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| Character creation is deep and different for each race (1) |
For each of these races, the degree to which you are able to customize is remarkable. I have only played as an Elf thus far, but I cannot wait to see what I can do with other races. Each race has a very specific kind of look and kind of customization, so no two races will ever look too much like another one. And once you pick your race, you will truly live as that race for the rest of the game.
As the elf inquisitor, royal human courts watched my every move and refused to acknowledge the power I held, and my people greeted me with open arms. I can only imagine that the opposite would happen if I were to play as a human. Not only that, but every race has a different last name, and you will occasionally be called by it. I would walk into a royal court and be introduced as "Grand Inquisitor Lavellan," which is a far cry from just being called "Hawke" all the time like in Dragon Age II. It also makes more sense in this case. You aren't just being called by your last name, you are called by your title and then your last name. It is a small thing, but I appreciated it, and it was a nice break from the Dragon Age II model.
Different races also occasionally come with different romance options and different kinds of armor. Gone are the days of dwarven armor being stretched to fit a human. Instead, different armor pieces are only made for certain races.
In short, character customization in Inquisition, no matter what race you chose, gives you access to an entirely different story every time. Even though the main plot is the same regardless of your race, the journey to get there is slightly different depending on your race. In some cases, you can glide through with ease because you were born human, and in some cases, you can face adversity at every turn because, as a Qunari, you were born with horns and undying devotion to the Qun. It is the kind of detailed touch that we have not had since Origins, and it is even more prominent in Inquisition than in Origins.
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| Combat in Inquisition is challenging at most times, so you will need to do some thinking (2). |
Ultimately, it takes the action-y nature of Dragon Age II's combat, but slows it down so you aren't in a Final Fantasy game. You also have access to the "tactical camera," a feature that was once a PC-exclusive for Dragon Age. It allows you to tell your party members what specifically to do at a given time, and even on casual difficulty you will need to make use of the tactical camera at some points if you want to survive.
As in previous games, you choose a class at the start: Warrior, Rogue, or Mage, and Inquisition is determined to give you the most satisfaction out of whatever class you choose. I chose to be a Rogue, and as such, I expected to be lithe and mobile and dirty in my tactics. And boy, did Bioware deliver. As a Rogue, you have access to as many as three different moves that let you swing around the battlefield quickly. You have a hook attack that involves you throwing a hook and pulling yourself towards an enemy and doing a backflip off of them. You can then use your flip ability to leap out of the way of their attacks. Then you can use your backstab ability to suddenly blink behind them. As a rogue, Bioware makes sure that you can be the rogueiest rogue that you could possibly be. I haven't played as a warrior or mage yet, but from what others tell me, you get the same kind of experience.
A brand new feature in Inquisition is "focus." Essentially, as your party deals damage and kills enemies, you gain "focus," and when you get enough you get to use a specific ability. It varies based on party member, so you have a wide variety of possible focus abilities at your disposal, each useful in their own ways. More often than not, it came in handy in a pinch.
A returning feature that was not present in Dragon Age II is the ability to choose what your party members wear and use as weapons. Gone are the days of needing to use Isabella if you want a rogue with two knives and Aveline if you want a warrior with sword and shield. You can choose whether a warrior in your party has a sword and shield or two-handed weapon, of whether a rogue has daggers or a bow. In addition, when you equip armor on a teammate, they will wear it, but it will be converted to "their" version of the armor. In other words, you can give your teammates the kinds of benefits you want without making them look odd. It is a welcome idea that works well.
I do, however, feel like I should point out the negative aspects of combat. You can't access to inventory screen while you are in combat, and thus, you need to be sure to equip whatever you want to use before you go up against enemies. This was a slight hassle, as I sometimes wanted to equip a bow in the middle of combat to change things up a bit. But it is only a slight hassle, as the higher leveled I got, the more I enjoyed just using my daggers.
Also, and this isn't truly a negative, but you have a total of 8 health potions across your entire party, and if you run out, you have to go and get them restocked. I didn't like having to turn back and go to a camp if I found I was running out of potions, which made it an issue with me. But there is an aspect of that idea that keeps it from taking any points off: It encouraged tactical thinking. The prospect of losing all my health potions made me more inclined to use the tactical camera and sacrifice doing damage in favor of not losing any health. It made large-scale boss fights more challenging and the game in general more tense.
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| This is but one of the ten high dragons that you can hunt (3) |
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| The world of Dragon Age: Inquisition is massive (4) |
Let me once again take a step back to explain something through example: My first night playing Inquisition, I did maybe one story mission, and the rest of the time (this was around 9:00pm-7:30am) I just spent doing quests and activities in the very first area you are dropped in. That is how huge this world is, and that is only one of the many, many areas available to you. I simply cannot describe how much I love the ambition and thought that went into the world building for Inquisition. Bioware took the idea of the Dragon Age world and expanded on it enough to really make it a breathing world. I thought that Thedas felt alive in Origins, but I hadn't seen anything until I played Inquisition.
Part of what makes this the case is the fact that there are no "copy-paste" areas. Origins had several areas that were re-used over and over again, and Dragon Age II was especially bad. But there is not a single area in this game that is re-used. There are some that look similar, yes, but none that are re-used, so everywhere feels like a new area.
I should also point out that every area on the map is seamless, unless you enter a separate dungeon. That means that if there are villages or towns in the area, there will be no loading screens before entering them. You will just walk into them. While the map is not entirely open, as I've said, the areas of the map that you can walk in are entirely seamless, and the only loading screens you need to worry about are in fast travel (and a good thing, too, but I'll touch on that later).
Yes, you read that right. Fast travel. No matter where you are (unless you're in a dungeon), you can go to your map and fast travel to the opposite side of the world. As much as I loved origins, there were times where I dreaded having to walk the entire way back to the exit so that I could fast travel. This gives Thedas a fluidity that is long overdue.
And on the topic of getting around the map, Dragon Age: Inquisition introduces mounts such as horses, harts, dracolisks (dragon-like horses), and some unique mounts as well. They are kind of a random idea, considering I didn't always think to use them out of sheer force of habit, but they were still handy when I wanted to get somewhere on the map faster.
In every area, there are regions to explore, landmarks to claim, rifts in the veil to close, quests to complete, minerals and herbs to collect, shards to find, locked doors to open, caves to explore, hidden treasures to find, and beautiful scenery to be enjoyed. I could write for pages and pages about all the things that you can do in the world of Dragon Age: Inquisition, but suffice it to say that I have 45 hours under my belt for this play through, and I haven't yet completed even a fraction of what I can do.
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| The full cast of characters, Last supper-style (5) |
Part of what made Origins so great was the fantastic character development. Every last one of the party members you assembled was a well-formed character that I wanted to get to know better. I spent hours talking with them, learning more about them, gaining their trust. It helped with the immersion I felt with the story. In addition, part of what made Dragon Age II such a nightmare was the fact that none of the characters were well-developed. Every last character in Dragon Age II was a caricature with no substance. So, does Inquisition do a better job with that? The answer is yes and no. There are a number of incredibly well-formed characters that I took with me on every quest.
Take Blackwall, for example. When he was announced, I looked at his profile and thought, "oh great. Another Dragon Age II style companion." But then, I met the dude, and I ended up taking him on every quest, because he turned out to be such a fascinating character. Like I said, there are a number of characters who are extremely interesting and well-developed...but then there are also characters who seem like they came from Dragon Age II (Ironically, Varric, who WAS in Dragon Age II, does not fit on that list).
Take Sera, for example. Sera is an elf who sounds like Bioware was looking to get Rebel Wilson but got a Rebel Wilson impersonator instead. All she does is crack jokes about her butt and talk like old people think teenagers talk like. Bioware has, without fail, had a lame character like that in every Dragon Age game. In Origins, it was Alistair (who was still well-developed, despite being lame), in II, it was Anders, and in Inquisition it is Sera. Congratulations, Bioware, your loser character is a woman this time.
But what I'm trying to say is that character development in Inquisition is hit-or-miss, hitting a lot of the time, and missing sometimes as well. Out of the 9 companions you have, I'd say that about 6 of them are well-developed. That is a majority, even though it means that 3 of them are underdeveloped.
As with previous Dragon Age titles, party banter is alive and well. I can't say I got the full scope of it, considering I had my favorite party lined up and stuck to it, but the banter within my favorite party was funny, sometimes blood-pressure raising, and sometimes touching.
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| When the story begins on such a high point, you know you're in for a treat (6) |
All of that being said, the story for Dragon Age: Inquisition is phenomenal, cinematic, and it kept me on my toes, hanging off of every line of dialogue in the events leading up to the end. The premise is this: After the events of Dragon Age II (Anders blowing up the chantry to show that mages and templars can never be at peace...Why on earth am I still single?), a year has passed, and the mages and templars are meeting with Divine Justinia of the chantry in a conclave to discuss the future of the magic problem. You are involved in the conclave in some way, depending on your race, and you don't know what happened, but you end up walking out of the fade (the demon realm) and being arrested for the murder of the divine. You learn that a giant explosion tore a hole in the sky, and that hole leads to the fade. Demons are spewing out of the rift in the sky, and the Inquisition, an organization formed by the Divine before she was killed, is working to find a way to close it. You eventually begin working with the Inquisition, and find that you are opposed by the Venatori, essentially the KKK for the racial purity of the Tevinter Imperium, and that the Venatori serve a self-proclaimed deity known as "The Elder One," a being of darkness that is, as a victim of his says, "m...more p.p.powerful than the Maker," (or God, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the lore).
And that is about all I can say about the story without spoiling anything. But this is a story in which you will mingle with nobility, pass judgment and make difficult decisions, and take down hordes upon hordes of demons.
Once again, I cannot stress how important it is to be knowledgable in the right areas. If you are like me, and you are knowlegable in the right areas, then you will leave the ending and the post-credits scene of Inquisition shaking from nerd joy. If you can understand it, and you do have the means to do so, then the end of Inquisition and the implications that it has for the future of Dragon Age will stun you and leave you thinking about it for days to come.
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| It will take the game about ten seconds to reach even a fraction of this texture quality (7) |
However, the absolutely horrendous texture pop-in never quite went away. In just about every cutscene, it would take somewhere upwards of five seconds for all the texture layers to show-up. I can't count the number of times I've had to watch story events unfold in basic texturing. In other games, it is only a minor annoyance, but in Inquisition it is a constant battle. How so much of it can be so easily overlooked is beyond me. More often than not, I couldn't even focus on the story event at hand because something new would be popping in every two seconds. That is just not a mistake that one can afford to make in a triple-A game.
As bad as the texture pop-in and the graphical downgrade was, it wasn't nearly as bad as what I call the "what is my life" glitch. The "what is my life" glitch first pops up about halfway through the story, when you team up with a familiar character to go talk to some gray wardens in the Western approach. What this glitch does is this: A character will deliver a line of dialogue, and then he will just stare off into space. The cutscene will not move along, and the only way to get out of it is to skip dialogue. As a result, you miss important details. And you know what else? This glitch happens exclusively in story missions, sometimes in really, really important spots. There are some things I don't know because I've had to deal with this glitch so many times. It always happens at the same times, and I don't understand how it was possible for Bioware to overlook this glitch.
There were also several audio bugs. In just about every fight, there were sound effects that were missing, and in many lines of dialogue, the voice-over would get screwed up, and it would sound like my character was speaking gibberish.
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| The veil has been torn, and the result is perhaps the best game of this year (6) |
10/10
Masterful work, Bioware, masterful work.
Picture Sources:
Cover: www.rebelgamer.de
(1): www.eurogamer.net
(2): www.egmnow.com
(3): www.vgfaq.com
(4): www.princessstabbity.com
(5): www.en.wikipedia.org
(6): www.dragonage.wikia.com
(7): www.worldsfactory.net
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