REVIEWS

DRAGON AGE: INQUISITION Review

It's particularly notable and amusing that EVERY title announced and released by BioWare/EA in recent years, from 2007's Mass Effect to the present day, has managed to generate buzz and intense reactions throughout its historical existence, before, during, and after its release. This may be unintentional and coincidental (after all, the gaming public getting angry, rightly or wrongly, for whatever reason, is not an unprecedented development in the annals of time), it may even be purposefully done as the ultimate application of the maxim "there's no such thing as bad publicity", but it remains an undeniable fact that has been proven many times over and over as the years have gone by.

Dragon Age: Origins received criticism as early as when its initial trailer promos aired (lets not forget that this one was originally marketed as "the next big fantasy RPG after Baldur's Gate, from the creators of Baldur's Gate" but in the process its tagline became "AN EPIC TALE OF BLOOD, LUST AND BETRAYAL" and its trailers were full of blood and Marilyn Manson music) as well as for various... let's call them "dubious quality" experiments with the sexuality of several characters. Mass Effect 2 and 3 were progressively lambasted both for their clear shift towards the Action element at the expense of the RPG element and for their lacking finales. Dragon Age 2 was shunned both for its almost complete shift to an Action game and other unfortunate design choices (constant location recycling, enemies spawning from rooftops, and other such lazy elements, products of a generally rushed release) and for taking the "dubious sexual experimentations" of Origins and elevating them to new heights... Coincidence repeating itself ceases to be a coincidence, and in the case of BioWare/EA you get a bit of an impression that either they really do have an issue with their design team or their organization is just really asking for it.

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"When we first conveived the game, we saw that playing as a male character and flirting with your army commander while the world collapses around you is really the epitomy of what our game should be about"

Among all this, it's no wonder that when in 2011, a few months after the release of Dragon Age 2, Bioware unofficially stated that they were starting work on a third Dragon Age (a statement that was confirmed by more official heads at the company in 2012), almost immediately rumors, reactions and remarks of all kinds began to accompany the development of the title, a practice which continued steadily until the game's official release not long ago. During those years we've heard it all: that the game is developed as an MMO, that it will be delayed on purpose to better promote BioWare's Star Wars MMO, that it will be released prematurely in order to make up for the losses of the afore-mentioned Star Wars MMO, that it will be the open-world RPG that will "end" all other open-world RPGs (I can hear a Witcher's laughter somewhere in the distance), that it will draw inspiration from Skyrim, that it will be just another generic fantasy title, that it will be in its entirety just a "dubious sexual experimentation" of epic proportions that the early games in the series won't hold a candle to. Sometimes unfairly, sometimes rightfully, the game really has received all sorts of comments.

If we take all of this background info into account from the outset when trying to judge Dragon Age: Inquisition there is a risk of completely losing any objectivity ("then why have you been bothering us for 3 paragraphs with irrelevant drivel, you idiot?"), so at first lets at least get the absolute basics and focus mainly on 2 parameters: how Inquisition stands as a member of the Dragon Age series, but also as a simple RPG of its time. .

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During character creation we choose between the 3 standard classes - Fighter, Rogue, Mage, the standard 4 races - Human, Elf, Dwarf and Qunari, and then... the show begins. Our customization options are so extensive that you can even modify which way your broken nose tilts!

Plot-wise, Inquisition begins as a direct consequence of the events we saw in the Dragon Age 2 ending. A few years after that bloody bastard Anders nearly destroyed Kirkwall, Mages and Templars is now in a state of open war, with extremes being carried out by both sides. In an attempt to end the hostilities, Divine Justinia (head of the powerful Andrastian religion- the Chantry in other words), is calling a summit to take place at the Temple of Sacred Ashes (which we visited during Dragon Age: Origins) where the leaders of the 2 factions will be invited to sit down at the negotiating table to find common ground and defuse the tension. All's well and good so far. Suddenly, however, a terrifying explosion literally obliterates the temple, leaving in its place a huge rift in the Veil (the "barrier" separating the physical world from the Fade, the world of dreams and spirits) through which Demons of various kinds enter the world. At the same time, as a result of the creation of this rift (now simply referred to as "The Breach"), other smaller rifts open up throughout the southern provinces of Thedas.

Soldiers arriving to investigate the temple ruins in the crater formed by the explosion find only one survivor (us, apparently), who, according to eyewitnesses, appeared in the crater through a portal to the Fade, at the side of the goddess Andraste herself. This divine intervention, along with the fact that the survivor is said to have acquired a strange magical mark on his hand which has the ability to interact with the breaches in the Veil, prompt many to call him the "Herald of Andraste", the chosen one who will stop the war and save the world... So our chosen hero, who (conveniently) suffers from amnesia so he doesn't remember how he got into the crater, what he did in the Fade, or how he got the mark on his hand, ends up joining other unknown and familiar characters from previous games in the series, and taking part in the formation of the INQUISITION: an independent authority that will act autonomously and unaccountable to anyone, with the goal of investigating the causes of the destruction of the Temple of Sacred Ashes and the creation of the Breach, tracking down the agents fueling the chaos in the southern kingdoms, and restoring order to the world at all costs. 

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In the name of Andraste, this dragon is about to be turned into shoes.

The game's plot isn't the most groundbreaking or thought-provoking as a concept, but it has its moments, its twists and turns and its important choices (with the corresponding, equally important consequences), especially after the first Act - there's an issue of course if you first have to play for 10-15 hours before the game starts to really open up, but fortunately in this case the wait more than rewards the persistent player. Another interesting aspect that adds to both storyline development and replayability is the options available in Dragon Age Keep, a "mosaic" of choices that replaces the ability to directly import our older saves from Origins and DA2. In DA Keep the player can set up a vast number of details as to how various events in the series have unfolded so far (from what character was the Warden in Origins, which companion lives or dies and who is king of Ferelden, to whether you let a random NPC live or die in a forgotten side-mission in the Deep Roads!) and create a Custom World State, essentially tailoring Inquisition's world to the player's wishes/choices. Some options affect very minor details, but there are others that affect the plot's development quite heavily.

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The game may open up after Act 1, as mentioned above, but what to expect from it gameplay-wise becomes clear much earlier. After the first few hours of navigating the world of Inquisition it becomes clear that we are NOT talking about an "open-world" title per se, but more of an enlargement of the "pick a location on the map and travel" system that we encountered in Origins - and we say enlargement because the maps of the various locations in the game are actually HUGE, with large amounts content and quests, not always of the highest quality of course (for example, especially in the mediocre first Act of the game, quests of the "collect 10 goat horns" or "slay 5 bears" variety abound, as if we're playing some kind of cancerous Korean MMO grinder). This enlargement is also reflected in the game's length in "man-hours": my first playthrough, skipping a few areas and not doing nearly all the quests presented to me, took over 60 hours to complete.

The game's visitable locations are essentially divided into 2 regions, the kingdoms of Ferelden and Orlais, and we choose our travel destinations by entering the War Room of the Inquisition's headquarters, where maps of possible destinations are displayed in front of us. There are 2 things worth noting here. One is that there are several non-plot-critical areas on the map, which we can explore purely for side-quests, leveling, or just messing around with the Lore, and which further increase Inquisition's length for someone who aims for a completionist playthrough. The other is that, depending on what we do in our playthrough, various optional Missions pop up on the map which we do NOT carry out ourselves but instead assign to one of our 3 Advisors (which basically represent a different approach - Diplomacy, Espionage or Brute Military Power) and which provide us with various rewards, either money, items or an increase in our influence.

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Typical view of the Ferelden War Map. The pinned knives represent completed Main Quest missions, the Pyramids mark the visited locations, and the other "pins" represent the optional Missions. Quite a lot of stuff, in general.

The controversial aspect of these side-missions is that they require REAL TIME to complete, ranging from 5-10 minutes to... 20-24 hours in the most extreme cases. That's right. You happily select the "Contact Hero of Ferelden" mission, you choose which advisor you want to send to do it, and watch the counter read "TIME REMAINING: 18 HOURS". Some may not be particularly bothered by this. Personally I felt like the game treated itself like some Farmville clone, where you have to wait 12 hours for your lettuce to sprout or something like that. The game's length is already huge, and the fact that they're attempting to increase it even further with cheap tricks like this really leaves me speechless. Good thing they didn't add a button to "SPEED UP YOUR MISSIONS BY PURCHASING DRAGON AGE COINS - ONLY 4.99$".

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"Mission time will be reduced by 1 hour for every friend you convince to buy the game and Poke you in your Keep! Water your lettuce, upgrade your radishes and unlock exclusive wheat varieties! The new generation of open-world RPGs is here, and it's thirsty for water and fertilizer!"

Another consistently controversial area of Dragon Age is the combat system, especially after DA2 where, from the real-time-with-pause, isometric and quite tactical approach of Origins, we suddenly switched to a fully Action environment with lightning-fast movement and damage indicator numbers flooding the screen. In Inquisition the truth is that some attempts were made to mitigate the alarming impression of the hackfest we were treated to in 2, with the characters' movements being noticeably heavier, so visually at least the action seems to be much slower and more measured. Its mechanics of course are still closer to the style of DA2 than Origins. On the lower difficulty levels you might not even need to switch between your party members during battles - you just let the party attack on autopilot, control your main character, bash and spam your skills once cooldowns are complete, drink your respective potion if needed, wait for enemies to fall, and repeat the above for all other battles. 

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The game's Tactival View, which allows you to fight in isometric view. It quickly becomes clear that the game was not particularly designed with this view in mind.

Despite these controversial elements, of course, and if viewed with sober eyes and without the expectations that it will be a radical step forward in RPG evolution, the fact is that Inquisition remains a highly entertaining game. Both in terms of exploring the vast areas and questing, as well as interacting with the other characters. And it's especially in this last aspect that it needs to be emphasized how much Inquisition is unfairly penalized in advance because of the awfulness we experienced in DA2, an awfulness that negatively predisposed almost everyone to Inquisition as well.

A prime example of what I mean involves Iron Bull, the protagonist of the video I linked above. In one of his dialogues (typically, between Main Quest missions, we get to talk to our companion NPCs about various topics), he suggests that the player pretend to be a common soldier of the Inquisition in order to blend in with the other common soldiers and get a feel for the moods and morale of the people after the latest events in the plot. There the player has the choice to either "fake it" to the end or break their roleplay because of what they hear. This is a highly entertaining and well-written Instance, one of many encountered during the player's interactions with his NPCs. No one talked about them though - everyone is focusing on the "You want to ride the Bull" in the video above, and we can't really blame them for doing so.

This mostly happens due to what people experienced in DA2, but the company itself is not without blame. For example, when you are by default ALWAYS given the option in Inquisition's dialogues to flirt with ALL NPCs, male or female, regardless of your character, it feels like there's a disturbance in the Force man. I mean, what exactly were the dev's goals? To play it " emancipated" and without taboos? To give the game world an air of complete sexual liberation? Just to provoke? And, whatever the case, don't they know that a respectable and vocal portion of the gaming public will be caught up in this atmosphere and focus on these details, completely ignoring the rest of the game? 

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Before the Darkspawn, before Blood Mages, before the Qunari, Mankind battled another, more sinister foe: BEARS.

However, leaving aside any such (expected, based on the company's history) kinks, as mentioned above, the fact remains that Inquisition is ultimately a thoroughly enjoyable title. It's certainly not the ultimate genre-redefining RPG of our generation (rumor has it that this one is set to come out in May 2015), though based on its scale the truth is that it's trying to be marketed as such. And that giant scale is one of the things that sticks with you at the end - both in terms of plot, based on the world-shaking events that take place in it, and in terms of the scope of content and sheer number of hours one can devote to it. Inquisition has something for everyone: a great many quests to complete, many and vast locations with a variety of gorgeous environments for anyone who needs something pretty to gawk at, tons of Codex Entries for the Lore lovers, a big collection of Mounts for compulsive collectors, the ability to decorate your personal Keep with various types of furniture for The Sims fans, a rudimentary Multiplayer aspect (similar in nature to what we saw in Mass Effect 3, but even more useless) that even features microtransactions for those who have nothing better to do with their time and money, many plot choices with equally many consequences for those perverts who want their RPGs to actually be RPGs (such freaks), appearance of several characters from the first games in the series for those who want to feel like they're playing the third Dragon Age game above all else.

In the end, this last one might be the fact that satisfied me personally the most: contrary to the feeling that DA2 gave me, even after the mediocre and boring first Act and despite the initial low expectations due to the atmosphere I analyzed in the extensive intro of this review, as soon as the end credits started rolling on the screen, Inquisition made me feel that I actually played a Dragon Age game. And that alone is enough to make me willing to overlook and forgive several of its flaws.

The review code for Dragon Age: Inquisition was provided to us by CD Media, which distributes the game in Greece.

Pros

  • Huge game length
  • Many available player choices, both during the main quest as well as in side-missions
  • Reunion with many known NPCs from the series
  • Fun party banter
  • A great many customization options through Dragon Age Keep
  • Beautiful locations
  • Morrigan <3
  • The world state after the ending leaves many prospects for a future DA game

Cons

  • Rather boring combat
  • Act 1 is boring and feels ripped straight out of an MMORPG
  • Optional Missions that require REAL TIME to complete, as in Farmville
  • Useless Multiplayer, and with microtransactions no less
  • A few (fortunately) bugs that haven't been fixed even with the latest patches
  • Typical BioWare romances that try to be controversial just to draw attention
  • Perhaps the most serious flaw of all, overpowered Bears

Go to discussion...

RATING - 84%

84%

Κώστας Καλλιανιώτης

Archaeologist/Historian, RPG Player, Motörhead fan, Consumer of Mutton.

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