While others are busy defining 'a true RPG', let's continue our little exchange.
A number of these quests are 'acquired automatically as part of the main storyline' according to the other page (and as such I don't consider them side quests) follow-ups from the prologue, or both. This affects the math you post later on.
Hm, I would say that just because they are acquired automatically as the main story progresses, doesn't mean they are not side quests anymore. It's up to you to finish them or not - they are optional (while the acquisition is mandatory, the completion is up to the players; you can skip them entirely).
In my opinion that's the beauty of them - the majority of them is tightly connected to the main story, giviing you precious insight into characters, a given town and a current situation. They offer (apart from a little distraction from the main storyline and possibility to earn orens/items) valueable information. And the more information you have, the better choices you can make.
A quick example from chapter 1 is the Malena quest. You find a bunch of militiamen harassing an elf woman, wanting to hang her. Given the tensions between humans and non-humans, they probably caught her near the forest line, suspecting her of killing two humans in the cave. The militiamen are afraid to go and check, as nekkers run aplenty there. Initially, you think those degenerated men just want to hang her for no good reason at all. You enter the cave, fight nekkers and indeed find two human corpses, pierced by elven arrows. You go back and can tell the truth (Malena will still insist she has nothing to do with it and has a proof of that in the forest - you can follow her or cut it right there and let them hang her; if you follow to the forest you are ambushed by elves.) or lie, which grants the woman freedom - she's thankful and says the reward awaits you in the forest. You go there and get ambushed by elves. Malena escapes. If you manage to find her later (she's in hiding), she will beg you for mercy, being sorry and all. You can kill her on the spot or let her go.
It's just a side quest, yet you gain so much insight about the two parties (humans and elves), and you are drawn into a small scale confrontation between the two - the choices you made and the outcomes of them (+ the knowledge) may very well influence which side you are going to choose in the main quest.
Your long description of the content in question doesn't really challenge what I said -- you're making an argument that some of these basic quests are more memorable/involved because they're "a little spiced up". But you know, these details didn't make these quests any more memorable or interesting for me, as evidenced by the fact I didn't remember any of these details until you brought them up now. So I stand by what I said -- based on personal experience I don't believe this kind of extra work put into DAI quest would make them that much more memorable for me. Just like it didn't help these Witcher 2 quests.
Wait a minute. I've said that the mini-game quests are at least a little bit spiced up. They are hardly memorable, yes. However, the majority of side quests (as my math proved) have a clear story focus and offer proper content. I find them memorable and objectively at least ok. You don't. I understand that. I just cannot comprehend why and how can you dismiss TW2 side quests as inferior to DA:I side quests, which are utterly unmemorable (or maybe they are - being so bad, it's hard to forget about them... wink wink)?
My stance on this boils down to: yes, from the reasonable point of view the Inquisitor's actual tasks would be limited to travelling with large troop and doing nothing but closing the Fade breaches. Because that's one task where he/she is irreplaceable, and allowing the inquisitor to risk their life travelling the countryside with three other people and picking flowers instead, that's insane.
Thank you. My point is, if go to the cinema to watch a movie, naturally I expect it to be good. However, as I watch, I cannot help but notice how incoherent and forced the plot is. For me, that's a major issue which ruins the film. Same with video games - if I detect the lack of basic common sense and intelligence in the story oozing from the game, it's just bad in my book. If the quality storytelling (which includes pacing, the bulk of the story, the presentation of it, the background, coherency etc.) does not meet my standards, I'm dissatisfied with the product. Plain and simple.
Except if you actually did DAI the way it'd "make sense"... there would be very little of actual "game" left there, and what's left would be basic and extremely repetitive, far more so than what we currently get.
Indeed, and that's a huge flaw of the game.
So as it is, the game offers you all these activities which the players who played other RPGs demonstrated to enjoy, and which are largely optional. And so for any of these tasks, you can do them either because it happens to be something that's fun to you, or because you believe the character you are role-playing would do it "for the little people" or whatever... or you can tell yourself "no, that's not the sort of work my inquisitor would be wasting time on".
And I find the offer unacceptable. It's sub-par, as compared to previous Bioware products.
There was a thread on this forum, not so long ago, where the OP argued that DA:I is a case of style over substance, and I fully agree. Bioware's priorities clearly shifted with DA:I into a direction I disapprove of. I'm not going to lament though, to be honest I didn't even buy the game (and do not intend to buy anything Bioware in the future); my friend did and we have spent a lot of time playing it together. Granted, we are both disappointed - he's more than me probably, since he paid for it.
That's all there's to it. And I think this sort of semi-sandbox allowing you to shape your own experience and spend anything between 20-100+ hours on it, that DAI currently is? It works out ok. At this point, while i can agree it'd be nice to see more fleshed out content, I'm not convinced it'd be a good tradeoff if it came at expense of removing a number of the zones from the game.
Maybe it works for some, just not for me. I think they did not tame the semi-open world + frostbite 3 engine experiment and the it slipped through their fingers, becoming something mediocre.
And yes, the removal of zones does not equal instant quality in areas that would be present in the game, however, I'd rather they took this shot. But it's ~4 years to late for that.
I guess, that about concludes it. Thank you for the discussion. Unfortunately, it is rare to engage in such an exchange - especially on this forum.
If you want to add anything, by all means.
Peace.
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