272 réponses à ce sujet

[ShadowLordXII]

See, this is not the argument being made. The whole argument is DAI "Tells and does not show". That is the entire complaint. However the Broodmother does exactly this same thing, the only difference being an NPC that exists purely to serve as an info dump, which serves the same exact purpose as "that random note". I'll also have you remember, as you said. The Main Story NPCs in DAI are much better yes? Well guess what Hespith was....a Main Story NPC. The Broodmother is not a side quest. You HAVE to go through that section of the game. 

Thanks for bringing up the Broodmother, as that's where subtext, mood, setting, atmosphere and horror on display all come into play to make that scene so damned disturbing and memorable.

 

At first, it seems like it's just a tour through darkspawn infested tunnels and hack and slash towards the goal right? Well at first, it's like that until you realize that you're not fighting through darkspawn caverns, you're fighting through what used to be a dwarven stronghold until the darkspawn overran it and defiled it with their filth and taint. It's a quiet, yet poignant presentation of the cost that awaits the world should the Grey Wardens fail to stop the Blight.

 

As you advance, you hear a creepy song that essentially lays out what happens to captured women. Then you find a horribly tainted and unwell dwarf woman named Hespith who was singing the song and then she apparently stalks you and whispers to you about what happened to someone named Laryn. All while you go deeper into the defiled fortress of Bownammar, all while you delve deeper into a flesh pit that's likely a breeding ground.

 

And then you see what they did to Laryn.

 

She's been turned into a giant, ugly, obese, festering, multi-breasted, hairless beast forced to eat and breed for the darkspawn horde and all you can do for the poor girl is put her out of her misery. If you survive her surprising strength and the darkspawn that are literally born out of her to kill you.

 

Worst yet, the worst part about what happened to Laryn, Hespith and all of their kin isn't that it happened. It's that it was allowed. Something that Branka later confirms without remorse or regret, underlying just how crazy and insane that the quest for the Anvil of the Void has driven her.

 

You don't see everything, true. But it's still a good example of show and tell, because you see enough. You hear about this screwed-up process and then you see enough of it's end product and survivor who kills herself to where you don't want to fill in the blanks yourself because the subtext more than spells out to you that whatever exact process is used to turn females into broodmothers...it's horrifying and far worst than death.

 

I can't think of anything good with this especial line: Eighth day, we hated as she is violated. Technically the darkspawn are asexual so that should mean that rape isn't possible and yet...whatever happened was probably just as bad if not worst.

 

The only scene in DAI that comes close to being as horrifying, tragic, sad or tense as the broodmother scene is that of Future Redcliffe in the "Hushed Whispers" quest. It's an appropriately bleak and dark setting that displays exactly what's going to happen if the Inquisitor fails to beat the Elder One and close the Breach. Your companions turned into red lyrium mines doomed to die; Leliana mutilated and tortured; dead bodies in torture chambers; Connor committing suicide; Alexius having lost all will to live and Felix trapped in his own body unable to die due to his father's love. The difference is that the tension and stakes are already partially undercut since it's merely the future and all you need to do is go back to the present to prevent it. Not to mention how laughably quickly that the Breach is resolved, so already this bleak future no longer exists.

 

There's no undoing what happened to Laryn, Branka's House or Bownammar. All you can do is keep from falling to a similar fate. Hell, after the Deep Roads tour, you're not even sure if defeating the Blight will help the dwarves because they're under constant attack with Orzammar being the last bastion of the dwarven civilization.

 

At least that's what I got out of that otherwise laborous quest.

[Bhryaen]

You make a good point in that, outside of main quests, there's generally less character interaction with NPCs in DAI than in the previous games, which can make the Inquisitor feel sort of detached from what they're doing. During main quests however, I think they did a rather good job at tying minor NPCs into the story. For example, as you make your way through Redcliffe castle in In Hushed Whispers, all of the named NPCs you encounter are people you could talk to in Redcliffe village (Lysas, Linnea, Hanley, Connor if he was saved in Origins, the Chantry mother). 

 

Also I think you're overlooking a couple of important NPCs who have really captured the fandom's attention: Scout Harding (she even has her own song now), Barris, Abelas, Samson, Krem, Calpernia, Bianca (negative attention in her case), and probably a few more I'm forgetting. 

Yes, I recognized afterward that I hadn't added a line or two regarding the main quests- and it bore a mention. It seems to have been decided at some point during DAI's development to go ahead and add as many quests as possible, but to only invest meaningfully in the main quests and companion interactions and quests. And it shows: on the one hand, the main quests and companion interactions are fairly well-designed and interesting, adding more tangible NPCs as accompaniment, as you mentioned. There it feels very much like DAO. And being greeted by Harding on each new area and the appearance of an older Connor in Redcliffe were great. But on the other hand, the side-quests- i.e., the majority of quests in the game- were only so-so, even anticlimactic, as I mentioned. I did like the Hold village in JoH though, and I liked the accompanying NPCs in Descent a lot, even if the devs killed off one with an unlikely one-shot while the other went off for ambiguous reasons. Still, there was that, and they were memorable, even if not the Daveth/Jory sort of memorable.

 

My main points regarded how side quests lacked the character that DAO never failed to add, mostly because the vast majority of my time in DAI anyway has been exploring the vast territory that wasn't the main quest. The only type of encounters in DAO that were like that were, say, the random travel encounter with spiders. You basically just battle spiders through a short maze until you get to the big spider and escape- no dialog, no interactions, just kill your way through to the end (or stealth it- heh). But that was a travel encounter, not a quest involving NPCs, much less boss NPCs at the end of a long quest.

 

 

I do not disagree that DAI lacks decent character interactions for side content. They could have scaled back a bit on the Area Design to make NPCs more fleshed out. I agree entirely that this is a serious issue with DAI. Even Skyrim's NPCs are better than this (granted I like Skyrim a lot, but that's not the point atm). However, I felt nothing for Jorey, or Daveth. I did not care at all when they died. So clearly this is not some Objective truth that it added weight and power to the scene, because that scene did nothing for me at all.

 

The Broodmother and Brankas House? Yes absolutely, which by the way, they tell you about, not show you. You only SEE the final result, as we often do in DAI, which seems to be the complaint here....The Broodmother is sold because of what is implied, they never show the woman being violated, ripping off her husbands face, eating their filth and bile. No, they never show any of this. It is ALL subtext. It is all told to you by Hesbeth. Even the almighty DAO did this this horrible crime of Telling rather than showing. Clearly the Broodmother must be a sanitized Tinkerbell plot because they didn't show us all the Squick and revolting violation. 

 

I have no problems with a game showing horrible things on screen, and I'm sure most people arguing on our side feel the same way. The difference is it has to actually have a point, a purpose, not just be included for the sake of Grimdark. DAI follows the same pattern as the Broodmother, and everyone hails the Broodmother section as being gritty and disgusting. The reason for this is obvious, you actually see The Broodmother, and kill her. However, without Hesbeth being there to tell you the backstory of it's existence and how all this happened, 99% of us would have just dismissed her as a disgusting looking boss fight and called it a day. They Told you, and you bought it. They didn't need to show you the horrible gore to sell you on it. This is the point. It is not always necessary to go this route.    

Skyrim... meh. I did try. Multiple times. Never could get into it. But, OK, I'll have to concede your point that the compelling nature of the Daveth/Jory narrative isn't objectively measurable. This doesn't mean that it doesn't accomplish what it set out to do. If the drama fell flat for some (and all of it would fall flat for someone who can't get into video games), I'd still prefer they continued with that way of storytelling than just assume anything they'd do of that sort would fall flat and thus just make everything fairly bland as a common denominator. Not that you're suggesting that.

 

Your comments about DAO's lead-up to the Broodmother I agree with entirely, I think. Not much to add except that, while, yes, Branka and Hespeth only narrated what happened rather than you witnessing it all, they weren't remote narrators (like a Codex entry): you were very much in the scene with them. Branka stands over you now that she's trapped you- darkspawn lingering menacingly in the distance- egging you on as she likely did before with the rest of her family (and Oghren's reactions as your companion only add to the scene), and Hespeth's state of decay crouched among mangled corpses (and the general foreboding you get from being so far into the Deep Roads and not knowing what comes next) adds to the creepiness of her spoken tale. That part they didn't narrate to you: it's the fix you're in. But none of that has a bearing on my criticism of DAI's handling of side-quests. If anything they show exactly what I was talking about: in DAO there is interaction that makes the ultimate fight scene mean something more than a hack-and-slash, that makes the combat itself (however fun it may be) secondary to the telling of a story. True that both of those you mentioned were main quests in DAO, not side quests, but that manner of delivering a story was a staple for all quests in DAO.

[correctamundo]

Your comments about DAO's lead-up to the Broodmother I agree with entirely, I think. Not much to add except that, while, yes, Branka and Hespeth only narrated what happened rather than you witnessing it all, they weren't remote narrators (like a Codex entry): you were very much in the scene with them. Branka stands over you now that she's trapped you- darkspawn lingering menacingly in the distance- egging you on as she likely did before with the rest of her family (and Oghren's reactions as your companion only add to the scene), and Hespeth's state of decay crouched among mangled corpses (and the general foreboding you get from being so far into the Deep Roads and not knowing what comes next) adds to the creepiness of her spoken tale. That part they didn't narrate to you: it's the fix you're in. But none of that has a bearing on my criticism of DAI's handling of side-quests. If anything they show exactly what I was talking about: in DAO there is interaction that makes the ultimate fight scene mean something more than a hack-and-slash, that makes the combat itself (however fun it may be) secondary to the telling of a story. True that both of those you mentioned were main quests in DAO, not side quests, but that manner of delivering a story was a staple for all quests in DAO.

 

I am in Lothering at the moment and no, it is nothing like Hespith, Broodie and Branka. It is not staple in DAO by a long shot. DAO is a great game but there is plenty of generic side content.

[Almostfaceman]

Believe what you like. 

 

Believe what you like. 

[Almostfaceman]

 

And then you see what they did to Laryn.

 

In all its low-resolution poorly-executed game environment glory, yes. In my opinion the art of the writing was poorly served by the visual art of the game. 

[Pallando]

See, this is not the argument being made. The whole argument is DAI "Tells and does not show". That is the entire complaint. However the Broodmother does exactly this same thing, the only difference being an NPC that exists purely to serve as an info dump, which serves the same exact purpose as "that random note". I'll also have you remember, as you said. The Main Story NPCs in DAI are much better yes? Well guess what Hespith was....a Main Story NPC. The Broodmother is not a side quest. You HAVE to go through that section of the game. 

 

I didn't say that NPCs were better in the main quest of DAI than in the main quest of DAO. I recognized that they put more efforts into the characters you encounter during the main story than in the random characters...

 

Also, when it comes to "atmosphere" and "feeling", the way the information is dumped is as important as the information itself. 

[Almostfaceman]

 

There is no reason at all to try and convince people that the darkness is still there. 

 

 

Yet here you are writing a wall of text. If you're going to "you people" us you may want to spend time looking in the mirror. 

[Redemption2407]

All I have to say is "Point me to the Disney films you've been watching, because nothing I've seen even remotely compares".

 

 

Tinker Bell, any, from 2008 onwards.
But beware, if Inquisition has anything dark at all for you Tinker Bell will make you have nightmares for decades to come, specially The Pirate Fairy.

 

Didn't even have to answer.
I'd personally go for Lion King and other classic stuff.
 

Yet here you are writing a wall of text. If you're going to "you people" us you may want to spend time looking in the mirror. 

Nope. Explaining people are different and that it is fine to be different is the precise opposite of arguing that people should like the same kind of "darkness" you like because it is superior to be able to perceive something without "explicit gore". I think your abilities of interpretation you claim to be so good that can see the same "darkness" from origins in inquisition are not that good right? You can't even tell the difference when things are oppposite =)

[Teddie Sage]

Wrong. The series needs to aim to be different. I don't want to play Origins with dfferent characters and a copy/pasted battle system, dungeons, etc. I want something new, something fresh. If they were going to use the same sort of plot over and over again, I wouldn't had been playing their games. I like the changes in the world, I like how they've been keeping away from the first game and always creating new stuff. Origins is its own story and should remain as such.

[Almostfaceman]

Didn't even have to answer.
I'd personally go for Lion King and other classic stuff.
 

Nope. Explaining people are different and that it is fine to be different is the precise opposite of arguing that people should like the same kind of "darkness" you like because it is superior to be able to perceive something without "explicit gore". I think your abilities of interpretation you claim to be so good that can see the same "darkness" from origins in inquisition are not that good right? You can't even tell the difference when things are oppposite =)

 

You are the "you people". We all are. You're getting worked up about others perspective, when you should expect varying perspective. So, stop expecting people to have your perspective and expect varying perspective. It's called subjectivity, try to grasp the concept. 

[ArianaGBSA]

Wrong. The series needs to aim to be different. I don't want to play Origins with dfferent characters and a copy/pasted battle system, dungeons, etc. I want something new, something fresh. If they were going to use the same sort of plot over and over again, I wouldn't had been playing their games. I like the changes in the world, I like how they've been keeping away from the first game and always creating new stuff. Origins is its own story and should remain as such.

 

Not wrong. Wrong for you, right for me. What I want the most is keep playing Origins with different characters. (And hopefully more races and classes)

[Redemption2407]

 

You are the "you people". We all are. You're getting worked up about others perspective, when you should expect varying perspective. So, stop expecting people to have your perspective and expect varying perspective. It's called subjectivity, try to grasp the concept. 

Nope. Different perspectives are not the point. Everybody should think the same when it comes to difference: Never try to convince other people they should like things they don't. This is the only perspective in life.

That's why you didn't understand what I said. I'm not saying "everybody can think whatever they want", I'm saying everybody needs to stop arguing about preferences. It is not about freedom, not in general, it is about stabilishing a law (which I previously proposed in this forum, and should be in all forums) that you can't argue or even comment about other people preferences. Subjectivity exists and is stupid when there is no law preventing you to shove yours on other people.

So again, freedom of perspective is STUPID, freedom of preference is mandatory. You can't think what you want about life when it means you think you can talk about what other people like or dislike. There should be laws preventing people from preaching religion, politics and anything really. People do whatever they want, whenever they want and so on EXCEPT when it comes to other people preferences. This should be human kind most basic dogma, religion, politic and everything else. Basis of mankind and any sentient being able to like anything.

So, in a sense, if you thought my speech was about freedom (which I think you did) it fits "you people".
But no, I'm against freedom completely, I'm dictatorially in favor of forbidding anyone and everyone to argue about people likes and dislikes. The only freedom I'm arguing about is the freedom to like anything you want and letting the others like whatever they want. You never comment on things other said unless to completely agree and human kind can work just fine. Disagree? Great, don't say a thing. But again, ONLY about liks and dislikes. Anything else can be discussed in any way, from the most polite to the most savage, including species extinction, I care not. But the card "I like it" should be a godlike power of nature preventing anyone from talking anything further to you about that matter. There should be a spell that if the other people try to argue with you after you said "I like it" the person exploded instantly and went to hell to suffer eternally.

[robertthebard]

Didn't even have to answer.
I'd personally go for Lion King and other classic stuff.
 
Nope. Explaining people are different and that it is fine to be different is the precise opposite of arguing that people should like the same kind of "darkness" you like because it is superior to be able to perceive something without "explicit gore". I think your abilities of interpretation you claim to be so good that can see the same "darkness" from origins in inquisition are not that good right? You can't even tell the difference when things are oppposite =)

If we had a rolling around laughing smiley on these boards, I'd deploy it here. Really, the Lion King? Frankly, I'd have gone for something like Snow White, or Cinderella. Hell, Bambi was darker than the Lion King... However, and this is what got me drug this deep into the conversation; different people perceive different things as "dark". The only nightmare I ever had about the Lion King was being forced to watch it for the 106th time, back when I used to babysit my niece. The most emotion it ever got out of me is when they had their home broken into, and the thief took everything but that VHS. I was ready to hunt him down and kill him for that. You tell me not to try to tell everyone there's darkness in the game, because there's none there. I'm supposed to then take you at your word, and say "yep, there's nothing dark about twisting a man's oath to serve the very thing he's supposed to be combatting, the Blight".

No, Cory's dragon wasn't an AD. However, he was a darkspawn magister. In so far as the information we have goes, one of the Original Darkspawn. This means that the Wardens are, in fact, serving the Blight by serving him, and they are serving him, whether they realized it or not, and we get confirmation of that in the Approach, before we ever march on Adamant. But that's not dark, because it was just "mook87" that got stabbed...

[darkway1]

Just finished DAO and I'm kinda halfway through "Awakening".......the narrative,characters,moral choices,immersion of DAO runs rings around DAI to be honest.Both DAO and DAI are great games but I felt that DAO made an effort to address the problems that effected the game world,you were witness to the effects of war,political corruption,companions,power struggles and the obvious horrors of the blight,all of which gave the game a much more dark and mature tone.

 

DAI on the other hand didn't offer any real threat,my team just steam rolled though what ever was in front of me,the majority of environments seemed detached from the war,most places seemed quite calm and pretty.The companion characters didn't challenge my train of thought or offer anything of real interest,I dated Josephine at one point and broke up with her due to pure boredom.........so yeah,DAI is a fine game but I definitely understand the points made by the original poster,DAI seems to have gone in a very different direction.

[TheRevanchist]

 

Your comments about DAO's lead-up to the Broodmother I agree with entirely, I think. Not much to add except that, while, yes, Branka and Hespeth only narrated what happened rather than you witnessing it all, they weren't remote narrators (like a Codex entry): you were very much in the scene with them. Branka stands over you now that she's trapped you- darkspawn lingering menacingly in the distance- egging you on as she likely did before with the rest of her family (and Oghren's reactions as your companion only add to the scene), and Hespeth's state of decay crouched among mangled corpses (and the general foreboding you get from being so far into the Deep Roads and not knowing what comes next) adds to the creepiness of her spoken tale. That part they didn't narrate to you: it's the fix you're in. But none of that has a bearing on my criticism of DAI's handling of side-quests. If anything they show exactly what I was talking about: in DAO there is interaction that makes the ultimate fight scene mean something more than a hack-and-slash, that makes the combat itself (however fun it may be) secondary to the telling of a story. True that both of those you mentioned were main quests in DAO, not side quests, but that manner of delivering a story was a staple for all quests in DAO.

 

Really? what game did you play? The Blackstone Irregulars were the same boring, generic stuff DAI has. The Mage Collective, recovering Ironbark for the Dalish, Recovering a tree branch for a magic tree, Give a Werewolf's scarf to her husband, Deal with random mooks and thugs throughout Denerim. Solve little puzzles for special items, collect Codex entries to get special items, craft some bottles of poison for a farmer, make some health potions for a village elder. All of this is the same menial, pointless tasks you get in DAI. THIS is DAO's vast majority of Side Content. It is all just as hollow and insignificant.   

[darkway1]

Really? what game did you play? The Blackstone Irregulars were the same boring, generic stuff DAI has. The Mage Collective, recovering Ironbark for the Dalish, Recovering a tree branch for a magic tree, Give a Werewolf's scarf to her husband, Deal with random mooks and thugs throughout Denerim. Solve little puzzles for special items, collect Codex entries to get special items, craft some bottles of poison for a farmer, make some health potions for a village elder. All of this is the same menial, pointless tasks you get in DAI. THIS is DAO's vast majority of Side Content. It is all just as hollow and insignificant.   

 

I think indirectly and unintentionally you raise a good point.........although the side quests were generic (they all are regardless of game),look at the diversity of location and content in which you find those side quests......take Denerim for example,you start with the town area,then the brothel,then the mage hideout,then a few random area's,then you go in the actual castle,then the Dalish zone,then the possessed house,then the slave trade.........DAO may offer the same side quests as DAI but DAO certainly knew how to keep things interesting.

[TraiHarder]

The thing with the DA series is that, so far, each game has more or less been an 'experiment'--something that BioWare has admitted on several occasions. What I think this means for the future of the series is it will continue to present something new each time a major entry is released. In other words, you will never see another Origins or Inquisition from BioWare.

I also never thought DA:I was 'light'. Far from it. It just never quite managed to excel at what it tried to achieve as an RPG.

I totally agree although DA2 took many risk Inquisition really took not even one not even a small one.

If you watch the Alpha gameplay it looks as of they were going is a nice new direction one that was really wanted by the community. It was going in a newer style of rpg direction one that really Immersed us into the world but then that all changed around the beta for whatever reason.

[Savvie]

We just have to accept that Bioware wants to try to experiement and do something different with each game. I don't care for the direction that the DA franchise has gone. To me if feels like they lost the identity of what dragon age was supposed to be, but that's just the way it is.

 

At this point, I don't even think a DA 4 game really excites me.

[TraiHarder]

We just have to accept that Bioware wants to try to experiement and do something different with each game. I don't care for the direction that the DA franchise has gone. To me if feels like they lost the identity of what dragon age was supposed to be, but that's just the way it is.

At this point, I don't even think a DA 4 game really excites me.

But they didn't really experiment with anything in Inquisition to be honest.

[Teddie Sage]

Not wrong. Wrong for you, right for me. What I want the most is keep playing Origins with different characters. (And hopefully more races and classes)

I keep playing DA2, DAI with different characters so the joke's on you. Origins, DA2 and DAI all got tons of replayability, it's like people are just cherry picking the best game and refuse to acknowledge that other people might enjoy the other styles. Personally I'm a bigger fan of DA2 and DAI's combat system and I can't get enough of the party banters from the characters in both games. What I don't want back is for the plot to return to another blight focused story or another grey warden story. The world is huge and there are plenty of things to talk about. We don't need an Origins 2. Innovation isn't always bad.

[darkway1]

I keep playing DA2, DAI with different characters so the joke's on you. Origins, DA2 and DAI all got tons of replayability, it's like people are just cherry picking the best game and refuse to acknowledge that other people might enjoy the other styles. Personally I'm a bigger fan of DA2 and DAI's combat system and I can't get enough of the party banters from the characters in both games. What I don't want back is for the plot to return to another blight focused story or another grey warden story. The world is huge and there are plenty of things to talk about. We don't need an Origins 2. Innovation isn't always bad.

 

I don't think fans want a repeat of the Blight or another Grey Warden story,it's more to do with the way subject matter,character development and general story is handled,DAI comes across as a story written for a Saturday morning kids cartoon on times.......it's fun to play,looks great but that's not why fans fell in love with the franchise.

[Teddie Sage]

I don't think fans want a repeat of the Blight or another Grey Warden story,it's more to do with the way subject matter,character development and general story is handled,DAI comes across as a story written for a Saturday morning kids cartoon on times.......it's fun to play,looks great but that's not why fans fell in love with the franchise.

I disagree there. It contains a lot of elements of why I came to the franchise in the first place: interesting characters, world building lore entries, myths and legends to explore, a different take on medieval times, etc. Thedas keeps changing and having interesting new places to visit, which is why I come back to Dragon Age with each new release. Sure, the feeling is different because the tone changes, but to me it's always the same world. 

[darkway1]

I disagree there. It contains a lot of elements of why I came to the franchise in the first place: interesting characters, world building lore entries, myths and legends to explore, a different take on medieval times, etc. Thedas keeps changing and having interesting new places to visit, which is why I come back to Dragon Age with each new release. Sure, the feeling is different because the tone changes, but to me it's always the same world. 

 

Well I'm glad you enjoy the game,I do too but if I'm honest,this time round the characters were pretty boring,the story was poor and the main threat just wasn't threatening,these are all key elements of great story telling in my opinion,some thing Dragon Age Origins was famed for,that same level of narrative and story/character diversity just isn't present in DAI.

We see the same familiar places and faces,the lore expands etc but DAI is no longer the same game,it's a totally different experience.

[TraiHarder]

Well I'm glad you enjoy the game,I do too but if I'm honest,this time round the characters were pretty boring,the story was poor and the main threat just wasn't threatening,these are all key elements of great story telling in my opinion,some thing Dragon Age Origins was famed for,that same level of narrative and story/character diversity just isn't present in DAI.
We see the same familiar places and faces,the lore expands etc but DAI is no longer the same game,it's a totally different experience.

I agree on some point with you but not all.

Cory was a huge threat but I just think his demeanor wasn't as evil. I think it mainly felt that he wasn't super evil because the game it's self wasn't as dark as the previous two. I mean before we see people cut down and destroyed by dark spawn and heads chopped off. Mothers being sewn together. And both game just had a darker feel around character. Samon to be honest seemed darker than Cory.

But in inquisition we have a happier lighter setting because we are building something people bare putting their faith in.I just think if the game had it's npcs and such show more emotion you'd feel more connected to the game.

I definitely feel as if we're in the same world but it's just not as dark.

AND VIVIENNE IS AMAZING SO U SHUT YOUR MOUTH

[DuskWanderer]

Well I'm glad you enjoy the game,I do too but if I'm honest,this time round the characters were pretty boring,the story was poor and the main threat just wasn't threatening,these are all key elements of great story telling in my opinion,some thing Dragon Age Origins was famed for,that same level of narrative and story/character diversity just isn't present in DAI.

We see the same familiar places and faces,the lore expands etc but DAI is no longer the same game,it's a totally different experience.

 

We differ a lot on this. Yes, I agree that characters, story, and antagonist are important for a game like this, but Origins fumbled a lot of these. The characters were pretty good as far as party members were concerned, but the rest fell flat.The main threat of course, the Archdemon was uninteresting. Meredith may not have been as dangerous as an archdemon, but I got more of a reaction from her because she was more believable as a villain. This was a woman who went off her rocker and dangerous things happened. That's infinitely more terrifying than a Blight-Dragon.

 

The story for Inquisition was fine, and I thought the themes of faith were done very well (many "faith" stories these days are just walking billboards for atheism, and far preachier than any Sunday service.) Origin's plotline was just the same recycled BioWARE plot: Get a quest, go to four places, then wrap it up. Inquisition at least tried the open world, and it somewhat worked, but the quests didn't really do it for me (to be fair, they didn't do it for me in any other game too) 

 

I think Inquisition's problem is that they divide their focus for MP and its microtransactions. That leaves them with less time to do the SP content.