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To say that this review is a daunting one would be like saying RPGs are mild time-sucks, which is to say, quite an understatement. But this review is a daunting one. Mostly because it’s actually not that daunting at all. You see, Dragon Age: Inquisition is a pretty straight-forward game: It’s one of the best on offer this year, it’s a stellar RPG experience and realistically you won’t regret your purchase. So what’s left to say besides buy it and experience the rest for yourself? Apparently, a lot, because first of all this is a Dragon Age RPG we’re reviewing and those deserve a certain level of attention to detail. And second, look at who’s doing the review? (Disclaimer: This is a joke for the regulars. Ask about it.)
In the interests of fairness then, we find ourselves in need of a certain level of attention to intricacy. That is, we need to break down every aspect of this game and get into the minutiae. If you’ve come for an easy opinion of the Dragon Age: Inquisition regarding whether or not to buy it, you should already have it buy now: Buy it. But if your needs stretch further than simple consumer advice and you’d like to know, well, more, then by all means read on.
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A journey of a hundred hours begins with a character
BioWare games do a really neat thing where they take your choices from previous games and implement them in their current ones through imported save files. So for example you import your save from Dragon Age: Origins into Dragon Age II and voilà, your choices from the first game have affected the world in the second game (we’ll get to this in a bit). This can obviously be very tricky when considering the new generation of consoles, more so since BioWare’s threequel is not built on the same engine as the previous games. Thus, a new method for save importing has been created in the form of Dragon Age: Keep, which you can think of as an interactive save file creator, allowing you to set every pertinent choice from the previous two games and then export a save file that can be imported into Dragon Age: Inquisition. A pretty neat way of handling it, all things considered.
After a lightning-fast five minute install and a relatively small ~200MB update (this is astronomically quick and tiny respectively, by Xbox One standards) Dragon Age: Inquisition was up and running, and from there it was a quick matter of logging into the Dragon Age servers using Electronic Arts’ Origin ID and then importing the save that was created in the Keep. From there, starting a new game and selecting the difficulty (which is the standard easy, normal, hard and nightmare) took you straight into character creation.
To say that character creation is extensive would be a gross underselling of the sheer freedom you are given here. Gone is the forced human character. Here you get four races to choose from (Human, Elf, Dwarf and for the first time, Qunari) as well as the returning three classes of Mage, Warrior and Rogue. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, your racial choice doesn’t matter as much and mostly comes down to personal preference, aside from very minor perks. Classes differ in terms of available skill trees, armour and weaponry as well as unique abilities: A Mage can energize bridges and torches, a Warrior can bash in walls and a Rogue can pick locks. Doesn’t really count for much in the long run so again, mostly down to personal preference. Then the character customisation screen comes in and allows you a wide array of configuration options for crafting the perfect character to your tastes, including a choice of either an American or British voice, which we found quite neat for some reason.
Upon completion of character creation some introductory story events occur and you’re immediately carried off into the world of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Immediately noticeable to you should be two things, now trademarks of a BioWare game: The traditional dialogue wheel has made a return, allowing you a set number of options along a radial wheel that will likely end with you regularly picking a particular option (for example, the top one) and hearing voiced responses that only vaguely sound similar to the text response you chose. And the traditional pause menu, also allowing you a set number of options along a radial wheel including the likes of your Journal, Codex, Inventory, Quest Map and more. Nothing anyone who has played a BioWare game has not seen before.
It’s Game of Thrones meets Lord of the Rings meets The Witcher
Let’s get the story stuff out of the way, hopefully without any spoilers. Yes okay, it’s quite cliché to call Dragon Age: Inquisition a bold and risqué amalgamation of Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings and The Witcher… but it is. It just is. In the first Dragon Age we saw Ferelden plunged into darkness as the world stood on the brink of cataclysm under threat from the Blight, whereas in the second Dragon Age we got a more personal story regarding a particular character and their life and times in the city of Kirkwall. Dragon Age: Inquisition steps things up in massive ways by taking ongoing conflicts from the previous games and giving them centre stage. Rightfully so.
The Mages and the Templars have reached the point of war. The Chantry (think politics meets religion) has called a Conclave to meet and discuss things in order to achieve peace. This is quickly interrupted by a massive breach opening up in the sky followed by the death of the head of the Chantry, the Divine. You, meanwhile, are found passed out at the scene of the crime. You don’t know how you got there, but you have a mark on your hand that makes people think you had something to do with it. Cue returning characters from previous games, Cassandra and Leliana, to invoke The Inquisition — a mostly above-the-law, order-restoring task force of sorts — together with a bunch of other characters including you, thanks for that mysterious mark you bear, with the aim of finding out just what on Thedas happened and how to stop the increasing number of rifts created by the breach in the sky, which has torn a hole between the physical world and the Fade — think Dante’s Divine Comedy meets an acid trip — resulting in demons pouring through. But that’s just the beginning of the tale…
In truth, Dragon Age: Inquisition uses its storytelling a lot better than what can be explained here with words. It just has to be experienced to be fully believed. If we could rate this game on its story, it would be a perfect 100 and we would all be happy. BioWare have taken some massive strides forward in storytelling, perhaps borrowing heavily from the likes of George R. R. Martin and CD Projekt RED by presenting players with a plot that is anything but straight-forward while chock-full of brutally difficult decisions to contemplate. In that respect, Dragon Age: Inquisition offers some of the best examples of true player choice; there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ choice but rather a bunch of equally difficult choices that leave you spending many stress-filled moments agonising over the correct decision and then agonising further over whether or not you made the right (or best) decision after all. We stand up and applaud BioWare for the daring way they’ve chosen to approach this story, and to say more would be to edge towards spoiler territory. If you’re really interested, check back in a few weeks and we’ll have a spoiler-filled story discussion but for the moment, just know that this story is full of political intrigue, true character growth and world-changing decision-making around every corner. This is a story that stands near-unparalleled amongst games from recent years, and deserves every bit of praise that it gets.
Away from the main quest, there are a myriad of side quests to get involved in. Some are deep and extensive and yield long-lasting rewards for your Inquisition whilst others are simply fetch-quests and the like. It should be noted that dragons have made a triumphant return to form, with quite a bit more flying about than in previous games. For the first time in any RPG we’ve played, we got the feel that BioWare wants players focussing on the main quest. Especially since more side quests open up in the surrounding areas of the game as you progress through the main story and very little is actually locked off to you later, meaning no annoying point-of-no-return like in previous games. As for those places that are locked off due to story reasons, you can easily find a merchant who will sell you the codex entries you might have missed from those areas. To that extent, we heartily recommend you get out of the Hinterlands at the beginning of the game and play as much of the story as you feel like, before you start side-questing. Trust us on this one, it makes for a far better overall experience of the game. You’ll know when the game wants you to go side-questing.
One of the strongest aspects of the Dragon Age games has been its supporting cast and Dragon Age: Inquisition is no different. Depending on the save you’ve chosen to import, a wide array of returning characters form part of your progress through the main quest, but there are also new characters who are equally entertaining and diverse, making for yet more difficult decisions given that you’re only allowed to take three of them along on each quest. Oddly, this is then offset by a standard BioWare issue that involves the mixture of near-perfect voice-acting with that dialogue wheel’s keen ability to create dissonance with actual conversation. To explain what we mean, let’s take an example: You have three dialogue choices. One of them is a quite emotionally charged option whereas the other two are quirky or blunt. You pick the emotional option in between the other two and watch your characters move from bawling to blaspheming to bantering all in swift motion, and honestly it’s quite jarring. It feels wooden, as if the preselected responses are exactly that. It just… doesn’t quite flow like it should.
Still, it’s not enough to take away from the mostly interesting characters — who now have far more ‘random banter’ moments during questing — and there’s certainly a character for everyone here. Particularly Dorian is a surprise standout, although we’re sure everyone will have their own favourite. Plus, can you really criticise wooden conversations when one of them turns into an actual full-blown song? Remember, kids: If a game sings to you, it immediately wins.
Welcome to National Geographic: Thedas
Dragon Age: Inquisition is a massive, massive game. It has ground coverage. Mileage. Whichever you’d prefer. Not just in terms of the staggering amount of exploration on offer, because yes it’s absolutely large in that respect as well, but also in terms of just how many quests there are. Make no mistake, it could take you months of playing to get through all of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s content, unless you powered through it non-stop in which case, may we have your life? There’s a lot to do here, in a large area. Is it Skyrim large? Perhaps. It can’t really be worked out that way because Dragon Age: Inquisition has ‘locations’ as part of the World Map. We can say that the world is a lot more diverse, ranging from lush forests to bone-dry deserts to snowy tundras to rained-out coastlines, some areas changing up as you go along. There are massive outdoor and indoor areas on offer here, and you’re going to spend many, many hours joyously lost in this world.
Amazingly one of the best features, unprecedented for BioWare, that have made exploration that much better, is the addition of a jump button. Yes, that’s right, with a single addition BioWare has transformed world exploration as you know it, for this series. We’re not even kidding about that. Over and above that, the Frostbite 3.0 engine presents a jaw-droppingly beautiful game not just in terms of visuals but also in terms of sound quality. This game looks and sounds the part, and you’re going to find yourself, more than once, gaping in awe at this game’s splendour. As expected, perhaps? Either way, it’s a great thing to see something this astoundingly gorgeous and well-presented, and it affords wanton exploration that much more appeal.
In Dragon Age: Inquisition, as a leading character in the Inquisition itself you are granted access to the War Room table, which is effectively a map of Thedas split into two halves, namely Orlais and Ferelden. Think of like a tactical map, filled with little pins for points of interest. In this tactical map are two types of pins: Some of them are basic operations which you may charge agents of your Inquisition to undertake; they’ll take some time (although thankfully they work in real-time, meaning even when the game is off) but will be handled offscreen and yield you rewards. The other type of pin is that of unlockable areas, which could be either side or main quest areas; these are unlocked using Power, which you accrue simply by completing objectives ranging from discovering new areas to solving puzzles to questing to closing rifts using that mark we mentioned earlier that’s on your hand, and more. There’s just far too much to do in each area and you’ll spend entire days in a particular place. Suffice to say, there are many, many areas to unlock along the course of the game. And even more in the way of operations.
To aid in exploration, you are now able to fast travel from pretty much anywhere you’d like, with the use of the Quest Map. There is also a handy trail along the Quest Map which shows your path travelled, allowing you to retrace your steps should you get lost. Finally, making a debut in the Dragon Age series is the addition of mounts. That’s right, at some point after playing through a bit of story the game will allow you to explore on horseback. This has the benefit of significantly speeding up your exploration of areas while having a drawback that you may get ambushed while on your horse, and you really don’t want that. Still, it makes for a refreshing addition especially given just how large some areas are. Just walking from end to end in some of these areas could take hours, but on horseback it’s a lot easier. A welcomed addition then. Oh and if you end up in Val Royeaux, do visit the merchant selling the mystery box and thank us later.
But how’s your role playing?
Naturally the meat of any role-playing game is the actual gameplay. After all, you’re going to be spending a lot of your time questing, when you’re not engaging in ridiculous amounts of dialogue. In Dragon Age: Inquisition, BioWare have seen fit to try and do what they did with the Mass Effect series; whereas the first game was for the hardcore RPG player and therefore difficult for newcomers to the series, the sequel was a lot more fast-paced and simplified, favouring action over strategy and effectively alienating a large amount of the fanbase. Thus the threequel serves as a delicate middle-ground balancing act between the previous two games. With this in mind, some design choices are understandable if not agreeable and for the most part, Dragon Age: Inquisition is very intuitive and easy to master as a result of this hybridisation of action and tactics.
For the most part — at least on consoles — you control your characters from the third person perspective. On the Xbox One version your character can attack using the Right Trigger, jump using A and then use a variety of abilities with the face buttons (X, Y, B) and the Right Bumper, while pressing Left Trigger allows access to further abilities. Pressing the Left Bumper brings up a wheel of options that allow for potion usage as well as party commands such as Disengage, Hold Position and the ability to summon your mount. Clicking in the Right Stick will send out a search wave that highlights loot and hidden items, extremely handy for questing. The D-pad allows quick access to the Quest Map while also allowing you to switch active control between party members, while pressing the Back button (on old controllers, we’re not really sure what to call it on the new controllers, Options maybe?) will flip the game into Tactical mode which then switches up the controls and lets you press A to attack while Right Trigger advances play. It’s typically a matter of personal preference which you prefer to use but sometimes Tactical mode really saves your bacon, especially during particularly challenging fights, of which there are many depending on the difficulty (read: dragons). It’s all quite fluid and easy-to-use, and is explained well enough to you at the beginning even if button presses will take a while to acclimatise to, especially given how many there are in this game. More than once, trying to change to Tactical mode resulted in accidentally consuming a potion. We’re not really sure why… blame Andraste.
Your character gains two types of experience in this game. The regular kind of experience — the one we’re familiar with — is gained via completion of quests as well as through kills and codex discoveries. Enough experience levels you up and gives you a skill point to spend on abilities in various skill trees based on your class. All quite standard fare for any RPG, yes? Notably for the first time, Dragon Age: Inquisition automatically assigns attributes to your character as you level up. This is mildly forgiveable since items now grant extra attributes aplenty. The skill trees themselves are in Dragon Age II’s form of overly simplified and if there is anything to be said about them, they don’t really allow for the same level of customisation as the original game. A definite disappointment for anyone looking to spend hours picking skills and working out sexy combinations. Also of note is the removal of any form of Heal spell in this game, replaced instead by an entire skill tree that revolves around the casting of Barrier. This has the effect of making potions important again, but it is sorely missed during longer spells of exploration. Alongside potions are the likes of grenades and tonics, all available to be crafted by the player after collecting an assortment of herbs. Weapons crafting is also available and is about as extensive as you might imagine by this point; not only can you create weapons and armour but you can create custom upgrades for further bonuses.
The other type of experience you accrue is called Influence, which you can think of as Inquisition experience. That’s right, your Inquisition levels up! You gain Influence by completing quests and acquiring key objectives, as well as by completing operations. Levelling this up then grants you Inquisition Perks (not like that) which are minor bonuses to your entire game, such as extra inventory slots, bonus experience for research, rare items and more. However if you feel it’s easier and you’re too impatient to do it the normal way, you can find a merchant later on and simply buy Influence. Yes really.
Later in the game you’ll unlock specialisations, three per class, which offer your character the chance to branch out a little. This is a returning feature from the first Dragon Age, and like in Origins you will have to ‘achieve’ these specialisations rather than have them unlocked from the get-go. Each of the playable characters will unlock one of the specialisations, at the very least allowing you to try them out by spec-ing them — don’t worry, you’re allowed infinite re-specs for enough gold — and seeing how they play. This is a welcomed return for the series, although if we’re being honest it’s a little disappointing to see that those specialisations are reused for other characters, rather than giving entirely unique skill trees to each member of your
death squad
team like with Dragon Age II. Also, blood magic is entirely gone, which makes complete sense for the first time given the game’s narrative, and yet, it is sorely missed for its potency and plain fun factor. Tears, man.
Also noteworthy is the complete removal of tactics in the game. At the very basic level you can configure potion usage per character, as well as select which abilities each character should use more or less frequently, or not at all. That’s about it, though. Say “Maker be with you” to telling your heroes exactly what spells to use at what moment in fights. A little disheartening for the more hardcore RPG fanatic who wants that level of control over AI but for the newcomer to the series, perhaps they might not even notice that it was there at all? Either way, you can still play the game in two ways: Configure abilities based on which you would prefer your party members to use, or disable all of them and use them manually in fights. The choice is yours.
A note on the excellence of the continuity
We said we’d come back to this so let’s take a moment to talk about just what an amazing experience Dragon Age: Inquisition is for fans of the series who are returning for their third outing. Unfortunately newcomers might not feel as much emotional attachment to characters and thus a lot of the returning characters and cameos will go entirely missed. This is a crying shame. We truly sympathise with newcomers as they no doubt look around awkwardly while others are foaming at the mouth at a particular story event. BioWare has assumed full prior knowledge in Dragon Age: Inquisition and as a result, really throws you into things from the beginning. We’re going to respectfully bow in admiration of this level of risk-taking because let’s be honest, how frustrating is it to play the third game in the series and have to learn everything over yet again? None of that here in Dragon Age: Inquisition; you’re simply told the basics and let loose on the world. And you know what? They dared to go there. They finally dared to actually address a conflict that has been quietly building in the background across two games. They gave us what we wanted. How many other developers have done that, of late?
In a way you’re left wondering whether they had planned this all along; Dragon Age II told a far more personal story with Hawke, and thus a lot of fans of Dragon Age: Origins were left wondering what happened to the Hero of Ferelden, or Morrigan, or pretty much anyone else from the first game. Save for a few small cameos, the sequel had little and less of anyone while telling its own personal story through that framed narrative that worked for some but failed for most. Perhaps an unexpected boon from that is that Dragon Age: Inquisition, as a result of having all those saved cameos from the previous game, is chock-full of them. This is probably why Mass Effect 3 was considered devoid of reappearances when in fact both sequels in that trilogy shared the spoils. Here entire missions will centre around returning stalwart characters, and you’ll find more than a few familiar faces in your adventures. This is excellent fan service from BioWare and we cannot help but commend it. Even in the game itself, the progression shows through character interactions and along the course of the game, through the ‘random banter’ you’ll experience while questing, characters make mention of things that have gone on while you’ve played the game. A plus, BioWare. Well played.
A comprehensively pedantic list of minor niggles
Unfortunately, Dragon Age: Inquisition is not a game without issues. Here is a list of random questions based on minor bugbears we experienced throughout the game, compiled in point form for your reading pleasure:
Why can’t you pause during a cutscene?
Why are character animations so awkward at times?
Why do characters clip so terribly, even during cutscenes with their default clothing on?
Why is there minor slowdown whenever your character enters Haven?
Why does audio sometimes lag or cut out? Is this a headset issue?
Why are there so many unnecessary Requisition orders?
Why is the world so static? Why don’t NPCs move when you try to walk into them?
What happened to racial conflicts? Does everyone suddenly get along now?
Why are character attributes automatically assigned when you level up?
Why do enemies of the same level/class as you take far more hits to down?
Why is the mini map so simple as to confuse?
Why don’t story missions scale to your current level?
Why does Spirit Mark cause some quests to become unable to complete?
Why do your party members get in your way so much?
Why do cutscenes sometimes halt and take ten minutes before proceeding to the next dialogue?
Why do potions sometimes get used up without being replenished?
Why is there so much glimmer on lips?
Why do eyes appear sunken whenever characters aren’t looking directly at the screen?
What is actually the point of approval in this game?
Why don’t party members share experiences sometimes?
Why is jump mapped to the same button as interact?
All of this said, the fact remains that BioWare have done a stellar job with Dragon Age: Inquisition and based on it being an RPG of all things, we’re willing to forgive some of the minor niggles in the interest of the overall experience. However we cannot give it Carte Blanche either. It’s a shame because the storytelling and adventuring on offer in this game make for a perfect-ten experience. Unfortunately that perfect experience is marred by the oversimplification of skills, the dissonant dialogue wheel and the typical RPG-esque glitches which, in today’s day and age, we feel we cannot simply ignore. Too many games these days release in this state, would it be fair to call Dragon Age: Inquisition an RPG and let it get away? Thus, a slightly lower score than it truly deserves.
One final note that should be made in BioWare’s favour is that Dragon Age: Inquisition has far too much potential for monetisation, and yet they pay it no interest. Were this Ubisoft or Activision, there might have been many microtransactions either to speed up the completion times for operations, or to gain you some extra Influence. As it stands, all ‘cheats’ are handled in-game using currency you earn as the player. Commendable, especially since this is technically an Electronic Arts game and we still haven’t forgotten that stunt with Dead Space 3’s microtransactions. Oh and one more thing: There’s a multiplayer mode, if you care about it. It’s cooperative and not nearly as fun as the story mode and you really don’t have to care about it.
The post Review: Dragon Age: Inquisition Is A Crowning Achievement In Storytelling appeared first on #egmr.