Nobody expects the Dragon Age Inquisition

[Dewar]

When I felt the (delayed) hype train for Inquisition rumbling through, I thought it was about time I played DA:O, as well. Let me know how you get on with it. I'm about 10 hours in and having quite a good time so far. It's scratching a "generic fantasy" itch that I didn't know I had

 

I played DA:O earlier this year. The combat gets trying by the end and I hit a bug with the relationship system so things didn't quite work out with my intended, but I had a good time otherwise. I'd play it through on easy though, some of those areas are just unnecessarily long.

[Trip Hazard]

Aye, I got stalled on it a couple of times in the past because I didn't think the combat was much cop. Well, I mean, I'm sure it's perfectly serviceable, but I didn't have the patience to micromanage skills and that. Anyway, it's on easy this time around and things are going more smoothly.

[Korax]

Okay, setting mesh detail to high fixes the plastic hair weirdness, but it comes with an expected hit in framerate. I dug up some Frostbite 3 console commands to try to disable post-processing stuff, but they either don't do anything noticeable or don't work.

[Architecture]

Well that's a relief then. It did sound rather far-fetched. I feel a bit foolish now.

It didn't sound entirely implausible, either. Though I guess I would have expected such issues to stem from a Ubisoft product rather than an EA game.

[clyde]

Negotiating four Origin accounts between my wife and I, the xbox and pc sure did kill the hype. I'm three hours in and I just made my character. My pc origin is tied to my wife's ps3 account. My xbox account is tied to all my ea purchases on xbox, but not to the ones on pc. My wife eventually found the origin account attached to her xbox account so that we could input the stuff we could remember happening. It's a fucking mess.

Video games.

[Dewar]

Ech, PC controls suck, really bad. They make this into an action game, but then don't even allow you to strafe at all with the controller. Switching over to the keyboard there's no way to turn on permanent mouse look, so unless you want to play holding the right button down the entire time, you don't get that either. Also, you can strafe, but you turn sideways when doing it making shields mostly useless. : (

[Brannigan]

sounds like it controls like WoW/any mmo then with the mouse look thing.

[Dewar]

Right, but it's an action game, or is at least pretending to be one.

 

Oh, and no voice chat options either, so be prepared to listen to tons of people who don't know they're on a microphone.

[Bjorn]

Ech, PC controls suck, really bad. They make this into an action game, but then don't even allow you to strafe at all with the controller. Switching over to the keyboard there's no way to turn on permanent mouse look, so unless you want to play holding the right button down the entire time, you don't get that either. Also, you can strafe, but you turn sideways when doing it making shields mostly useless. : (

 

Yeah, movement is not what you expect it to be.  Locking onto enemies does seem to give you the Dark Souls style circle strafing.  But locking on seemed a bit wonky, camera zooms way in and you can switch targets quickly and unexpectedly.  Though that might just take a bit of getting used to it.  Keyboard controls are TOTAL FUCKING BALLS.  I looked like a drunk Dwarf on Disco Night who mistook his shield for dance partner. 

 

I took the Dwarf fellow up to level 7 and the Keeper up to Level 5.  Only had one successful run through Zone 5, and that's cause some lord was carrying us babies through it.  His score at the end was more than double second place.  The other runs all ended, and ended quick, in Zones 3 or 4.  Man, once one person goes down, things go belly up fast.

 

I'm really not sure what I think of it so far.  I haven't spent any skill points so far, because I have no clue how to build these characters.  Money seems a lot more generous than credits were in ME3.  The handful of matches I played let me buy one large chest and 3 small chests. 

[Gwardinen]

Yeah, the keyboard controls are shockingly bad. I was surprised they weren't mentioned more in the PC reviews. In a particularly strange turn of events, using the tactical camera is actually harder using mouse & keyboard than it is with the gamepad. I had initially assumed that the action controls would be worse, but when zoomed out and issuing orders the mouse would be tops. Nope.

 

I have converted entirely to using the gamepad for it now, though it is somewhat frustrating in that you need to change the control scheme to gamepad at the main menu and then it completely disables the mouse and keyboard from that point on. You cannot switch in game, and can't even open up the console to do things like show FPS or enable triple buffering (which for some reason is not in the display options despite this game having quite prominent screen tearing).

 

WEIRD CHOICES.

 

A further note for anyone playing on PC: cutscenes are locked to 30fps, but this can be overridden by adding the following to the command line: -GameTime.MaxSimFps 60 -GameTime.ForceSimRate 60+

Warning: While this does work if you put it in the Origin command line options, it will desync multiplayer matches, so I recommend having a separate shortcut with these parameters to use for singleplayer only.

[eot]

Aye, I got stalled on it a couple of times in the past because I didn't think the combat was much cop. Well, I mean, I'm sure it's perfectly serviceable, but I didn't have the patience to micromanage skills and that. Anyway, it's on easy this time around and things are going more smoothly.

That's what I did too. On easy you won't get hung up on the combat, but instead it's a huge part of the game you don't particularly enjoy. I think if I replay it I'll try to bump up the difficulty and try to actually get into the mechanics.

[CollegeBaby]

Another day, another garbage PC port. Well looks like I'll be skipping this for a while. Too bad, it sounded decent.

[Bjorn]

You cannot switch in game, and can't even open up the console to do things like show FPS or enable triple buffering (which for some reason is not in the display options despite this game having quite prominent screen tearing).

This is the weirdest. You also can't plug a controller in after you've started the game (at least I don't think you can). When I did, the option to switch from K/M to Gamepad never unlocked. I had to restart the game to get it to recognize my controller. What game can't just auto-detect what controller you are using? Like this is a thing low budget indies have been doing for a few years now, and Bioware can't figure it out?

Although, in 2012, ME3 launched on PC with absolutely no controller support at all. So this is kind of a baby step improvement?

[clyde]

I am having a very hard time with the tactical-mode which is the way I played DA:o and DA2. In order to switch between the camera goes black which is disorientating. I also have a really hard time keeping a bird's eye view and just selecting what I want everyone to do. Maybe it's possible to play the old way and I just have to figure out how, but this is really not enjoyable currently. I don't remember having to advance time or struggle with the camera in the old games and if I have to play this way I mighy have to play it as an action game which would remove half of what I love about the series. Maybe I just haven't found the right settings or something.

[CollegeBaby]

What I've heard of the tactical camera is that is a pretty weak add-on. Nice that it's there, but totally insubstantial. Nowhere near comprehensive enough to play it like a real-time-with-pause RPG. A token gesture to Origins fans that just borders on being insulting more than anything.

[clyde]

I'm thinking about loading up DA:Origins or DA2 to understand what's missing. Maybe I'm just not used to the pacing yet. I think I need to go into the settings and tell everyone to stop using their abilities before I tell them to (and stuff like that).

If I can't play it like the older games, then I want to figure it out fast (but be sure about it). I can deal with finding out that this is a way different game than the other two. I just need to go through the process of finding out that my expectations are way off and that there is a new way to enjoy the combat.

[Griddlelol]

I am having a very hard time with the tactical-mode which is the way I played DA:o and DA2. In order to switch between the camera goes black which is disorientating. I also have a really hard time keeping a bird's eye view and just selecting what I want everyone to do. Maybe it's possible to play the old way and I just have to figure out how, but this is really not enjoyable currently. I don't remember having to advance time or struggle with the camera in the old games and if I have to play this way I mighy have to play it as an action game which would remove half of what I love about the series.

 

 

Are you playing on PC? On PS4 there is no fade-to-black, it just instantly goes to a birds-eye view, which you can then move to a 3rd person, behind the back view by waggling around on the analogue stick.

 

What I've heard of the tactical camera is that is a pretty weak add-on. Nice that it's there, but totally insubstantial. Nowhere near comprehensive enough to play it like a real-time-with-pause RPG. A token gesture to Origins fans that just borders on being insulting more than anything.

 

Personally, I think that reaction is a little bit of whining, mixed with a valid criticism. It's not as good as origins, but it's decent. With easy battles I play like an action game, maybe throwing out an order with the tactical cam before letting the combat flow. In tough fights I spend the whole time in tactical, advancing time and giving orders/moving people out of the way of things.

 

Example: in the first boss fight, he has a pretty powerful frontal cone AoE attack. I spent the whole time in tactical cam to make sure my mage and ranged rogue were standing at a decent distance, whilst also making sure my 2-handed warrior was smacking the boss in the backside. Felt competent, if not a little bit slow.  

[Dewar]

I figured out why I'm so annoyed with the controls in multiplayer when my friends don't care. It only really matters for the shield bearers, since their facing matters for shield blocks and damage reductions. If you're a mage or an archer, the controls work just fine. 

 

Edit: Also, I can't figure out how the targeting works with the controller.

[clyde]

I wonder if anyone has made a guide that tells you all the settings to change if you want to play it in tactical-mode like in DA:o.

@Griddlelol

I'm playing on an xbox 360 and this may be one of the technical compromise that I feared.

If I could figure out what to ask you then maybe you could tell me what I'm doing wrong. Right now I'm just going to go through the menu and turn off all the AI and play a bit longer in hopes that I'll get used to it.

[CollegeBaby]

Yeah I would expect it's designed to fit into an action game and it's there if you need to get a better handle on the action when it gets overwhelming, which is actually fine to me. It's something I really wish was in something like Dragon's Dogma which didn't let you directly control your party members or even give them complex orders which got really frustrating if you needed your mage to cast a damn fire spell on an enemy that was only weak to fire... but they just stood around like a zombie. Does Inquisition have friendly-fire on AoE spells and backstab zones behind enemies? That's the sort of thing a pause mode is really handy for.

[Griddlelol]

I've been playing on normal, and it fits action game well, but I fear if I turned up the difficulty I'd have trouble without issuing commands individually.

 

The problem I find with the action cam is that it's so slow to issue commands. It doesn't let you queue things up other than move->use ability. I've not played around with the "tactics" for each individual, which I guess will be most useful for mages (I hate it when the mage blows their load on a single enemy when there are 3 guys stacked up somewhere else). 

Didn't check for an "if this, then that" part for setting up synergies, but I doubt it's there; it'd be too useful (and complicated).

[CollegeBaby]

Yeah the Giant Bomb review says there is no conditional AI programming to the extent of if-then-else statements. Not surprised, but I tended to take control of that myself anyway.

[clyde]

Does Inquisition have friendly-fire on AoE spells and backstab zones behind enemies? That's the sort of thing a pause mode is really handy for.

I know you can turn friendly-fire on.

---

I'm sorry y'all, but if you are considering buying this for the XBox 360 and you want to play in tactical-mode, you are probably not going to have a good time.

I'll try to put up a vine or something about what this looks like, but basically when you advance time the screen goes black and time progresses. So you are taking damage and shit and the camera changes perspective and it's just broken.

I'm pretty sure the way it used to work was that I would press the left bumper, issue a command (it was paused while I held it down) and then I would just switch to all the members of my party and issue commands, let go of te left-bumper and watch all my commands execute. The tactical-mode here requires you to actively advance time and it just doesn't flow at all. I'm going to have to play it like God of War or something.

[Gwardinen]

I know you can turn friendly-fire on.

 

Yeah, it's a menu option. There are no other ramifications to this setting, so it's purely a personal preference thing.

[Gwardinen]

Oh this is neat, should help at least a little:

 

Tactical view force-centering when switching party members is a bug and will be addressed in the next patch.