I’ve never played a Dragon Age game in my life. That hasn’t prevented me from getting sucked into all of the action, drama and romance of Dragon Age: Inquisition, the latest entry into the franchise.
Since I never played before, I caught up on the events of the first two games at the Dragon Age Keep. I’m please to say that BioWare presents a character creator as a grand entrance to an RPG with so many options. There’s an impressive amount of control over almost every feature of my characters face and body, and I get to choose a voice. You can really see some of the up close detail that went into the game during character creation. You also choose your class; I knew I wanted to play a rogue, and they have the option of starting with dual wield daggers or a bow. I went with a bow.
Inquisition starts off with a bang — literally. Almost everyone is killed when a rift appears, sending green, fiery rocks hurling through the skies and demons pouring out. Your character’s hand glows green every so often, so naturally, people jump to conclusions and assume you’re to blame for the rift. It turns out that you can close fade rifts, so that’s what you set out to do. Close the many fade rifts in the game, and using the Inquisition as a means to an end. And your decisions as head of the Inquisition are made at the war table. The war table is a map of southern Thedas, and it’s how you’ll apply the power of the Inquisition. Through operations and missions, you’ll unlock new areas and operations. All operations have a power cost; power is obtained by doing activities you’ll probably be doing when running around an area — closing Fade rifts, capturing keeps, defeating dragons, setting up camps, finding landmarks and more. It’s a really great system, and I feel like I’m making big decisions that could impact my success. That’s because I am though. You’ll divide your power between operations and critical story quests, and it’s the story quests that will move you along the main quest line. Those typically cost 20 to 40 power, so you’ll have to decide if you want to save up and do those, or if you want to unlock more areas. I will say, I don’t like that if you view an operation, it blends in with the ones already completed, as the exclamation point for new doesn’t stay overhead.
It’s a little overwhelming at home much is on the map for me to do and find. You can sort of just run in any direction and come across tons of landmarks and points of interest that will help you improve. Sometimes I wasn’t even seeking things to do; I was just exploring, finding cool stuff and enemies, and stumbling upon new tasks. There’s a lot to do and a lot of places to do it in. Eventually, I just wanted to finish the story, so I stopped worrying about questing in areas I unlocked through operations. Also, I got tired of playing the game “how am I going to get up that mountain to get that shard?” Anytime I think I can jump on something, I either slide down or bounce off of an invisible wall.
When it comes to combat, what started off as a mixed bag slowly grew into a system I enjoyed immensely. Still, there are some things that I never used, such as the tactical camera. I feel like it breaks up combat to offer artificial control over characters. It gives you a top-down view of the action while pausing the game so you can issue orders to your party — moving, attacking, defending. But the only thing I like using it for is healing. After you give them orders, you can return to the action or stay in the tactical camera while fast-forwarding to watch your orders be followed, then issue new ones. It just slows everything down, doesn’t feel intuitive, and it isn’t fun.
The regular combat is in third-person, and you’ll aim with the right stick while holding the right trigger will attack. Abilities and attacks are mapped to face buttons and bumpers. There’s a four trees for every class (to start) with multiple abilities and upgrades to those, so you’ll have to make choices in your build. I am going for bow damage with poison upgrades. So while my auto attacks don’t hit hard, the poison ticks and abilities do. I’m finding that positioning is everything in combat, so distance and height really matter. I also like that I can switch between the characters in my party by pressing up or down on the d-pad. It’s good if I want to play as another character for a while, or if I see their health is low and they need to heal. And there’s also reasons to switch, like using a certain party member to energize debris to make bridges.
Another thing that makes combat so much fun is that I get to see those blue and purple weapons in action. There are some truly remarkable designs for weapons and armor, and unique abilities to boot. I personally enjoyed the boy that would cause corpses to explode, so enemies near it were getting poison damage from a passive of mine, poison damage again from an active ability, and the explosion would cause fire damage. The crafting system, though I never went too in-depth with it because I’m not a big crafter, is also robust. You’ll need schematics or recipes of course, but there’s lots of ways to customize the armor/weapons your making and the upgrades in them.
The portrayal of Inquisition’s grand scope is helped by the quality of the environment. While traveling and exploring, you’ll find some really cool and unique areas. And there’s a ton of variety to the different areas, from harsh desert and snowy mountains, to densely fogged swamps and northern coasts. While the graphics are good for the most part, I do notice a lack of polish — especially during cutscenes. First, when I see an enemy in the distance, it shouldn’t be commonplace to see that enemy walk a few steps, disappear and reappear a few steps further. In cutscenes, there have been some framerate issues with a couple of hiccups and slow-downs. And during dialogue, there’s a very noticeable lack of smoothness to the character models, as if their outlines are very pixilated and jagged. It’s a little off putting. Though I have noticed that there’s less of these issues on the PlayStation 4. I’ve also had some really odd pausing problem. After I romanced someone, and often during dialogue scene, the game would just pause on someone’s response and I wouldn’t be able to skip it. The pauses usually lasted 30 seconds. I also noticed that during cutscenes, characters would walk right through environmental pieces or buildings. Then there’s the issue I had that every time I tried to enter a quest zone the game would crash and send me to the Xbox Home screen. That happened about five times before it finally worked.
As you progress in the story, it opens up the gameplay even more. You’ll unlock new classes for characters, upgrade your fortress and make decisions that will bolster or hurt the Inquisition. Then there’s the other decisions you’ll have to make, like who you’ll send on a suicide mission, who you’ll side with in fights, and when you’re judging prisoners, do you let them rot in jail or chop off their head? The story itself has some powerful moments, and it had a few twists in it that I didn’t expect. While a veteran of the series might understand more of the story’s intricacies, I can respect what’s happening with a solid grasp of past events.
Then there’s the multiplayer, which is kind of like the multiplayer that can be found in Mass Effect 3. Kind of. In groups of four, your party will take on one of three levels with five zones each. Each zone gets more difficult until it results in a boss fight. Players level up the specific class they start with — one of three — until they have enough gear and are high enough level to go up a difficulty. Every match you’re rewarded with loot, gold and experience, all of which is shared by the team. You’ll unlock new classes by crafting the armor needed for them, so you’ll have to salvage weapons and gear that you get and don’t intend on using. From salvaging a few items, I can tell you that it’ll take quite a while to unlock all the classes and then level them up, AND then gear them. At the time of this review, I haven’t beaten a match yet, and that’s with about 11 runs under my belt. It’s really difficult and unforgiving and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
There are some differences with multiplayer and the single-player campaign. For one, there’s no search in multiplayer; it’s replaced by sprint. You also can only equip four skills, so you’ll have to decide how you want to build and what you’re going for that run. There’s no switching weapons, skills or armor once you’re in the match, so figure it out beforehand. You also only get two health pots, and you can only be revived twice. I really love the multiplayer. I just hope they release more areas to fight in, and I can’t wait to see if the weapons and armor are just as cool as the campaign. Also, I had no lag, so that’s awesome. But our Editor-in-Chief did have some weird problems, like not being able to rotate the camera. That wasn’t fun and didn’t make the run any easier.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is a huge game. And I’m not even sure the word ‘huge’ does it justice. There’s so many places to go and so much to do that it’s a bit overwhelming, but also refreshing that I can choose what to do, where to do it, and when. At 90+ hours in, I still haven’t killed a dragon — I’ve tried, though, and gotten my ass beat. So with trying to kill the dragons and being a completionist, I should get around 110+ hours out of the game. That’s insane!. While I’ve had some graphical hiccups, think the Tactical camera is a waste, and had an odd crashing problem, the game is so grand that I kind of give it a pass. Inquisition is just flat out awesome — not the most eloquent phrase to use in a review, but it’s true.
Reviewed with a provided Xbox One review copy and purchased PS4 copy.
