A Lengthy Walkthrough of Combat in Dragon Age: Inquisition

Looks really bad to me. I hate the look of it, it looks so cartoony compared to the medieval themed art style of the first game. Its very clear that they are making an action game, they try to say that you can play tactical but its clearly an afterthought. And with games like Divinity and Pillars of Eternity the revitalization of CRPG is now. Inquisition just doesn't rate. At least for those looking for a real RPG.

Bioware has just lost it completely to me. Sadly.

I was thinking the same thing. Saw them playing a live demo at Comic-Con, and it looked smooth as Hell, but the colors and style threw me off.

Yeah! They should be using a board and dice!...seriously, are you 12?

@andrewb: could not agree more with everything you said.

I am worried about this game, and glad Divinity Original Sin exists.

Nothing against the game itself, but I'll wait for a PC gameplay video.

God damnit; they just went full console. My enthusiasm for this drains with each trailer.

Yeah, that's the way to play these games. I didn't appreciate Dragon Age 2 until I went up to Nightmare and each fight was minimum eight minutes of pausing and micromanaging. I loved it! It was one of the most mentally taxing, hardcore, yet rewarding experiences I've ever had with a game. 300-hour platinum trophy lol. I am unbelievably excited for this game since it seems to have all the combat options from before but with a better overlay. They tell you which debuffs you've put on the enemies!

@neozeon said:

People seem to want this game to fail, just so they can go around screaming that they were right at the top of their lungs.

I don't just want the game to be good at this point, I want it to be amazing. Not just for the obvious reason (That I enjoy fun games) either, but so that maybe, just maybe, I can stop hearing people bitch about the series being whatever they think it is despite the fact that they probably are going to buy it anyway.

I totally agree. I don't often talk about how much I loved DA2 on the internet because it's impossible to have constructive discussion about the game without people bringing up how much they hate it. Same goes for FFXIII. I sincerely hope people are open-minded enough to evaluate this game as this game and not another Dragon Age they're too elitist and "hardcore" to like because of the seemingly action-based combat. The game people want it to be is very much there if you turn up the difficulty. Perhaps you shouldn't have to but whatever. They'll sell a few million more copies to people who aren't you and have cooler trailers at the cost of making you spend 15 seconds in the options menu. It's a fine sacrifice to have dozens of hours of incredible RPG.

Edit: Sorry about the formatting. I haven't used GB comments in a long time.

@atwa said:

I think criticism of change in visual style Is completely valid, but also just a matter of taste. The first one wasn't exactly going for photorealism, it was pretty... non-descript? The second one gave the series a far more distinct, if a bit more cartoonish, style. I think this is just an evolution of that.

But "a real RPG"? I think "CRPG" is a fine enough term because it denotes something very specific, mechanically, but "RPG" has not, and cannot, ever mean just Infinity Engine games. It's a very broad field of gaming, and video games are only one part of that. Trying to imply that the term means a single style of videogame (that's barely even a genre) is incredibly misleading... and also just annoying to those of us, to whom roleplaying just means roleplaying.

How's the storytelling looking bad here? I'll give you that DAII's end was disappointing and the game was rushed overall, and not everybody was happy with the direction Bioware took ME3's ending in (I thought it was fine, if surprising... which isn't necessarily a bad thing). But what exactly about the story here makes you think they aren't going back to their (fairly strong) roots of storytelling? Mind you, Bioware stories have never been amazing, but they've been told really well, for the most part.

Tactical gameplay (as far as that means extensive pausing/turn-based gameplay) was never a draw for me in Bioware games, but I can see that some people will find the direction Bioware has taken with the series. They're clearly trying to provide those elements to the "old school CRPG" fans but the focus is elsewhere. I don't mind, I'd rather see them go more in the action direction (Witcher 2, or, y'know, why not even go full action as long as there's loads of customization).

I can't blame them for not making a series that's entirely focused on nostalgia and reverence of old Black Isle/Bioware games. If it was any other medium, be it books, movies or music, or whatever, no one (reasonable) would blame the authors for not making the same thing over and over again for their entire career. Some people want to do that and sometimes even successfully gets away with that, but it's pretty rare.

Also, as a AAA game series they're clearly going for the Skyrim crowd, just like the Witcher is. Whether they succeed at it, by which I mean bringing in some of that Bioware magic, remains to be seen. The Witcher will probably be better storywise, so what has Bioware got going on for them? It's definitely not combat (nor has it ever been, in my opinion). But I remain cautiously optimistic, even if it's not the Witcher, it might still be pretty good.

@jeanluc: Thanks for the info

This is Giant Bomb. Their "Quick" Looks are sometimes two hours.

This game does look promising. I skipped the second because of well....we all know how that turned out.

Game is looking great and very pretty visuals. Looking forward to this one.