Just so you know, I have autism, a mental disability that keeps me from recognizing other people's social cues. As a result, when I played through Dragon Age: Origins, I was constantly dependent on approval meters to tell me how much my party-members liked me. I also gave them gifts to further increase their approval of me, especially Feast Day gifts to maximize their approval of me.

But then comes that new game I'm playing right now, Dragon Age: Inquisition. Unlike Origins and DAII, I now have to recognize how much specific party-members like me based on their social cues and dialogue. Unfortunately, I can't do something like that, because again, I have autism.

Of course, I have another way of gauging how much my party-members like me, and that's probably unlocking their side-quests and completing them. Technically, party-members of nearly any RPG tend to have character-arcs, whether within the main-quest itself or taking the form of side-quests. Once their character-arcs are fully resolved, they end up developing a better bond with the player. For example, Persona 4 had Social Links, whereby resolving the seven Investigation Team members' arcs and bonding with them, do they evolve their personas to reflect their fully-resolved character-arcs.

And that was what playing Dragon Age: Origins was like when I played it, as well. Party-members can bond with me better if I unlock and complete their side-quests, in other words, their character-arcs. Zevran was the only party-member without his own side-quest, and yet there was a random encounter where he ended up siding with either me or the Antivan Crows, depending on how much he liked me.

So surely, unlocking and completing side-quests in Inquisition will help me bond with my party-members just as much.

Don't worry, DA:I has taken a lot of the focus away from the approval rating stuff, it's why there isn't a on screen meter anymore.

I played through the entire thing not ever using or interacting with most of the characters and still unlocked all their side missions.

If it makes you feel any better, I have never played a game with detailed or accurate enough facial expressions that you could gauge social cues on them alone so you're not alone on that

hope the rest of your life isn't too hard on you because of your condition

cheers

Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it dude. There were some points in time where I felt like I'd handled certain situations wrong and wanted to go back, but in the end everything sort of just works out, and you get a much more interesting and unique story if you let the chips fall where they may.

Yeah I think you have the right approach, just keep doing stuff for them to keep liking you, you dont need a meter for that. But if you have sex with them, I think that means you hit a wall.

You still get approval messages that pop in in the left hand corner of the game. Also I believe the cards each companion has during the companion select screen will change if you have a high approval or a low approval.

There's very little variation in how party members talk to you except for the specifically written stuff where they go crazy and start shouting at you which is explicit in how they feel. If you're talking about making the choices for what to say to them I'm right there with you. The approve and disapprove notifications are the only thing to go on and it sucks.

Yeah there is an approval notification that pops up during certain moments but there is deliberately no counter or meter where you can constantly check a character's approval rating. To be fair, I even had a hard time knowing which characters actually had a high approval rating with my character and that is probably the entire point.

Its good to just role play your main character and make the decisions you want to make and live with the consequences, regardless of whether a member of your party likes it or not. It makes interactions more natural that way instead of playing in such a way that encourages you to game the system by making conversation choices for the sake of increasing approval.