Upon completion, my overall impression of the game was that it was a bunch of fetch quests with a weak and unfocused story thrown on top of it. It certainly didn’t feel as satisfying or immersive as Origins but, on closer examination, I think that maybe it’s less a case of the story not being there as it is the way it’s presented that is the problem.
The origin stories in Origins really bring you into the game, give you a sense of who your character is, and give you a good reason to follow the quest line even if your character really doesn’t want to be a Grey Warden. The story is very focused up until you hit Lothering, at which point it can get bogged down in many of the same issues that people raise with Inquisition, until you reach the Landsmeet.
In Inquisition, you are thrust into a world in which you don’t really understand your place, role or background, but are told you have a magic hand that is the only thing that can save the world, which you do. You are then told that you are now the leader of the Inquisition because otherwise there’s no reason for you to keep playing the game. It’s easy to struggle trying to figure out your character’s motivations.
In Origins, there are tons and tons of fetch/tag/bounty quests, but they’re all hidden away on chanter’s boards, Blackstone Irregulars chests and other quest containers. If you just ignore all of those, Origins plays out as a tight, well-constructed story. In Inquisition, you can’t ignore them because they’re lying around all over the map and because you have to do a bunch of them in order to gain generic power in order to unlock the next part of the game. My experience with Inquisitions was a lot of running around a map, clicking on things and being told I’d completed some quest or another; +1 Power. If you take all the chanter/mercenary/mage/etc. quests in Origins, it plays out in basically the same way, except that you get some additional dialog as you tell some poor slob he’s been conscripted and has to make his way halfway across darkspawn-infested Ferelden to report for duty. The option to not do the fetch quests is what allows Origin’s story to flow better.
I don’t know to what extent the choices you make actually affect anything in Inquisition, but if they do, the effects are much more subtle and harder to detect. In Origins, it was usually pretty clear when something happened as a result of a specific choice you made earlier. The lack of feedback in Inquisition makes it feel as though your choices don’t matter, whether or not they actually do.
Both games had awful, tedious grinds of a final battle, but Inquisition’s felt forced and contrived. I didn’t understand why Corypheus didn’t just flee to continue his plans that he’d been working on for ages and instead go into petty revenge mode. (Or maybe I missed the motive, as I got sidetracked grinding out 35 or so extra power to unlock the final battle.) In any event, Origins gave you some weighty final decisions to make before the battle and a good epilogue. Inquisition gave you not much of anything. I felt that I ended the game as I had began: not really very invested in what was going on.
Inquisition did have some really good story elements that just didn’t tie together very well. Especially the bit at the end with Solas and you-know-who, which seemed like it could have been an interesting plot point except it was delivered as a throwaway at the end of the game, and only you, the player gets to see it: your character doesn’t even know about it.
If I could liken Inquisition to a third grade art project, I’d describe it as some very nice pictures pasted into an messy and incoherent collage, with an overly-liberal application of glitter.
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. Hopefully a game comes out in the near future that sucks you in like DA:I did to many of us. Let's pray for the witcher!
