melmer

Nobody expects the Dragon Age Inquisition

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I just got sick of combat in DA3 tbh. I played 40 hours of taking battles seriously on hard but eventually the only limiting factor became the amount of healing I could do in between combats. Since the ball I've mostly played on casual so I can have fun with the story more. 

 

I'll play on hard for the dragons though and main bosses.

 

I don't think I'm that far through tbh. I've been soaking my free DA hours into completing each location before moving on.

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I agree about the comments on the tactical view, if that worked properly I'd bother to learn the synergies between abilities for each class and think a lot more about combat. But because I've explored a fair bit (while leaving a few areas for another play through at some point) I'm massively

Over powered for anything other than a Dragon or the occasional spider swarm. A proper camera that zooms out and access to all abilities would go a long long way to making this a much much better game.

Not sure how much longer there is to go in the main quest - I think I'm fairly near the end, i should Probably get on and finish it before Pillars of Eternity come out and The Witcher 3 is released. I did go to the forbidden oasis last night and learnt what all those annoying shard fetch quests are for. Plus possibly learnt just who one of the companions is.

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You don't actually -have- to do most of the busywork, but they clearly want you to and I for one have a really hard time detaching myself from that completist mindset.

 

I can't agree about DA2's combat, though. I found it to be an unending sea of tedium to the point where I knocked it down to the easiest setting midway through, not because it was ever challenging, but because I just wanted to have the fights end as quickly as humanly possible. And they still dragged. I've been tempted to do the same with Inquisition but someone was saying (I think on Crate and Crowbar) that this didn't actually make the fights any quicker, just less likely to actually hurt you in any meaningful way. I haven't been frustrated by the fights, though. They're really easy even on Hard (as a mage, anyway) as long as I don't try to use the tactical camera and don't take on anything more than a few levels higher than me.

Well, fair enough. It may be because I played a rogue in DA2 vs a warrior in DA:I. In fact, that's almost certainly why I feel that way, now that I think about it.

 

Honestly I wish Dragon Age just had no combat whatsoever if they're not going to go back to DA:O's combat. I'm not as high on DA:O as a lot of people, but it was definitely the best combat in the series, and was actually challenging in a good way, rather than just frustrating and slow and boring. But... I think I'd feel differently about DA:I if they had a usable tactical combat mode. Who knows.

 

Bioware just really dropped the ball on this game. It's so pretty, and big, and wonderful!!! Except when it's not.

 

As to your first point: yes, that's true, I definitely did a lot more sidequesting than I should have. I'm similar in that I find it hard to ignore side stuff, especially in an RPG when sometimes the sidequests are the best content. Turns out that's not the case in this game. The sidequests are almost universally bad. I did the same thing in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, despite being told not to, but I really enjoyed the combat in that game.

 

BUT! It's not just the sidequests. Everything you have to do in that game takes a long time to do. I don't really feel like digging up my initial posts in this thread, but basically, it feels like Bioware wanted to have as much fidelity in the animations and movements of every action in the game that they willingly sacrificed the feel of the speed of the game to do so. Harvesting a plant or a mineral takes three times as long as it should because you have to stop, bend over, accept the item, then stand back up before you can move onto the next one that's like three feet away sometimes. (I eventually stopped gathering shit altogether.) Accelerating to top speed from a complete stop takes far longer than it ever has in any of their games. Adjusting my position by a small amount is sort of a pain in the ass because I kept overshooting it because of the way the start-moving animation works. It's just bleghhhhh.

 

There's a really good game in here, but it's drowning in a pond of filth.

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What about the combat don't y'all like?  Personally I found Origin's combat to be frustrating more often than not, DA2 was better but with poor encounter design, and DA:I seemed like the ultimate expression of those two systems.  I get the sense that from the presentation, mainly looking and feeling more like an action game, people assume it should play like one when really it's a rules heavy system underneath.  The only problems I had with the combat were that enemies have a ton of HP, and the various foibles that come about when fighting on cliff faces or other spots where the hit detection would fail.  There was a bit of a disconnect when the combat system interacted with the world that was really exacerbated by the hundreds of little protrusions all over the game world that would cause an ability to miss or fail to work due to one glitch or another.  For example the combat roll ability does move you through space like a combat roll does, but the dodge was only effective if triggered at the right time, even if your character would have gotten out of the way of the projectile's initial path as a result of the combat rules.  Overall I liked the combat, but only after I did some looking into the cross class and spell combos and made an effort to trigger them.

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I feel like this is a chronic problem with the Dragon Age series as a whole. People raved about Dragon Age: Origins' combat, which wasn't very good but was different enough to be refreshing in an age when stop-and-go realtime battles weren't that common. The subsequent two games in the series has been doubling down on that design in odd ways, even though an explosion of tactical games in the intervening years has revealed Origins' combat to be drawn out and fiddly. It's just another example of how Bioware can understand perfectly why some people play their games but not why other people do.

 

I think DA:O's combat is just about as good as any real time combat has gotten in an RPG. Which is to say I find real time combat inherently less tactical and more frustrating than turn-based combat, but it was relatively easy to control, had tons of options, and, at least until the late game where I was simply too powerful to be challenged very much, required careful positioning and thoughtful use of abilities. I'd certainly be sympathetic to people who made a case for one or more of the Infinity Engine games being better, but I'm not sure I'm prepared to agree because Origins gave non-caster classes way more to do than the D&D games did. Neither II nor Inquisition provide the range of tools that Origins did, nor the variety of enemies, nor that level of control over relative positioning (for different reasons - II because enemies just spawn in on top of you, Inquisition because there's no usable tactical camera). Neither are they willing to let the enemies pose nearly the level of threat they did in Origins, although given the much weaker combat in the later games I feel this is just as well. I'd hate to have to deal with fights that can kill my entire party inside 30 seconds without the tools that made those encounters challenging rather than frustrating.

 

(And they definitely don't pose the same level of threat. I remember being utterly terrified of revenants in Origins - they could absolutely shred anything next to them and their mass pull spell made sure everything was next to them on a regular basis. This on Normal. They appear in Inquisition, too, which I'm playing on Hard. They didn't even register as being revenants until I'd killed a couple and gotten the journal entry. II didn't have anything that interesting as an enemy in it.)

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UT! It's not just the sidequests. Everything you have to do in that game takes a long time to do. I don't really feel like digging up my initial posts in this thread, but basically, it feels like Bioware wanted to have as much fidelity in the animations and movements of every action in the game that they willingly sacrificed the feel of the speed of the game to do so. Harvesting a plant or a mineral takes three times as long as it should because you have to stop, bend over, accept the item, then stand back up before you can move onto the next one that's like three feet away sometimes. (I eventually stopped gathering shit altogether.) Accelerating to top speed from a complete stop takes far longer than it ever has in any of their games. Adjusting my position by a small amount is sort of a pain in the ass because I kept overshooting it because of the way the start-moving animation works. It's just bleghhhhh.

 

It's way too late now, but it sounds like you weren't using the F key to gather/loot stuff. I'm like 99% certain that skips accepting the item and just drops it into your inventory. (Stuff like this is why I quickly switched to controller on The Witcher 2, since M&K controls required me to go through dialogue boxes to loot things and with the controller they just all went straight to inventory like I'd want.) It also just feels less fiddly. Don't think it fully addresses your complaint, but it'd have been something.

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I was using a controller. Also sorry you don't have to "accept" gathering nodes. But you do for looting corpses or chests or whatever. This is as opposed to DA:O where you only need be within like five feet of the object instead of right on top of it. And facing it, because heaven forbid you accidentally look the wrong way. And there's no looting animation in DA:O. It just opens the window and you can immediately take all the items if you want. It's much snappier and much much much much better.

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I was using a controller. Also sorry you don't have to "accept" gathering nodes. But you do for looting corpses or chests or whatever. This is as opposed to DA:O where you only need be within like five feet of the object instead of right on top of it. And facing it, because heaven forbid you accidentally look the wrong way. And there's no looting animation in DA:O. It just opens the window and you can immediately take all the items if you want. It's much snappier and much much much much better.

 

Yeah, totally agreed there.

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Oh also

 

(different topic, still near end-game)

What was that blue glowy lady who followed you through the eluvian after you drank from the well (or in my case after Morrigan drank from the well).

 

The spirit thing didn't show up later. At first I assumed it was maybe Mythal, since there was all that junk about being forever bound to Mythal, but then Flemeth was Mythal.

I'm pretty sure that WAS Morrigan... in my playthrough I let her drink the water, she went blue when she opened the mirror. She was still glowing when she came through herself

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Nope! 

She's the first one to run through the Eluvian. 

 
 

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I think, I and maybe already said this here, I can´t remember for sure - but the main issue with the combat cames from the fact that Bioware isn´t sure how exactly deal with that part of its fan base want one thing (more traditional approach to rpgs) and the other part want something different (focus on narrative and relationships), to be fair Bioware itself doesn´t appear very sure of how much focus on combat (and other mechanics) or narrative. Since ME 2 they have been trying around with please everybody (remember the difficult settings for me2?).

 

The combat system in Origins was ok, but much depend of how much combat you face (I am looking at you Deep Roads) and how enemies are balanced (because the last part you do face lots and lots of enemies, but their leves are much lower so you just mow them and its quite fun, at least for me, which upon this part was quite tired, this made the last push toward the end a lot better). I haven´t played DA2, only the demo,  so I can´t say anything. DAI is at a normal level  a ok system, nothing amazing but does the job and overall pace: number of enemies, overall HP ect... is good, however the tactical mode is useless, I never needed it so far.

 

Now while the Rifts are slowly getting tiresome, they are way far from Oblivion Gates (I really dislike navigate in Oblivion planes) or Skyrim Dragons (and their power to ruin your attempts to do a screenshot) in terms of how annoying it could be.

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I think the combat in DA2 was the high point. On harder difficulties I needed every level up point, and agonized over the improvements. The healing seemed very tightly tuned, where I always seemed to use all my tricks.

 

The thing I liked best, and was most disappointed that they removed was the way each character seemed to be more their own class, and the skills referenced their personalities.

 

I'm really not crazy about the combat in 3, not the least of which is very limited behavior options. They have specific stats for flanking, so why not be able to set melee DPS to "try and flank [char name]"? Also, for casters and archers, why not "stay at range"? It was driving me nuts in the dragon fight that Sera kept running to shoot this living barn from 3 feet.

 

I would prefer a greater focus on tactical combat, with an option to just turn it off for disinterested players. 

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embodiment of mythal I believe, water is supposed to be a part of her I think

Yeah but Mythal's in Flemeth. If that's the case, why not just be explicit about it?

 

I'm not saying you're wrong, but it doesn't really make sense to me.

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continued near-end-of-game stuff

Oh yeah I forgot about that. You might be right, then. I just find it weird, like why even bother doing that. Oh well.

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Related to the solas thing, a friend of mine mentioned that there is a fan theory that Sera may be Andruil, one of the ancient elven gods, but not know it.  Andruil was an old god that went mad and started hunting the others, which may explain how she revels in making trouble for others.  There are a few references sera makes that seem odd, for example saying "the veil is girly here" out of the blue, and a few party banters between sera and solas that seem to support the theory.

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Finished the game last night, I have to say I found the ending a little underwhelming to put it mildly. A good game but not a great one I think, there were (as has been mentioned before) far far to many middling side quests and fetch quests, which is a shame and detracted from area, some of which were excellent (the hissing wastes and Empris de Lion were both really good).

Combat would have been a great deal more enjoyable if it had a tactical camera that actually worked.

I'll go back and replay it to be sure, but the crippling performance issues after the second patch meant those final few stages were a complete slog at times. I think I'll wait until

They fix that (if ever) and move on to Divinity Original sin before Pillars of Eternity sees the light of day.

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Man, I just finished the Orlesian empress mission and it was long, hard, and a general pain in the butt. Not only that, but looking at some of the info about it, I spectacularly botched it. Plus 

 

Am I the only person who absolutely despises Morrigan?

 

It did not leave me excited to play again.

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how Morrigan comes across IMO depends a lot on how you have her set up in the keep

specifically, if she has a son, I think she's pretty different than if she doesn't

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I'm not going to spoiler tag my opinion. I don't like Morrigan. Done.

 

I'll tell you who I did like, Dorian. No one seemed to like him compared to (the also pretty cool guy) Iron Bull. Dorian said some straight up funny stuff that made me lol. Plus he had moustache. That instantly makes him likeable in my books. 

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Morrigan is great!

 

Iron Bull was okay.

 

Dorian was undeniably the best character in Inquisition. (Sorry, Varric, you were the best in 2, but you kind of sucked in this game.)

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how Morrigan comes across IMO depends a lot on how you have her set up in the keep

specifically, if she has a son, I think she's pretty different than if she doesn't

 

My dislike of her is completely rooted in the first game. She was nothing but sassy the entire time, but I still busted my ass getting her dang book and fighting her mother, the hardest boss in the game. Then she decides she wants to have a kid with Alistair, which would make the kid that she's planning on sacrificing to Flemith frickin heir to the throne, and there's no way I'm letting that happen and she leaves in a huff. I wish I could have stabbed her in the back on the way out.

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