221 réponses à ce sujet

[l7986]

Once I got past the "Oh shiny" phase of playing, this game started to feel like SWTOR but with dragons, less gold spammers and way more tedious. Hell some shady gold spammers that try to rob you blind would have been pretty cool to have in the game since I'm always running low on money. I kind of wish they had cut the Emerald Graves and Hissing Wastes and used the resources that went into those areas on polishing everything else. Also would it have been to hard to add an option to screen shake the **** off.

[txgoldrush]

 

The thing that really annoys me is this recent issues of book characters in games, im sorry but i find that a terrible thing. The game should provide the context, and if you require that i read a crappy game based book to get that then that is bad design. This is one the MAIN reasons i hated wicked hearts and eyes missions as so much about the characters was in some novels and therefore as a game that mission was incredibly boring as a player has no context. Same with coles quest of finding rhys etc. Please provide proper context that does not require me to read your novels.

 

Weird thing is this has started happening more and more, happened in ME3, now DA:I and frankly i personally do not like it.

 

It happened in Mass Effect, but not to the complete deteriment it does in DAI. This is because its Shepard's story and not Sander's (the novel trilogy) or Liara's (her comics that link the games). However DA being multiple stories and multiple protagonists, it gets even more annoying. It goes to show you how much superior the direction of the Mass Effect Trilogy is to the DA series.

 

Also it started with ME1, with Revelations being about Anderson's history with Saren before ME1.

 

 

Or the assessment is just plain correct? I mean this can circle back and forth till the end of time....

 

I skipped out, this being one of the reasons.. most of the characters struck me as fairly dull and boring. I even suggested trying to spice them up before the game released but alas...

The characters are good, but with better direction, they could have been great.

 

Its weird how Morrigan actually steals the show in DAI. She gets more development than the rest of the cast outside Leliana and Cassandra. An old Bioware problem plagues DAI, lack of character development and weak connection between the plot and the characters (outside the main party member or two)

[Vox Draco]

Sir, is there any possibility of you changing your name to Vox Draconis? You chose to use a Latin name but paid no heed to the grammar and thus your name literally means voice dragon; surely you wish it to mean voice OF the dragon no? A humble request...

 

[DeLaatsteGeitenneuker]

Well, know then that your name is in a literal sense, incorrect and some people will recognise that, Voice Dragon.

[Vox Draco]

Well, know then that your name is in a literal sense, incorrect and some people will recognise that, Voice Dragon.

 

Latin is a dead language, that is still used in many parts of the world to torture innocent minds of children. I therefore love to spit on its corpse and desecrate it, with pleasure And Voice Dragon ...yeah, cool ...sounds like a Thu'um from Skyrim ^^

 

but speaking of names ...

 

 It goes to show you how much superior the direction of the Mass Effect Trilogy is to the DA series.

 

Henceforth thou shalt be named txcomedygoldrush! So it is written!

[Scerene]

You will not find much consensus on the BSN but people outside of it might well agree, I certainly do. Even certain elements that come up in the story, upon playing it a 2nd time strike me as odd. Take the Adamant situation, by all means include wardens being controlled by a darkspawn magister, makes sense but in hearing the Calling, not a single one apart from Alistair questioned it? And then they get it into their heads to summon a demon army to hunt down the final old god? Who on earth came up with that? It is almost on par with Anders has to blow up the Chantry. They MUST summon a demon army of all things...so many other possibilities but that one seemed pulled out the arse imho.

haha this is so true, its the most ridculous plotline ive ever come across. Wardens hear the calling, dont question it, then turn to tevinter, and bind a demon army to themselves in an attempt to head down to the deep roads and kill the old gods  and i agree with just about everything you mentioned op, the game is "decent" at almost everything it attempts but never excels at anything. Its all over the place, with no idenitity of its own, and i dont understand biowares need to go from one extreme to the other. People mention something lacking in one game, to which they respond by heading completely in the other direction. Im also kind of annoyed at how they seem incapable of sticking to a foundation, completely hopping from one direction to the next. Stick to an artstyle and an identity ffs. The mass effect team did a far better job. I felt more attached and emotionally involved because all the games had an established identity through more or less the entire trilogy. It was also very nice how youre relationships carried over.

 

edit one thing im very happy about is theyve changed the elves and most importantly given us the option to not include that weird nose thing, especially this. I dont mind npcs having bioware ugly elf features, but i hope they do not take this back. IMO the DA2 elves are the worst artstyle decision theyve ever made.

[Emu8207]

Inquisition's main problem is the combat and how lackluster it is. The pacing is also an issue although Inquisition is more about a journey, then just rushing through the story.

[DeLaatsteGeitenneuker]

haha this is so true, its the most ridculous plotline ive ever come across. Wardens hear the calling, dont question it, then turn to tevinter, and bind a demon army to themselves in an attempt to head down to the deep roads and kill the old gods  and i agree with just about everything you mentioned op, the game is "decent" at almost everything it attempts but never excels at anything. Its all over the place, with no idenitity of its own, and i dont understand biowares need to go from one extreme to the other. People mention something lacking in one game, to which they respond by heading completely in the other direction. Im also kind of annoyed at how they seem incapable of sticking to a foundation, completely hopping from one direction to the next. Stick to an artstyle and an identity ffs. The mass effect team did a far better job. I felt more attached and emotionally involved because all the games had an established identity through more or less the entire thrilogy. It was also very nice how youre relationships carried over.

 

edit one thing im very happy about is theve changed the elves and most importantly given us the option to not include that weird nose thing, especially this. I dont mind npcs having bioware ugly elf features, buti hope they do not take this back. IMO the DA2 elves are the worst artstyle decision theyve ever made.

Character-wise, ME wins for sure.

[txgoldrush]

Mass Effect wins on almost "everything-wise", from game direction, to characterization, to world building, and scenario writing.

[SomberXIII]

Actually, Sci-Fi is easier to handle than Fantasy. That's why Mass Effect wins at everything.

[Siven80]

I agree with most of the OP's points.

[Wavinglighter]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the people who wrote the storyline for ME2 did not write the storyline for DA:I (not including writing individual characters). Also, different game directors. Some people are just better at this than others, but unfortunately those people left BioWare.

[mindw0rk]

While I dont agree about Mass Effect (which was fully focused on awesome main storyline), I agree completely about DAI. They just threw everything in a bag without any attempts to make it work together. It still boggles my mind how they could release an RPG where 90% of content is tedious fetch quests and collecting garbage. Bioware, you grew lazy? You dont want to be creative, dont care to release interesting story and content? And you think people will chew it just because you're Bioware? Well, I have bad news for you, you're not kings of RPGs anymore. Check DAI user score on metacritic, thats how low you fell. And wait for Witcher 3 and Enderal to learn from people who still know how to make great story-driven roleplaying games.

[Morroian]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the people who wrote the storyline for ME2 did not write the storyline for DA:I (not including writing individual characters). 

 

Given that the ME2 story is the worst of the series whats your point? 

[txgoldrush]

Given that the ME2 story is the worst of the series whats your point? 

Its better than DAI.....and ME2's story would actually be improved if you cut some scenes out.

[Yokokorama]

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a great game, IMO, certainly better than DA2.  However, I agree with many points brought up by the OP and have a few of  my own to add.  Just to note, I haven't beaten the game in its entirety but I have clocked about 65 hours in the game, and I certainly feel I have played enough to address some of these points.

 

1.  Open-world is great both conceptually and visually, but falls a bit short in technical application.

 

Seriously, its impossible not to appreciate the game's environments.  They are extremely varied (forests, plains, battlefields, beaches, snowy mountains, etc) and extremely detailed.  Gone are the repetitive areas of DA2 and the overall lazy level design.

 

The problem is, despite the game's visual beauty, there isn't much to do in them.  It's great that we have a varied open world, but the marvel wears off later on in the game, let alone the second playthrough, when it hits the player that a large portion of the regions are filled with so called "quests" that are the generic MMO-type "bring this item here", or "kill 10 of this".  Whats worse is that you are the "Inquisitor" in this game, an individual with influence and pretty much a make-shift ruler.  The tasks I found myself doing for a large portion of my time all seemed be low level tasks that should be delegated to agents or people beneath you rather than something the Inquisitor himself would be doing.

 

There need to be more meaningful quests in the game; the bulk of the game's quests should not be comprised of "fetch quests" or badly disguised permutations of them.  If Bioware is unable to produce a sufficient amount of meaningful quests, the world's size should be scaled down to fit the number of meaningful quests they have.  Basically, don't go open world just for the sake of being open world.

 

2.  Multiple hub zones are great but feel far too dead for what they are supposed to be.

 

Everyone loves zones where you can relax, take a breather, and spend some time talking with NPCs and citizens.  Main issue here, however, is that most of the hubs are populated by completely static NPCs.

 

Look no further than Redcliffe, Haven, Skyhold, that Warden place in the desert (once you capture it) . . . all of them are filled with NPCs standing there waving their arms around robotically 24/7.  They have no daily schedule like what  you'd see in a Fallout or Elder Scrolls game.  They don't move around or change what they are doing as time passes.  The hubs are filled with tons of people and no corners were cut in their visual design, but they still feel dead.

 

Now I know you may jump at me and say that Bioware hubs don't have to be like Bethesda hubs.  Afterall, Mass Effect and previous Dragon Age games didn't have this "daily schedule".   However, the hubs in those games still felt more alive than in this game for one reason: interactions, which happens to be my next point.

 

3.  Other than your advisors and companions, hardly anybody in the game can be properly interacted with.

 

Sure, you've got the guy asking for requisitions but I'm talking about real interactions.  Remember the Citadel Mass Effect 1 and 2?  Even Noveria from Mass Effect 1; there are a good number of people you could talk with, could be assigned quests from, and things along those lines.  It just felt more alive than in this game where you hardly get to interact with anyone, and when you do, it isn't via cinematic dialogue which brings me to the next point.

 

4.  Cinematic dialogue, Bioware's forte, seems to have been largely replaced by the 3rd person camera-swiveling dialogue.

 

About 90% of the game's dialogue isn't cinematic (i.e. zooming into the faces, better look into reactions and tone, more immersion in the coversation).  This is odd, considering it was the complete opposite in all of Bioware's previous RPGs.  It would be great to have this back, especially for companions. Yes, there are tidbits of cinematic dialogue, but for what I'd expect from a Bioware game they are few and far between.

 

5.  The lack of dialogue is most glaringly obvious in quests.

 

I might be back-tracking a bit here, but remember back in the first paragraph where I discussed the abundance of fetch quests? Well, I also have complaints about the "actual" quests in the game, the ones that don't involve "kill ten of these and get their skin" or anything like that.  I'll use a few examples.

 

Remember the Exalted Plains, where you go around burning the hay stacks and the pits where the corpses keep rising out from? That quest had everything it needed to be great.  It had a visually unique area, a plot that made sense, and an initially good premise as to why you should contribute to stopping the zombies.  Same thing with that Warden Keep in the Western Approach (the desert area).  Same thing with the main quest in the Mires location (the swampy area filled with undead).

 

What was the problem with all of these places? The reason to continue plowing through the waves of enemies and through the quest itself wasn't continually reinforced throughout the aforementioned quest, making the player (or at least, me) lose interest and investment in the quest.

 

Just to expand on this, think about a standard Mass Effect quest.  Sure, you'd fight through waves of enemies but guess what? Beat a few and suddenly  you'll be thrown into a cinematic dialogue sequence.  This usually happens several times throughout the quest (remember when you retrieve Archangel or the Perfect Krogan quest-lines).  It isn't just an arena fighter; there is enough character interaction to remind the player, and perhaps even motivate them further, to continue the quest.

 

And here is the thing; in Inquisition, even when you beat the quest, you don't really get any dialogue with anybody to make you better get an idea of the impact you had on the characters affected.  Even when you do get dialogue, I usually found it to be through that un-cinematic third person, and the dialogue itself was usually meaningless (a sentence or two spoken, at best).  In Dragon Age 2 and the Mass Effect series, there were proper resolutions to the quest, not just a pop-up on the top right saying "quest complete."

 

Many of the quests had all the ingredients to be perfect,  ranging from areas, enemy variety, and initial reasoning as to why you should help.  Primary issue was that you were never constantly being motivated to continue, which often pushed me (and several others I know) to asking "why am I doing this again, and why should I care?"

 

5.  What's up with the companion quests?

 

A brief point, but something I wanted to address anyway.  I haven't done them all, but the ones I have done thus far seem extremely lacking.  Varric's companion quest is basically a "fetch quest" involving you traversing the map smashing red lyrium.  Dorian's family problem was interesting, but it was ultimately a 3 minute scene.  Same thing with Sera's loyalty quest, which involved killing three enemies and then a dialogue scene.  Solas' quest had an interesting premise of saving his friend who had been forcibly brought out from the fade, but ultimately it boiled down to nothing but a pride demon fight and a brief dialogue. 

 

Compared to what we had in Dragon Age 2 and the Mass Effect series, where entire areas / levels were dedicated to the companion quest (which usually took at least 30 minutes if not longer), this seemed lacking.  I mean, compare Dorian's 2 minute conversation with his father versus Jacob (from Mass Effect 2) who fought through an island of crazy shipmates and gradually learned more about the events that had transpired via dialogue and eventually, a dialogue confrontation.  The latter felt far more satisfying and helped me as a player beter relate to Jacob and actually give a damn about his "daddy" situation.

 

Perhaps there will be more interesting companion quests later on, but thus far they haven't been holding up well.

 

Overall . . .

 

I still am loving Inquisition and I don't want anybody to think otherwise despite my above criticisms.  It is still highly enjoyable and Bioware's 4 year effort is visible in many of the game's strong point (mainly art design and diversity).   It by no means feels like a lazily produced game.  However, in their fixation of addressing the community's concerns regarding repetitiveness in areas / level design, I feel they lost their way in several other factors that I would usually expect to be their strong points.

 

Inquisition is a step in the right direction away from DA2 and I don't regret buying it at $40 (I rarely buy games at anything above Steam sale prices, so $40 is a pretty big deal to me).  However, in future installments or potential DLC, I'd really like some of the issues I mentioned here to be ironed out or addressed to some extent.

[dekarserverbot]

Companions shallow? The Companions are probably the most complex to date. They aren't one-note one dimensional characters. They have different views to varying degrees about different issues. You're assessment is just plain wrong.

 

The one dimensional characters debuted and died in DA2 thanks godness...

[o Ventus]

Please stop making threads.

[Violetbliss]

Completely disagree on the series needing a cohesive style for the three games as OP seems to promote; It's the same game world but the stories do not need to be a trilogy, it can be standalone or a mix between the two. Think of it like three books in the same setting.

 

However, yes there is some clash between making a huge game and making a story-driven game for sure. The game is way too large to fill all of it with quality quests, plain and simple. It's of course -possible- but the dev time would reach new limits, and I suppose they have a loose deadline. I don't really mind since I think it is still a lot of content to be enjoyed, and I did.

 

However, if I have a criticism it would be that I think the game suffers from you being such a prominent figure politically and power-wise. Without delving into it lengthy-wise, the narrative often has less opportunity for journey when your protagonist is expected to be around for the organization or devote so much time to building its power as in this game. The large, beautiful areas clash a bit with that. You get some real political gems like Halamshiral, but with the responsibilities your character is supposed to have, a lot of writing will need to go towards that if it's to make sense.

[KaiserShep]

Its better than DAI.....and ME2's story would actually be improved if you cut some scenes out.

 

What could you possibly cut out of ME2's main plot without gutting it? There are very few main story missions, with the bulk being comprised of recruitment, loyalty and side missions that deal with mercenaries or tracking down faulty mechs. The loyalty missions themselves don't deal with the Collector story at all, and only a couple of recruitment missions directly involve the Collectors, being Mordin, Okeer/Grunt and Legion's being more an aftermath of a different mission entirely.

 

As for it being better, that's subjective, but the logic of the story is far worse than Inquisition's. If the reapers were coming anyway, what is the point of the human reaper? If a single frigate could take out both a Collector cruiser and the entire base, why is anyone convinced of the danger of these things targeting earth, where the mass of the remaining Alliance fleet could just wipe them out? On that note, why would they target earth if the reapers were coming? They couldn't wait another few months? When Harbinger tells the Collector General "We will find another way", you'd think that the reapers were going to mull over some kind of plan, when in reality, they just decided to just bee-line to the galactic horizon. It's kind of like ordering Chinese takeout for delivery, and the delivery keeps failing and so you finally just decide to walk across the street to pick it up yourself.

 

I won't bother going in deep on Project Lazarus. I'll only say that it's the worst plot device in the entire trilogy, and I think it was a huge mistake to kill Shepard in the middle of the trilogy, because it was stupid.

[ashlover mark 2]

What could you possibly cut out of ME2's main plot without gutting it? There are very few main story missions, with the bulk being comprised of recruitment, loyalty and side missions that deal with mercenaries or tracking down faulty mechs. The loyalty missions themselves don't deal with the Collector story at all, and only a couple of recruitment missions directly involve the Collectors, being Mordin, Okeer/Grunt and Legion's being more an aftermath of a different mission entirely.

 

As for it being better, that's subjective, but the logic of the story is far worse than Inquisition's. If the reapers were coming anyway, what is the point of the human reaper? If a single frigate could take out both a Collector cruiser and the entire base, why is anyone convinced of the danger of these things targeting earth, where the mass of the remaining Alliance fleet could just wipe them out? On that note, why would they target earth if the reapers were coming? They couldn't wait another few months?

 

I won't bother going in deep on Project Lazarus. I'll only say that it's the worst plot device in the entire trilogy, and I think it was a huge mistake to kill Shepard in the middle of the trilogy, because it was stupid.

Damn my thoughts exactly on ME2.

[Bladenite1481]

I found nothing interesting about the companions in DA:I. Every single one of them felt like it was trying too hard for me. I'll take a well written cliche over a trite overzealous attempt of a character written into a personified morality clause any day.  Most of these characters can be found in any half-baked fiction story about war and their constant pandering to wanting to keep things realistic or "mature" vexes me because it becomes little more than the most simplistic representation of character growth. In short, it looks real pretty but it's skin deep and that includes any of the companions.