Some will agree with me and some will disagree. Just please, whichever side you take, be polite and respectful about it.
I've been replaying the game, since I wanted to play Jaws of Hakkon without any missing party members. Now I'm done with JoH, and completely did all available side quests in all regions. I just need to finish the game out with a complete run through Wicked Eyes, Wicked Hearts and the end game, basically, and I'm done. This is not my first playthrough. I got the game on release day, and beat it within a week or two afterward. This time, I've taken more time, appreciated the plot and characters more, and gotten annoyed with all of the repetitive side quests and shard-hunting.
What has stuck out to me the most in this lengthy playthrough is that it is really too lengthy, in a not-good way. The length is not taken up by deep plots or fascinating character conversations, it's taken up by forced slogs around mountains and through bogs to get to the next quest point.
Regions are, as my initial impression in my first playthrough told me, not all connected to the plot. Some could have been cut entirely. We have three desert areas. They are all interesting looking, but I'd have rather seen other kinds of terrain if I must have all of these extra areas at all. And, if they aren't directly tied into the main plot--preferably in a nonlinear fashion--and are basically things I'm doing extra for the influence/power/resources/whatever... then all I am actually getting out of visiting them is eye candy and extra lore.
I'm all for extra lore. And I'm all for eye candy. The problem here is that these extra areas are often gigantic, and yet, again, do not tie in directly with taking down Corypheus.
I would much rather have less exploration and more plot and lore. Areas could have been cut down in size to allow them to tie in with the plots. We did not really need three different kinds of mounts in dozens of recolors all with the same animations applied to their different meshes.
And I'm torn about this. I want a tighter experience. I want a more focused plot, but without forced linearity. I want to be able to visit these regions for plot-important reasons, but I also want to meet fascinating people there. Instead, the regions are vast and empty of people except for the dead (which makes sense in the Wastes, I suppose?) and maybe one or two stragglers.
I want to feel that my efforts within the plot matter and are far-reaching. Inquisition has failed in that respect, too, because though I am closing rifts and healing the huge hole in the sky, they don't seem to have affected that many people. The largest population center you encounter in the game is the Val Royeaux Summer Bazaar... followed by Redcliffe Village. There are no rifts in Val Royeaux and only one outside of Redcliffe. If the rifts aren't threatening the population at all, if I'm only saving the local wildlife... well, that takes a lot of meaning out of everything I've done. The most threatening plot I can remember was the red lyrium overtaking everything when siding with the mages. After that... even though red lyrium is everywhere, it doesn't really seem to be that threatening in the sense that I don't see it harming harmless NPCs.
DAI needed more of the soul of a BioWare game. When I played DA:O I could overhear NPCs having major conversations. In DA:I there are only a few of cases of this that come to mind--mostly in Haven and Redcliffe, as if there were no time to implement more into other areas. In DA:O, you would find these little snippets everywhere and they were memorable. Remember Dog running up to you with a child he'd found in Denerim? Remember the hungry Chantry sister who kept misspeaking the Chant and adding in foods?
I know, I know, technically I'm not supposed to finish everything until I beat the final boss and just want to play the game and goof off or whatever. And that's what I kind of did on my first playthrough. But the number of side quests available does not in any way make up for how very empty and desolate Thedas feels as represented by DA:I. No major cities, other than Val Royeaux. Most of the land you travel is sparsely inhabited, or has been evacuated by refugees.
I don't want to do away with exploration. I just think the experience should be tightened up. Preferably, don't add areas that don't directly tie into the plot, and make the ones that do be bigger areas, filled with rich lore, interesting places, and believable NPCs. Exploration should be within areas you already have a good reason to visit--yes, I know all areas had reasons to go there in DA:I, but they were not all urgent need-to-visit areas for the main story. Just because an area ties into the plot directly doesn't mean the plot has to be linear, either. If you choose to go to X first, you can never visit Y, and vice versa. Or, you could visit X, Y, or Z first, but the consequences to the locals will be different (and not 100% positive regardless which choice you make). When you cut those extra areas, you can make the areas you do have more interesting, and put more interesting characters there. You can make exploration less of a chore by making it less difficult to get to the main plot areas while still attracting the player's attention from the main plot with interesting landmarks or even NPCs who are coded to actively try to get the player's attention.
Again, I'm torn. I get why the desert regions in particular are a bit empty. I definitely understand the artistic value of a vast empty place filled with ruins, like the Hissing Wastes. There is an appeal to galloping across the Wastes in the moonlight. But aside from the beauty of these areas--which I know is enough for some players--they don't add much to the gameplay. Forbidden Oasis was a pain to navigate. Hissing Wastes was huge and empty and I honestly got a bit bored wandering around it to finish all side quests and find all shards. I don't personally think "Because it's pretty" is a good enough reason to leave it in unless it's just a game about wandering around finding pretty things--the Wastes are one case where I think the entire region and the events within it could have been cut from the initial release, then fleshed out more post-development to make some very good DLC, given more time to work with the "idea" of the area.
In reality, the entirety of DA:I's plot is far under the 160+ hours I have into the current do-absolutely-everything playthrough. Saying that the plot itself is 40 hours long is probably generous.
I know cuts were made, massive ones. I don't know what kind of content was cut, beyond one or two things that were promoted early on that didn't ever appear in the final release. Maybe the main plot did once involve every single area, and it was just too massive to finish on time. The game's still good. It's great, even. It's just not really what I want when I play a BioWare game. The tedium of wandering entire maps just to reach an important plot point takes away from the replay value you'd otherwise get by making lots of different decisions throughout the plot. In an Elder Scrolls game, the decisions you make are more simplistic, generally affecting your character more than the world. I don't feel any real urge to replay Skyrim because I want to know what happens if I decide to be a werewolf this time--because little will change.
When I pick up Skyrim, it's more like I'm playing a Fantasy Hero Life Simulator--there's a plot because fantasy heroes need quests, but meanwhile I can just take my horse for a ride, get married, adopt an orphan, learn a trade, cook some food... etc. That's great, but that's not the kind of game Dragon Age is nor the kind of game it should try to be. I don't want a life simulation; I want a story with some degree of freedom but a sense of urgency that I should do something about it. Even if I can continue playing in the world after the story, the story and the characters inhabiting the world are the primary draw. They are not props in the background of my fantasy life simulator--and maybe that's what makes BioWare games tend to be more lifelike than Elder Scrolls games, despite the (usually) smaller worlds. When I think of replaying Dragon Age games, it's more because what happens if I choose the templars instead? What if I execute everyone I'm set to judge? Or make every mage tranquil? What if I'm as mean as I can be to everyone? What if I lie whenever possible and play along when not? But then I remember running through the Hinterlands, and Crestwood, and the Fallow Mire, and the Forbidden Oasis, and... maybe I won't try those other playthroughs for a while, after all.
Sorry for the long ramble. I know others have expressed similar points many times over. It's just that during this replay, it's become even more apparent to me that DA:I would have been improved by being a tighter experience--and with more focus on plot and characters it could have been a far better game. Once I've played all of the DLC that DA:I may have in the future, I am hopeful that a different approach is taken to the next game, or that at least that it is less devoid of interesting NPC characters. Not sure if I'm up to that much hiking--maybe if my companions can ride with me and banter along the way next time?
Retour en haut
