Summary [9.5 out of 10]

The answer to my RPG prayers, Dragon Age Inquisition proves to be exactly what I was hoping for: A complete experience that features strong characters, interactions, story and graphics this game gets the series back on track. Telling the story of a new character thrust in a world of political intrigue, Inquisition pays off set ups from previous games while blazing a new trail. The characters are great, the combat feels right, the immersion is there and the world is teeming with opportunity. Some glitches tarnish an otherwise perfect experience but not enough to take away just how good this game is.

What It’s Like

Dragon Age Origins/Dragon Age II: While this should seem like a no-brainer, I mention it because DAI is pretty much the hybrid of the first and second games in the series I was hoping for. In Origins, I loved the story, characters, relationships, romances and moral ambiguity. In the second game I loved the graphics and combat but felt that a lot of the things that made me love the first were gone. What I was hoping for with Inquisition was a mixture of the strong story-telling, character development, moral ambiguity, choice and  wealth of content with strong combat and beautiful graphics. That is pretty much exactly what Inquisition delivers. This game feels like a best of both worlds situation and further solidifies my assertion that DAII should have been a side-story instead of a numbered sequel.

Diablo III: I cannot speak for PC but as far as consoles are concerned, the combat here is that of an action RPG with mapped powers to face buttons and one to one combat. Battles felt a lot like Diablo III if Diablo III had party management thrown in. The option is there to go to a strategy mode if people are looking for more tactical combat but the default combat reminds me of Diablo.

The Great

Depth: There is just a lot here. If you just stick to the critical path and only do enough side quests to unlock the story missions, you are probably not going to notice this as much but below the surface level there is just a ton going on in this game and a lot to delve into.  While it is not as open as something like Skyrim there is still an enormous amount to do, see and become involved with in this game. From the story to the side-quests, companion quests, codices, war table missions, collections, crafting, decorating, gardening to pursuing relationships there is an enormous amount of depth to the game and while some of these things are minor or don’t feel impactful there is often an impact on the larger world and it all goes toward making things feel alive and important. It is hard to get too wrapped up in the drama of it all if you don’t care about the people around you but DAI gives you all you need to care. From the bigger scale conflicts to even the small moments with people you meet in the wilderness there is a ton of texture here that makes it feel like you can just keep digging and digging. It is pretty easy to lose yourself in the content while playing. I had many play sessions in which I did very little to move the story forward and instead focused on and enjoyed smaller things in the game. This is a place in which it is pretty fun to just hang out and there is a ton to do while you are there.

 

Scope: This is connected to depth but it speaks more to the over all feel of things. In contrast to the more insular DAII, DAI is a vast and sweeping game makes you feel like you are part of something very big. Instead of just being limited to one city or one kingdom, DAI spans both Ferelden and Orlais and each area you go into is huge and offers up unique environments and challenges. When you go from muggy swamps to snow covered mountains to blistering deserts and a lot of sorts of places in-between it is hard not to feel like this is a vast world you are exploring and not just a small specific patch of land where some things are going on.

Characters: A good mix of returning characters and new ones, Dragon Age Inquisition packs in a lot of company for the player character in the form of questing companions, advisors, agents and just general NPCs. Bioware excels at giving you characters that you will care about and want to spend time with and DAI is no exception. It can be weird to play a new character and interact with old friends like you don’t know them but that is the nature of the beast when you have a different player-character each time. The personalities are varied and unique and in general there were very few I didn’t like or get along with. The party banter when out in the field is always entertaining and often very funny and different configurations of party members gives you different banter results. I liked these characters so much I was often bummed that I couldn’t take them all out with me and I would change up every so often just to experience them all. None of the characters here feel small or one dimensional but rather feel full and fleshed out which makes them easy to connect with and that, in turn, makes the game’s emotional turns that much more impactful. There were some hard decisions here and they felt that way. If I didn’t give a shit about the people around me it would fall flat but as it is I was very moved quite often and that is not something that happens in a lot of games. I could name maybe four of them and three were made by Bioware.

 

Story: When I first heard about the plot for Inquisition it sounded a lot like a rehash of Oblivion and I wasn’t really looking forward to running around the world closing up holes to another dimension but in practice things are quite a bit different and what we have here is a story which is on the surface very much the ‘chosen one tries to stop the Big Bad because he/she is the only one who can’ but the more you get into it the more layers you peel back and find that it is a deep journey for a group of people who stand for something and want to try to fix the broken things in the world. As it turns out there are a lot of things broken. The villain of the game is out for domination and destruction but the institutions of Thedas are all on the brink of collapse themselves. That makes for a nuanced and deep story as it gets into why they are who they are and do what they do while allowing the character to get into the nitty gritty of right and wrong and how often times things are not so cut and dry. Even the player-character him or herself isn’t entirely sure why he or she is the hero in the first place and sorting through all of the alliances, betrayals, beliefs and motivations is much less binary than  simply good and evil. Everyone has a point of view and if you are going to navigate the stormy waters here you have to try to understand where they are coming from. Often people look at story as simply ‘what happened.’ The important things to look at in DAI is ‘how and why it happened.’ There is a lot of depth and nuance to this story and to simply dismiss it as a standard fantasy plot would be a mistake. When even the player’s status as the chosen one is rightfully in  question, you can tell there is more to this than going through the motions.

Game play: In a general sense Inquisition is very much a standard RPG in terms of the structure and quests and how you go about them but I found, and of course your mileage may vary, that the quests were interesting and fun. The different mechanics on how to do everything has some variety as well as adding a horse into the mix changes up how you do things and the real rewards from crafting make resource gathering feel like much less of a chore. Even though no molds are really broken in the game play department but the fact that I had fun and would lose myself in the experience speaks volumes toward the notion that the game play is very solid and very transparent. I didn’t feel like I was just grinding when I was doing things and whether that is genuine or an illusion doesn’t really matter because the net result is that is  I had fun doing things I have done before without really thinking about how often.

 

Graphics: The graphics in this game are gorgeous with great looking environments and character models as well as an excellent art design. I really hated how DAO looked and DAII looked really good albeit with a really stylized look that didn’t quite sit right. DAI looks exactly how I feel it should with a ton of visual variety, visual effects and extremely high fidelity. There isn’t much else to say here aside from how gorgeous and lush environments  look with a high level of detail. Easily the best looking game in the series.

Companion Management: A hallmark of Bioware games, companion management is very important and here they have done something a bit different to streamline the experience a bit and make it feel a little more organic. The dialogue wheel returns and with it the somewhat straightforward ‘nice’ ‘neutral’ and ‘dick’ options and it still lets you know if your companions approve or disapprove of your words or actions but what has changed is that there is no longer any kind of approval meter with the companions to let you know where you stand. You have to take cues from dialogue and behavior and that makes the interactions feel more natural and it is easier to interact with them when you aren’t looking at a hard representation of how they feel. There are some cues, like their character card on the companion selection screen changes depending on how they feel about you and things that have happened in the game. This doesn’t always have to do with you but it can be used as a sign post to guide how things are going. I really love this set up because it makes me feel more at ease with my interactions and allows me to focus on what I think is right as opposed to how high Varric’s approval bar is. There are plenty of things that remind you that you are playing a game here but thankfully managing companions isn’t really one of them.

Replay/Length: I mentioned this above but holy crap is this game large. I am not entirely sure how long my first playthrough was because the clock apparently keeps running on the One if you just quit and resume but I played for more than two weeks solid with some robust play sessions before going ahead and finishing up. Because it is semi open world, you can do things when you want and if you want to tinker around for several hours before moving on you can. It seems like typical play times I have read about are around 80 to 100 hours but you can take a lot more time than that if you want. With the choice in gender, race and class available with specializations in each there are a lot of reasons to go back through the game multiple times. Each class has two play styles as well so even if you were a rogue the first play through you can be a rogue the second time again and have an entirely different combat experience. And all that is just the single player without even getting into multiplayer options.

Diversity: This has been controversial amongst some players and the fact that it is controversial is all the proof we really need that it is a thing we need. The way the game handles sexuality, gender identity and race is pretty awesome and I was very, very happy to see the steps taken here to promote diversity. There are people who will reflexively accuse Bioware of pursuing some agenda and forcing diversity on players but it really doesn’t. The game offers options and representations of a wide variety of people and anyone can play this game and see themselves. That is amazing and it strikes at the heart of a big problem that gaming has had for a long time. That it doesn’t do it forcefully makes it that much better because you don’t have anything really shoved in your face but it is there if you want it. I really don’t want to give details away but there was one interaction regarding a transgendered character that I thought was awesome and I was very proud of Bioware for taking that line. This may be a pain point for some players and if it is I think this is a great opportunity for them to take a really hard look at why.

The Good

Combat: A lot of the combat issues here will come down to preference. If you are into the action RPG thing then you will be very happy with combat. You can switch back and forth between characters so you can directly control them or you can just stick with your character. You can also switch to the top down isometric view that allows you to tactical control in which you can assign targets and actions for your characters and then watch them do it. I did not play with the tactical view much as I prefer more direct control but the tactical mode seemed to work just fine for me whenever I tried it.  All that being said, there is a certain repetition to the combat that you can’t help but feel if you have ever played any kind of an action RPG before. It works very well and is certainly nothing like the buggy mess that DAO offered but it is not going to set the world on fire with innovation either.

Healing: Healing is kind of interesting here because there aren’t really direct healing spells available and the number of potions you have with which to heal is limited. At first I thought this would be irritating but honestly I ended up liking it because it offered a new element of tactics and strategy for combat. You really have to watch what you are doing and pay attention or you will find yourself in hot water. It also makes for some very tense boss fights in which you can’t just spam health at characters when you get in a jam. Sure, occasionally this leads to full party wipes but generally it made me think harder about what I was doing and how I was doing it. I got through some fights by the skin of my teeth and the satisfaction for doing so was increased 100 fold.

Difficulty: The difficulty can be on a sliding scale a bit as there are missions and zones that are level gated meaning you have no business being there under a certain level and your quick and embarrassing death will follow if you are unprepared but in general I found the difficulty to be just right. You have four to choose from so if you just want to buzz through without worrying too much about combat then there is casual and if you are a masochist and like to be punished then Nightmare is there for you as well. The standard normal setting is a good place to start as it gives you just the right amount of challenge to really dig in and learn the ropes. This is a welcome change from games that try to force you unto replaying through difficulty. I will replay because I want to and not because I think I have to and that is a nice feeling.

Continuity With Previous Games: I really can’t get too specific here because I don’t want to spoil anything but there is a ton of continuity with the previous two games and if you played them you will have a lot to appreciate in this one. When I picked this up for the Xbox One I was initially worried about my progress from past games given that I played them on the Xbox 360 and I wasn’t sure how transfer would be managed. As it turns out it was no big deal as you can go to the Dragon Age Keep website where you can import your world states from previous games. This does not transfer saves but rather reads achievement markers to recognize your decisions on your previous play through. You can tweak it here and there if you want as sometimes the details get muddled and then you can upload the completed world state into your game. It was a fairly simple process and I was able to play in the world that I made with my first two DA characters. This was pretty sweet and it was awesome to be able to continue in that world based on my choices.

Crafting: I usually hate crafting in RPGs. I usually do it to level or to get rid of stuff but I rarely ever craft anything in games that I then use or is of higher quality than what I can find while looting. This was not the case in DAI. I crafted a ton and the options available for enchanting and modifying allows you to craft gear that not only has higher stats than pre-made gear but can also be customized to the player’s needs and comfort. This helps me play the way I want to and gives me more agency in my character’s adventure and on top of it I had a lot of fun. Particularly naming the new pieces. I had way more fun doing that than I probably should have.

The Bad

Glitches: The thing about glitches in game reviews is that I can report only what I have experienced and while I have heard of a lot of issues, I have only experienced a few. These range from mildly annoying to losing a half an hour worth of game play. The primary issues I have run into are a delay in conversation responses and a clipping glitch that cost me a bunch of time. The conversation glitch is not a huge issue and basically just makes you wait for a response in which it looks kind of like the screen has locked but if you wait a minute the conversation will continue. This can be annoying but ultimately it isn’t that big of a deal. The other had a companion clip through the floor and start falling endlessly down a hole. That wouldn’t have been so bad but when I wasn’t sure where he was I switched control to him and then got caught in a plummet loop which continually auto save. The only thing I could do was reboot a previous save which sadly was from 20 minutes earlier. As of the time of this writing there has been no patch but I am sure there will be and hopefully these issues will smooth out.

The Ugly

Hats and Helmets: This was an issue in Origins and it is a problem here too. Hats and helmets, by and large, in Thedas look completely ridiculous. The ones from Orlais should be expected to look silly but there are more than a few standard issue pieces of headwear that look god awful. Come on guys, lets deal with this hat issue once and for all, yeah?

Conclusion [9.5 out of 10]

Dragon Age Inquisition is the game I have been waiting for on my new gen system. With over 100 hours of game play and a ton of variety and depth DAI delivers exactly what I was hoping for. It is a fun, exciting, engaging and emotional experience that I won’t soon forget because I won’t soon leave. Sure, some of my personal relationships took a hit during my first play through but that is okay because this is pretty much worth it. Hands down my favorite new gen experience, DAI delivers in all the right ways and in some I didn’t expect. If action RPGs aren’t your thing you might look elsewhere but if you are looking for a AAA RPG with great production values and a terrific story then you need look no farther than Dragon Age Inquisition.