I loved Dragon Age: Origins and I found Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition to be enjoyable, despite flaws I saw in each.
Although I felt Inquisition had a split personality and some disappointing story elements, the Trespasser DLC left me intrigued about where the story might go next.
So I was excited when a report surfaced that BioWare is hard at work on the next Dragon Age game… and wary when Kotaku’s recent article on Anthem mentioned that their sources say development on the next Dragon Age game was rebooted “to implement more ‘live’ elements into the game.”
“Live” elements? What does that mean?
The whole thing sounded disturbingly similiar to EA’s explanation about shutting down Visceral Games and changing direction for their Star Wars game because the market doesn’t want linear, single-player games.
Dragon Age: Inquisition already suffered (in my opinion) from all of its open world elements, and Mass Effect: Andromeda handled it even worse. Watching Dragon Age drift even further in another direction doesn’t appeal to me.
Fortunately, it might not be that bad. BioWare’s Casey Hudson responded to fans by saying the next Dragon Age will still be focused on its story and characters, and that the “live” elements are part of “designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story.”
At first, this just sounds like DLC, but that doesn’t make sense. The previous Dragon Age games continued their stories with post-game DLC. You wouldn’t need to reboot development to allow for post-game DLC, and that’s not a “live” element.
And if it’s continuing the story, it doesn’t sound like multiplayer, either.
After thinking about it, this sounds to me more like the sort of in-game events from MMORPGs brought to a single-player game, like how Final Fantasy XV had the “Assassin’s Festival” event. (That specific event was a crossover, but others wouldn’t have to be.) It’s a story addition added to the game at a certain time, and then it disappears at a certain time. To me, that sounds like a “live” way the story continues.
However, if that’s what they have in mind for Dragon Age, I’m not sure I like it. I didn’t play the Assassin’s Festival event in Final Fantasy XV, but it still bothers me that a story event was added to a single-player game and will be taken away at the end of this month.
But who knows? What do you think the “live” elements in the next Dragon Age game will be like? How do you think they will affect the game?
Since I played it for over 100 hours, you’d think I’d be 100% in favor of Inquisition. And I did enjoy it. Dragon Age: Inquisition is a good game.
Nevertheless, I left it feeling decidedly conflicted.
Inquisition splits its open world into several large regions, rather than a single connected world. In theory, this makes it more appealing to me. There were distinct areas to explore.
However, the majority of those areas mean nothing to the overall plot. There’s a plot tie-in to get you there, but the main quest quietly waits in another area while you complete sidequests that ultimately feeling meaningless. You get power and influence, yes, but the quests felt more like a series of objectives to complete for completion’s sake, rather than part of my struggle to save the world.
In Dragon Age: Origins, your plot quest was usually in a large area with a variety of sidequests you could also pick up. Dragon Age 2 put everything in a single city and its surroundings. But Inquisition keeps the sidequests so separate from the main quest, they almost feel like two different games.
A few areas did it right. The Western Approach, for example, was a wide open area with a plot quest within it. I explored and did sidequests on my way to and from the plot event. It worked. I enjoyed it. But most of the game is not like that.
But Inquisition really wanted to focus on exploring its open world, so a lot of game content lies there… which makes its main story not only feel separate, but somewhat weak. I enjoyed its plot points, but there was so much nothing in between them, the pacing felt stilted. I was shocked to reach the end, because it felt like it came too quickly despite 100+ hours of gameplay.
On a more minor note, I have some criticisms of the character creator. Xenoblade Chronicles X is under fire because you can’t make your character’s chest size identical to yours, but what about Inquisition’s hairstyles?
Origins and DA2 may not have had the greatest hairstyle selection, but why take away half those options? And why are there so many bald/shaved/buzzed options compared to everything else?
And why, when I finally gave my Inquisitor black hair, did it look brown in most scenes? Oh well. Character customization is fun, but it’s not a huge deal.
This is the only time my Inquisitor’s hair ever looked black.
And the rest of the cast made up for my lackluster Inquisitor.
My party members were phenomenal, and one of my favorite parts of the game. Cassandra, the Seeker from DA2’s frame story, returned and proved to be a quite entertaining character. Iron Bull (the most laid-back qunari you’ll ever meet, and my romance option of choice) and an unusual spirit named Cole joined her as my favorites. The rest of the party also had shining moments (with the possible exception of Blackwall, whom I found rather boring).
You can spend a lot of time in Inquisition just talking to party members, and it was one of the things I liked the most.
On the other hand, my criticisms of the way Dragon Age 2 handled romance remained, and I missed the more organic, natural way of romancing a character that Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect used. I felt as though I simply had to pick a character and choose the right options (helpfully marked with a heart icon) rather than get to know the character and let the relationship develop, like another player explains in more detail.
And despite an ominous start, the main villain disappointed me. After the early portion of the game, I stopped feeling threatened by him. I didn’t feel Origins’ oppressing sense of being up against an unstoppable enemy.
Spoilers for epilogue/Trespasser
I’m talking, of course, about Corypheus. If you approach the game from the perspective that Fen’Harel is actually the main villain, that was handled in a much better fashion… though you only realize it in retrospect.
The major choices also felt disappointing. Other than the first big choice, whether to side with the mages or templars (in a war which quickly ends, despite Dragon Age 2 setting it up as major plot point), I never felt like I was hard-pressed to make a tough decision.
(Part of this is because of the choices I made in previous games. What could have been a difficult choice at one point instead had me choose between a beloved character I spent hours with and an NPC I barely knew. Emotional impact gone.)
One last criticism, and then I’ll stop complaining. Dragon Age Keep. I knew going into this that choices couldn’t be carried over the same way, but I thought when I imported my Origins/DA2 saves into the Keep, it would register my choices. No, I still had to select them manually.
I thought it would at least import my previous protagonists’ appearances. No, instead of the exciting moment I expected when my Hawke would walk in, Inquisition sent me back to its horrible character creator to attempt to remake her as best I could.
Close enough, but she’s not my Hawke.
(I also was really disappointed when the Architect didn’t make an appearance in Inquisition. I waited through all of DA2 for him and thought this was his time to return!)
After all this, it must sound like I disliked Dragon Age: Inquisition. I didn’t. I loved my party members and their interactions. Some banter and scenes made me laugh out loud.
I enjoyed exploring the world, even if its lack of relevance to the plot eventually made me tire of it. Despite the main plot’s flaws, it had some epic moments. And the epilogue’s twist struck me as so brilliant, I only wished the rest of the story lived up to it.
Although it falls far short of Dragon Age: Origins, Inquisition is a good game. In many ways, it’s two okay games. And if they worked together a little more, instead of making Dragon Age: Inquisition feel like it has a split personality, it could have been a great game.
As it is, I recommend Dragon Age: Inquisition with some reservations, and hope the next game learns from its mistakes.
When I started the sequel to one of the best games I played in 2013, I didn’t expect it to make me examine the “show, don’t tell” lesson of storytelling. Dragon Age 2 gets a lot of criticism, mainly for its repetitive environments and combat.
The repeated environments bothered me not because I found them monotonous, but because they tie into a greater problem I’ll discuss in a moment. As for the combat… I honestly didn’t notice much of a difference. Maybe it’s just been too long since I played Dragon Age: Origins, but I can’t explain how the battle system changed.
On the other hand, I’ve heard Dragon Age 2’s story praised in spite of gameplay flaws, but the story–or rather, storytelling–is what lessened the experience for me.
That’s not a jab against BioWare’s decision to make Dragon Age 2 a frame narrative. I liked the idea that the entire game is recounted by Varric to one of the Chantry’s Seekers, Cassandra. It didn’t use the frame narrative structure to its fullest potential, as explained by one reviewer here, but in general it didn’t bother me.
I liked most of the characters. It had great party banter, which is always one of my favorite parts of games like this. My party members’ side conversations ranged from poignant to hilarious, sometimes both at the same time.
I generally wanted to know what would happen in the story, but at the most critical moments, the game just didn’t manage to make me care enough. The plot lacked cohesiveness, with only a couple threads tying the first act to the last. But its biggest problem was that, as if the writers forgot the player wasn’t a passive listener like Cassandra, it insisted upon telling things that would have been more effective if shown.
Nothing demonstrates this better than the time skips. Dragon Age II is divided into acts separated by time skips. The game spans years, but you only get to see a few select segments. Times skips are great… when they actually matter. This is why the repetitive environments bothered me. The city of Kirkwall and its surrounding lands didn’t change after the time skips. The people didn’t change. Even the party members stayed the same, with only the occasional line of dialogue about how long they’ve been friends to remind you that time has passed.
Fortunately, I knew which character I wanted to romance immediately.
That’s a related problem: the narrative knew Hawke and the party members still spent time with each other across all those years, and treated them accordingly. I, however, didn’t feel I knew them nearly as well as I knew my Dragon Age: Origins party members.
Instead of talking to them on a routine basis, new interactions with your party members become available as side quests. This disjointed the experience for me. It felt less natural. Likewise, the romance felt more like I was checking off boxes rather than getting to know the character.
But the problem with Dragon Age 2’s time skips goes a lot deeper than unchanging environments or shallow character relationships. It strikes the core of the plot and the heart of the story’s “show vs. tell” problem. After one time skip, the game dropped me into an argument between the templars’ Knight-Commander and the mages’ First Enchanter and asked who I thought was right.
Imagine you walk into a room, and your friends are arguing about something that happened the previous day without you. Then they ask whose side you’re on. That’s how I felt. Hawke knew if their accusations about the events of the past few years were valid, because she actually lived through them. But me? All I had to go on was a line of narration from Varric and two people arguing. I refused to side with either and assumed the game would help me figure it out as I played more.
Maybe if we argue loud enough, she won’t notice the storytelling flaws.
And this is Dragon Age 2’s great mistake. It wants to tell a morally gray story, but it doesn’t balance the two sides. It repeatedly tells you why one side is wrong, through dialogue and narration. It kept telling me mages were oppressed. Why not show me? Then it tried to balance its anti-templar ranting by tossing in corrupt mages, to an almost ludicrous degree.
Why didn’t the plot take us into the Gallows to see how oppressed mages are? Why didn’t we have a Circle mage as a party member? Heck, why not have a templar party member too?
Click for spoilers
In my game, Bethany got taken to the Circle. That would have been a great chance to open a window onto the plight of mages, with built-in sympathy… except she was just fine there.
The game’s crucial moral choice was a difficult decision, not because the game portrayed such a morally gray situation but because it failed to do so. I didn’t believe the First Enchanter was right, because it didn’t show me enough from that side. I didn’t believe the Knight-Commander was right, because her reactions were irrational. The majority of the NPCs had stopped making logical sense by that point, and the game hadn’t convinced me to really care. I wanted to just turn around and leave Kirkwall’s idiocy behind me.
Of course, I couldn’t, so I picked aside and forged ahead… into an ending that made me wonder if my decision mattered at all.
It’s hard for me to pass a verdict on Dragon Age 2. I enjoyed it while I played it. I liked the characters and the idea of the plot. It had some cool moments. The general gameplay didn’t bother me.
But in the end, I found its narrative forgettable rather than compelling.
I’m a Dragon Age fan.
