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[Zendou]

I just finished the campaign. Yes, just now. 6 months after it was released. It was difficult staying interested. I literally finished it for the sake of closure and completion, not because I felt compelled, as I had in the first 2 games, to finish because it was enjoyable and gratifying. Loved the story in the first two games. DA:I was meh. Loved the combat mechanics in the first 2; DA:I was not as exciting as I expected. I did love the expanded, non-repetitive world, but did not like how it was segregated into "warp zones". It doesn't feel open world to me if I can't travel to each place from any locale. I also liked the crafting system but felt limited (capped) by how high I could push my weapons dmg and armor defenses. I did like the ending and hope that it is a jumping off point for future sequels.

 

I don't want bioware to see this as bashing DA:I; I'm glad I paid full price for this game and will do so for the next one. But I do hope if anyone else had my experience that it will help improve future iterations of the DA games.

[b10d1v]

I agree, I value Bioware for what they have done for immersive gameplay, but playing DAI for enjoyment left almost immediately due the the poor condition of the game at release and its disruptive nature on my systems, moreover character development slipped tremendously below standards.    Fortunately, I get some satisfaction at ripping things apart to see why they don't work properly, a game in itself, and my technical and management skills get a workout in the process.  

 

What is more interesting is what Bioware and EA will do next to push technology ahead.  Will they recover from this failure to compete with this advanced technology or wither and die?  On the other hand, if they don't get their management practices and quality assurance systems corrected they will die -that's for certain!  That there has been noise in the news and a management shake up is good news, as management caused this failure.  A lot of quality creative talent went into this product, good people!  Pity management forced them in a corner, leaving so much on the cutting room floor.

 

Bioware is pretty good telling a story, but developed a niche market with immersion via character driven human attributes their characters can help tell the story in an almost conversational manner!  The complex character controller was a big step in the right direction to vastly improve simulated human behaviors across the board.  What's more, Bioware merged with a new technology using computational rendering to add markedly new environmental experiences and potentially improve characters vastly.  Meeting these goals was challenging and difficult from the start, but a few other surprises popped up with the integration:

1. barrier conflicts between frostbite and the new modules -expected, but not well understood
2. communication conflicts between modules - somewhat expected, somewhat confusing - priority issues
3. conflicts with the control interface - not expected -opps! 
4. stressful human learning curves - lost on management? => finding this one really bothered me!

So much was sacrificed by management in dealing with these issues and they remain problemattic - one could argue that the cuts exacerbated the conflicts!  For most of the missing items, just take the time to insert them properly.  However, more effort on the character controller would solve a lot of problems seen in quests, conflicts and dialogs, not to mention improve behaviors!  The boundary issues are tricky and managing the conflicts w/o inducing cosmetic effects or additional instabilities will be challenging.

 

If you have worked with quest aware characters, you get a far better sense of why a complex character controller is necessary, but if you haven't, it has to do with:

1. tracking the characters 
2. checking for conflicts between them 
3. setting priorities to relieve conflicts
4. managing dialog and behaviors
5. staying consistent with the plot and everything they interact with -there is a lot going on.  

A central controller reduces duplication between multiple NPCs with advanced behaviors -reduces errors and improves efficiency = faster is better, as it's mostly sorting and collating data.  Too much was cut from the scope of work to call this a success and the errors and missing elements prove it.  I can't stress enough the importance of this module.