609 réponses à ce sujet

[Ieldra]

This article should be required reading for the DA team.

[CronoDragoon]

BioWare shouldn't be afraid of Dragon Age 2's length, which is actually one of the things I like most about that game. DA2 got a lot of flack for its fetch quests in the day, but they comprise a small % of your playthrough, similar to ME2 and ME3. There are plenty of quality side quests in that game. A game the length of Dragon Age 2 but with Inquisition's environment/level variety would be a great start.

[Mr Fixit]

BioWare shouldn't be afraid of Dragon Age 2's length, which is actually one of the things I like most about that game. DA2 got a lot of flack for its fetch quests in the day, but they comprise a small % of your playthrough, similar to ME2 and ME3. There are plenty of quality side quests in that game. A game the length of Dragon Age 2 but with Inquisition's environment/level variety would be a great start.

 

Maybe this is only my age speaking (in my 30s), but I no longer have the time needed to play (and especially replay) very long games. In that sense, I actually liked DA2 and all three ME titles: just long enough to warrant multiple playthroughs.

[Fiery Phoenix]

This article should be required reading for the DA team.

And the ME: Andromeda team while they're at it.

[Iakus]

Completionism is a terrible thing.

Where's the "not like" option? 

[Iakus]

To me, "good" side quests come in two types:

 

1) Well-crafted side stories that add depth to the environment and tells it own little story.  Essentially doing a story in a story.  Baldur's Gate 2 was full of them:  Trademeet, the stronghold quests, The Windspear Hills, etc.

 

2) Extremely simple additions you can do while doing something else.  Such as being on the lookout for a particular item or NPC while you're crawling around in a dungeon you were going to visit anyway.  They add nothing to the story itself, but provide a nice little reward for being observant.  Things like finding the Redcliffe blacksmith's daughter  or the Topsider's Honor quest in DAO.  

 

Boring ones are the ones that ask you to visit difficult to access areas for no other reason than they are there, or require a long, repetitive series of actions which do little but pad out the number of hours played without adding any real story to the game.  "Collection quests" are the worst.  Like the mosaic pieces or the bottles.  

[Iakus]

Games that get side quests right have one key ingredient: the designers recognise that a side quest can be just as important as the main quest. In many ways, they are even more important. They allow us to develop our characters in a thousand tiny ways that can impact the direction we choose to go down when we start walking along the main road again. And they can change the world around us.

 

QFT

[Iakus]

A very good article with which I heartily agree with pretty much every word. Dai's side quests were appalling. Really hope in future they take the time to invest in quality in this area.

They weren't all appalling.  But yes, a lot of them, especially in the early game, felt very much phoned-in.

[UniformGreyColor]

I disagree on Skyrim- found it very dull as a game and couldn't finish it- but otherwise, yes, the only "side"/optional content in DAI that's up to the standard set by TW3 are the companion/advisor quests. Or at least they're the example of what Bioware did right in providing content for DAI's encounter experiences. If they'd left out all the hours and hours worth of other drudgery (that so many of us do anyway) and just extended those quests further, it would've actually been a fuller game that never seems to drop the ball on content. The only comparable smaller-scale side adventure that exists in DAI outside the companion/advisor ones is the brief but quality encounter in JoH called "Loss of a Friend" where you actually get an adventure, a cutscene, a fuller interaction, and a meaningful choice that will depend on the sort of character you're roleplaying. And that's it. The rest of the side-quests are filler.

 

To me, this is greatly a matter of opinion. There were more than a few side quests that I did in DA:I that when I was done with them, I actually found myself saying to myself "that was great!" To name a few there is Still Ruins in the Western Approach, Valammar in The Hinterlands and The Flooded Caves in Crestwood. These are some of the absolute funnest quests in the whole game for me. Not only do they tell their own story, but there is more than one story there that are all intertwined with each other. There are also the Keeps, which I had a blast conquering -especially the long road up to the one in Emprise du Lion. These are all exactly the kind of thing I look for in a side quest and they were really done beautifully. Actually reading the codex often gives you inside info on what is going on at these locations as well, which is a big plus.

 

So the argument isn't "But I'm a completionist. Please cater to me!" The argument is, "If you're going to make content, settle for no half-assery." If the content in non-essential questing is high quality, engaging, and meaningful for the player's/character's experience, even a non-completionist might be intrigued to explore all you've created. If it's a matter of limited resources that they couldn't make the plethora of smaller-scale quests more than mechanical busywork, fine: then don't do them! Or just scale back on them to the extent that enables you to give them the proper narrative strength. It's not enough to just say, "Well, we couldn't do more of X, so here's x-lite." I doubt anyone would've faulted the devs for providing less empty hill combing and more interesting content (at least not anyone who's putting quality first). Unless the devs were intentionally going for a more MMO-like cheap-and-easy encounter feel, in which case making the main campaign multiplayer might have helped. But the DAverse is narrative-rich, not lending itself well to Assassin's Creed repetitiveness where you do one mission, feels cool taking over a ship or knifing two unsuspecting guards simultaneously, and then you're told, "Now just do that same formula for the next 40+hrs." It's similar in DAI. "Ooh! Spooky mansion to explore!" Busywork happens, then kill a sub-boss."Next!" A lot of anti-climactics are built into DAI's repetitive side narratives. I'm not even a fan of DA2, but even there you had side-quests that never felt half-assed the way DAI's do, and DA2 was rushed!

 

*raises hand* I think the "hill crawling" needed to be in Inquisition and here's my reason: DA:I would be nowhere near as beautiful place if there was a location of interest every 15 meters. Think about this. If there is nowhere to explore and allow to just get lost in the scenery you are left with a game like Watch_Dogs. I might be alone in thinking this, but I actually think that DA:I ties everything together even better than DA:O. In DA:O most side quests are an isolated affair and there isn't really the interweaving of the different stories going on to the effect that there is in DA:I.

 

I hate that I'm now finding myself saying, at least regarding side-quest construction, "Be more like TW3." It'd help anyway, and it's really the sort of thing DAO already did, just on a smaller scale than TW3 did. CD Projekt is simply "doing DA's thing" better than Bioware at this point. But short of emulating TW3, go back to your own roots. BG1 was chock full of really short side quests that were nevertheless memorable, imaginative, and very worth getting involved in- many not letting you not be involved if you stumbled into them- and most of which helping the player decide just the sort of character they were playing. A great DA4 can be made that way without even attempting to "do TW3." I'm pretty sure BG1/NWN/DAO/DA2's side quests weren't anywhere near as elaborate as TW3 stuff (haven't played it yet to know), but that's far beyond the colorless, purely-mechanical encounters we're getting in DAI's backwoods. For me it stifles DAI's replayability: do I have the stamina to stomach so many more hours of half-assed content to manage another playthrough? Just being honest...

 

If you haven't played a game its not really fair to compare that game to one that you are saying you are not really a fan of, no? TW3 is based on a book... THAT is where its story comes from. So to say that TW3 has way better side quests, you are forgetting that TW3 was a book first and as such, there is little in the way of creative storytelling that TW3 doesn't already have accounted for.

 

To me, "good" side quests come in two types:

 

1) Well-crafted side stories that add depth to the environment and tells it own little story.  Essentially doing a story in a story.  Baldur's Gate 2 was full of them:  Trademeet, the stronghold quests, The Windspear Hills, etc.

 

2) Extremely simple additions you can do while doing something else.  Such as being on the lookout for a particular item or NPC while you're crawling around in a dungeon you were going to visit anyway.  They add nothing to the story itself, but provide a nice little reward for being observant.  Things like finding the Redcliffe blacksmith's daughter  or the Topsider's Honor quest in DAO.  

 

Boring ones are the ones that ask you to visit difficult to access areas for no other reason than they are there, or require a long, repetitive series of actions which do little but pad out the number of hours played without adding any real story to the game.  "Collection quests" are the worst.  Like the mosaic pieces or the bottles.  

 

I agree. And I'd like to add that most all side quests that DA:I has, completely nails this on all account. You are correct that quests like The Bottles of Thedas are tedious, but only if you are not looking out for them and aren't looking to complete those kind of quests systematically, which, if you are, that completely diminishes the point to RPing anyways.

[Mr Fixit]

Someone correct me, but TW3's plot is not based on a book. Its quest design success most definitely can't be attributed to "source book advantage". 

 

While Valammar and Still Ruins are very entertaining in my opinion too, when people talk about side quests, I think they'd also like more roleplaying opportunities included, interesting NPCs, and such. DAI side quests offer almost none of that. 

[Rosstoration]

TW3 side-quests are truly a thing to behold, and done completely correct. It's frustrating that DA:I had such a poor showing when it came to utilising side quests to build the world around you. TW3 treated sidequests like short novella's, with a purpose, a theme, a beginning, middle and conclusion, and ultimately -  consequence.

 

Old BioWare did this sort of thing before as another poster pointed out above, how many people played BG2 and never completed Firkraag's dungeon - one of the best locations in the game. Or never unconvered the mystery of the "Skinner murders" or destroyed the Cult of the Eyeless, or never even visited Trademeet. BG2 was full of completely optional locations with fantastic sidequests, yes there were the "Take A to B", but these were rarely without the reward of lore or characterisation or a great piece of gameplay in the form of the Kangaxx fight or the Twisted Rune battle. How many of these completely optional moments of awesome does DA:I have? Few.

 

New BioWare needs to seriously stop trying to promote themselves as the maker of romance simulators and take a look at their storied history for how to create a fantasy masterpiece.

[Mr Fixit]

Speaking of BG2, and totally unrelated to side quest issue so you'll (hopefully) excuse me, but I miss the old magic item system. When you got your hands on the Holy Avenger, Robe of Vecna, or Celestial Fury... ah, the beauty, the carnage... 

 

I'm not really a fan of the scalable item system DA has implemented. A +100 attack amulet! Yay? I guess it's better than the old +95 attack amulet!

[Rosstoration]

Edwin with the Robe of Vecna and Amulet of Power, casts Time Stop, casts Improved Alacity - the hell that was about to reign down on any enemies. Good times. Why do I suddenly now want to play some Baldur's Gate?

[Mr Fixit]

Edwin with the Robe of Vecna and Amulet of Power, casts Time Stop, casts Improved Alacity - the hell that was about to reign down on any enemies. Good times. Why do I suddenly now want to play some Baldur's Gate?

 

Hah, D&D magic system was seriously overpowered, but it had, you know, magic. DA, in search of balance, really neutered the more exotic and outlandish aspects of magic.

[Kabraxal]

Considering side quests existed in DA:I that were more involved and the "fetch" quests are purely optional and yet still tend to add to the lore... I don't get the "hate". Especially since the game it is held up against has just as much repetitive filler... Sorry, but one great sidequest isn't enough to rise above "go here talk walk follow witcher senses kill" repitition that is all over TW3. Maybe some forgive it, but let's not act like it doesn't commit the same "crime" Inquisition does. It's just that you like that game and forgive the same obvious "flaws".

So sick of thise sidequest crap being used against DA:I when it isn't the only ROG to have these types of quest. If it gets hate for it, so should Fallout and The Witcher.

[Milan92]

I think that alot of the dislike comes from the lack of cinematic camera.

 

The Witcher 3 did contain quite a few fetch quests (Let's be honest, all the monster contracts were the same, aside from some story stuff), but the fact that every conversation was viewed with the cincematic camera really made it less bad. Atleast for me.

 

If DA:I had added more cinematic dialogue, then I'm willing to bet people would have disliked the sidequests less.

[Kabraxal]

I think that alot of the dislike comes from the lack of cinematic camera.

The Witcher 3 did contain quite a few fetch quests (Let's be honest, all the monster contracts were the same, aside from some story stuff), but the fact that every conversation was viewed with the cincematic camera really made it less bad. Atleast for me.

If DA:I had added more cinematic dialogue, then I'm willing to bet people would have disliked the sidequests less.

Didn't make a difference to me really.

And I understand if you like the world/characters and that is the bias that eases this issue... For me, I didn't mind the "filler" in DA:I because it usually added to the lore and increased the scope of the experience to me. TW3's stock dark fantasy wore thin before the game and, outside of one quest and one scene/event (witcher party ), the quests added no new flavour to the cliched dark fantasy world and lore. It never became more than the common cliches it started with. So I wasn't as forgiving on the filler personally. But I wouldn't claim DA:I had less "filler". I just enjoyed the filling.

Or... DA:I gave me more cream in my donut. TW3 gave me salt for stale toast. IMO

[Mr Fixit]

I don't understand the term "cliche dark fantasy". Is there an overabundance of been-there-done-that dark fantasy in RPG gaming whose tropes Witcher lazily reused for what seems like nth time? Not getting into whether Witcher is a good game or not, but the last thing I'd use to describe it is "stock" or "cliche". It implies something seen a hundred times, and I honestly can't think of a game with its feel and design.

[Milan92]

Didn't make a difference to me really.

And I understand if you like the world/characters and that is the bias that eases this issue... For me, I didn't mind the "filler" in DA:I because it usually added to the lore and increased the scope of the experience to me. TW3's stock dark fantasy wore thin before the game and, outside of one quest and one scene/event (witcher party ), the quests added no new flavour to the cliched dark fantasy world and lore. It never became more than the common cliches it started with. So I wasn't as forgiving on the filler personally. But I wouldn't claim DA:I had less "filler". I just enjoyed the filling.

Or... DA:I gave me more cream in my donut. TW3 gave me salt for stale toast. IMO

 

Fair enough

[Kabraxal]

I don't understand the term "cliche dark fantasy". Is there an overabundance of been-there-done-that dark fantasy in RPG gaming whose tropes Witcher lazily reused for what seems like nth time? Not getting into whether Witcher is a good game or not, but the last thing I'd use to describe it is "stock" or "cliche". It implies something seen a hundred times, and I honestly can't think of a game with its feel and design.

When there is a whole sub genre of books that exploded in popularity post GRRM in 1996 and a growing trend in tv for dark fantasy/sci fi... Yes, it is playing off a worn out cliche. In gaming it is less glaring thankfully, but to anyone that reads this sub genre is a all repetition off the same tricks and themes. I grew out if the sub genre around 2009/10 and TW3 offers nothing new in dark fantasy and nothing new to gaming. Everything it has done has been done before in both mediums. If you aren't sick to death of what is a very lazy sub genre... Then I get why TW3 can be welcomed or the flaws forgiven. For people like me... No. I want more than the grim dark "everything sucks, people are monsters, blood and ******" extravaganza. I get that in DA:I. It has more depth and complexity in its themes to me.

[Toasted Llama]

Since there are games that improved although being bought a lot, this doesn't apply to every developer. I know that there are games like Assassin's Creed which improved nearly none over the years and people still bought them like crazy. I didn't "blindly" purchase DAI, i checked reviews, gameplay videos and every news beforehand and sadly still got disappointed. There is nothing like playing the game for yourself and experiencing it.

I don't see how exceptions somehow disprove the point.

There were so many reviews pointing out the flaws of DA:I, so many gameplay videos that were the proof and you definitely did not need to play the game yourself to know of their existence and despite all the warning signs, you bought the game anyway. Yeah, that's your own fault.

 

Granted i'll be more cautious for the next Dragon Age but i'll probably buy it someday because there is always hope.

 

Congratulations, that's exactly what purchasing a game blindly is like. There's thousands of games to buy, yet you decide buy the game from a developer who, with the recent installment (dare I say installments because DA2/ME3s ending was poorly received as well), has proven to be lacking the content you want. Why? Because... "hope".

 

Ah yes and thanks for calling me stupid i think

You're welcome.

[Bhaal]

To me, "good" side quests come in two types:

 

1) Well-crafted side stories that add depth to the environment and tells it own little story.  Essentially doing a story in a story.  Baldur's Gate 2 was full of them:  Trademeet, the stronghold quests, The Windspear Hills, etc.

 

2) Extremely simple additions you can do while doing something else.  Such as being on the lookout for a particular item or NPC while you're crawling around in a dungeon you were going to visit anyway.  They add nothing to the story itself, but provide a nice little reward for being observant.  Things like finding the Redcliffe blacksmith's daughter  or the Topsider's Honor quest in DAO.  

 

Boring ones are the ones that ask you to visit difficult to access areas for no other reason than they are there, or require a long, repetitive series of actions which do little but pad out the number of hours played without adding any real story to the game.  "Collection quests" are the worst.  Like the mosaic pieces or the bottles.  

I second that. Also how you got those quests is important too. The Paladin stronghold quest was as simple as it could get: "Orcs in my land, get orcs out of my land, i pay gold." but somehow you suddenly find yourself as the murderer of a group of Paladins and before you know it you're facing a Red Dragon who has a personal feud with your adoptive father.

 

Thing is i try to do all those side quests in rpgs because i'm expecting them to turn up something unique and fun. In BG2 i could stumble upon a random quest which is more interesting and rewarding than the main plot. In Fallout 4 i take a settlement quest, expecting something with different plots and unique NPCs but nope! "The" settler (who doesn't even have an actual name) wants me to murder some human being (he claims they're raiders) and like any house wife (who just woke up from 200 years long cyro-sleep )would do, i accept to kill those people... for bottlecaps...

[hoechlbear]

Considering side quests existed in DA:I that were more involved and the "fetch" quests are purely optional and yet still tend to add to the lore... I don't get the "hate". Especially since the game it is held up against has just as much repetitive filler... Sorry, but one great sidequest isn't enough to rise above "go here talk walk follow witcher senses kill" repitition that is all over TW3. Maybe some forgive it, but let's not act like it doesn't commit the same "crime" Inquisition does. It's just that you like that game and forgive the same obvious "flaws".

So sick of thise sidequest crap being used against DA:I when it isn't the only ROG to have these types of quest. If it gets hate for it, so should Fallout and The Witcher.

 

You mean the witcher contracts? Yes, they usually go down that route, because they are just that, contracts for killing monsters, they aren't labelled as sidequests. So you're clearly ignoring the actual sidequests that involve much more than witcher senses and killing things. You keep saying that the people who enjoyed TW3 turn a blind eye to all the "huge flaws" the game has, but that's just your opinion. For one, I liked the witcher contracts a lot more than I did DAI's sidequests. Because at least the contracts had a story behind it, and it's your job to discover what happened. They are engaging. Sometimes they even present you with a twist and you can choose how you want to deal with it. I played TW3 quite a few times already and in all my playthroughs I did all of those contracts because I find them enjoyable not because "I like the game and forgive its flaws". If I would find those quests boring, I wouldn't do them for the 5th or 6th time. I mean, I get it, you hate TW3, but you really need to stop saying things like they are a fact, when it's just your opinion. And a not very popular one, might I add. Because we all know TW3 did incredibly well both in reviews (critics and fans) as well as sales and its sidequests are probably the number one thing that gets the most praise from people. You don't agree? That's fine, but don't go around stating things like they are an undeniable truth.

[BansheeOwnage]

This article should be required reading for the DA team.

For every RPG developer, really.

 

And the ME: Andromeda team while they're at it.

Oh no... You've just made me realize how very likely it is that Andromeda will be similar... All those planets to explore, gotta fill them with something! Now I'm worried it'll be mostly filler

 

 

Boring ones are the ones that ask you to visit difficult to access areas for no other reason than they are there, or require a long, repetitive series of actions which do little but pad out the number of hours played without adding any real story to the game.  "Collection quests" are the worst.  Like the mosaic pieces or the bottles.  

I don't mind if some collection quests exist, but not if there are too many and definitely not how they were implemented in Inquisition. There are simply way too many bottles and shards for one thing, not to mention the incredibly tedious backtracking and terrain-navigation we had to do to collect them. It also didn't help that the bottles were often in obscure areas (though I do try to explore every inch of the maps) and gave me false hope by using the "ping" system to locate them. Quizzy is like: "There must be something here..." and I think: "Yay! Quest stuff!" Instead, I find... another bottle

 

Honestly, I could tolerate the bottle quest as-is if only it could be a cross-playthrough quest, like similar quests often are in games. I wouldn't mind finding 29 obscurely-placed bottle once.

[Bhryaen]

To me, this is greatly a matter of opinion. There were more than a few side quests that I did in DA:I that when I was done with them, I actually found myself saying to myself "that was great!" To name a few there is Still Ruins in the Western Approach, Valammar in The Hinterlands and The Flooded Caves in Crestwood. These are some of the absolute funnest quests in the whole game for me. Not only do they tell their own story, but there is more than one story there that are all intertwined with each other. There are also the Keeps, which I had a blast conquering -especially the long road up to the one in Emprise du Lion. These are all exactly the kind of thing I look for in a side quest and they were really done beautifully. Actually reading the codex often gives you inside info on what is going on at these locations as well, which is a big plus.

 

*raises hand* I think the "hill crawling" needed to be in Inquisition and here's my reason: DA:I would be nowhere near as beautiful place if there was a location of interest every 15 meters. Think about this. If there is nowhere to explore and allow to just get lost in the scenery you are left with a game like Watch_Dogs. I might be alone in thinking this, but I actually think that DA:I ties everything together even better than DA:O. In DA:O most side quests are an isolated affair and there isn't really the interweaving of the different stories going on to the effect that there is in DA:I.

 

If you haven't played a game its not really fair to compare that game to one that you are saying you are not really a fan of, no? TW3 is based on a book... THAT is where its story comes from. So to say that TW3 has way better side quests, you are forgetting that TW3 was a book first and as such, there is little in the way of creative storytelling that TW3 doesn't already have accounted for.

Depends on what your standards are for side-quest experiences. If you're good enough just having an interesting-looking place to explore and some battles, then, sure, the Still Ruins especially were more than sufficient. I loved the time-stopped effect, plucking the book out of one frozen dude's hand... And the forts were fun enough to take, the dragons were awesomely designed and purely optional, the taste of the Deep Roads in Valammar... In fact, I'd say the best content you get in DAI's explorations beyond the main mission requisites were the little artistic touches to find, as though the game were a museum-walk-simulator where you just look for the next cool scene that's been rendered. Like this one- awesome the first time I came across it:

 

 

Or this kinda funny scene:

 

It's content... of a sort. It's creative. I like it anyway. It's even kinda memorable. But is that all we were to look forward to? Quiet background art? Or that encounter in the Hissing Wastes (one of a number of its type) where you find and kill demons near a corpse with a journal which- if read (if you consult the codex)- tells of a Vint mage who had clearly failed to control those same demons. It was also memorable. And somberly quiet. It told a story, but was completely unengaging to the player. That doesn't make it bad- and if it were the minority of encounters it'd be a lot more interesting. But it was the recurring standard of encounters in DAI's back-country. Of all the games to go silent during exploration, DA doesn't seem the place. We've already experienced a significantly higher standard in this franchise alone (and predecessors in the Bioware rpg line) for side-quest experiences, and comparatively DAI's fall far short. Should we lower our standards now? Count only on nice visuals and kill XP and basic loot for each experience? All we need? Why would we? It changes the nature of DA to reduce standards to that.

 

I'm only presuming that TW3 has the same distinction, but my presumption is not exactly wild speculation. It's a fairly overwhelming impression players have gotten. As is the impression that DAI's side-quests are woefully bare. I even heard a Mike Laidlaw interview where he said he was enjoying TW3 a great deal. That said, there's a reason I finished DAI and haven't yet managed to get past the first fight scene in TW3, but that's due to the main narrative and customizable characters, not side-quest depth.

 

Contrast DAO's warehouse blood mages where you had a full adventure finding the place, getting through the secret door, battling a variety of different defenses, then had a short cutscene where you get a personal interaction with the boss bastard against you, and then it was a nasty boss fight (albeit I never used much mage-killer spells, so...) with some key items to find. I could list more examples, but the difference from DAI's side quests was the content involved: voiced, impactful, memorable interactions with NPCs, narrative choices that determined your character's tendencies, a more complex adventure sequence. Just look at "Trespasser." The devs acknowledged that they designed those encounters far better. They're damn right and deserve the accolades. If you have to rely on codex entries and wordless boss fights, then you're asking the player to pretend the content for you... which is kinda lame. DAO's side-quests- hell, even that much-maligned encounter with Cammen and Gehenna- did far more for the player's experience. And none of DAO felt like filler. It all felt like part of the main story, the full story, albeit optional.

 

Mind you, this is DA we're talking about, not AC or FarCry where that sort of filler is exactly what the game entails. I enjoyed Mad Max (more or less) because that was the kind of game it was. DA... at least up to now has had a different standard, no? Plenty of players wouldn't bat an eye at DA becoming another AC (which is going great, as we see... *ahem*) But games like AC or FarCry will always outdo DA on that ground. Better DA stick to what it has done best: tell stories. I'm not a fan of DA2, but I'd rather DA4 be more like DA2 than DAI side-content-wise: it's more consistent with the standard that the franchise itself set.

 

Just take DAI's most elaborate side-adventures: JoH and Descent. We never get to talk with a single Hakkonite or ancient dwarven defender- just kill, kill, kill- and so many of them (literally infinite due to respawns) until... done. "Uninspired" is a kind word for it. The village in JoH was good, of course- plenty of interactivity and such plus a few talkable NPCs in the woods- but the Hakkonites were just different barbarians, no? Why not some spoken encounter with them? At least one with a boss at the gate or something. They weren't zombies. But it was wordless battle the whole way. Also Valta and Renn were awesome, Valta making it through the entire adventure with us to keep the narrative going. But the Sha-Brytol are an entire city! You know- of people. People talk. And all they could do was brainlessly kill? Perhaps they were written that way intentionally- to be 100s or 1000s or 100,000s of mindless lyrium-drone killing machines- but if so that's part of the point I'm making. Why write them that way? Why wouldn't they say something? Aren't they curious about these new not-darkspawn intruders after so much time alone in the dark? Then we get to the end: big crystal boss... kill- done. DAI is profoundly quieter than DAO or DA2... and not in a profoundly meaningful way...

 

This is why the "hill-crawling," no, is not bad in itself. It's bad when it's empty. If they could've added more meaningful encounters, the hill-crawling would've been par for the course. But they didn't. So there's a lot of "elevator time." And even then, a lot of the encounters you do find are outright lazy: go click a gravestone, then click me again- done; kill a few thugs I'm going to identify right on your map, pick up ring, click me again- done; kill a few demons, click a mass grave, repeat three times- done. Not even that any of those are so bad in themselves (just conspicuously uninspired and uninspiring), but that such an overwhelming portion of the side-quests were no better... like nearly all of them. I mentioned the haunted mansion (in the Emerald Graves) because that was my favorite of the main-game side-quests... and no less disappointing to proceed by killing constant zombie respawns and at long last end in yet another wordless (and lackluster) demon boss battle. The puzzly bit was ok (held together by codexes again), but... that was it. So, as I said, if they can't manage more meaningful encounters in the given extensiveness of the terrain, it'd be better to scale back the explorable realm to where they can invest in providing them with the content to make them meaningful and have impact (and occupy a larger proportion of the total playthrough time as such). If I were to make one suggestion to them it would be to make no side-quest at all for DA4 unless it resonates impactfully with the overall story they're telling.

 

And unfortunately the problem doesn't stop with the side-quest (lack of) quality. It's also the reliance on farming for craft materials and grinding through respawns as a means to character development- a mainstay of MMO's where the lack of content is usually mediated by the fact that you can get buddies in to play with and make it more meaningful that way. Hence my (not-so-sincere) suggestion to just make the main game multiplayer-accessible. Other than the main campaign and companion quests- which can be a minority of the time "finishing" the game (depending on your interest in completion)- the rest ends up being well-painted fluff.

 

The most important mention in the OP's cited article was the entreaty to devs to think more carefully about how they're requiring the player to spend their time. How the devs answer this question is determined by how valuable they consider the player's time. If one cynically feels that the player just needs their time wasted in a more or less entertaining way, obviously there's nothing to discuss. But if the devs are intending a meaningful experience for players of their game- something the player identifies with, remembers for years to come, struggles with emotionally and/or philosophically, challenges the player if it can, immerses the player head over heels in the unfolding narrative... then they'll have to do better than the bulk of DAI's meh side-encounters and gameplay. And for as talented a writing crew as DA has, it's really not an unreasonable requisite, just a reorientation of priorities...