I tried for a while to come up with a good joke-y name for this blog, or some sort of word play, but in the end, I was just dragon my feet before actually starting to write it, so I gave up after an age and just started writing. Just answering in case you were inquiring as to why the title is so bland.

Anyway, Dragon Age is one of those franchises that I was interested in for years, but never actually got around to playing. The original was one of those games that seemed like a PC-ass PC game, so I never played it. Between reading that the console versions were kinda janky, and that the game was pretty hard, I stayed away, despite being interested because I was such a big fan of Mass Effect. I wanted more of that BioWare style game, but not enough to actually try playing the game. Then Dragon Age 2 came out a couple years later...and given the game's negative reception, I stayed away again. But Inquisition caught my eye from the beginning, mostly because everything shown of the game looked beautiful. Then after the good reception, and talking about the series as a whole with a friend (fellow GB user @andrewb), I found myself quite excited, and played the game.

But, just jumping into the third game in a very story focused series seemed like a bad idea, so I spent some time reading up on the stuff from the first two games. By which I mean andrewb walked me through the Dragon Age Keep thing step by step. If you don't know, then the Dragon Age Keep is a website EA set up to let you pick all the choices from the first two games, and then let you import those into Inquisition. It's not perfect, and it crashed on us several times, but it works. In the end I ended up importing his "world state" into my game, which we did partly to be able to compare at the end of the game how it played out based on our choices. He hasn't finished it yet, as of this writing, though I feel like once he does, it'll turn out that we made mostly the same choices, at least for the larger, more important story stuff.

But I don't really want to get too deep into the story stuff, because the story is what it is, and I don't really want to spoil anything, at least relating to the main story. It's not the best story, but off the top of my head, I can't really think of anything I super disagree with and think was overly bad. I will say that some of the stuff is a bit predictable, and that the ending I got was a bit too tidy. I don't really know how differently stuff can play out in the end, but, again, without spoiling anything, I'd say "too tidy" would be my biggest complaint with the ending.

I did like most of the writing, and most of the characters, though. The people you can bring with you out on missions (or, "party members," as you my have heard them called) are a pretty diverse bunch. I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing that there were party members that I actively disliked, not for combat skills, but for their personalities. In the Mass Effect games, there were always party members that I was fairly indifferent towards, but I don't remember any that I actively disliked. Maybe Liara, but even then, I feel like "dislike" is too strong of a word. Anyway, I'm getting off topic.

The point I was trying to make is that it might be a good thing that the game was able to get negative responses out of me in regard to the party members here, rather than just making all of them likable characters. I'm not sure if that was actually intentional, though. I feel like Vivienne is the only one that was actually maybe written that way intentionally. I don't think the writers at BioWare actually wanted me to dislike Sera or Cole as much as I did, but I did.

Either way, there were several characters that I did like very much, the standouts being The Iron Bull, Dorian, and Varric (who is returning from DA2, and I can see why they brought him back). Those three specifically all fall into archetypes that I quite enjoy in my fiction. Varric is the silver tongued rogue (literally) that spins tall tales, Dorian is the dashing rogue (not literally, he's a mage) that is basically Cary Elwes from The Princess Bride and Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and The Iron Bull (he likes having the article in the front) is the rough old mercenary type that likes hitting things. Nothing super original, or mind blowing, but they all have a lot of depth, and nuance and I think they're all great characters. They aren't the only ones, but I don't want to turn this into me just writing about every character in the game.

Though, I suppose I should write about Dorian now if I'm going to, because I feel like I should for him. This is going to get a little spoiler-y for his character arc, and some of his character specific side stuff, so it'll be whited out if you want to avoid that stuff.

So, the thing with Dorian is that he's gay. That isn't a spoiler, EA was advertising Dorian as a "fully gay mage" months before the game was released. Now, despite what EA's marketing would have you believe, gay characters aren't anything new in BioWare games. Mass Effect 3 had two of them, actually (Cortez and Traynor), but I think this might be the first one where it's actually really important to the character. I know Cortez had that thing where he was getting over the loss of his husband, but you could easily make him straight by making all that about a dead wife.

Instead, Dorian's arc is about his parents rejecting him because he's gay. See, Dorian comes from a fairly high ranking Tevintor family (I forget off hand if he was actual nobility or if it was something similar but different), and his parents wanted him to marry a woman from another family of similar social rank, and to have children, etc. But being a fully gay mage, Dorian wanted nothing to do with that, so his father actually tried to use blood magic (which andrewb described as the "nanomachines" of the Dragon Age universe, which I think is a brilliant comparison) to change Dorian to be straight. So Dorian high tailed it out of there.

If you know me at all, you probably already know why I'm mentioning this, and it's because I came out this year, and have spent most of the last five years in the closet. Luckily I haven't had to deal with anything as bad as Dorian has, like being shunned by my parents, or having to deal with one of those "therapy" things that thinks it can make non-straight people straight (trust me, it's not possible), but it's still something that I can relate to, on some level. And I think that's really cool. Given my totally boring white guy life, I usually don't have much, or anything in common with the characters in video games. And yes, I know I'm technically not gay (bi, if you forgot/didn't know), but it's close enough. It'd be tough to make a bi character's bi-ness actually matter to a story in a game anyway, unless it was specifically about people not believing the character is actually bi, or some other bi stereotype. But I've gotten off topic again.

Dorian also ended up being the character that I romanced in the game. I only bring this up because something ended up happening that didn't really happen to me when I was playing any of the Mass Effect games. In typical BioWare fashion, the romances in DA:I seem to "climax" in, well,a sex scene (though it doesn't actually show any sex, so far as I know),and Dorian's is no different. But after getting a nice shot of his toned, muscularbutt, he and my character (who I know I've barely mentioned, but I'll get to that soon) had a heart to heart. Dorian started talking about how worried he was that something might happen (not the first time, actually) to Harold (the name I called my character, again, I'll get to that soon). And he said that if they were going to break up at some point, he would rather it happen then, instead of later, so... I broke up with him.

Granted, I'd be lying if I didn't mention that part of it was because I was curious as to how, if at all, the game would address the break up afterward (it doesn't, aside from giving you an option to start a new one, which I didn't try). But given the overall tone of the game, and what was happening in the story, it just felt like the thing to do, you know? I dunno, and I ended up feeling kinda bad about it later, but I did a good job of sticking to my guns and not reloading saves in this game to do things differently, so I kept it the way it was.

Okay, enough about Dorian, I should write about my character, Harold Andraste. If you've played the game, you know that (very early on) people start referring to the character you play as as the "Herald of Andraste" (Andraste being a deity in the fiction). Naturally I thought it was funny to start thinking of my character as actually being named Harold, because in BioWare tradition, it's a create-a-character situation. There's a lot of depth to the character creator, but basically all I did was give him a big beard and switch the voice to the deeper pitched one because I felt like it fit better (and I actually quite liked that voice). But the game does offer all sorts of ridiculous options, like even a slider for your Adam's Apple (which I'm sure isn't a ridiculous thing to some people, I can see why it's in there, but it's a dang slider).

Also in BioWare fashion is the dialog wheel that lets you pick all sorts of dialog options throughout the game. I don't know for sure off hand, but I feel like this game has a higher percentage of things said by Harold that are chosen on the dialog wheel than Mass Effect 3 did. Still not as much as Mass Effect 1, where I'm pretty sure there was only one line in the entire game that Shepard said that wasn't chosen in a dialog wheel (a scene where Shepard and company are running out of a collapsing cave thingy), but still a good step back in the right direction. But while I'm on the topic of dialog, I should mention the facial animations. They're...not great. Not terrible, but when compared to games that use facial capture tech, it looks pretty dated. I get that for a game with so much dialog, and with a main character whose face is created by the user, that stuff isn't really practical, but at a certain point it detracts from the experience.

Especially when so much of the game does look really and genuinely beautiful. This is a game that has a high level of technical beauty, and some really great art design. And really varied art design too. The fancy clothes and architecture of Orlais (fake France) looks a lot different from the more plain and rustic designs of the castles and other things you'll see in Ferelden (not fake France). There's plenty of other areas, both fantastic and mundane in the game, and almost all of them look gorgeous. The lighting (colored and otherwise) just looks incredible. It's a really great looking game that my screenshots don't do justice, partly because the PS4 doesn't PlayStation Share at full resolution, and partly because my laptop isn't as good as my TV so things never look as good on it (so your experience may vary).

But that kinda brings me to one of my biggest faults with the game. For as beautiful as it looks, for as alive as the game looks, it doesn't really feel alive. NPCs don't really move around much, or at all, in most cases. There's a few that will pace back and forth, or walk between a few slightly different spots in their location of choice at Inquisition HQ, but most are static. They stay in the same spot. Forever. They don't feel like people so much as they feel like props, or statues that animate a bit. I'm not saying the game needs to simulate everyone as they go about their daily routine as time passes, but...well, actually, the game couldn't even do that, because the game doesn't have a day/night cycle. Instead, different areas take place at different times of day, but just stay that way forever (unless there's a story reason, which I think only actually happened in one area of the entire game).

The game world also feels oddly small, especially for a game as long and with as much content as this one does. I think it's because the game isn't open world, instead it's divided up into a bunch of different areas that you go to from a map screen. A few of them are kinda big, but not huge. And I get why they did it this way. If they had tried to make all of Orlais and Ferelden into one big area, it would inevitably end up being much smaller than what an "actual" Orlais and Ferelden would be. I still think I would have preferred if the game had smaller scope in terms of variety of locations, and instead had one big open world. I'm sure there's plenty of other reasons why that isn't the case (a lot of them technical), but it'd have been nice.

It'd also be nice if the "city" type places felt like, you know, actual cities. I guess it's really just Val Royeaux, but even then, the area is tiny. It's supposed to be the capital of the mighty Orlais Empire, and it's basically just a shopping mall. And not even a good one, because you don't need to buy anything in this game. It gives out more than enough loot to keep you going, and even when I felt like I needed something better, I just crafted it, rather than trying to find something good in a shop.

And I guess I should mention the combat in this blog too. It's okay. Took me about 20 hours to get to a point where I was kinda enjoying it, and I'd say by the end (60 hours) I was enjoying it. But not in a, "I really like this" way so much as it is a, "This is fine" way. It's just...I'm not good enough or interested enough in the tactics sort of thing to play it as an olde school RPG (and even then, this game's tactics mode is not good), and it's not a good action game. Holding R2 to auto attack and waiting for skills to recharge is not compelling game play.

At least it wasn't with a warrior when I started playing. But after talking with @andrewb about it, I decided to start over after playing for an hour or so, and instead went with a rogue, specifically dual wielding daggers. And that I enjoyed a lot more, because playing as a rogue involves stuff like turning invisible, sneaking behind enemies, and then stabbing them. Reminded me somewhat of playing as Shulk in Xenoblade Chronicles. I still didn't enjoy the combat in DA:I as much as I did in Xenoblade, but part of that may just be that the music in Xenoblade is so good it got me hyped every time. Not that the music in DA:I is bad, it's good, just not Xenoblade good.

Most of the game is fairly easy, at least on normal. There were a few times where I stumbled into enemies higher enough level than me that I had to skedaddle and get away, but for the most part I got through the game without any issues. Even the final boss, which was higher level than me, wasn't hard at all. Granted, I get that in a big AAA game, they want people to be able to see the game through to the end, but it'd have been nice if I felt at least a little challenged by the final boss.

That's not, however, the case with the game's dragons. There's ten optional dragons in the game. The first few times I tried fighting them, I got absolutely destroyed. Like, I didn't stand a chance, destroyed. Eventually I got to the point where I was able to take one of them down to about half health using my usual (lack of) tactics. But I felt like even if I leveled up a lot more, that was about as good as I was going to do without actually putting some thought into how to actually beat a dragon. So I got some advice from internet friends (mostly Jay whose GB name I can't recall and can't muster up the effort to ask him for this). I ended up crafting a new dagger that gives me "guard" when I hit enemies (the equivalent of old FPS armor where it decreases health lost and also depletes when hit, I think), and I took an actual tank (because The Iron Bull isn't a tank, apparently) with me into the fight. I still kept Bull in, because I would have felt bad leaving him behind. He gets so excited when he sees dragons! Then I was able to beat the dragon! And I went and beat another one.

But that's really all I have to say about the combat. It's fine. I don't love it, but I don't hate it. The tactics mode only lets you do one thing at a time, which seems bad. Maybe it if was a bit better I'd have used it for more than just telling Varric to not stand in fire when fighting dragons. Also, the friendly AI is sometimes pretty bad.

So, I did that thing where I write most of a blog at once but then take a break and get distracted, and now here I am. Though, I think I've said just about everything that I have to say about the game. Overall I did like it a lot. It's definitely one of my favorite games of the year. I'd say it's among the ten best games of the year. Speaking of...

This is my last regular blog of the year. No PS+ Catch Up this month, nothing else except The Moosies. When are The Moosies coming? Some time before the end of the year, hopefully. I haven't really done much work writing them, because I wanted to write up a blog just about Dragon Age Inquisition before I got to work on that. I also know that in some of the previous years, I would post a blog of the nominees for the awards, but some of this year's awards are so stupidly specific that I shall not be doing that. I'm also incorporating the awards into the top ten list, so I can put it all up as one, big, overly long post.

I *might* also do some sort of end of year retrospective. That might end up as a part of The Moosies, its own thing, or may not get on GB at all if it ends up being too much about not video game related things. It'll be on Tumblr then, or something, I dunno. I might not do it at all, still thinking about it.

Anyway, that's it for now! I hope The Moosies end up being good this year.

I tried for a while to come up with a good joke-y name for this blog, or some sort of word play, but in the end, I was just dragon my feet before actually starting to write it, so I gave up after an age and just started writing. Just answering in case you were inquiring as to why the title is so bland.

Dammit.

Also Dorian is an Altus which is the higher socio-economic class (Laetan is the lower class and the Soporati are the common folk that have no magical talent).

I think not liking a character is not bad writing but , on the contrary , good writing , and that is the problem that I have with people when they downright dissmiss chararcter they dont like as poorly written ( it happens lot with the characters of Dragon Age 2 , because people say they are not like the one in Origins which is the god damned point). Some people you like and some you dont and I find it ridiculous that people in games cant fanthom that and just relegated everything into "bad writting".

I say you should give a go to the other 2 as well , you may know the stories but not the particulars , and they can be played in easy which is practicly automatic :P. Also glad that you gave the franchise a chance and see why people like it as much.

@aetheldod: I should clarify, I don't think any of the characters in this game are poorly written, I was just unsure if some of them were meant to be disliked or not. Vivienne I feel fairly certain was, the others, not so much.

I want to dedicate myself to this and finish it, but it always feels like im barely inching forward (and i'm still in the hinterlands :( ). Meanwhile i have a coworker just blowing through it and i keep thinking where does he have all this time??

Gonna sit down with it for a few hours tonight if i can manage. It's annoying feeling shamed by a game.

@ripelivejam: Play the game at your own pace. It's a really long game that you could easily get to 100 hours in, if you really wanted to. I know a lot of people say to leave the Hinterlands, but if you don't want to, then don't. That said, I do feel like the game drags a bit if you don't keep pressing the story forward.

But yeah, play at your own pace. Don't force it and burn out.

@mooseymcman: D: no no no I wasnt trying to say you were like that , I was trying to say that you were right -_-

Yes Vivienne can be not liked by some because of her stance in the mage/templar war , were most people are promage (tham crazy people , magic is EVIL!!!!! >:3 ) and was purposely written like that , well I asume because unfortunately I havent played the game ... my Ps3 decided that it no longer wished to play new games and shutdown always in the beginning of the game :( , but using other Bioware games Im sure that the characters are well done.

No way dude, Vivienne is freaking rad.

@aetheldod: Ah, okay. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Tone is still hard to convey in text!

And yeah, Vivienne is definitely a divisive character, and intentionally so.

Also, sad to see that about your PS3. My first PS3 decided to stop reading Blu-Ray discs back in 2010, which meant playing games was out of the question. Had to get a new one. That said, you might be better off saving up for a new console or a decent PC for Inquisition. It really does look incredible on PS4. Most of the time.

@mooseymcman: Yeah got rid of my copy of Dragon age :( so now I will save for a PS4 .... I mean there is the Witcher 3 and Bloodborn too n(to save for a new and better PC is more out of the question)

@aetheldod: That's a (hopefully) really good trio of games, so I think you'll be happy with a PS4 once you get it. I mean, assuming the PS4 version of The Witcher III is good, and Bloodborne is good. But I think those are safe bets. And yeah, I'm with you on PCs being too expensive. :( Not having money sucks.

I feel like Vivienne is a natural politician and a high society snob (she has a superiority complex and also tends to look down on people) but she does care a lot as to what happens to the world though she does have her own agenda. I like her character. I actually don't like Sera not because of the way she tends to look at things as completely black and white. She's probably the only one in the party I don't agree with in terms of certain things.

Okay, Sera I will say is the one character that I think was kinda poorly written. I feel like they were trying too hard to make her...I don't even know how to word it, but I feel like they were trying too hard.

Nice blog. I have to finish this game but who knows if I will. I get so caught up in respeccing skills and crafting that I never really move the story forward when I play

I should clarify a couple of things about Dorian. His parents don't necessarily have a problem with his homosexuality, rather that him being from a magister family he is supposed to dutifully reproduce with a suitable match (they have some sort of eugenics lite system going on), what one does afterwards isn't an issue. Dorian being very ambivalent about Tevinter society and very much as a black sheep, he feels he should be able to do things his way, regardless of custom.

I thought that way at first too, but by the end of it I came around on her. Yeah, her whole 'buttz and gigglefits' thing is not especially great, but by the time Sera and my character were talking about cookies, I started liking the side of her that isn't just "buttz"

Vivienne, on the other hand, is just the best character and I adore her.

@tuxfool: Good point, thank you for the clarification. That subtlety was lost on me, but you're right.

@cjduke: You should move that story forward!

Sounds like you had a good time with it. Honestly I think Sera is probably the most actively disliked character. Vivienne is actually not a "bad" person or anything she is just very blunt and talks down to people quite a bit. If you get to know her part of her past and situation is actually pretty pitiable. Course I wouldn't tell her that :P. I also find her one of the more surprising characters because considering how she just lets everything just hang out you would think she would be one of the romance options (since this is how it is in most Bioware games) but she wants nothing to do with you on that front.

It sounds like you didn't want more challenge in the game to be honest. Truthfully normal is easy, hard and especially nightmare though have plenty of challenge. As little as a 3 level advantage is basically a run or die on max difficulty against just about anything.

I really like Inquisition myself, may end up my Game of the Year (tm all rights reserved etc etc) but I am pretty invested in the dragon age lore. It does have issues, but I think it meets a pretty happy middle ground between DA:Origins and DA2. Also this is one of the best "companion" sets of any Bioware game. I had an actual opinion about all of them save Cole who was just so weird and out there I couldn't bring myself to actually care.

Did you run around with her and Blackwall? He treats her with exactly that preconception and she keeps making him look like a fool. It's glorious.

Actually not exactly, it start because he sees her take a hit in a fight and he asks if she is okay then she proceeds to mock him for asking implying reverse discrimination when he was basically just being a nice guy. If you get to their later conversations he eventually just says something like "Whatever it was you hate me for doing I apologize, but if that isn't good enough you will have to sod off."

Harold Andraste

That is just brilliant! Dang I wish I had named my Inquisitor that now.

I'm actually quite frustrated. I got the bug that prevents you from moving forward in Dorian's personal quest, which meant I couldn't romance him. I finished the game wondering when it was going to happen, turns out it's broken. I'm not going to romance the same dude in different playthroughs, so unless I find some way to fix it and reload before the endgame, my dwarf and Dorian are never going to hook up. And if there's more Dragon Age games on this generation of consoles, they'll probably carry shit over from Inquisition and gahhhh....

She felt to me like they took Tiny Tina and gave her a Dragon Age twist - with all the positives and negatives that would entail - although like most people I did end up warming up to her by the end.

And Dorian telling me he wouldn't go back to Tevinter because it "lacks the presence of [his] best and only friend" at the victory celebration made my heart grow three sizes. I may have romanced Cassandra, but I can tell you with certainty that Dorian and I had a passionate bromance going by the end of the game.

@karkarov: I don't remember that at all. For me it was always him suspecting her of disliking him because of x y z commoner traits and her always saying nope it's all in your head. Maybe I'm just misremembering.

@brodehouse: Man, I didn't even realize that was bugged! (Could also be I played after it was patched without realizing it.) That really sucks. Luckily I didn't run into much in the way of bugs when I played the game, which is why I didn't bring it up. I did see a few small, goofy things, like the occasional corpse floating in mid air, or a character moving without animating. But nothing game breaking, just the small, kinda funny stuff.

But still, that sucks. :(

I've mentioned this before but it's very true that modern Bioware games give you an illusion of depth without it actually being there. It's a veneer. This extends to most aspects of the games, including the world, which feels a bit like a theme park. On the surface it's all shiny, flashy and attractive but when you touch it you notice all the walls are made of expertly painted cardboard and plastic. The combat is similarly afflicted with it. Things are popping off in bright colours and loud noises left and right but the actual mechanics behind it are shallow.

@hassun: I hadn't really thought about it before, because I've not played the other Dragon Age games, and the Mass Effect games haven't really been about big areas (not counting ME1, which I won't get into here), but yeah. Pretty accurate. I still liked a lot of the story and writing type stuff, which has always been the draw for me in BioWare games anyway.

Very true. That must make the people who disagree with you extra wrong.

I also liked Vivenne, but I don't think she was well written. She leaned too heavily on the 'my dear' and other "society" cliches like that, and honestly, if she's such a good politician, why is she so perfectly willing to spell out everything she wants for you? Shouldn't she be twisting you around her finger to make you think she wants what you want, when in fact she's benefiting from it all?

As for Sera, I found her mildly amusing when she was talking about anything that wasn't serious and repellent whenever she talked about anything that was. That, I think, was intentional. They wrote her as being totally unable to express herself or thoughtfully consider disagreement.

@veektarius said:

That must make the people who disagree with you extra wrong.

Is that sarcasm I'm sensing? :V

@hassun: All in good fun.

@starvinggamer: Yep thats exactly where I'm coming from with her when she had a bit of superiority complex. It was from those interactions with Blackwall that mademe realize how she actually perceives people like Blackwall as thugs and that didn't fly well with me at all that she kept belittling the guy but intrestingly her interactions with Bull are surprisingly pleasant. Its really weird.

I think I prefer the theme park treatment with beautifully hand crafted areas rather than the organic worlds of Skyrim and such with lengthy stretches of forests or mountains that contain nothing of interest. Developers have been leaning so heavily into the open worlds lately that it seems like they forgot the power of a well scripted, tight gameplay experience. Dragon Age really blends the two really well in my opinion. Within the "zones" you still get the feeling of an open world without any of the needless fluff. You get just enough forest or just enough desert to get the feeling for that particular location without it feeling pointless. There have been plenty of open world games where I would stop and wonder who spent the time to model this hill, or this valley, in which nothing is happening. It always felt like a waste of time and a hindrance to my travels.

@humanity: I totally agree that a big world with nothing in it is also not very interesting. I disagree on the lack of needless fluff though. DA:I is drenched in the stuff. Fetch quests and assorted MMO bullshit all over the place. Most of it is optional but it's still there. I'm not entirely sure that developers have been leaning all that heavily on open world designs either. When I look at the major video game releases of 2014 I don't really see this trend. Of course there is the usual load being dumped into our hands by our friends at Ubisoft but other than that I don't think it's all that bad.

There is also something to be said for sprawling vistas. Red Dead Redemption is the one which immediately springs to mind. That game is just downright gorgeous, even today. I spent hours just wandering around.

@hassun: They are the same quests we have had for ages now. This is the bread and butter of all RPG's. I don't mind it, because it gives you things to do in the game world. The main questline is interesting and the character specific sidequests are also fun. Most of the stuff was organic for me. I'm exploring a new area and see a rift, so I go close it and move on. I very rarely went about the world doing the Rifts first, then the shards, then this then that. Most of the time I just did whatever came up.

Also I'm not sure what you mean about the trend not being there. Dragon Age is fashioned as an open world game. The Witcher 3 will be an open world game. The Dark Souls games were basically trying to be open world games. All the Ubisoft stuff. Most RPG's these days are open world experiences.

@humanity: What is an RPG these days though? Ever since CoD4 there have been RPG elements in almost all genres of games. The Witcher 3 is an unknown quantity at this point and I think Dark Souls and DSII are special cases. Dark Souls II is less open than Dark Souls for example. It's more like a game where you have multiple (semi-)linear paths to choose from.

We'll have to wait and see how MGSV turns out as well and that's not an RPG either. As for Dragon Age, I would say it's much more trying to be an MMO than it is trying to be an open world game. Like they arrived at the same conclusions as the people behind Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Destiny has that going on as well.

Games are just emulating success stories. Nothing too surprising about that. GTA and Skyrim for open worlds (followed by Assassin's Creed), WoW for MMOs, CoD for tight first person shooters, etc. I mean it must have been really painful for a developer like CD Projekt RED to release a game that is vastly superior to Skyrim with The Witcher 2 but not seeing that reflected in sales and fan/critic appreciation. :V

@hassun: MMOS are all about grinding and repetition. You don't do much hardcore grinding in Inquisition. Honestly you seem very hung up on this notion of it being an MMO in a negative way but I think you're confusing side quests with MMO elements. I mean it's no more an MMO than Skyrim or Assassins Creed. Having an open map with side objectives doesn't make you an MMO.

@hassun: Plenty of people appreciate W2. But the problem with that game is that it was originally released only on PC and even after the 360 release it had anemic marketing, because lets not kid ourselves, ads sell games.

@humanity: I can assure you I am not hung up on anything like that. I don't even have anything against a game being an MMO or like an MMO. The problem is it's only really taking some of the bad things about MMOs instead of the good things. MMOs should not be "all about grinding and repetition". I don't accept that is one of the genre's core aspects at all. I'm not saying having an open map and sidequests makes it an MMO either.

@tuxfool: That's true. On the other hand, Skyrim was released on PS3 as well and the game was just plain broken on that platform. If you want that wide appeal and release on a lot of platforms I think you need to be judged accordingly as well.

@hassun: Well then I'm confused, what does make it like an MMO then? I'm honestly trying to understand because I just don't see where the comparison comes into play. Dragon Age Inquisition is basically Mass Effect 2 with a sprinkling of cues taken from Origins.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is pretty much my GOTY at the moment. I still need to finish up a few other things, but if game gives me almost 100+ hours of solid enjoyment, it's safe to say it's probably going to take the first place in my mind. While there are some annoying hiccups (I had an almost game breaking issue with a certain important Judgment mission, luckily the generous autosaves helped in that case) it overall has been a great experience. Also less buggy than other AAA games that came out this year.

I adore Vivienne because she is so different. I disagree with all of her decisions, I think she's a snob, but dammit I really like her for how confident she is. Through three games, I have seen how crappy Templars and people can be to mages. yet, I had never really seen a person that lived a really awesome life in the Circle. That's Vivienne, so why wouldn't she be okay with the Circle if she has had such a good life within it? Her experiences actually helped me to see that side of the argument, even if I still think mages should have more freedom.

I actually view Vivienne as very similar to Samara in Mass Effect. They both are older, powerful women who are confident and almost motherly, although I would say Samara is more maternal than Vivienne. Vivienne is much more abrasive in her interactions with others, but they come from a very similar place. Either way, I love both characters for who they are, not that they agree with me all the time.

My favorite character may be Blackwall. I find his arc to be pretty satisfying. Dorian is also great. Cassandra was originally not someone I wanted to party with but as her story progressed, I really found her to be quite interesting. I also found myself making a late game decision in one way that I never would have made at the beginning, but it just seemed really organic based on the story. Cullen is my boyfriend, so he's obviously great. A little bit like plain crackers, but he has been in the games for all three installments, and his arc through all three was very satisfying to me. At the end, I thought he deserved to be happy, and what would make a person happier than spending their lives with my avatar. (cue eyerolls, laughter, etc)

I only have two more major missions to go and I really can't wait to see it through. While I think that the first DA had a lot of charm and I am not sure if this game captured that initial feeling I had while adventuring in Thedas, it is certainly a million miles better than the second installment.

Okay so spoiler I guess but did anyone think it was weird that - the villain in this game was the villain in a completely optional bit of DLC in DA 2? I thought this was really strange. I mean, I think it's cool that they decided to call back to that game, but the villain was from DLC, not main campaign. I just thought that was kind of weird to hang so much of the narrative turns on a piece of content that people may not have played, even if they played DA 2.

@jadegl: Yeah, that point you brought up in the spoiler is something I learned from andrewb after we both got far enough into the game to have seen that. Really bizarre, that.

Also, I think Cullen would make a splendid video game boyfriend. I think I did flirt with him once or twice, but I think he's straight in the game, which is why he acted so awkward to me. But yeah, after breaking up with Dorian partly just to see how the game would handle that, I regret it. But you can't change the past in life, so that's how I tried to play this game! Decisions matter! (Now I need to go see what happens if you start a new one with him after breaking up).

And yeah, it's definitely one of my favorite games of the year. I won't say how high on the list it is, because I need some surprises for The Moosies, but it's definitely on there.

The more I see other people talk about Vivienne, I feel like I probably didn't give her a fair shot. Not that I think my opinion would drastically change, but still.

@mooseymcman: Cullen is super adorable. He scratches that ultra-romantic itch that I don't normally need scratched in my real life. It's like a fairy tale versus reality. It's the thing that gets scratched in romantic comedies. I love that in games, for whatever reason.

I actually was thinking of writing something about that. I always seem to gravitate towards the same romance options in Bioware games. It's almost a personal joke, at this point. Anyway, to sum it up, Cullen is hella cute and I like him lots. :D

In this game they smoothed him out quite a bit. In the previous 2 game he was a bit of a prick.

@tuxfool said:

Yeah they did do some work on his character. I think, based on what the guy has gone through in the prior games, it does make sense. At the end of the day, I figure that the guys has seen a lot and been party to a lot of horrible stuff, I figure his time with the Inquisition is his redemption arc. Plus he still can be a little bristly when you don't play stuff like he thinks it should be played (mages vs. templars etc) so I think he still is the same, just older and maybe a bit beaten down. Hopefully, maybe a bit wiser too.

Yup, I found this really strange. When Varric started talking about how he had dealt with him before I was super confused until I went to some Dragon Age wiki and realized that he was from the DLC I decided not to play after being disappointed with 2.

@zornack said:

I played it but I barely remembered it, and I consider myself a DA super fan. :D

@jadegl said:

I played Legacy. And it was awesome.

I also had bug eyes and a sore jaw from it hitting the floor when Corypheus pimp walked onto the stage and took a bow. I did not see that coming, especially after how poorly received Dragon Age II was. I was actually impressed that they decided to pay that particular plot thread off. Even if the villain came from DLC it was still a great "oh shit" moment for anyone who knows the lore.

Not to mention that without this villain, we couldn't have had many fascinating conversations about... well, a lot of religious stuff.

@humanity: Loot (actually called loot too), pinging, picking herbs, crafting, repetitive fade rift closing, fetch quests, a shift into more bright and colourful visuals compared to the previous Dragon Age games, power/Influence/reputation mechanic to gate access to missions and areas, "Operations", etc. I think it's fair to say Dragon Age Inquisition has quite a lot of MMO influences. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that either, check just about any review or discussion about the game and it will be there.

People tastes vary and some will have no problem with any of that at all and others will detest it, but they will be MMO influences either way.

To illustrate it even further: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dragon-age-inquisition-began-as-a-multiplayer-only/1100-6423362/

@hassun: If those are the cut and dry criteria were going to go by then by all intents and purposes not only is Assassins Creed Black Flag an RPG but it was designed as an MMO as well. I think we just have a fundamentally different view of things here so in order to not ham the thread up any longer we can just agree to disagree. I can sort of see where you're coming from but I don't really agree with it at all, but hey thats ok.

@humanity: That's why I did not try to (and will not try to) defend the big budget Ubisoft games at all. I totally agree with you! (BTW, here is an interesting article about this busybody grindy kind of stuff. It links to another one as well which is also worth reading. I don't personally agree with all of it but it's not like that is a necessity is it?)

Don't get me wrong either, I'm also not saying Dragon Age Inquisition is a bad game, far from it. I might not like it as much as some do but there's nothing wrong with that is there?

I do think it's MMO-influences are undeniable though.