Dragon Age: Inquisition Review
RPG fans had a great year in 2014 as we predicted despite some prominent delays (Pillars of Eternity and The Witcher 3), but the sweetest treat is perhaps one of the latest in 2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition. I had speculated that this game could have been Bioware‘s comeback, and after dumping 85+ hours of my time into it, I can safely attest that they’ve done it.
The first thing you need to know about Dragon Age: Inquisition is that it’s an absolutely massive RPG; I didn’t even complete all of the sidequests and yet it took me a couple of weeks of playing constantly to get to the end. The scale of the game is such that there are massive regions where you don’t even need to go for the main story, but they are there purely for exploration and sidequesting purposes.
The big change from previous titles in the franchise, obviously, is that players aren’t funneled through small maps. This time, the studio built large zones that just beg to explored; while Inquisition doesn’t feature a contiguous open world like Skyrim or Fallout, these zones are so big that the fundamental feeling of an open world is still present. I remember spending an entire evening in the Hissing Wastes just going around the beautiful desert scenery until I discovered a series of dwarven tombs; each one held a fragment of the key to the final resting site of a dwarf Paragon, and in order to get the fragments I had to solve puzzles which also provided the backstory on the fate of these dwarves. That’s not the least of it, as my companions added interesting comments at each tomb (with Varric the dwarf particularly intrigued, understandably) and of course I got a ton of epic loot for literally stumbling on this sidequest without anyone sending me there.
For me, that’s the essence of an awesome fantasy RPG.
In terms of combat, Dragon Age: Inquisition takes the best from its two predecessors. Real time combat has a proper action feel to it, while you can always pause and issue commands with the tactical camera. While playing in “real time”, you’ll quickly realize that fights aren’t quite as thrilling as in games like Dark Souls or Lords of the Fallen: there hardly are any deadly attacks that you’ll have to avoid at all costs, probably because in this game you’re controlling an entire group instead of a single character. Still, this is understandable for the scope of the game and there really aren’t other games attempting to do the same (real time action combat with pause while controlling a full party), mostly because it’s a quite complex effort.
AI isn’t quite perfect though and they won’t be able to use certain skills properly (like Charging Bull…), which will likely lead you to swap them in favor of safer skills; you could, of course, pause and switch character to execute them yourself, but doing that each time would slow the gameplay pace to a crawl.
Overall, I would say that combat isn’t one of the highlights of the game, but at the same time it’s satisfying enough, especially after mastering all of its quirks (which, indeed, takes a while); I’d recommend playing at ‘Hard’ difficulty for a decent challenge.
Dragon Age: Inquisition has a stellar cast of companion characters: most of them are both deep and relatable, and you can learn a lot about your allies between dialogues and sidequests. Each character brings a unique human flavor to the Inquisition and thankfully, they’re interesting enough that you won’t feel like wasting time at all by hanging out with them. I intended to list my personal favorites, but I quickly realized that I would have to include almost every major companion…Suffice it to say, even minor characters such as the cute female dwarves Dagna the Arcanist (you might remember her from Origins) and Scout Harding are very well characterized and, according to Web buzz, they’re among the favorites of most who already played the game.
Moreover, Bioware even pulled off a couple of major twists that I reckon many gamers won’t see coming.
The main story is once again epic like in Origins (Dragon Age II was more limited in scope). It’s definitely a good one, and even though some may say that it’s fairly predictable, there are a few memorable moments that make it absolutely worthwhile; moreover, it sheds some much needed light on certain topics like the origin of Darkspawn and the true nature of organizations like the Chantry, the Templars and the Mages. It also clearly sets the stage for a sequel - Dragon Age is definitely not a trilogy, and after playing this one I felt an immediate need for the next game, even though it’s at least a few years away.
Inquisition introduces some brand new gameplay elements as well. Being the Inquisitor gives you access to a War Table map, which is the domain of the advisors: Cullen, Leliana and Josephine. The map will display available missions which tie into everything you’re doing; you might gain favor, a powerful NPC ally, items, money or more from these missions, not to mention that this is also how new regions are unlocked.
You’ll be able to choose which advisor will take care of these missions in most cases, and each one will do it in a different way with potentially different results. For example, Cullen is the commander of your army and tends to have a direct approach like any soldier; Leliana is the spy master and will favor sneaking unseen whenever possible, while Josephine is a master diplomat and an expert in trading favors for your own gain.
These missions can never fail, which is a bit disappointing. That said, they do take a lot of time in a realistic fashion, and most importantly they greatly enhance the feeling of actual power struggles going on in Thedas; moreover, sometimes you will be offered followup missions here after completing a certain quest with your party, generally bringing that particular subplot to a satisfying closure. This also ties into the actual position of Inquisitor, as you may order your advisors to caputre a certain escaping NPC and once he/she has been apprehended, you will be able to exact judgement in a dramatic fashion while sitting on Skyhold’s throne.
Graphically, the game looks stunning thanks to Frostbite 3. Everything from armor and weapons to buildings and vegetation is gorgeous and overall, all of this beauty doesn’t take a major toll on your PC. It’s a shame that Dragon Age: Inquisition doesn’t feature dynamic day/night cycle and/or weather conditions, especially since rain is fantastic and it affects surfaces in a very realistic way; each region is instead fixed to a certain combination of time and weather, although in the grand scheme of things this is just a minor complaint.
The audio isn’t any less grand. Music has some great tracks which really fit the mood of certain situations and zones, while voice acting is just excellent and I’m not merely referring to dialogues, as you’ll hear plenty of snappy comments just passing by.
For the first time in the series, there is also a multiplayer mode. This is modeled after the one featured in Mass Effect 3, although with a dungeon crawler vibe. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite have the amount of depth that a MMORPG player might expect out of running dungeons with some friends. First of all, there are currently some balance issues, with the first rooms being a cakewalk and the last boss being a nightmare; also, there are only four active skills per character available here (instead of the eight ones in the campaign) and you’ll begin with just two, meaning that you’ll spam those a lot initially.
The issues don’t end here though, as loot is entirely random (or RNG driven, as the savvy would say): there are no drops from the bosses or in the dungeons, rather you’ll have to collect money and buy chests which will randomly yield items. This doesn’t really sit well with most gamers used to online RPGs, and would be probably enough to make them quit this mode if the extremely frequent connection issues didn’t take care of that already.
Multiplayer mode is, for all intents and purposes, a bonus. We didn’t even know of its existence until a couple of months before launch, and clearly Bioware focused its efforts on the campaign, on which they delivered on all accounts. This is mostly why I’m not that bothered by the current issues of multiplayer. If they fix and improve it over time, then it’ll be even more free value for everyone, but even if they don’t Dragon Age: Inquisition already delivers many more hours of fun than your average game.