I really appreciated that BioWare has finally come out of hiding and started to communicate with their customers. Here's hoping that the patch goes some way towards delivering on the promises that were made to the PC players during the pre-release marketing spin. I am still waiting for that game:
Dragon Age: Inquisition - Made for PC Gamers by PC Gamers
“The combat HUD was created specifically for the PC so it gives a lot of the maneuverability you want as a PC player. The tactical camera and pause-and-play is just like you would expect from [Dragon Age] Origins. You’ll be super super pleased with it! It just creates a nice interface to interact with the world.”
Elizabeth Lehtonen, Associate Producer, BioWare
The ONLY thing about the HUD that is created specifically for the PC is the quickbar – and they didn’t even get that right. PC players get a quickbar with a maximum of 8 slots because that just happens to be the number of skills you can map on the console controller.
The punchline of the video really is when the associate producer describes the excitement and anticipation during the PAX presentation:
“We hit “A” and it just went smooth as silk”.
Referencing the green A button on the Xbox360 controller is probably not the best way to convince someone that DAI was “Made for PC Gamers by PC Gamers”. I guess we should have picked up on that as a sign of things to come.
If BioWare wants to keep me as a customer I expect major PC optimizations of not only the HUD, but also the menus and the controls. Keeping my fingers crossed for the patches to come. You can do it BioWare!