melmer

Nobody expects the Dragon Age Inquisition

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You can always just control a different character. I setup one of my rogues as a backstabber and I realized that the CPU was never going to do it right, so I started to control her. I've found it a lot more fun.

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What difficulty is everyone playing on?  I jumped it up to nightmare at the start, really just to see what it was like, but so far haven't had to lower it after about 8 hours in.  So far I'm really enjoying the challenge, and have even been able to take down level 8 mobs while my party was only level 4-5.

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Playing it on normal. I've had my butt handed to me a couple of times, but I've always managed to get out of there with one party member (once against the first rift I closed after the tutorial and once in the spider cave at the sword coast at level 4.) I don't really want to play in tactical mode most of the time, so I'm pretty happy where the difficulty is.

Thanks to whomever mentioned the R3 target locking. That gives you the strafe control that I've been needing so badly when playing a shield guy. I could swear I tried R3 before and it didn't do anything, but maybe I just did it at the wrong time or didn't click it hard enough.

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You can always just control a different character. I setup one of my rogues as a backstabber and I realized that the CPU was never going to do it right, so I started to control her. I've found it a lot more fun.

 

I have done that, but it just feels weird!

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AH damn it. I think I like this game.

 

I started over, I took some time to create a character I like seeing walk around and talk, so that helped. After starting over I spent more time in Haven to talk to characters and did a bit of research online to know the different systems about sending operatives, the requisitions, the armor upgrade system, etc... I don't know if the game was ever going to walk me through this, but, wow I would have missed some of this stuff if I didn't read about it. Like Haven, it's a whole god damn area past the gates, I saw a door closed so figured I couldn't go outside.... nope, theres a ton of shit out there for you to do.

 

When playing Dragon Age Origins I called in Mass Effect 1.5 (this was before Mass Effect 2, I think) in a way that I could see many of the systems from Mass Effect 1 built and expanded on, it's why I loved it so much. After Mass Effect 2 and 3 I saw that series go in a very different direction system/design wise and didn't enjoy it as much.

 

Playing through Inquisition I see those old ties with Origins/Mass Effect 1 and am really enjoying it now. One I wrapped my head around the layout of the game it feels very much like an expanded and improved upon set up of Origins, with a few exceptions. Looking back we now see this design divergence of old Bioware RPGs going to Mass Effect and splitting into different directions. 

 

I much prefer where Inquisition is sitting and get the feeling Mass Effect 4 will return some of these philosophies to that series.

 

Also, I got a new video card, running everything on high now and I honestly don't notice much of a difference. My frame rate is much improved at least, so that helps, but the draw distance, pops and such are all still present. I think as long as you have mesh quality on high, everything else seems to improve it marginally. I was kind of hoping for a bigger jump with shader and texture quality, but it's not that big of a difference. Still looks great though.

 

One thing though, going back and forth between this and Mordor, Mordors graphic settings and benchmark utility was amazing compared to Inquisition where I was blindly changing settings, having to restart the executable and load up a game to see what the difference was. Developers should take note of what SoM did.

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Yeah the benchmark tool doesn't even seem to work properly for me. It runs through it at an erratic pace (something to do with using a 144hz monitor maybe?) and it doesn't even appear to be rendering anything in the correct detail settings. Whatever, the game runs fine when I actually play it.

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One thing though, going back and forth between this and Mordor, Mordors graphic settings and benchmark utility was amazing compared to Inquisition where I was blindly changing settings, having to restart the executable and load up a game to see what the difference was. Developers should take note of what SoM did.

 

I totally agree, although from my own tinkering it actually seems like the "won't take effect until the game is restarted" message might not be entirely true. I think most of that stuff takes effect when you quit to the main menu and load back in, you don't actually have to restart the program.

 

Edit: Also, Shadow of Mordor simply ran well while looking good, something none of the big games this past month have entirely managed to do. DA:I is less of an offender than the Ubisoft games in this case, but it can still run a little dodgily for seemingly no reason at times.

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Man, talking to Leliana, who I think should be dead, she talks about Hawke's brother in Kirkwall even though he died before they reached it and she refers to the Hero of Ferelden as a a friend and a 'she' even though he was a man (who had her executed). I would be okay if they didn't talk about the past games, but having them talk about and getting everything wrong messes with my mood a lot when playing.

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I think your keep state might not have imported properly.

 

Did you get the

where Leliana talks about how she had thought she had died only to be resurrected by the maker and relays her frustration that a god with that sort of power would allow Divine Justinia to die?

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Sort of, except I don't remember anything about resurrection. I definitely did the whole thing, I don't understand how it could have failed to import unless there's a bug.

 

EDIT: I went to check the keep and it should have everything. Apparently I didn't kill Leliana. A bunch of stuff is still wrong, though.

 

EDIT: I found the option in the Keep that let's you check the game you're playing, and it's wrong. The heroes have totally unfamiliar names. I took me hours to actually get into the game and apparently for nothing. I still don't understand how I could start a new game that would work properly, because there's only one world state in the Keep and that's has my characters. Guh. Where did I go wrong in just following the instructions and then starting a game?

 

EDIT: Yup, I started a new game as a test after exporting my world state from the Keep again, and the heroes in the new save are different but still wrong. I don't get it.

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So they do actually refer to the Hero of Feralden and the blight? I've only seen one mention of it in a loading screen and a small comment in a conversation about a blight ten years ago. It seemed odd they wouldn't mention more of it since, at the time, it seemed kind of a big deal.

 

Also, I may be mistaken, but didn't Lelianna have more of an Orlesian accent in the first one? I think thats part of the reason I didn't make the connection that it was her at first (that and I forgot who she was) but she sounds English to me now. I might be wrong, but if true and the intention was that she has spent so much time in Feralden now, that's a neat touch.

 

I'm enjoying the game, but starting to get the impression that the game takes place mostly in the hinterlands. It's a gigantic space with a lot of variety and seems to be where the bulk of the content is taking place. The other areas are diverse and pretty gorgeous, but I have yet to go somewhere that has the size and variety of the hinterlands. I get that they wanted the game to be a globe trotting adventure and feel larger than life like the first one, but loading these separate places that are more or less kind of one off spaces has the opposite effect on me. I think I would have preferred a contiguous open world.

 

I also lament a little at the quest variety, while there is plenty to do and "explore" the quests seem to be reduced to "go here, collect this or kill that". I understand that the bespoke nature of conversations, cutscenes, and variety of Origins is hard to achieve again(it's fing time consuming and expensive) but that was one of the key things I loved about the Origins, there was an equal amount of content of talking to different characters and solving problems with the combat. To be fair, I did stumble on a quest where I had to talk to some cult people or something, but I needed a certain item equiped and didn't realize that until after I had killed them all, so maybe I'm missing a few of these events because I wasn't paying attention enough.

 

One last thing, but last night the game deliberately tried to kill my character.I don't think it was a bug, but there was certainly some AI Direction schenagians going on, which I was unaware that the game featured anything like that and its very possible that it might now, this is just my interpretation of events.

 

I get out of a fight that has hurt my crew pretty badly, some of them have no potions and low health. THere is a camp site a head so I start moving, cautiously avoiding some enemies on the peripheral. As things go, I unluckily ran into an elite great bear or something, it was only one, so chances are we could survive. The bear almost dead, another one shows up, but we're still managing, then two of my characters go down; assassins!(or something) So I start running. 

 

The bears are now fighting the assassins, the assassins chasing me, the Herald is the only one left running, I'm dropping fire walls and explosions as I run, eventually kill teh assassins, the bears now attack me, two of them left. Kill one and keep running around in a circle around this camp site, another bear shows up. Eventually kill them and hope to get out of content so my party wakes up, templars show up. Eventually kill them too and a bear literally spawns(pops) in right in front of me before it takes me out of combat.

 

Long story short, managed to survive, but it really felt like when the shit hit the fan and when I was at my lowest it was just bringing in more enemies(especially after seeing a bear materialize in front of me just to try to finish me off). Anyway, it was actually pretty exciting if not a hilarious hassle. It reminded me a bit of the excitement of the slog you had to go through in the Deeproads, except this was systemic and probably just happenstance. Pretty cool either way.

 

Oh and I finally got some new party members, the crazy Russel Brand-esq one is pretty interesting.

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I didn't see it mentioned in the last few pages, and I kind of assume people already know, but if not, the PC version defaults to a locked 30 FPS for the cut scenes. Mine looked pretty choppy at first. You can unlock that by making a shortcut on your desktop for DAI, and adding a line to tweak the frostbyte engine (relevant text in bold, as your install location is likely different):

 

"E:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Dragon Age Inquisition\DragonAgeInquisition.exe" -GameTime.MaxSimFps 60 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 60+

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I didn't see it mentioned in the last few pages, and I kind of assume people already know, but if not, the PC version defaults to a locked 30 FPS for the cut scenes. Mine looked pretty choppy at first. You can unlock that by making a shortcut on your desktop for DAI, and adding a line to tweak the frostbyte engine (relevant text in bold, as your install location is likely different):

 

"E:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Dragon Age Inquisition\DragonAgeInquisition.exe" -GameTime.MaxSimFps 60 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 60+

This works but beware! It will cause game-breaking bugs in some story missions. At least it did for me. 

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That fix is also rumored to affect multiplayer, so it's probably best to restart the game without that command-line modifier whenever you want to jump into a multiplayer match.

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Whoa! Really? 

 

How did you know it was that?

I started a story mission

(the boss fight in the Templar mission)

and most of my characters stopped animating entirely. They kind of just hovered above the ground with their arms and legs splayed to the side, like little ragdolls. I restarted the game without the tweak and the mission started fine. The same thing happened in a later mission

(where the dragon attacks Haven)

and again, restarting without the tweak fixed the problem. 

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So I've been playing every once in a while without tactical-mode. It's just not worthwhile for me. I really enjoy the pacing of the Dragon Age games when combat is slow and tactical; every battle is challenging, I pull off some interesting combos when the opportunities present themselves, I get a slightly better piece of armor and a bit of talking, repeat. But without tactical-mode the combat is over so quickly that I don't enjoy the loot or the banter because I just put new stuff on my peeps 1 minute ago and the banter doesn't have as much glue to it when I don't spend time telling the team how to work together.

If they don't patch the 360 version to fix the tactical-mode then I will feel cheated regardless of whether or not I want to. Having to wait a few weeks after release is fine, but kinda rude.

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That's interesting, because I've been using those commands from the start and just lately getting a lot of sound, interface (dialog trees not showing up) issues. I was about to do a main story cutscene, no sound, no animation, no interface, so I alt cntr, deleted out. When I start up the game it just freezes up at the start screen.

 

Pretty much thought I was screwed, turns out I just had to delete the latest save file, luckily, didn't lose too much progress, but scary never the less. Think I might remove those commands if it's causing these issues.

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One last thing, but last night the game deliberately tried to kill my character.I don't think it was a bug, but there was certainly some AI Direction schenagians going on, which I was unaware that the game featured anything like that and its very possible that it might now, this is just my interpretation of events.

 

I don't think it's AI Direction, that just kinda happens there (if it's where I'm thinking of). The elite bears are a fixed spawn, the assassins and non elite bears are both a common random spawn in that area. Though I had cleared out the templar camp mission in the Hinterlands so I didn't get that addition. I was overlevelled at the time so it wasn't a big deal for me also.

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the one really good bug i had was pausing it right at the start of combat, setting my initial attacks, then accident hitting spacebar when i went to unpause, and when it started Cassandra jumped like 50 feet straight up, and landed by the enemies. She took a ton of falling damage, but she cleared some debris barriers. 

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I've had a pretty funny bug. When giants attack with their jumping stomp, about 2/3 of the time, they actually jump super high into the air, land and take a bunch of fall damage. Then I just need to hit them twice to kill them. Makes giants obscenely easy.

 

I decided to restart. I like the game so much I felt that I wanted to get the platinum which means playing on Insanity. It's not as hard as I thought it would be. Once you get the party together and get a few points to help CC stuff, it becomes manageable. The first hour is the hardest. I decided to go with mage because warrior wasn't really doing it for me. I do not regret my choice.

 

The main difference between insane and normal, is that I have zero chance of taking on enemies 2 levels above me. Plus I can't rely on the AI for  anything.

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So they do actually refer to the Hero of Feralden and the blight? I've only seen one mention of it in a loading screen and a small comment in a conversation about a blight ten years ago. It seemed odd they wouldn't mention more of it since, at the time, it seemed kind of a big deal.

There are a couple of folks in my camp that you can talk to that aren't specifically called out on the map. One argued with me about whether Logain was justified in walking away from the fight at the beginning of DA:O. I'm not sure if maybe those characters are hold-overs from DA2 or just random NPCs. There's some flavor there, but you do have to dig a bit to get it.

 

Also, I may be mistaken, but didn't Lelianna have more of an Orlesian accent in the first one? I think thats part of the reason I didn't make the connection that it was her at first (that and I forgot who she was) but she sounds English to me now. I might be wrong, but if true and the intention was that she has spent so much time in Feralden now, that's a neat touch.

Listening to her in both DA:O and DA:I, I'm pretty sure it's the same voice actor but she tuned down the accent some, which I think is a big plus.

 

I'm enjoying the game, but starting to get the impression that the game takes place mostly in the hinterlands. It's a gigantic space with a lot of variety and seems to be where the bulk of the content is taking place. The other areas are diverse and pretty gorgeous, but I have yet to go somewhere that has the size and variety of the hinterlands. I get that they wanted the game to be a globe trotting adventure and feel larger than life like the first one, but loading these separate places that are more or less kind of one off spaces has the opposite effect on me. I think I would have preferred a contiguous open world.

The Hinterlands is pretty huge, but I feel like I've gotten to do a ton of exploring in the Sword Coast as well. I think the intention is to have three really large zones in the game, a few smaller ones, then a bunch of set piece areas such as Orlais.

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Plugged at least 5 hours into MP and I'm finding it to be pretty boring.  There are 3 area types, but they're all shaped similarly, with randomly generated winding hallways leading you to the endpoint.

 

It may just be lag, but it lacks a sense of connection.  I swing my axe at the pot of loot, and the smallest delay occurs before it smashes.  I hit "X" to collect the loot, but my character jumps.  I hit "X" again, another slight delay, then she bends over to get the loot.  All of the characters take up physical space, so when two players run into each other this weird stuttering occurs and one is pushed back slightly.  Regular attacks lack any sort of response animation, which makes it feel spammy and the enemies sponges.  Minor details, but the lack of polish adds up.

 

I'm intrigued by the loot system, but thus far it's been stingy.  I've put in a decent amount of hours and have only earned enough gear to unlock one new class (I salvage everything my current character can't use - also, it's not explained well at all, but you unlock new classes by crafting armor for that class, and the only way to get crafting materials is by salvaging armor that you've acquired).

 

Feels like a bunch of stuff that can be fixed down the line, so I'm going to put down the MP until/if they release a patch.

 

Wife's been so busy I may start up my own SP game....

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Plugged at least 5 hours into MP and I'm finding it to be pretty boring.  There are 3 area types, but they're all shaped similarly, with randomly generated winding hallways leading you to the endpoint.

 

It may just be lag, but it lacks a sense of connection.  I swing my axe at the pot of loot, and the smallest delay occurs before it smashes.  I hit "X" to collect the loot, but my character jumps.  I hit "X" again, another slight delay, then she bends over to get the loot.  All of the characters take up physical space, so when two players run into each other this weird stuttering occurs and one is pushed back slightly.  Regular attacks lack any sort of response animation, which makes it feel spammy and the enemies sponges.  Minor details, but the lack of polish adds up.

 

I'm intrigued by the loot system, but thus far it's been stingy.  I've put in a decent amount of hours and have only earned enough gear to unlock one new class (I salvage everything my current character can't use - also, it's not explained well at all, but you unlock new classes by crafting armor for that class, and the only way to get crafting materials is by salvaging armor that you've acquired).

 

Feels like a bunch of stuff that can be fixed down the line, so I'm going to put down the MP until/if they release a patch.

 

Wife's been so busy I may start up my own SP game....

Overall I've ended up pretty disappointed in MP. I played two different sessions, and just haven't seen any reason to go back. And I had such high hopes after ME3MP.

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Plugged at least 5 hours into MP and I'm finding it to be pretty boring.  There are 3 area types, but they're all shaped similarly, with randomly generated winding hallways leading you to the endpoint.

 

It may just be lag, but it lacks a sense of connection.  I swing my axe at the pot of loot, and the smallest delay occurs before it smashes.  I hit "X" to collect the loot, but my character jumps.  I hit "X" again, another slight delay, then she bends over to get the loot.  All of the characters take up physical space, so when two players run into each other this weird stuttering occurs and one is pushed back slightly.  Regular attacks lack any sort of response animation, which makes it feel spammy and the enemies sponges.  Minor details, but the lack of polish adds up.

 

I'm intrigued by the loot system, but thus far it's been stingy.  I've put in a decent amount of hours and have only earned enough gear to unlock one new class (I salvage everything my current character can't use - also, it's not explained well at all, but you unlock new classes by crafting armor for that class, and the only way to get crafting materials is by salvaging armor that you've acquired).

 

Feels like a bunch of stuff that can be fixed down the line, so I'm going to put down the MP until/if they release a patch.

 

Wife's been so busy I may start up my own SP game....

 

When I was playing with a set friends group, it performed very well, but random matchmaking has performed about like you're seeing.

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