145 réponses à ce sujet

[Solbranthius]

Thankfully there's plenty of people who consider DA:I a success whilst still enjoying what DA:O brought to the table. If DA:I isn't to your tastes, that's fine - but there's really no need to be overly dramatic and make it seem like the developers have betrayed you. I for one feel as though the story is just as meaningful and deep as it was in DA:O, there's all sorts of different things to do and see - so the fact that the game world is so large is a major plus in my book.

[Shark17676]

How do people not like Blackwall? I'm so straight, a black hole couldn't bend me, and even I want to **** this guy, lol. Just kidding.

 

No but seriously, I want his babies. lol. LOL.

 

Anyway, Blackwall is the ****** man, and that tragedy makes for some great drama. I was talking with a friend here, begging her to try this romance out because I knew the feels would be epic after finding out what he really was, and it turns out, I was right. Blackwall's story is amazing, and I am really surprised  he doesn't get more love. People love tragic stories with big burly men. Twilight must have poisoned our youth, lol. Young girls nowadays don't know a real man when they see one.

 

I digress.  Oh well...

 

I thought Blackwall's story was incredible.  I am so glad I was able to dodge all the spoilers on it...the game made it blatantly obvious that he was lying about being a Warden (I wish it hadn't), but the situation still blew me away -- it almost makes me wish I had actually played my lady Inquisitor first and romanced him, just for the additional drama.

 

It also saddens and confuses me to see so many people still call him the most boring companion in the game, especially since I've seen several of those same folks say that they thought Solas was dull until his shocking reveal.

[Kappa Neko]

I think your idea of what the story is, is much narrower than the writers'. They've said they're telling the story of the setting, and that's never been more true in DAI where the locations and events there are the story. The Orlesian civil war, the return of magic and its implications for the different races, Tevinter struggling against decline, the Chantry's renaissance- this all is the story. There's still a very clearly defined critical path and you don't need to do much in the game at all if you just want to get through it, though you'll be missing a lot.

Yes! If one only considers closing the breach the story, then it's not surprising there's so much disappointment. Which is quite ironic considering that the plot in DAO about the archdemon was not what the game was about either. The plot in Dragon Age games is only a backdrop for exploring all the things that are wrong in Thedas. The plot explores a symptom of a much bigger illness, if you will.

The "corruption" that caused the blight is symbolic for the corruption of the entire mortal world. About the "sins" of man. DAO was not about defeating a dragon, it was about the nobility and their stupid struggles for power, slavery and racism, about the evils within the chantry, even the evil potential of magic itself. DAO set the stage for everything that is boiling over in DAI.

DAI does a fantastic job of showcasing the hypocrisy and madness in Thedas.

 

I'm not the kind of person who reads all the codex entries and I admit I ignored most of them in DAO because I don't have the time anymore. But it's so much more rewarding and immersive to READ in this game. Every area tells a story. And the areas do make sense and are connected to the story. All the letters you find tell you what's going on in an area. Even most of the fetch quests are well within the framework of the mage rebellion.

There is so much DESCRIPTIVE narrative in this game that adds to the atmosphere the same way a talented writer fills the pages with details. Don't play Dragon Age like a book on astrophysics and then complain it's not immersive or emotional enough. The world of Thedas is more alive than ever before in DAI. Just because it's not all told in flashy cutscenes doesn't mean it's not there.

 

And Bioware games  are all about the illusion of choice. DAO was no better than DAI in that respect. It always ends the same way. You get the same kind of dubious choice with Morrigan. The divine is the new Alistair made king thing. Again we have to deal with Leliana's unstable psyche. Don't people see that all those big "differences" are just cosmetic? I really don't understand why people want to be unhappy about DAI so badly... nostalgia needs to die.

[EmissaryofLies]

Starting to hate Inquisition myself; the narrative clearly wants the player to lean one way while doing its damndest to destroy any incentive to do otherwise. It reminds me of how the Dalish were represented in TME.

 

I like the actual playing of the game and the character writing but the narrative doesn't seem to want me to form my own opinion. It'd rather show example after example of "these people are stupid", "these people are bad", and "these people are beacons of light of which there is no doubt that if not for them you would be nothing".

[Colonelkillabee]

Now... as much as I like this game, lets be real here. When people think of a game's main story line, they aren't talking about side developments, they aren't talking about codex pages, they're talking about real sidequests with good chunky content with dialogue and so on and so on, and this is something that Dragon Age Inquisition is lacking.

 

Reading is something I tend to like to do, but in this game its not very immersive, dropped with lifeless black boxes of text, but I do it anyway when I can. But the point is this is NOT a replacement for genuine storytelling. If Bioware wanted to tell the story of the land, which they do of course, and do so pretty well, they need to rely on dialogue and real sidequests, not codex entries. And as much as I again, LOVE this game... that is a ridiculous argument. It's lazy.

[Darkly Tranquil]

Which just happens to work slightly against me and traditional DA fans who don't care about exploration but want a great emotional story. "Skyrimization" of DA was my biggest fear for this game, and I feel it's confirmed.

I'm in the same boat. I don't care at all for exploration (hated Skyrim), I care about the story; all the open world ends up doing is diluting the narrative focus. I would much rather an smaller more tightly focused game with more time and attention placed on the major story elements (the Orlesian Civil War, Mages and Templars, and Warden plots were all resolved far too quickly, and Corypheus was not built up at all well as a foe) and far less distractions like roaming around maps, respawning trash mobs, jumping puzzles, shards, Astariums, and other collectible time filler nonsense.

It seems to me that Bioware spent so much time making Inquisition huge, they forgot to give it a coherent, well paced, consistent narrative than ran from start to finish, and instead we have a bunch of subplots only very tangentially connected, with a "final boss" sort of tacked on to round things out.

[mfmaxpower]

I agree with OP. Inquisition's open-world design comes at a significant cost in regards to the narrative.

[macready1988]

I thought it was a really good meaty game. It hasnt "restored my faith" in the franchise per se but maybe thats because its never been that strong to begin with. Bioware might insist dragon age is "about the world" and to be frank i find the world rather boring. I dont like the magic lore, hate the chantry and the elves, find the dwarves boring and dislike the qunari pandering (aka the silly qunari inquisitor and casanova'iron bull) - much prefer them as respectful antagonists.

However the keep was damn near worthless.

Out of over 100 hours this is all it gave me:

2 minutes of warm fuzzies with Dagna.

2 minutes of warm fuzzies with Morrigan followed by a heck of a lot of "when are you going to mention/worry about the warden" and also "why isnt he here protecting you and your son instead of farting around trying to cure something that wont affect him for another 10-20 years and can therefore clearly wait for a bit".

I mean SERIOUSLY - Morrigan is talking about losing her life and how it affects her son and she FORGETS he has a father still out there?

Oh and a brief but hard hitting mention in the fade that Isabela is all that Hawke has left in his pathetic existence and that hes afraid of losing her - but not so afraid to let years pass with them apart.

So yeah, the keep seemed like a lot of work for relatively little payoff - yet anyway.

The Inquisitor was also a fairly bland hero - i kept expecting him to turn into a badass but never did. The dialogue at Haven with corypheus was PATHETIC! "Im not afraid!" *clearly sounds afraid* also running away from corypheus and his pet like a wimp in mythals temple didnt do much to impress either.

Still im happy with the atheist and agnostic choices for his character and also the love and need the Inquisitor can have for Cassandra as well. No cliche "i love you" endgame build up, that got sorted early on and the refusal to lose her to the chantry was nice too. Made sense to me for a mage inquisitor who has been cutoff from most human contact nearly all his life.

However i felt the main plot was pretty thin and i get the impression a lot is still to be resolved via DLC. But i enjoyed it well enough and will see what any possible DLC has to offer.

My view is though that its the characters that make this series, not the rather bland lore, nations and themes. That means every time it "resets" i lose interest in the franchise. I nearly didnt bother with DA2 because there was so little connecting it to DAO and it was only the strength of characters like Varric, Isabela and Aveline that convinced me to try it (and are also one of the few things i like about it).

DAI had it easier because its such an obviously improved game. Maybe if they keep to this formula and improve on it itll be easier for me to take an interest in any future sequels but I doubt ill ever be fully comfortable with this 1 protagonist/1 party per game theme but thats just the way it is really.

[MEBengal2008]

It took me a while to get into this game. Once I took a step back this is how I viewed DAI vs DAO...

 

 

Both are epic from beginning to end. I mean in DAO you are selected to become a warden, the lone survivor of the three candidates, and eventually you save all of Ferelden from the blight.

 

In DAI, you are one of many head to the conclave and Corp shows up and ruins everything. You get this special mark and save Thedas building up your army (the Inquisition) in the process. You run into Wardens, Templars, Mages, and even empires that you need to make choices on to impact your Inquisition, which is about changing Thedas future.

 

Both games are great and both shape Thedas. Of the two, I believe DAI will impact Thedas future a lot more than DAO. The choices you make in DAI are more impactful long term than DAO.

 

Think about this....

 

When I think about DAI and DAO they are quite similar. In DAO you picked who will rule Orzammar and in DAI you pick you will lead the Orleanais. In DAO you use the Warden treaties to recruit armies; in DAI you pick Mage or Templars and then from there can recruit other armies based on your choices.

 

There are many side quest that open up various dialogues in DAO and the same can be said in DAI.

 

The thing for me is that DAI took a while to get interesting vs. DAO where you get pulled in immediately and it continues throughout the game.

 

Both games are good and both offer players plenty of choices.

[GGGenesis]

My 'beef' with DAI is that it felt more like a scenic road trip than an actual involved thing and I am not sure why...I think it's because there is little time spent on getting to know people and groups and why they're so significant. I felt like I was passing through and not really meeting people and getting involved with the issues of certain groups. Think of the Circle quest in Origins. DAI is set up in a way that assumes you know about Thedas's issues whereas Origins showed you the issues and had you navigate them. It is pretty sad IMHO that the Templar vs Mage rebellion was reduced to bland series of battles in the hinterlands and was only mentioned. Worlds also felt more empty as they were 'factionless' - no communities, towns etc.

[Carmen_Willow]

To be honest, I'm bias. I'm a big Skyrim fan but I always wished it had a stronger main story. So to me, DA: I is a wish come true. Perhaps I just have a high tolerance for doing random side quests. lol

I think for a first attempt to have an "open world" with a story driven quest line, it went okay. It needs some more "Important" side quests in it. It would have been fun if you could actually have participated in some of the quests we only heard about at the table, or have been able to send our B Team out to solve an issue for us.

 

I don't know, perhaps a story-driven quest in each area could have helped, but instead of YOU becoming the arch-mage, or the head of the fighter's guild, etc., someone else takes on that role and you just walk away having done your best to bring order. Yes, I know we kill all the Arcane Horrors in the Exalted Plains and turn off the defenses in the fort, but there was no emotional tug to that. Perhaps we needed a Tallis- like figure to beg for our help and go along on the mission to add zest.

 

We all get down on Bioware, but they seem to be trying things that haven't been done before in RPGs. DA:2 grew on me over time, and Inquisition, though it has its faults, can grow or can be the parent of a new game that's better. I end up with game-fatigue playing this game, but I see the possibilities. I think the team will figure out how to immerse us better in the game with future DLC (as they did in 2), or in the next game.

[Carmen_Willow]

Another day, another self-obsessed idiot whining about how great Origins was and how much of a failure Not Origins (I mean, Inquisition) is. 

 

Get over yourself. There was plenty of other useless crap going on in Origins: Chanter's Boards, Mage's Collective, Orzammar went on forever and the Urn of Sacred Ashes was right there along with it. Origins was a fine game, so is Inquisition. Stop complaining how it's not Origins. 

I loved A Paragon of her Kind. Yes, it was long, yes, it was oppressive, but it was MEANT to be so. No other Deep Roads quest has given me that feeling that I'm miles below the surface of the earth, and I'm never gonna make it back to the outside. The only quest that has sent more chills down my spine was the Derelict Reaper quest in ME:2. (God I hate those husks!)  The Deep Roads quest was a paragon of dramatic build-up.

[Labrev]

I love Dragon Age Origins more than I love my first born child. With that said, I painfully say I have little respect for Inquisition. It's a failure. Let me tell you exactly why. Origins was beautiful because it was so immersive in the main story. Dragon Age 2 does this better than Inquisition. Everywhere that you go in Origins, From the Brezilian Forest to Orzammar, from The Frostback  Mountains to Denerim, It's all story related. There wasn't a place you would go where it didn't direct you to the main story, the main mission, stopping the fifth blight. There was a plethora of side quests in each area to do that weren't related to the main story, yet in the end, they are done in an area that is related to the main mission of stopping the blight. In Inquisition, there is no resemblance of this structure. The main bulk of the game has NOTHING to do with stopping Corypheus and his threat. It's all about doing missions in areas that I found I couldn't give a damn less about. Like wtf. The beauty of the first Dragon Age was the drive to end the blight. In Inquisition, it feels like there's no urgency in stopping corypheus, I feel no immersion in the story. Instead now I'm play Skyrim where I just walk around areas looking for things and doing random quests in areas that ultimately don't matter at all. In Origins, every area mattered to the story. Second of all, What happened to the freedom of choice in the game? In origins, almost every time I played, I found there was a different outcome to almost every situation. In Inquisition, it's simply monotonous. It's the same outcome no matter what. There's no change to anything I do, everything kind of just works the same. The only efforts they made to make me feel like a choice I made mattered was choosing templars or mages, choosing the orlesian leader, and destroying the wardens or keeping them. In Origins, I felt like almost every choice mattered. Being persuasive had effects over simple dialouge, whereas in Inquisition, being pursuasive issss simple dialogue. I felt I mattered in Origins but here in Inquisition, where I should feel like a leader, I just feel like the game is trying to make a sheep to conform to pretty graphics and oooh, pretty trees. Where the hell is beef. Inquisition left me so dissatisfied. Anyone get what I'm trying to say?

 

Wall of text is wall.

 

That said, I agree.

[Qun00]

TL;DR

Real answer: Because it's the newest game.

Fans react that way in every franchise.

[Carmen_Willow]

93 hrs into the game, and I don't feel like I'm on a railroad, even though I am. I'm playing the game like I played Skyrim. I'm exploring areas and running across quests and actions I need to take. I realize this is probably not the way Bioware intended the game to be played. I'm dragon hunting now because I feel like dragon hunting. I'll probably be so overpowered by the time I go after Corypheus it will be ridiculous. So I have essentially broken the game. I'm only about 1/2 way through the main plot. Don't ask. I walk everywhere and don't fast travel. The only thing I can say that is missing is day and night cycling. Bioware should have put that into the game. Next time.

 

I love this game. I probably will only play it a couple of times though instead of the dozens. Why? It's the way I play games like this. Skyrim logged 300 hrs. Oblivion 600. So there you go. Open worlds are time sucking vampires.

In my most recent play through, I was so overpowered, with so much high grade armor and ultimate weapons, Cory was whimpering on the ground in mere minutes. I think we chugged a total of 2 potions between all of us. Still, it was FUN being a bigger badder god than he was, watching my lightning strikes go KABOOM! instead of kaboom.

[thats1evildude]

I'm pretty sure Andraste spoke out against thread necromancy.

[Cobra's_back]

Four words: Where. The. Druffalo. Roam.

 

I never fetch animals, but did get all possible agents and built up the power I wanted. The important power points were rifts, saving towns and cities, and some of the war table missions were really good at the end. The epilogue states if you had great power leverage or not.

[berelinde]

Don't give me that logic. I'm entitled to my opinion too. Don't be a rude diehard fan ******. HOF did all those quests in areas that were relevant to stopping the blight. The area's that weren't, are DLC. 

Right. Logic clearly has no place here. Also, your poor firstborn, to be second in your affections to a game.

 

Sadly, no Dragon Age sequel will ever be able to recapture the magic of the first one because it won't have novelty going for it.

 

Each of the areas *do* have something to do with the main plot. In the Hinterlands, you're earning Ferelden's trust. In the Fallow Mire, you're rescuing Inquisition soldiers. Maybe they aren't important to your inquisitor, but mine felt that rescuing them was absolutely essential to the cause. In the Exalted Plains, you're restoring peace shattered by the Orlesian Civil War. In the Emprise du Lion, you're crippling Corypheus's Red Templars. In the Hissing Wastes, you're disabling his Venatori.

 

Looking at Origins by your lights, there's no point in going to the Brecilian Forest, Orzammar, or to the Circle because the game can absolutely be completed without doing any of those things. The only gains you achieve by going to those places are a few ineffective chunks of meat to throw at hurlocks in the final battle.

 

You are entitled to your opinion, but it is no more important than anyone else's. The many who disagree with you are not wrong.

[berelinde]

I'm pretty sure Andraste spoke out against thread necromancy.

Whoops, yeah, should've checked the date.

[Cobra's_back]

I agree with OP. Inquisition's open-world design comes at a significant cost in regards to the narrative.

 

 

Technically not open world. Open World means moving openly from one area to the next. DAI you have to open the area through the war table. Skyrim was truly open world. DAI the player picks the area they want to visit. DAI doesn't required you to do all side quest. You could technically finish at level 16. Player's choice is never a bad thing.

[Carmen_Willow]

Whoops, yeah, should've checked the date.

Re: Thread Necromancy. 

 

Not the one who re-started this thread but don't people yell at you if you start a NEW thread with the same subject as the old one? I guess you're darned if you do and darned if you don't.