Hey everyone! I'm back again, with a
review of Dragon Age: Inquisition to hurl in yo' faces!
Dragon Age: Inquisition
is the third instalment of the Edmonton-Based game studio, Bioware.
In it, you play the Inquisitor/Herald of Andraste, and fight against
a world gone mad after a conclave meant to bring the Templar-Mage war
to a halt was destroyed in a magical explosion, tearing a hole
between the world of mortals and the world of demons. You have a
mysterious mark that allows you to close these tears in the veil that
have opened in the wake of the Breach, and this lands you as a key
member of the reborn Inquisition.
But
before we can discuss the story, lets get the technical shizwa outta
the way. Inquisition
is built on a new engine for Bioware. Before, they typically used the
Unreal engine, but for their latest game they've switched over to the
much more powerful Frostbite engine, and it shows. Animation is much
smoother, and the physics are much more visceral and engaging. So
many times, I've had my warrior smash apart a cart just because it
happened to be behind an enemy I was slamming through it, and my hits
really feel like they connect. The gameplay is somewhere between the
Action-based RPG of Dragon Age II,
and the more tactical combat of Dragon Age: Origins.
However, unlike both games, it's managed to succeed surprisingly well
at both. The tactical camera mode has an option to allow you to
advance time only a short distance, allowing more tactically focused
players greater control. The decent computer AI allows players who
prefer more action-based combat to let their party members make
generally decent decisions while the PC focuses on hack-and-slash.
Combat also makes tactical positioning and combat more varied and
emphasizes its importance. While in the previous instalments, things
like flanking and positioning were
important, the gameplay never really emphasized this except with the
melee-built rogue in Origins,
who received a backstab bonus and . However, in Inquisition
the bonuses for flanking are much more obvious, as some enemies are
extremely difficult to fight head-on due to their defenses.
But
the game is far from perfect. There are a number of conversational
glitches, such as with many of the scenes involving two
spoilery-characters. They'll often stop talking in the middle of the
cut scene, and not resume talking unless you skip through the scene,
causing you to miss a lot of details of what's going on. This only
seems to happen with cut-scene conversations, however, and the
contextual conversations work very well. There's also some issues in
cut scenes and even the main game with clipping, such as a
dual-wielding dwarf rogue wearing the Inquisitor's Hat, as your
daggers stick up through the brim of the hat. It looks hilarious but
it can take you out of the game a bit.
No
more murder-knife in Inquisition as
well. Your character will use your equipped weapons in cut scenes
(with one exception, but it's story based), rather than some
mysterious super-knife like in Dragon Age II,
or some sword your warden picked up off the ground as in the final
scene of Origins.
The
characters, however, are where Inquisition
really shines. Where in the previous two games, relationships often
felt a bit forced or like something you just needed to earn enough
points in to win some sort of prize, in Inquisition
the relationships feel much more organic. This is helped by the lack
of an “approval” bar somewhere. You're still informed whether or
not someone approves or disapproves of your actions, but there's no
numbers attached. This also helps the romances a great deal. Unlike
in previous games where, once approval was high enough or you flirted
enough or whatever the characters would throw themselves at you and
you'd unlock a sex scene, romances in Inquisition are
much more involved, frequently requiring side quests and your
character going out of his or her way to win their companion's
affections. One of the romances even involves a duel! It makes them
feel much more realistic and organic, and above all earned
than in previous games. Also,
you can't be stealth romanced in this game. You'll know right away if
you're getting involved, and you have multiple opportunities to
abandon a romance. There's a reason this game's version of the
Paramour achievement is for “Committing to a romance.”
Inquisition is
a massive, sprawling game with easily 80 or 90 hours of gameplay for
the most dedicated of players, and no two playthroughs are ever going
to be exactly the same. There are no “right” or “wrong”
decisions in this game, and there's no perfect playthrough like in
previous Bioware games. Above all, it feels like a return to
Bioware's standards of excellence that we saw with Origins
and even Baldur's Gate
2. If Bioware keeps this up,
there will be only good things ahead for the studio.
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