I finished Dragon Age: Inquisition very recently.
And I am pretty floored by how terrible the ending was. To the point where I've come and made an account here specifically to speak about it.
I despise ME 3's ending, and I'm not going to pull any punches against it. It completely betrayed the themes of the series, utterly invalided both all of Shepard's actions and the player's choices, threw any sense of scientific plausibility out the window. It's riddled with literally dozens of ridiculous plot holes to the point of incredible mental gymnastics being necessary to make even a modicum of sense.
But you know what? At least I can tell they tried.
The writers of ME 3 easily, easily could have had the last mission feature Shepard pressing the magic problem-solving button, the Reapers falling over, everyone giggling and going home. No complications or dilemmas. It would take 20 minutes for a single person to write the plot out. But they didn't. Despite how incredibly easy it would have been for them, they tried something else. Why? Because they at least understood that a story needs to be more.
Is that something understood for Dragon Age? It certainly doesn't look like it from the ending.
There's no courage in the final battle because there's nothing to be courageous about. There's no triumph because there's nothing to be triumphant over. Corypheus is never shown to be anything more than a somewhat difficult opponent, but it's the same kind of somewhat difficult opponents the Inquisitor has been cutting through for the entire game now. Yes, Morrigan is knocked out of the fight and the Inquisitor must face the dragon, but it makes no difference. The dragon is swiftly dealt with the same way every other opponent in the game has been dealt - whacking it with a sword or spell or arrows until it dies. Never in the battle is the Inquisitor shown to be forced to adapt or improvise or seriously struggle. Never is there any moment of real courage, skill, or determination. Just the same old killing he or she has been thoroughly exposed to for some time now.
In other circumstances, that might be totally okay. After all, not everything is about combat. Oftentimes, the antagonist of the story (intentionally) has ultimately very little to do with the true conflict. But here Inquisition has nothing to offer either. Because there's nothing here! No revelations, no choices, no complications, no new information, no challenges to consider, no anything. Once the fight is over and the breach is sealed (again, with no challenge, just pick up the orb and problem solved), we just pack and up and go home!
In every quest of any narrative value and for endings in particular, there must be some information revealed to the player they could not have anticipated beforehand. Because being told by the story that the protagonist is going to do something and then watching them do it with no complications or revelations is dead boring. There's no drama in it.
To summarize, never in the ending is the Inquisitor actually challenged. And because there's no challenge, no conflict, the fundamental basis of all drama, the ending is thematically bankrupt. It's void. And therefore a complete failure. Having the central conflict solved with no struggle or challenge invalidates the entire point of conflict in stories in the first place. At the moment of climax - the most important moment of a story - the moment where the themes of a story are meant to shine through at their absolute strongest - Dragon Age: Inquisition, like ME 3, is at its weakest.
To top things off, the mission structure is awful and dialogue is flimsy. The final mission begins and the Inquisitor just walks up to Corypheus. Where's the building of tension? Where's the sense of rising action? The sense of an upcoming climax? Nowhere. The player is safe and snug in Skyhold one moment, and 30 seconds later he's facing the central antagonist. Video games have the player cutting through hordes of mooks before encountering the final boss for a reason, and a good one.
And what does our Inquisitor say at the moment of supposed 'victory'? "Let's go back to Skyhold" in a tone more fitting for someone suggesting "Let's go eat breakfast."
When the Inquisitor went back to Skyhold for the reception and the objective box told me to go to my quarters, I was certain that this was all a facade to lure the player into a false sense of security. That the actual conflict, the actual confrontation was yet to come. That the Inquisitor would fall asleep and enter and the fade in his or her dreams and Corypheus would be waiting somehow. But no. What I thought was a joke was the real deal.
Months ago, I read interviews by staff members promising to try and make the ending of Inquisition as strong as possible. I can think of few descriptions better for Inquisition's ending than as weak as possible.
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