Dragon Age Inquisition: A Quick Impression
https://basementmtl.blogspot.com/2014/12/dragon-age-inquisition-quick-impression.html
I picked up Dragon Age Inquisition earlier this week but before I get to it, I really
want to bring you up to speed with my involvement with the series so far. Full
disclosure: I didn't like Dragon Age: Origins very much. Maybe I'm just not that into turn-based
strategy games masquerading as action games, maybe I put the game on hard when
I shouldn't have and got royally butt hurt by a boss or two. Take your pick. I
played for about 12 or so hours and then just put it down. I never tried the second game, but aside from people bashing it for being an open world RPG that
only took place in a single city, I heard the combat was more enjoyable than
the first—which sounds like a big plus to me.
As far as Bioware goes, their first games don't seem to do
it for me. I have a great deal of distain for the first Mass Effect, but I absolutely loved, and I mean LOVED the second one. And
again, I have yet to play the third Mass Effect. In comes Dragon Age
Inquisition and I've been hearing some pretty amazing complements, so before I
let the hype train overwhelm me—did I mention this was purely an impulse buy
yet?—let's see how this goes!
Race selection makes a return (I heard it was removed in the second) and normally I would go with a Human
character but I decided to go with a Dwarf this time around. I did so because
the Dwarves have a 25% bonus to magic damage and if memory serves, magic does a
dumb amount of damage in the DA universe. I also chose a brutish warrior class
that uses a two handed weapon.
Character creation in general was the usual affair, although
the feature is limited to facial customization only—you cannot adjust the
body. The only real disappointment I found was that there were only two voices
to choose from. Now I get why this is: I mean, Bioware pumps so much dialogue
into these games, having to record the same thing multiple times because of
different voices for the same character is pretty shitty. At the same time only
having 2 voices is pretty shit too. One was a chippy British sort of voice,
while the other was a pretty regular sounding lower toned one. I chose the guy
who sounded like his balls dropped. I'm curious though, if I had picked a Human
character, would the voices be the same too?
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| My guy's head vs. Varric's, the other Dwarf in my party |
The graphics are pretty good, but you can tell that they
were held back a bit because they developed Dragon Age for the older consoles
as well. The only thing I will say though is that the faces do look pretty
amazing. The funny thing about that though is you can really tell the
difference between a procedurally generated face i.e.: my characters mug vs.
one of the other main characters' faces. The visual fidelity is just missing in
the custom face, which sucks, but it's to be expected.
The intro sequence is pretty straight forward. There is this
massive explosion that opens up some sort of rift in the sky, and ends up
killing a bunch of people. Since you're the only one around that survived, and
also happen to have a similar rift looking thing pulsating off your hand,
you're automatically suspect number one. After a quick tour with the sentry on
duty, she begins to believe you are not to blame, and since that "thing"
on your hand can close the rifts, you are a means to an end in resolving this
whole ordeal. So you're quickly recruited into their ranks and off you go.
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| The draw-distance isn't too shabby either |
Immediately following this, I'm quickly reminded of the Elder Scrolls series. Those rifts allow
demons to come through into your world and that just reminds me of Oblivion,
and once I reached the town of Haven I
spent a good 30-60 minutes just running around stealing from peoples' pots and
chests. Why people leave such things lying around is anyone's guess, but hey,
works for me.
At this point in time I'm only about 2 1/2 hours in.
Fast Forward
5 hours in, I'm completely overwhelmed with side
quests...just have a gander at my map so far. Keep in mind that this is the
first area and I have yet to even explore the entire thing.
Not that this is a bad thing, but the more I play the more I
feel like I'm slowly completing nothing haha. I'll keep you all posted with
further developments. Stay tuned!
Given that you don't have previous experience immersing yourself in the DA series' lore, I was curious to hear your thoughts about what you've seen so far in DA: I. More specifically, does it come across as generic or engaging to you?
ReplyDeleteThe story is engaging enough, but the problem with games like these is that there is just so much going on and so much to do that you sort of lose touch with it.
ReplyDeleteI agree entirely. I find that playing The Witcher 2, which is replete with only a handful of sidequests usually, is draining enough to keep track of the main plot. And W2 is a smaller game in terms of content. I can only imagine something more akin to Elder Scrolls and how quickly you would stop caring.
ReplyDelete