The Agony and the Ecstacy of Dragon Age Inquisition

    The year is 2013. I had up to that point in my life never considered myself an avid video gamer, sure I would buy the yearly installments of FIFA like a good little boy and sprinkle in a WWE game or something but I was never the type to actively invested in a video game. That all changed when I happened upon my crush playing Dragon Age 2, so I had the brilliant idea of learning everything I could about this game in a juvenile way to impress her. So I started from scratch playing Dragon Age: Origins, and then you could say that was the beginning of my life. I played it, and devoured it like a starving man wanting food, moved on to Dragon Age 2 was a bit let down but that was ok because the new game was right around the corner in just.... a year. I distinctly remember googling "how many days till Nov 18 2014?" about 40 or 50 times, it wasn't an exaggeration to say this game mattered more to me than life itself. When I finally got my hands on the game (deluxe edition), to say my heart was broken would be half the story, this game so disenchanted me I would not touch it again for another 7 years. 

    In hindsight perhaps no game could have sated the expectations I had for Dragon Age Inquisition, and perhaps it was a shame that the game would often be paired with the once in a generation Witcher 3 which outshone it in every single way. But there were certain creative choices which I felt really betrayed the series and influenced it in a negative way. One cannot talk about DA:I without talking about the particular game that influenced it beyond all else and that was the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Skyrim had started a craze that fundamentally changed the RPG genre in video games forever, building on its predecessor Oblivion, it had produced a smash hit that still 11 years later never seems to get old. So Bioware had the idea to make Dragon Age as much Skyrim as elvenly possible. This was a cardinal sin in my book, I had played Skyrim when it first came out and I thought "people actually enjoy this?" the quests were boring, the main story which I had naively assumed to be the main point of the damn game was extremely trite and tedious and to top it all off the game gave me a horrid case of motion sickness that rendered me unable to play for more than an hour at a time. Dragon Age Origins for me although that probably wasn't it's intention was the anti-Skyrim with strong focus placed on its story and characters rather than expansive environments and an open world. It should be no surprise then that when Bioware attempted to replicate Skyrim it ended up with all of its flaws and none of its charm, endless fetch quests, large forgettable environments filled with nothing. Endless amounts of texts from Codex's that you tell yourself you're gonna read later but never do. Ultimately Bioware was attempting to be a Bethesda clone while forgetting everything that they specialized in that made the series great in the first place. 

                                                                        Characters

    The party members for DAI were a moderate improvement from Dragon Age 2 but that really isn't saying much, and a far cry from the iconic pack in Origins. We have from what I can remember Sera the angsty lesbian, Cole the forgettable, Vivienne the posh prick, Solas the bald, Iron Bull the large retcon, Blackwall who's only purpose seems to be ticking the boxes for a daddy fetish, and Dorian Gay. And lastly, we have of course Cassandra who has the personality of a tough imported block of wood and Varric Tethras who is perfect. In all seriousness though, several of the characters were hit or miss for me with standouts amongst the cast including Varric, Blackwall and Solas. 

    The game also doesn't do much for those non-companion members of the Inquisition with Scout Harding seemingly having more interaction with the player than Leliana, one of the more interesting characters from the series. Leliana, Cullen, and Josephine the Inquisitor's advisor trio are pretty lackluster with Cullen having the most standout story but it seems like it could've been the story of any templar trying to get away from lyrium addiction. 

     Few memorable characters populate the world of Thedas in Dragon Age Inquisition with a struggle to remember even one NPC that mattered in any substantial way that wasn't associated with the Inquisition, the brief glimpse of the Divine perhaps? While I am a fan of the occasional callback to previous iterations of a series there were way too many in Inquisition that were done poorly to great disservice to their characters among these were Leliana who just as easily could have been replaced with a new character who has some agency rather than the mopey boor she turned out to be. Morrigan served little purpose other than to provide some exposition on the Illuvian and have a creepy child somewhere but other than that I had the constant thought of "Why is she even here?" her presence in the game could have been a short cameo like Alistair to more narrative effect. The addition of Hawke was a bit of an intriguing surprise as the only former main character to make an actual appearance in a sequel and for what it was, it wasn't bad.  

                                                                        Romance

    As a heterosexual male, and someone who exclusively plays heterosexual male characters, Inquisition didn't do much to improve this department in the game. Perhaps because the romances are a bit too vanilla by nature, you have Cassandra and Josephine that's about it, not even the Wardens potential sloppy seconds in Leliana. So many opportunities went amiss with this one in my opinion, although they did do something positive in that they stopped making all the potential romances bisexual like they did in II which I felt was just a disservice to everyone. How about making the Inquisitor and Empress Celene lovers to seal their alliance which would certainly be in character and add an extra flavor to that subplot. Or how about not limiting romance to party members or members of your camp in general? The Inquisitor is also pretty chaste which might be appropriate for someone associated with the Chantry but it still strikes me as odd that he gets no chance to have a bit of fun outside the established romances in the game. 

                                                                           Story

    Inquisition has an ambitious story with many highlights such as the destruction of Haven which I thought added to the sense of struggle and the true rise to power of the Inquisition. But one cannot understate how asymmetric the conflict between Corypheus and the player feels, compare that to the ever looming threat of the blight and the Archdemon in Origins. Corypheus felt like well, an afterthought the attempt to balance the threat of Corypheus with the ongoing Mage-Templar conflict that was set up in Dragon Age 2 as well as an Orlesian Civil War seemed to do a disservice to all 3. 

    There was a sense of a large reduction in freedom in Dragon Age Inquisition, yes you could make your choices but it seemed that the game really pushed you in one direction the entire time. Compare that to Origins where you could be a huge psychopath that can kill every single one of your companions and do some extremely shady shit like abandon Redcliffe or poison the urn of sacred ashes or have a foursome in a tavern. The story itself wasn't too bad bar suffering from a poor villain and a bit of a mess of a finale with that elven business but it all felt very much like a rehash of Origins' "the world is ending so you must take command of this ancient organization to defeat this evil". 

                                                                        Gameplay

    This is ultimately where Inquisition most glaringly falls short, it's attempts to integrate a Skyrim-esque formula of an open world with many side quests in addition to the main story severely damaged the level structure of the game. The introductory level of the Hinterlands wears the player out with tons of meaningless side quests that serve to increase your "influence" on the region as reflected by the war table missions. Don't even get me started on what a terrible idea the War Table was with its infuriating integration of real time mechanics artificially slowing down your progression of the game. The worst part about it though was it's actual cool descriptions of things the Inquisition was doing but that you weren't. Instead of 20 fetch quests for useless memorabilia or grinding pelts or whatever other nonsense the game wanted you to do that seemingly has no other effect than increasing you EXP, lets have one or two of those actual awesome sounding missions like establishing relations with the Dalish or the King of Ferelden etc., in RPGs quality will always be greatly superior to quantity. The obsession over the amount of playtime that goes that went into the various press releases prior to the game is also disheartening and speaks to the perceived wants of the players with emphasis on the "40-50 hours of playtime" perhaps this was to allay fears of a repeat of Dragon Age 2 but the game clearly prioritizes a multitude of meaningless and forgettable quests to pad game time.  

    The game struggles with a sense of momentum that makes the mid and end game feel disjointed and rushed. There is little to no impetus to explore some of the later areas of the game such as the Emerald Graves and Emprise Du Lion, instead of making those pointless areas why not give some love to Val Royeaux which was an extremely sore disappointment, the area was what? about a third of Denerim in Origins when supposedly it's supposed to be on of the biggest if not the biggest city in Thedas. 

                                                                             Conclusion

    Overall, with years of hindsight and with the addition of some much needed DLC, Inquisition turned out good if you go into it with 0 expectations, but it is still a step back for the series when it needed a standout. I don't have much hope for the fourth installment with its rumored extremely troubled development cycle, but at this point with such fondness for the series any Dragon Age is better than no Dragon Age. I will say that the decision to make the game a direct sequel to Dragon Age Inquisition in terms of plot points is something that I think should have been avoided. The glaring problem of accommodating the multitude of player choices in every sequel is getting exponentially harder, as well as accentuating a problem ever since Dragon Age Awakening of all character choices being fully accepted as valid when you can "kill Oghren" yet he makes his comeback in the DLC. A game in Tevinter that would have been fully removed with the goings on of southern Thedas would have left a potential player with a lot of breathing space to fully impact the world. 

                                                                              Side Notes 

    The decision to make the protagonist fully voiced again was regrettable, it takes away from the immersion of the experience this isn't an established character like Geralt in the Witcher III this is supposed to be a self insert. The choice to be fully voiced seemingly comes at the expense of more dialogue options, gone are the days of 5 to 6 options in dialogue we are stuck with "good guy" "sarcastic" and "angry" as the only three personalities your player character can have. 

    Bioware really took the wrong lessons from the criticism of Dragon Age II and I think the critics share a bit of the blame by not adequately accounting for what was apparently an extremely rushed development cycle. The concept of the story taking place solely in Kirkwall and its outskirts over a period of 10 years was an extremely bold one and the right decision after making something so expansive as Origins. If there had been a 18 months more in II's development cycle it could have matched the success of Origins and Dragon Age might've been at the same prestige that the Witcher series currently enjoys. 

    Looking at some of the videos that were leaked before release and some of the commentary after about how the game was down-scaled to secure release on the last gen consoles pretty much compounds the disappointment of what could have been. The capturing of fortresses was pretty one dimensional insofar as you kill about 10 or 15 enemies and then you raise your flag and hooray a victory for the Inquisition. The more methodical and varied approaches might well be implemented in the next Dragon Age game which is supposed to be more based on stealth.

    This is more of a personal gripe but the removal of blood magic was really disappointing. Now I get that it was narratively jarring when Hawke and the Warden were committing these giant taboos by using blood magic but it was still really fun especially in Dragon Age 2. Another thing I felt missing was the presence of city elves which hopefully may have a bigger role to play with Solas running amock in the sequel.