Dragon Age: Inquisition First Impressions Discussion

What are you thoughts of the game so far from what you have played? Any problems or issues? Anything you love or hate? Share with us all.

I will be picking up the game in the morning and probably won't really be able to play it until the evening so I will be living the game vicariously through you duders for the time being.

EDIT 1: So far I've put in about 2 and 1/2 hours into the story (I'm am out of the tutorial or near the end, been able to roam camp and do some side stuff) and I am really enjoying it. I love the camp feel from Origins and so far the captured what was missing from 2 for me. Just being able to always go and talk to my companions (even if it is repeat dialogue) is nice to have again instead of the same one liner spouted over and over again.

Anyways I love how the story seems to be going and all the references to the previous games have been great, love the connected world feel. Solas so far is amazingly interesting, I exhausted all his dialogue options as soon as I could and couldn't be more interested in that character and where he might go within the story. Combat is fine, I'm not hear for difficulty but for the story and characters and the little I have experienced have met that requirement.

Haven't gotten a chance to play multi yet, maybe tomorrow I'll try and hook up with some duders to see what it is like, depends on my schedule.

EDIT 2: Now up to about 6 1/2 hours, did a bunch in my first open area and I really like it (still). The blend of Dragon Age and Skyrim in just wanting to walk around and do random shit/side quests is fantastic for me. Worst part is no music when you are just wandering and exploring, something Skyrim nailed, but when I am in exploration mode I will just pop in some headphones and do that mindless work. But so far the story is just fascinating to me.

Biggest issue, the voice I picked seems to be rotating between two different people, it is freaking me out. I selected the second human male voice and it really does sound like two different people sometimes, at least to me.

I can't get my controller to work with the PC version of the game.

Character creation is fan-fucking-tastic though.

Will also pick up the game in the morning ... but the PS3 version , seeing some videos of it and altho the texture quality is waaaaaaayyyy down (one might say pretty fugly) it appears that the gameplay is intact , or at least finaly the tactical view has been preserved , so it is a plus compare to DAO and DA2 on the PS3. Once I play it , will update what I think of it.

Edit: Well bad news either the game is faulty or my PS3 is bitting the dust because my system always shutsdown at the character creation or a little bit further (one the cutscene were you come out of the fade). :/ and no matter what I do it keeps hapening on the same parts , tried other games and they work just fine.

Magically it runs on my PC (which was also somehow able to run Watch_Dogs and BF4). Only played multiplayer so far as I've yet to tinker with my saves in Keep, but so far it's fun! The MP isn't as active as the ME3 multiplayer, understandably so, but it's still pretty good. Lots of characters to unlock and level up, gear to craft and upgrade.

They've said they'll support it like they did with ME3, and they supported the ever-loving shit outta that thing, so it should only get better.

Character creation seems great, but oh my god... Just give me a randomize button. It was overwhelming so I just went with preset #2.

Without spoiling anything; there is a lot of stuff on fire in the beginning... Fire that you can just walk through and stand in... In fact I walked into a burning building and it had a bunch of lootable objects you would have to walk through fire to get. Kinda of breaks the immersion but I'm enjoying the combat so far and the dialog.

It looks okay on PS4. Not amazing but still pretty good.

I wish I could run.

I really like being able to go into an indoor area without a load screen. I remember DA:O had a lot of load screens going into a tavern or castle and am pleasantly surprised when the doors open and I can go right in. This might change later on in bigger towns but for now it's great!

I wish i was touching a wolf medallion every time I did that ping thing to find materials.

I had some stuttering issues early on but disabling the overlays fixed. So far the game playa great and I'm really enjoying. The first environment is surprisingly open. Went up the mountainside with ease.

Just bought a new graphics card (GTX 970) for this and the Witcher 3 when that comes. So far been really impressed with the visuals outside of the cut scenes. This is up there with Witcher 2 as one of the best looking fantasy worlds I've seen in a game.
Had trouble deciding if I wanted to do and Elf or a Qunari, went with an elf because it would make a better rogue.

Crazy amount of stuff to do in the world once the game lets you out into it and all the voice acting and dialogue has been up to the high bioware standard imo.

Not sure what difficulty I should be on. Normal seems like a bit of a cruiser with some occasional exceptions against tougher groups of dudes. We will have to see but I may end up re-starting on a higher difficulty if this one proves too basic.

I already saw 6 hours just vanish playing this game, and I have a feeling this is finally going to be the game that pulls me in all the way this year. Super promising first stretch.

The cutscenes are locked at 30 FPS in the PC version. The game runs great outside of cutscenes but those 30 FPS cutscenes are jarring.

I think character creation is actually pretty terrible. Had to remake my dude like 3-4 times. The hair options are just bad.

It's taken some time to warm up to me, but I'm getting into the groove now. It's pretty overwhelming. There's A LOT of stuff in this game. I'm enjoying my Mage, but kind of wishing I tried another class. Too late to start over now though. I'm curious of what Warriors and Rogues think of their classes.

@kishinfoulux: What about being a mage isn't doing it for you?

Definitely better than Dragon Age II so far but the combat still leaves a lot to be desired. The "tactical" camera (top-down) view with pausing is basically worthless as you can see so little of the battlefield and your mouse acts like an analog stick. So it's very very actiony, meaning it's closer to DA1 on consoles than on the PC.

I really wish I have a current-gen system. By the way, is there an auto-attack button on consoles or do I have to mash X or A repeatedly like last time?

You can hold down the trigger button but not select an enemy and watch yourself hit it.

@horseman6: Hmmm... so does that mean that one trigger is used to advance the time in the tactical view mode, while the other to keep attacking? Anyway, that's really good to hear. Thanks!

@theht: Any co-op for the main storyline or is multiplayer strictly for the mass effect 3 style MP? While I wouldn't be exactly disappointed by this since I did enjoy the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer I thought it would be pretty cool to get an extra person to go through the campaign with.

How is the optimization for middle end Pcs ? I preloading it now, will unlock on the 21st.

@voshinova: What kind of controller do you have? I'm on a wireless 360 controller and the game won't recognize it unless I turn it on before launching the game.

@i_stay_puft: Nah, no campaign stuff. Just the separate multiplayer mode like Mass Effect.

I'm about 4 or so hours in and just about done with what I would consider the tutorial. (I play very slowly, searching everything/talking to everyone.) So far it's pretty much exactly what I'd hoped for/expected.

Combat is fun and challenging. I'm playing on Nightmare, so the tactical view is definitely a must in my opinion. I just wish it would control better and zoom out farther.

The only other thing that's really annoying is the awfully slow walking speed. Who the heck thought this would be a good idea in this kind of game?

@sessh: By the way, I saw it in the dev stream and I think there's a point where you can get on mounts. Not sure what the situations are though and where you can ride mounts. You can probably just scour the wiki for the details.

@gaspower: @sessh: Yeah, there are apparently a lot of mounts in the game, so it shouldn't be much of a problem for long. Hopefully you get your first one reasonably early.

@zeik said:

You get your first mount during a quest in the Hinterlands, about 2-3 hours in.

@conmulligan: Okay that's good, but can you ping and collect stuff while on horseback? If you can't I think it's pretty much useless.

I played DA1 and 2 with a mouse and keyboard, is controller better this time around?

@ichthy: It's what you'd expect. On PC you can pause like normal, but with a controller you enter a tactical 'mode'. It's different, so you might want to give both a try.

@sessh said:

I'm pretty sure you can't. Clicking in the left stick will spur your mount into a sprint instead. Getting on and off is pretty quick though, so if you're just going from place to place it should be fine.

OMG this game is so much fun! I ended up rolling a Qunari Rogue since I was an Elf Mage in Origins and a Human Warrior in 2. Fuck Dwarves. I just unlocked the war council and it's pushing all the right buttons. Love the changes they've made to the dialogue system. I'm barely a handful of hours in and I'm already looking forward to my second playthrough. Cassandra doesn't seem to like me very much.

On PC sprint and ping are separate buttons. Not sure if that's relevant here.

Oh no I enjoy it, but at the same time I've been a mage the last two games as well. Might just be approaching my tipping point.

The character models are impressive on PC, though movement can be a bit jerky/weird. I can't say I was expecting anything different from Bioware, but the story (at least at the beginning) is pretty uninspired. You are the chosen one, only you can save the world, blah blah.

After playing through both DA:O and DA2 as an elf mage, I decided to switch it up with a human warrior. Kinda regretting that now. Warrior combat is too button mashy. I'm not that far in, so might try an archer.

What hardware do you have and what settings are you using?

I have a Ivy Bridge 3570 at 3.4ghz, 8GB of RAM and a 2GB AMD 270X and I am hoping to play at least on high maybe some settings on ultra?

I'm just really not digging it. I liked Origins and even enjoyed DA2 a little bit. But for some reason, combat just feels...uninteresting. I'm just having a hard time getting through any of it, really. When I turned it off after a few hours, I didn't really want to go back. I'm very much in the minority.

@schlorgan: I have an Afterglow 360 wired controller. I've been searching around for solutions to no avail.

I had a problem with Dark souls on pc where it thought one of my usb hid devices was a controller - and i had to disable it to have the controller respond.

Tried that with this with no luck.

If I come across any solutions I'll be sure to share em with you.

i absolutely love this game.the combat is the best in the series,the customization is way better and theres alot of strategy.the open world feel is a massive addition,theres plenty to do in it as well and its all fun.i like the characters alot and they will only get better over time.i could go on and on,but the point im trying to make is that imo this is easily GOTY so far and the best in the series.i only have one complaint and this could just be the system im playing on(ps3)or it could be bad luck.the game has had a couple technical problems.its had pop in,slowdowns and fps drops,but none were game breaking and none ruined my fun.it also froze once in about 7 hours of play,so overall its hasnt been to bad but its worth mentioning.

I have the same controller...so that's unfortunate.

Edit: Just an FYI, my Afterglow does work with the game, except for an annoying bug where the camera keeps drifting downwards, although I suspect that's more something on my head.

Could it be its the class that you've chosen? What did you choose?

When can you access the multi? I popped it in hoping to at least play that for a little bit but it looks like I have to start the story mode before I can even experience that part of the game. If true how long before I can play the multi? Instantly? Couple hours before it unlocks?

I don't like the combat, I'd much prefer the micromanaging of Origins than the clunkiness of this game's combat. So that's one major pitfall. I can't say much besides that other than the game looks nice and has potential.

I hated the excessive micromangement in Origins so so much. Mostly because it was less a result of strategy and more about fighting against the ridiculously dumb AI. Origins would have been exponentially better if it had just been turn based.

But Inquisition's AI is at least reasonably intelligent now. Makes combat much more enjoyable.

A couple hours in.
Getting a lot of flickering, looks like the game has a problem with some SLI setups? Running two GTX 980s. Just installed the new NVIDIA drivers for Dragon Age but problem is still there.
The keyboard/mouse controls on the PC aren't great.

Story wise so far pretty good, not really story but the lore around it, they built the world pretty well.
Combat is interesting enough not to feel bland but it isn't exciting exactly.
Wasn't expecting too much from the combat anyway I just hope the story picks up, main reason I play these games.

Why couldn't they just put the combat of Divinity: Original Sin in this game? :{

No one else is talking about it, but aren't the multi-player controls just utter crap on the PC? I feel like I'm crazy or something. You can't strafe with the controller, strafe isn't really strafe with mouse and keyboard (you turn to the side and run,) and there's no mouse look unless you want to hold down the right-click all the time. Maybe it's just because I picked the guy with the shield, but I can't stay pointing toward the bad guys to save my life.

Edit: Oh, and no voice chat options so be ready to listen to tons of people who don't know they're on a microphone.

Its pretty good. Still haven't gotten a feel for how I overall feel about it.

Played it for about 6 hours today, I did pretty much everything there was to do in Haven, then moved into the Hinterlands and started doing some stuff there. Those 6 hours moved by in a flash, and I didn't want to put the controller down, so that's definitely a good sign.

So far I feel like there's been a ton of dialogue to get through, which I love, but we'll see how that keeps up, maybe it'll be 10 hours before I unlock any more conversations with my companions. Story has potential, but it hasn't really got going yet, I intend to do a lot of story stuff tomorrow, so we will see how that goes. One thing I can say is that I'm already pretty satisfied with how well they've been following up on the previous 2 games. DA2 didn't acknowledge Origins nearly enough, but this has already been better about that just in the first couple hours. There was a moment where Leliana talked about my Warden, that was really kind of touching,

Really love how big and explorable the environments are, though I expect I'll end up glossing over a lot of the content because there's so much of it. I'm kind of okay with that, because while there's been some good stuff so far, a lot of the quests have been kind of fluff. The crafting and resource gathering hasn't been as bad as the Quick Look made me fear. I just sort of grab stuff while I happen to be running around and then I get to make cool stuff. Seems alright in my book. War table seems neat, I'm interested to see how the Inquisition progresses as an entity throughout the game, and what effect I have on it.

Still not sure how I feel about the combat, I can't say it's hooked me yet, but I suspect that might change once I unlock some more powers, get some more party members, and start running into some more interesting story encounters. Or maybe I just played the wrong class, who knows. Speaking of wrong class, I'm annoyed that there's no healing in this game, because that's what I intended to be. I mean the healing options have always been kind of barren in DA, but I wish they'd found some way to work those in to their new design. In general I think the spell list is just kind of boring. There's been way more interesting spells and build possibilities in previous games. Warriors and Rogues seem pretty cool though. Not sure how I feel about the players indirect control over stats, it feels a little limiting at first, which seems unnecessary considering the game is already pretty easy.

Overall though I'm enjoying it a bunch so far, and I already know I'm in for the long haul. Any complaints I have are pretty minor in comparison to the last couple games Bioware has delivered. Hopefully it only gets better.

Can anyone confirm or deny if they manage to carry over the appearance of your Hawke? I always got the impression that the Keep only grabs the image portrait of your Hawke and not necessarily the data that constitutes the makeup of their face.

The QL had me interested but when I randomly ended up watching a stream of this game is when I started getting interested. The graphics and art design seem top-notch; as someone else mentioned it looks like the best looking fantasy world since the Witcher 2.

The guy I saw played a mage and I guess since he was able to fight from a distance everything seemed less chaotic than how Rorie played in the QL. Also mouse and keyboard seemed to make more sense. If I do pick up this game (going to have another go at Origins first though), I'll probably try an archer or a mage just to be able to view more of the battlefield faster.

Updated my main post. Really enjoying the game so far, been a fun 7 hours I've put in.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 @ 2.5GHz

8GB RAM

Radeon HD 6870 1GB

Vista 64-bit

It defaults to medium/low, but I'm playing with some stuff on high (like meshes, to avoid the shiny hair), most other stuff on medium, and the typical big stuff turned off (SSAO). I dunno the average frames I get, but it's playable so far in multiplayer and messing with the character creator.

Granted, I've got a pretty high tolerance for poor framerates. It hasn't been anything to severly affect gameplay or anything, no Blighttown levels of slowdown so far. This machine sometimes feels like the little PC that could. Shadows of Mordor, Watch Dogs, AC4, BF4. I've been able to play em all without any serious framerate issues.

Game looks fantastic! My only two gripes with it (PC version) is that there's no rebindable mouse, the WASD system just seems out of place for a DA game. That, and sometimes the camera just freaks out so I can't keep track of the enemys.

Other than that, I can't wait to get deeper into the game, and dig into the multiplayer as well!