@nightriff: Honestly I don't remember. I just know that I felt like I gave both a decent chance, but they never really dragged me in. I also feel like I was really into other games at the time and it made it harder to really get into a longer RPG.

I feel like a lot of why Inquisition interests me is that I've had a bit of a renaissance with longer single player games in the past few years. Also I think knowing that there are less games that will be interfering with each other helps. I'll probably get Far Cry 4 barring some catastrophe upon release, but I doubt that will be a terribly long game and once I beat that I feel like I'll probably get Inquisition. I'm still not 100% yet though. I liked a lot of what I saw in the Quick Look but there were definitely some things that I wasn't huge on like the constant pinging and the slow mount. Also I kind of wish there was some way of healing without using potions that is only available when not in combat/near enemies or something.

Except that this time everyone is aware of the reaction DA2 got. A lot of the reviews even address that specifically and say how and why it is better that DA2 and how it holds up in comparison to DA:O.

I think it's good for people to remain skeptical after a debacle like Dragon Age 2.

Games like Dragon Age 2 should serve as a reminder to everyone to stop preordering games and approach new releases with a sense of cautious optimism, while remaining mindful of previous games in the series and mistakes that were made with them.

Once bitten, twice shy. I'll probably still be thinking about my experience with Dragon Age 2 when Dragon Age 4 comes out.

While we will disagree on Champion vs Hero, don't break my heart by saying there will be no Mass Effect: Citadel Noire. Give me LA Noire with Garrus on the citadel, investigating murders, drugs, corruption, hanar prostitution ring, god damn that would be AMAZING!

I kind of agree with both of these sentiments actually. I'm all for some more personal stories coming out of these games, but I still want to be an important enough person to have some sort of impact on the world with my choices. The Champion of Kirkwall was kind of the worst of both worlds, because while he may not have been the only man that can save the galaxy, he was still the only man that could save Kirkwall. Despite that, he never had much say in what was actually going on. Everyone else got to make all the choices that led to all the fuck-ups, but he was still the one who had to clean up after them. It made me feel like a total pushover.

I just think, if you want me to be this Amazing Champion of Kirkwall, let me be that guy. If you want to let everybody push my character around, that's fine too, but make me some poor street rat struggling in a world full of bigger fish or something.

After reading the reviews and watching Rorie play I bought a month of EA Access to try it out ahead of release. It might only be 6 hours but that's enough to see how I feel. I went from not excited at all to pretty excited very quickly. I guess this is what they call "hype".

It's a 41GB download on Xbox One though so I won't be playing any time soon.

The combat seems so shallow :( That's my only concern about the game now... whether or not that holds up for 100 hours.

The smaller scale is one of the major things that made me really like DA2 despite its many flaws. There is a moment in the game, at the end of act 2, where (depending on certain choices) a character close to Hawke returns after a long absence, now a fully fledged Grey Warden. And the feeling of now, for all intents and purposes of being eclipsed by this person's standing in the world, and even having them reject your plea for aid, since they themselves have bigger problems is something few games have given me before. I'm psyched for a new, big adventure in DA:I, but I really enjoyed 2.

It seems that the story and writing is the strongest point this time around. I was more excited for unity than I was for this.. but.. The reviews say something completely different :/

But that's sorta what I liked about it. The Champion didn't want to be champion. She didn't want much of anything other than to live peacefully with her family. She just happened to be the one with the strength of personality and strength of arms to bring things to a conclusion. It made her feel so much more grounded and real to me that I like her more than any protagonist I've created outside of Shepard, and that's an unfair comparison because Shepard and I had three whole games to bond.

This is my problem after watching the quick look, as it looks far too similar to Dragon Age 2's very mashy combat. I don't know if I'd enjoy that for that period of time.

Good to hear. Really tempted to pick it up.

Also, I'm really tired of hearing people refer to DAII as some sort of abomination. It was a flawed, but still great game.

I honestly don't have a problem with the smaller scale story. I think it was effective for what it wanted to do and I enjoyed Dragon Age 2 for what it was, while also being disappointed in what it lacked. It had tiny environments that were reused many times, a much smaller and generally more uninteresting item/weapon/armor list, and I felt like the secrets were too easy to find. I pretty much squeezed all the content out of that game in not much time at all compared to how much time I sunk into the first game and the DA expansion.

My main problem is Bioware had done smaller scale games successfully with Mass Effect 2. That story was much more personal than the first "epic" scope game, but it also had characters I really loved and cared about, interesting story beats, and I felt like it connected back to the first game successfully. DA2, while a good game, may have been better served as not being the number 2 of a trilogy. It didn't feel as connected to the first game as I would have liked, and I found the characters generally less engrossing when compared to the first game. They even bland-ified, a word I made up just for this post, Anders, who I liked in the expansion and then kind of came to dislike in the second game. And it wasn't because of what they decided to have him do, that was great imo, it was just the character overall wasn't as interesting as he was in his introduction, at least to me.

Anyway, I do like DA2 for what it was. It was a good game and gets a lot of unwarranted crap, but it also was not as good as the first game. I feel like they felt like they had to get a game out, and maybe rushed it. I wish they had taken more time, but I have no idea since I'm just a person who plays games, not a developer. :)

@jadegl:

I agree. I actually liked Dragon Age 2 for what it was, but it felt short, unepic and simply rushed compared to Origins, but that's the thing, I'm comparing it to Origins because it's the official sequel. I think the game would have had a better time if it was just a spin off, or something in that nature. Regardless, Inquisition seems to bind Origins and Dragon Age 2 together in its own form which makes me happy at least because I had fun with both games, but I can understand why some people are still on edge.

After playing a few hours. I have not mashed a single button. Combat seems fine. (For added challenge I turned on friendly fire.)

Game is fun just running around in. So far.... The reviews are accurate. I do not see combat getting boring anytime soon. And the VA and writing is also fantastic.

If you want a RPG... This is a great one to be excited for.