Rating of
4/5
You Keep Using That Word…
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/15/16
“Dragon Age: Inquisition” (“DAI”) is the third entry in an original IP franchise created by BioWare. While BioWare was a champion of D&D-based PC RPGs around the turn of the millennium – alongside co-champion, Black Isle – the company’s acquisition by EA marked the end of its stewardship of the D&D license and the beginning of its attempts at making its own mark upon the cRPG. The initial result, “Dragon Age: Origins” (“DAO”), felt weak and uninspired when compared side-by-side with BioWare’s magnum opus of the ‘Baldur’s Gate’ series. Fortunately for those of us who remember BioWare in their prime, the weak start in “DAO” and the tepid reception of “Dragon Age II” (which I still haven’t touched yet) seems to have galvanized the dev team’s resolve, as “DAI” is a significant step-up, though unfortunately not in every category.
Presentation:
“DAI” takes advantage of the 5 years between its release and the release of the original ‘Dragon Age’ title with impressive use of EA’s Frostbite 3 engine, where the previous two entries used the more old-school Eclipse Engine. The result is a thoroughly modern-looking game with incredibly impressive facial animations, gorgeous textures, detailed models… and hefty system requirements. Even using an i7+GTX970 setup, I wasn’t able to max-out “DAI’s” visuals, settling for ‘High’ instead of playing a slideshow on ‘Ultra.’ Despite the obvious effort put into motion capture and animation, “DAI” still suffers from a LOT of clipping issues and random scenery objects levitating off the ground. “DAI” also features the return of ‘persistent gore’ leaving characters covered with procedurally generated blood spatters after every battle.
‘Dragon Age’ games aren’t known for their amazing soundtracks, and “DAI” isn’t out to change that. The main ‘Dragon Age’ theme is present, and occasionally swells forth from the ambient background noise. If the existing tunes – such as those sung by bards in taverns – in the soundtrack had been used a bit more liberally during regular gameplay, the results would have been impressive. As it is, though, the vast majority of the game is unaccompanied and painfully quiet.
The voice-acting in “DAI” is a significant improvement from “DAO.” While EA and BioWare didn’t break the bank recruiting celebrities to voice most of the cast – Freddie Prinze Jr. as Iron Bull is the only name I recognized in the credits – the performances come across as significantly more polished than previous go-arounds. Unfortunately, the one-take voice quips used in the game’s multi-player mode are atrocious. Two steps forward, one step back, it seems.
Technically, “DAI” isn’t nearly as buggy as “DAO,” but is still buggier than I would like to see. In general the remaining bugs are less menacing than before. “DAI” is quite stable, as I only experienced one crash-to-desktop. Most of the bugs I encountered were minor things, like map icons for quests sticking around long after the quest was completed, ‘Quest Complete’ notifications that would simply repeat forever until I left the area, or portions of a character’s armor being rendered as transparent (with no body underneath). Only once did I encounter a glitch that prevented an NPC from talking to me, thus breaking the next leg of the relevant quest, but a simple reload of a previous save fixed it. It bears mentioning that, in the time since “DAO” required us to register and activate it on EA’s website, EA’s Origin platform has become a thing. “DAI” is the game that motivated me to even attempt to put up with Origin, and I found that having Origin underpinning the game went a long way in stabilizing it technically. Of course, Steam, Galaxy, or literally any other gaming client would do the same thing. Having easy access to online patches at all times is a real lifesaver in an era of complex RPGs and Sandbox games with many interlocking parts, but EA’s attempts at taking their ball and going home aren’t really doing them any favors. For example, using a Steam controller with “DAI” is a very mixed experience, as sometimes it works (though it always ends with Steam crashing due to Origin’s attempted interference with the game executable) and sometimes it flat-out does nothing. Either way, Origin is DRM, and overreaches a bit more than it should.
Story:
“DAO” failed to impress me with its bland, derivative story about a Blight caused by Darkspawn. The underlying lore that “DAO” was built upon felt shabby and incomplete. Fortunately, the ‘Origins’ in “DAO’s” title turned out to be intentional, as it was only the first tentative foundation stone upon which BioWare intended to build so much more.
Some of the more questionable story decisions from “DAO” feel almost like they’ve been retconned out – the nonsense about Darkspawn recovering their minds and free will after the death of the Archdemon, and the ridiculousness of Blight Sickness turning its victims into zombie-like ghouls. Unfortunately, reading through “DAI’s” codex section of lore reveals these decisions to be intact, though thoroughly swept under the proverbial rug.
Indeed, “DAI’s” narrative is significantly stronger and its lore significantly deeper for focusing on something more than “DAO’s” zombie-apocalypse-rip-off Blight. Instead, “DAI” focuses at first on a mystery: Why has the Divine’s – the ‘Dragon Age’ universe’s take on the Roman Catholic Church’s Pope – temple been obliterated by an enormous magical explosion, why has a rift into the Fade – the ‘Dragon Age’ universe’s version of H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamworld – suddenly opened above the crater, and why has a single survivor appeared from the ruins with a magical Mark upon their left hand?
The survivor is, of course, our customizable main character – in my case a female member of the race of horned giants known as Qunari (who are also, amusingly enough, the ‘Dragon Age’ universe’s take on Muslims, and playable for the first time in the series) – who is immediately taken into custody by one Cassandra Pentaghast, a hard-nosed member of the Seekers, an offshoot of the Chantry’s – the ‘Dragon Age’ universe’s version of the Roman Catholic Church – order of Templars. Cassandra, naturally, assumes that the main character caused the explosion that destroyed the Chantry’s seat of power and tore open demon-spewing rifts all over the continent of Thedas, but soon changes her tune when it is revealed that the Mark on the main character’s hand allows them to seal Fade rifts.
Cassandra uses her position as a Seeker and ranking remaining member of the Chantry to initiate a new Inquisition, invoking ancient emergency measures that haven’t been used for 800 years. Alongside a bald, mysterious elven mage and a crossbow-wielding, hairy-chested (but beardless) dwarven author, Cassandra installs our main character as the Inquisitor, due to the power of the Mark.
I’d like to pause here and take a moment to talk about the use of the word ‘Inquisition’ in this game. Historically, the root word for ‘inquisition’ comes from the Latin for ‘questioning,’ and was used to refer to Roman legal practices. When used in the context of a religious organization, such as the ‘Dragon Age’ universe’s Chantry or the real world’s Roman Catholic Church, ‘Inquisition’ refers specifically to a practice of intense (commonly brutal, severe, and merciless) questioning in order to uncover heresy – that is, people who don’t 110% believe the same mythology as the organization running the Inquisition. Based on the behavior of the Chantry, the organization is, without a shadow of a doubt, the type of group that could and would institute a full blown Inquisition to root out Dalish elves (‘Dragon Age’ universe Jews), non-Qunari followers of the Qun (the ‘Dragon Age’ universe Quran), demon worshipping ‘apostate’ mages, or anyone else actively working against the establishment dogma about the Maker and the messiah, Andraste. Indeed, throughout the ‘Dragon Age’ series, it seems like the Chantry spends entirely too much time doing this kind of stuff already. Yet the Inquisition instituted under Chantry law doesn’t really seem very… inquisitorial. The entire premise of “DAI” is less about rooting out spies and seditious elements than it is about building an army powerful enough to take on the force behind the Fade rifts.
But I digress. “DAI” weaves many more fibers through the basic framework of lore laid-down in “DAO,” creating a Fantasy world with numerous, numerous parallels to our own and breaking away from the more staid, Tolkien-esque Fantasy that is so commonly over-used (though the influence is still obvious). With our player character installed as the Inquisitor, the first order of the day is to protect the common people from the demons pouring out of the Fade through the rifts, both by sealing the rifts, killing the demons, and by upholding the trappings of civilization (law, order, sanctuary, medical aid, etc.) in the face of an unrelenting assault.
Before long, however, the force behind the rifts is revealed: One of the ancient Tevinter Magisters who entered the Maker’s Golden City in the Fade so many centuries ago, unleashing the first Blight of Darkspawn upon the world, has come out of hiding. An oddly-mutated Darkspawn himself, this Magister, one Corypheus, has self-styled himself as a new god, and his goal in opening the Fade rifts is to re-enter the Fade in the flesh (whereas most folk only temporarily enter the Fade when they dream) and reclaim the now-blackened Golden City of the Maker (because that worked so well the first time).
Using Corypheus as a villain deftly ties together all of the loose threads from ‘Dragon’ Age’s’ mythology into a tangible threat, while simultaneously weaving in new threads that dramatically help to flesh-out the ‘Dragon Age’ universe and its scientific mechanics. In the process of uncovering useful knowledge to use against Corypheus and his demon army, the Inquisition also uncovers a lot of fascinating truths about the history of their world (naturally, truths that the Chantry covered up so well that even its highest ranking priests no longer remember them). The nature of the Fade, the history of the elves, the truth about the Maker and Andraste, and the corruption of ancient empires are all brought to light, making for a multi-faceted universe that has developed from something bland into something intriguing.
“DAI” is also a much less linear game than “DAO” was. While it isn’t truly open-world in the sense of an Action/Sandbox title like ‘The Elder Scrolls,’ “DAI” does feature an enormous amount of side-quests, almost all of which tie directly back to the core story and further built the world’s lore. On one hand, this is fantastic, as “DAI” combines some of the best facets of BioWare-style Action/RPGs with Bethesda-style Action/Sandbox games. On the other hand, the core narrative in “DAI” is only about 30 hours long, while the side items add nearly 100 more hours onto that. The result is a narrative that feels simultaneously rushed and unrushed. The Inquisition is free to dig around in ancient history, pick mushrooms, and increase its influence in the world while Corypheus remains conveniently silent. Still, this type of open structure is preferable to being railroaded all over the world map with many points-of-no-return along the way.
“DAI” features three Downloadable Content (DLC) packs that are included in the Game of the Year Edition for no extra cost. These DLCs all blend seamlessly into the base game, with two of them simply adding another area to the map that the player can explore at their leisure.
The first of these DLCs, “Jaws of Hakkon” sends the Inquisitor to the Frostback Basin, where they assist a university research expedition in learning more about the first Inquisitor from nearly a millennium prior. The titular Jaws are a tribe of local barbarians who worship a spirit of warfare – the titular Hakkon – and, of course, the Inquisitor gets to deal with them and their false god (this is the closest to inquisitorial the Inquisition ever gets).
The second DLC for “DAI” is “The Descent,” in which the Inquisitor aids some Legion of the Dead dwarves in an expedition into the Darkspawn-infested Deep Roads (formerly a subterranean dwarven travel network that spanned the whole continent). One of these dwarves is intent on the idea that there is a mythological creature known as a Titan in this section of the Deep Roads, despite the fact that all dwarven records (which are very methodical and thorough) claim Titans don’t exist. In the process of helping the Legion of the Dead, the Inquisitor learns a significant amount about dwarven history and uncovers some shocking revelations about Lyrium (the magical McGuffin mineral of the ‘Dragon Age’ universe) in the process.
The final DLC for “DAI” is “Trespasser,” which picks up after the main game’s ending and serves as a (point-of-no-return) epilogue. The amount of lore dumped in “Trespasser” is amazing, and it does a fantastic job of setting up the next ‘Dragon Age’ game. It certainly makes me want to know what happens next!
Gameplay:
“DAI” has homogenized the PC and console versions into full feature parity. Whereas “DAO” only allowed the use of the (crippled, gimped, and generally useless) old-school overhead camera in the PC version, locking the console version into a third-person trailing camera, “DAI” has successfully merged the two camera styles together. While playing normally, the camera in “DAI” is a third-person trailer, as one would expect in any modern Action game. At any point during combat, however, the touch of a button simultaneously pauses the action and pulls the camera up into a birds-eye view, allowing the player to switch between characters, issue commands, etc. before unpausing and returning to third-person on the party member of their choice. While this merging of camera styles is a fantastic idea, the execution is still a bit lacking, as the old problem from “DAO” of not being able to pan the overhead camera particularly far from the action is still present… and now it tends to get hung-up on scenery.
I am also pleased to report that “DAI,” despite what all of its friends are doing, has decided to remain a tried-and-true Action/RPG instead of going full-bore Action. The combat is “DAI” has minimal abstraction, but it still manages to prevent player skill from being relevant at all, which is good. Like “DAO,” “DAI” has a LOT of combat, but focus comes away from it onto exploration, questing, and crafting far more often, which keeps things from getting boring. “DAI” features an optional checkbox that causes enemies to scale to the player’s level instead of remaining static. While I typically hate level-scaled enemies, the tradeoff of ‘Significantly More Special Shipments’ of loot was too tempting, so I played the whole game with level-scaling turned on. I was surprised to note that combat never became particularly challenging, nor was it every particularly strategic. Level scaling simply gives enemies a buttload more hit points, which makes it take forever to kill them… but they also give a buttload more experience, so my party had reached the level cap of 27 (early on, BioWare promised NO level cap, but that didn’t happen) before I’d even reached the game’s halfway point.
In “DAO,” I was sorely disappointed by the utter uselessness of Warriors. While “DAI” still has the same uninspired Warrior/Rogue/Mage classes as the original game, they’ve been significantly reworked in an effort to nerf Mages and buff Warriors. Most noticeably, there is no more healing magic in the game. Period. The only healing that happens in “DAI” comes through potions, which can be restocked for free at a huge number of places (though special potions do require the player to spend some herbs to resupply).
Because there is no healing, Warriors really have a chance to shine due to their new ability to gain Guard. Guard is essentially a large glob of temporary hit points that must be taken to zero before the Warrior starts to take actual damage. Every Warrior has skills that generate Guard, and most of the time a Warrior never needs to worry about drinking a potion to keep going, as they just use a skill to build more Guard instead. Rogues and Mages, who lack any abilities to gain Guard, are thus much squishier and less useful. In “DAO,” I never used Warriors, instead building a party of 1 Rogue and 3 Mages. In “DAI,” however, I went with 2 Warriors, 1 Rogue, and 1 Mage, simply because Guarded-up Warriors can draw enemy attention away from non-Guarded characters most of the time.
Each of three classes has some specialization options. Warriors can go sword-and-shield or two-handed, Rogues can go dual-wielded daggers or archery, and Mages can focus on Fire, Electricity, or Ice. Furthermore, at a certain point in the game, every character unlocks a unique specialization branch in their skill tree. The Inquisitor can choose one of three skill branches for their class, all of which are copies from one of the available recruitable party members (bringing the entire cast of playable characters to 10).
Character leveling and skills are largely identical to what they were in “DAO,” with streamlined skill trees that unlock cooldown-based combat skills. Respeccing characters is as easy as buying a 300-gold amulet, which is in infinite supply at the blacksmith. Unfortunately, regardless of the highly-refined skill setups a player might create for their party members, the AI is still unacceptably stupid and ineffectual. Generally, I found that, if an AI party member started to take damage or, heaven forbid, die, that switching to that character and manually issuing commands suddenly made them perform a whole lot better… while some other character decided to start being a suicidal moron.
Outside of combat, “DAI” is a typical BioWare RPG, though a bit streamlined in the skill department. Dialog trees and searchable environmental objects are in. Pickpocketing is out. The Quest Journal and Quest Map are still present, and well refined, ably keeping track of the games myriad quests and locations.
Character inventory space is still shared, and a huge number of items no longer officially take up space, such as crafting materials and quest-related items. The crafting system is new and improved, but ultimately doesn’t come into play until the end-game. The amount of useful gear discovered as loot in “DAI” is incredible, and easily enough to outfit all 10 party members simultaneously, though, unfortunately, enemies still don’t drop all of their equipped gear for players to loot. For min/maxers, the option to craft is always there. Crafting requires a (re-usable) blueprint for a specific type of gear, then the player is free to mix and match the game’s huge variety of farmable metals, leathers, and cloths into the blueprint’s slots in order to determine the stats of the final product. I only ended up crafting custom gear for my Inquisitor, as I felt that the stuff I found as treasure was easily good enough for the rest of my team… being an archery Rogue in “DAI” means never finding any particularly good bows.
Finally, I think I need to talk about the multi-player mode a bit… about what an abomination it is. Instead of allowing four friends to coop their way through the Inquisitor’s campaign, “DAI’s” multi-player mode is an entirely separate beast where players can team up to play as random, nameless Inquisition members on meaningless busywork quests for the Inquisition. These characters – and there are a LOT of them to unlock – all start from level 1 and don’t level up together like the main game’s party does. The only real point of “DAI’s” multi-player is to serve as a stealth microtransaction engine in a retail game, as players can spend real money in order to open treasure chests which contain random gear and potions (otherwise, it takes a lot of time to save enough gold to buy one chest). None of this multi-player stuff saves locally or allows for local co-op, and it feels distressingly like a mobile game with its focus on glacially slow character progress, leaving players fully at the mercy of the Random Number Generator, and only endeavoring to be ‘fun’ enough to keep players from quitting, but not ‘fun’ enough that players won’t be tempted to spend money on microtransactions out of frustration. Honestly, I would have preferred the multi-player mode to be removed from “DAI” and given away on Origin as a separate Free2Play/Pay2Win experience.
Overall
While still a bit heavy on the none-too-strategic combat and burdened by moronic companion AI, “Dragon Age: Inquisition” is a huge step-up from “Dragon Age: Origins.” The writing team at BioWare has managed to flesh-out the unimpressive foundation laid by “Dragon Age: Origins” with an incredible amount of intriguing world lore, and an interesting, multi-faceted narrative that ties many aspects of that lore together. The open-world format also does this franchise a service, providing more game to those who seek it out and less for those who just want the core experience.
Presentation: 4/5
Story:
Inquisition: 4.5/5
Jaws of Hakkon: 4.5/5
The Descent: 4.5/5
Trespasser: 4.5/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
