are slain in word budgets and developmental ideas sometimes just can't be brought into game, in time.  Does it mean you won't see such things in DLC? - No.  Does it mean you will see them in DLC? - No.
... In the way that we asked "can we swim in DA-I? and heard "not yet, no" - doesn't mean we'll never swim.  It just means they couldn't get it working, in time.
But you do get a feeling for what they were trying/wanted to do.

Do I like the direction they tried to take with DA-I.  I do (bugs and all)
Bioware (even as an EA subdivision) isn't staying "stagnant."  They're trying new things.  

I just hit level 20 at 103 hours in DA-I (with a Keep save that imported all the way.  I've seen "call backs and references" to my previous choices" [in a game series that had numerous plot flag save errors ever prohibiting a fully functional "import save" feature.
Even an "import save" feature wouldn't have helped me.  I jumped from old gen platform to new - how would I have imported that? -- even with a USB stick? ]

Are there bugs, have I hit them?  Talk to me about Cole's amulet or some of the other bugs I've hit.

Was DA-I an ambitious attempt - absolutely.  
Are there faults - absolutely.

But this isn't "games on a cartridge" where we'll never see a patch.  

... and if they had the idea (for a feature, or a mechanic) they'll find a way !
(I remember Bioware saying they wanted a game mechanic that would recognize who your most taken out with you party members were.  Me3, Citadel DLC showed how they worked that out)

 

[Helion Tide]

Peter Molyneux would be a great example of someone whom tends to bite off more than he can chew. 

 

Right you are.  

 

But, in their defense, the devs explicitly state that their "vision for DA:I is" ... 

It's not like they really promised us anything, but they certainly painted a much larger picture than they delivered.  Oh well.  Hopefully now that they've got the engine by the horns, they'll be able to deliver for future DLC and sequels.  I'm sure they will.

[Giantdeathrobot]

I believe this is why developpers usually hesitate to show content before release, or at least until the game is near gold.

 

I do feel Bioware got a bit excited in their marketing campaign, and they shouldn't have showcased a gameplay sequence if they were going to cut it. But it's nowhere near like a Molyneux situation, who hypes amazing games and delivers mediocre crap consistently.

 

Inquisition can, however, be said to be a bit of a victim of its ambition regardless. Having a gigantic, beautiful game world is great, but having too many fetch quests in it isn't. Hopefully they learn and deliver a better balance in DLC/future games. I wouldn't want Bioware to get the wrong message and change their model yet again, big zones are so much better than the more linear areas of their previous games.

[Linkenski]

I think it's safe to assume all these excellent design concepts were ultimately dropped because resources/budget didn't add up or it caused glitches.

We know for a fact that Holstering was removed from Mass Effect 3 because PS3 had memory limitations, and bear in mind that Inquisition is also on last-gen. To have such big fundamental parts of the game cut seems absurd, but if the last-gen machines simply couldn't handle storing all these variables with the little ram they had, then it was the only call to make.

Does EA decide if a game should be cross-gen by the way? I hope not. I want Mass Effect 3 to maximize next-gen potential, not maximize profit with cross gen versions.

[Dutch]

Ending fight was underwhelming.

Corypheus is just a glorified choir boy. A choir boy!!!!

[Xiolyrr Zoharei]

Not surprising really. Levine did the same thing with cut content from the E3 demo for Bioshock Infinite.

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=Bbf2L62I6g8

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=xJV5ReOSjF0

[Giantdeathrobot]

I think it's safe to assume all these excellent design concepts were ultimately dropped because resources/budget didn't add up or it caused glitches.

We know for a fact that Holstering was removed from Mass Effect 3 because PS3 had memory limitations, and bear in mind that Inquisition is also on last-gen. To have such big fundamental parts of the game cut seems absurd, but if the last-gen machines simply couldn't handle storing all these variables with the little ram they had, then it was the only call to make.

Does EA decide if a game should be cross-gen by the way? I hope not. I want Mass Effect 3 to maximize next-gen potential, not maximize profit with cross gen versions.

 

I do think they probably had to cut corners because of last-gen consoles. I don't have anything against people who play those, but it's really about time that we leave this old, limiting hardware behind. Or hell go the AssCreed way and do a game specific for old-gen, I don't know.

[AresKeith]

Not surprising really. Levine did the same thing with cut content from the E3 demo for Bioshock Infinite.

And developers before him did it

It's not that new in game development, especially during Pre-alpha

[Al Foley]

Ending fight was underwhelming.

Corypheus is just a glorified choir boy. A choir boy!!!!

Wait Corypheus is actually Sebastian? 

 

*rim shot*

[Helion Tide]

Does EA decide if a game should be cross-gen by the way? I hope not. I want Mass Effect 3 to maximize next-gen potential, not maximize profit with cross gen versions.

 

They probably do, yes, and they probably have a lot to say in terms of monetization efforts.  EA successfully turned the DAI multiplayer into a mobile game cash grab, utilizing resources that could have been implementing more worthwhile features into the single player experience, thus executing more of their initial vision.

 

David Gaider himself on his blog reiterated in a post that developers consistently have to 'kill their children' to either make way for more cost effective ones, or to maximize efforts on one that works.  I'm paraphrasing, but the general statement was that effort into one thing almost always sacrifices efforts in another.

 

Again, the woes of game development.  It's a sad reality that there's too much money to be made, and is the only driving factor in this industry.

[Dutch]

It's just Bioware not keeping promises. Of course now that the Old guard are gone, the new people at Bioware don't know how to say NO to their EA masters.

This game needed a year or two to fully maximize what it set out to be in the beginning!

Honestly, if resources and technical issues were the problem that resulted in what we have now, Bioware should have just scraped the ps3/360 version so they could have focused more on building their vision that they promised a year ago.

It's sad. I bet the next mass effect will be the same thing. Promises not being met. What a shame Bioware.

[Xiolyrr Zoharei]

And developers before him did it

It's not that new in game development, especially during Pre-alpha

I know. It's sort of like unintentional false advertising in sense that people get hyped, expecting what they see in pre alpha builds to actually make it in the final cut. Devs should stop showing pre alpha builds since it's so liable to change, especially if the pre alpha looks more promising that what we end up with.

[AresKeith]

I know. It's sort of like unintentional false advertising in sense that people get hyped, expecting what they see in pre alpha builds to actually make it in the final cut. Devs should stop showing pre alpha builds since it's so liable to change, especially if the pre alpha looks more promising that what we end up with.

 

I'm pretty sure there's an image on some that pretty much says "Pre-alpha footage - susceptible to change"

[DemGeth]

Ah you don't know what pre-alpha builds are lol.

[Helion Tide]

It's just Bioware not keeping promises. Of course now that the Old guard are gone, the new people at Bioware don't know how to say NO to their EA masters.

This game needed a year or two to fully maximize what it set out to be in the beginning!

Honestly, if resources and technical issues were the problem that resulted in what we have now, Bioware should have just scraped the ps3/360 version so they could have focused more on building their vision that they promised a year ago.

It's sad. I bet the next mass effect will be the same thing. Promises not being met. What a shame Bioware.

 

I wouldn't say that just yet.  I think the development of DAI has already solved a lot of the technical issues that Bioware as a whole would need to tackle.  It's only a matter of time before they are able to execute.