So I get banters extremely rarely. Like I can go an hour or more without hearing a banter - and apparently this is a bug. (And a crappy one too, since banters are key in making the game less gloomy, considering how many zones are on the gloomy side).
So I get banters extremely rarely. Like I can go an hour or more without hearing a banter - and apparently this is a bug. (And a crappy one too, since banters are key in making the game less gloomy, considering how many zones are on the gloomy side).
And here I just thought banter was intentionally few and far between to space it all out. I've gone hours without any at all.
Rats.
Me too. The banter is really so rare. I'm bugged, gosh darnit. But when I do get banter, it is really awesome. That said, I have been basically using Cassandra, Iron Bull, and Sera as my "team". So I haven't changed it up at all because keeping track of 10 different characters and their weapons and their armor and their amulets and their rings is just too much. The game is so big.
So maybe the fact that I'm not changing it up is causing the banter to be limited?
+1
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
So on Monday I only had about an hour to play but I had just gotten to Skyhold so I spent that time exploring it and talking to people.
Last night I went through and finished exploring and talking to people. Took me another hour to finish up. Then I went to Val Royeux to check the vendor for house stuff and went back...
And the whole place changed. I had to re-explore the whole place. Talk to new people. Talk to old people again.
I... I have spent 3 full hours now running around that place just talking to people and reading notes/books... and I'm not done yet. I'm never going to get around to stabbing anything again, am I?
How does the game compare to the previous two titles? What does it do well/badly compared to those? And how open-world is it? I've checked out a couple of reviews, but I didn't come away feeling that I had a better understanding of how the game is similar to its predecessors and how it's different.
It's better than da2 and enough of a different genre from da1 that a direct comparison is tough. It's a third person sandbox rpg with gorgeous visuals and enough great about it that the relatively minor bad stuff seems somehow worse because of it.
Like 95% of the quests in the game will give general area waypoints (directed exploration)... Except the specialization quests.
The kbm controls really don't work for a lot of people, but pc controller integration is seamless.
The character creator is detailed and pretty amazing... But the lighting isn't great and there is no way to fix imperfections after creation.
It is huge, so big that it might be TOO big.
I'm not sure I like it better than da1, but da3 is certainly a great game.
How does the game compare to the previous two titles? What does it do well/badly compared to those? And how open-world is it? I've checked out a couple of reviews, but I didn't come away feeling that I had a better understanding of how the game is similar to its predecessors and how it's different.
It's not that it does what the other games do better or that it does one thing best or is the best of a certain thing. It's the way the fabric of the game weaves together seamlessly while still exhibiting some of the most enjoyable features from two previous yet entirely different titles.
It's hard for reviewers to review because there's just so much game and there's literally no ONE way to play it, in fact there's likely infinite number of ways to achieve "The End". You could likely just explore until you get bored and never finish at all, like Skyrim. However, it's not as simplistic as Skyrim. There are complexities and webs of minutiae which you can either indulge in or completely ignore, meanwhile everything has some bearing on the way the game pans out. Kill a dragon? People will be talking about you. Clear some Darkspawn from a silverite mine? An Orlesian countess is going to notice you for that one.
The combat is extremely satisfying, as well. It has the complexity of Origins with the pacing of DA:II, but entirely unlike the first two chapters, the worlds in which you do this combat are rich and complete. And encounters are routinely cinematic and interesting. There are no recycled maps or awkward zones with limited space that seem cramped or thrown together like motley. Standing on the precipice of a cliff in Emprise du Lion is entirely different from peering over a rocky hillock in the Hinterlands. Furthermore, the maps are enormous and they're dotted with caves and crypts and mountain fortresses, etc., etc.
I don't really care if I'm sounding like a fanboy at his point. The game has it's share of bugs but I chose to ignore them. To me, it's like griping about the frame when the painting is a masterpiece. Granted I haven't experienced any of the debilitating bugs but that's just my good fortune I suppose. I've had a few CTD's but you're not asking about the stability of the game you're asking about the quality.
It's everything Origins couldn't be and DA:II should have been had it been given the proper attention and amount of time to become a complete game.
My girlfriend made her first character yesterday afternoon and she asked if she should play DA:O and DA:II before she dives into this game.
I said no. To me that would be less like eating my whole dinner to get to dessert and more like eating a loaf of bread today, a jar of mayonnaise tomorrow, and then FINALLY making a delicious sandwich this weekend.
Needless to say her elf 2 hand tank is coming along nicely.
The fact that this is necessary is goddamn ridiculous. Just fucking tell me if they're going to approve or disapprove beforehand so I don't have to save scum.
Hidden statistics are shit.
That would remove all the fun from conversations. Losing a little approval isn't unrecoverable. If there was a point marker next to each option that would be the so terrible.
As a completionist, replaying Inquisition scares the hell out of me. I'm 30 hours into the game! I've barely done anything!
To me, replaying seems like a foolhardy endeavor. I am most certainly not going around the Hinterlands a second time to find the same 22 shards and 17 points of interest. That was too much of a grind. Which is unfortunate. But if I play this game for over 100 hours, and it seems like that is very likely, I am not sure how badly I need to replay it.
As a completionist, replaying Inquisition scares the hell out of me. I'm 30 hours into the game! I've barely done anything!
To me, replaying seems like a foolhardy endeavor. I am most certainly not going around the Hinterlands a second time to find the same 22 shards and 17 points of interest. That was too much of a grind. Which is unfortunate. But if I play this game for over 100 hours, and it seems like that is very likely, I am not sure how badly I need to replay it.
I'm gonna whisper something in your ear and it's gonna blow your mind - if you do a replay, you are not duty-bound to do everything all over again. In fact, since you've done it once you will likely feel less inclined to do it "for completion" again. Doing a replay lets you see different parts of the story and frees you up from having to do the more grindy side stuff if you don't want to.
The fact that this is necessary is goddamn ridiculous. Just fucking tell me if they're going to approve or disapprove beforehand so I don't have to save scum.
Hidden statistics are shit.
That would remove all the fun from conversations. Losing a little approval isn't unrecoverable. If there was a point marker next to each option that would be the so terrible.
Not fun for you. The current system is not fun for me. Seems like a game option to enable it at player discretion would solve both problems, no?
And let's not pretend stuff like "greatly disapproves" is easily recoverable in a limited resource system.
I strongly disagree with this, and you're doing a disservice to your GF if you didn't at least have her watch thr abridged versions of da1 and 2.
She's been watching me play Inquisition for a week now, backseat gaming like a boss. I've explained the story from the first two as best I can and even went so far as to reinstall DA:O and bust out my 360 for DA:II. The expression on her face while I showed her the first two games was expected. It was a combination of mild interest mixed with disappointment. They're both good games in their own right and I for one don't hate DA:II as much as most people do. But there's a difference between a series like Mass Effect and a series like Dragon Age. While the fiction is the same through the DA series and the stories coincide, it's not a flight of stairs like Mass Effect. It's more like two islands and a continent. Mass Effect was always Mass Effect and it sought only to hone its edge with every installment. Inquisition isn't the cherry on top. It's the whole cake where DA:O and DA:II are merely the recipe and the ingredients set out on the kitchen counter.
And I understand that there were more "options" in Origins regarding combat, but the complexity translates. Combining skills and abilities and squad synergy are all elemental. I really think that the people who think the combat was better in DA:O are just telling themselves that because they loved DA:O and everyone wants their first love to have that thing that sets it apart which they can look back on and go "Yeah, but it's no ___________".
Just keep exploring, you can reach pretty much the entire house. There are certain points you can interact with occasionally, and eventually they get you up there.
So explore every corner and read all the books/notes scattered around while spamming v. The enemies basically ignore you, so no need to fight.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
The fact that this is necessary is goddamn ridiculous. Just fucking tell me if they're going to approve or disapprove beforehand so I don't have to save scum.
Hidden statistics are shit.
That would remove all the fun from conversations. Losing a little approval isn't unrecoverable. If there was a point marker next to each option that would be the so terrible.
Not fun for you. The current system is not fun for me. Seems like a game option to enable it at player discretion would solve both problems, no?
And let's not pretend stuff like "greatly disapproves" is easily recoverable in a limited resource system.
Well no I don't think game makers should set options that people should flip at the beginning of each game to make it suddenly cater to every ones specific needs.
Games have some things you like and some you don't. Just like any other form of media. That's just how it works.
That's... that's crazy talk.
And Greatly disapproves is worth like 3 slightly approves.
because all life ends without them if an archdemon shows up, and given that basically everyone is losing their goddamned mind during this civil war, if you start trying to eye for an eye everyone you'll be left with a nation of blind people
Warden stuff!
The wardens can still chill around in other nations. To me, them suddenly deciding the world needs to end in an orgy of blood magic and demons because they are falling for an obvious fucking ruse means they no longer have a mandate. They can come back when there is a blight, making new wardens is a relatively simple matter. Until then, perhaps their order can stop being such fanatical idiots that they want to end the world on a whim.
And on the topic of the maker.
We get an explanation for all the events that have happened, it turns out it is an accident while someone is tinkering with the fabric of reality. If the maker existed, or gave a shit he would have intervened at this point. I still have the last two story missions left though, but so far everything is easier to explain by random chance and luck, which the inquisitor has plenty of!
That said, I love the religious themes of the game, and that you have a choice whether to go along with it or not.
Your thought process only makes sense in a very meta-game "I played DA:O and all the stuff I learned in it that was very much obscure or even secret is common knowledge" way.
It's not easy to make new Wardens. You can't just get rid of them in between blights and bring them back when it's convenient.
Their ability to combat blights relies upon them being able to bring the nations of Thadeus into line, giving them troops and resources. You make it sound like a blight happens and you just need to aim a few wardens at the conveniently located archdemon and let them go. That's retarded, not how it works, and not even how it happened in DA:O.
Lastly, the wardens falling into disrepute and getting mostly kicked out of Ferelden is why the 5th blight almost became incredibly serious.
If you had ever played Darkspawn Chronicles you would know that the 5th blight was literally one warden recruit dying during the joining away from complete disaster.
So no, kicking the wardens out of Orlais, the country where their power base is, after they've been decimated doesn't strike me as a safe idea. In fact, it's a remarkably shortsighted one.
because all life ends without them if an archdemon shows up, and given that basically everyone is losing their goddamned mind during this civil war, if you start trying to eye for an eye everyone you'll be left with a nation of blind people
Warden stuff!
The wardens can still chill around in other nations. To me, them suddenly deciding the world needs to end in an orgy of blood magic and demons because they are falling for an obvious fucking ruse means they no longer have a mandate. They can come back when there is a blight, making new wardens is a relatively simple matter. Until then, perhaps their order can stop being such fanatical idiots that they want to end the world on a whim.
And on the topic of the maker.
We get an explanation for all the events that have happened, it turns out it is an accident while someone is tinkering with the fabric of reality. If the maker existed, or gave a shit he would have intervened at this point. I still have the last two story missions left though, but so far everything is easier to explain by random chance and luck, which the inquisitor has plenty of!
That said, I love the religious themes of the game, and that you have a choice whether to go along with it or not.
Your thought process only makes sense in a very meta-game "I played DA:O and all the stuff I learned in it that was very much obscure or even secret is common knowledge" way.
It's not easy to make new Wardens. You can't just get rid of them in between blights and bring them back when it's convenient.
Their ability to combat blights relies upon them being able to bring the nations of Thadeus into line, giving them troops and resources. You make it sound like a blight happens and you just need to aim a few wardens at the conveniently located archdemon and let them go. That's retarded, not how it works, and not even how it happened in DA:O.
Lastly, the wardens falling into disrepute and getting mostly kicked out of Ferelden is why the 5th blight almost became incredibly serious.
If you had ever played Darkspawn Chronicles you would know that the 5th blight was literally one warden recruit dying during the joining away from complete disaster.
So no, kicking the wardens out of Orlais, the country where their power base is, after they've been decimated doesn't strike me as a safe idea. In fact, it's a remarkably shortsighted one.
I suppose that is correct, the blight in DA:O feels... very unthreatening.
However.
I guess I was just feeling very shortsighted when I did it, the wardens kind of burned my trust when they were easily fooled by a phenomena they knew about, and directly jumped to omnicidal stupidity as their solution. Literally every warden everywhere feeling the calling at once really should have had someone thinking "hey, perhaps something is trying to manipulate us, seeing as how this never happened before". Since they knew about beings like corypheus, and even if they thought he was dead there could be another.
I never played legacy in DA2, but the way the warden commander reacted like she knew who he was when I namedropped him seems to indicate they knew who he was and what he had done. The organisation being stupid enough to start some hilariously skeevy blood magic rituals they barely understand at the hands of some random Tevinter asshole probably means the organisation needs to burn to the ground. It is likely a bad decision, but leaving the wardens as is feels as bad, since they are clearly not capable of governing themselves.
It is a shortsighted decision though, that much is true.
As a completionist, replaying Inquisition scares the hell out of me. I'm 30 hours into the game! I've barely done anything!
To me, replaying seems like a foolhardy endeavor. I am most certainly not going around the Hinterlands a second time to find the same 22 shards and 17 points of interest. That was too much of a grind. Which is unfortunate. But if I play this game for over 100 hours, and it seems like that is very likely, I am not sure how badly I need to replay it.
I'm gonna whisper something in your ear and it's gonna blow your mind - if you do a replay, you are not duty-bound to do everything all over again. In fact, since you've done it once you will likely feel less inclined to do it "for completion" again. Doing a replay lets you see different parts of the story and frees you up from having to do the more grindy side stuff if you don't want to.
Yeah, this. I'm on a second play through and first of all I changed my world state in the keep to explore what it's like with different choices in DA:O and DA2. Then I changed gender, race and class and type of character (from snarky/good to snarky/evil). And because I know much better what I need to do, I'm proceeding much much quicker and more efficiently than first time around.
If you burned down every organization that got duped by the Venatori in DA:I you would be left with:
The Inquisition.
End of list. No allies. No one. I mean, I guess there would be some peasants and some unimportant Orlesian nobility who were too unimportant for the venatori to bother with.
But certainly you'd have no ally on the throne of Orlais, you wouldn't have mages or templars (and thus, wouldn't even be able to try to close the rift FYI).
If you burned down every organization that got duped by the Venatori in DA:I you would be left with:
The Inquisition.
End of list. No allies. No one. I mean, I guess there would be some peasants and some unimportant Orlesian nobility who were too unimportant for the venatori to bother with.
But certainly you'd have no ally on the throne of Orlais, you wouldn't have mages or templars (and thus, wouldn't even be able to try to close the rift FYI).
True I guess. Everybody in Thedas seems to have a fascination with making the worst possible choice in every given situation. So I might as well tag along!
It's Dragon Age. Everybody is constantly doing really dumb shit all of the time. If you execute them all for it, Thedas will get pretty lonely.
Yeah, honestly except for the protagonist and his or her crew, one thing you can count on in a DA game is a serious epidemic of the stupid affecting everyone.
You have to be forgiving, or else there will be no one left!
It's nice to know there is a banter bug, though sad that I found out about it when it was already far too late. I was wondering why I hadn't come even close to exhausting the banter options at about 70 hours played, and well, now I know.
It's quite depressing, because I feel like it has palpably lessened my experience. I could always listen to a compilation of them later ,but it won't be the same. Dorian and the bull never got together in my world, because despite lugging them around together for hours they just never talked.
Also if you are finding that being called "your worship" is making you feel too larger than life, just bear in mind that that's the exact title that Han Solo used for Princess Leia to annoy her.
(Her appropriate honorific was "your royal highness")
Well no I don't think game makers should set options that people should flip at the beginning of each game to make it suddenly cater to every ones specific needs.
Games have some things you like and some you don't. Just like any other form of media. That's just how it works.
That's... that's crazy talk.
Crazy talk, huh? You mean like the option in Star Wars: The Old Republic to show Light Side / Dark Side conversation choices?
Because that is literally all I am asking for. It's not crazy talk, it has precedent in several games, and to pretend that it's somehow some sort of extravagant, outlandish, ridiculous request is disingenuous at best.
And I understand that there were more "options" in Origins regarding combat, but the complexity translates. Combining skills and abilities and squad synergy are all elemental. I really think that the people who think the combat was better in DA:O are just telling themselves that because they loved DA:O and everyone wants their first love to have that thing that sets it apart which they can look back on and go "Yeah, but it's no ___________".
I didn't say the combat was better (neither did you), I said it was more complex. Because it was. There was way more moving parts, I could do a ton more things, and I actually had a useful battlefield map instead of this hampered over the shoulder nonsense.
But the complexity they threw out (like healing) ostensibly led to BioWare being able to better gauge fights difficulty, especially in dungeons. I can't say that I agree or disagree with the combat difficulty being better, as I'm playing on Hard and the only difficulty I've had were dragons. But moving my character around and holding right trigger to attack and sometimes tossing off one of three combat abilities... yeah, that's a shitload less complex than managing a squad of characters with a ton of different combat abilities including area denial and fun effects.
Also, Knight Enchanter is still ridiculously, stupidly broken.
I wish I could put up a tombstone for Roderick. He may have been a pain in the ass until he got stabbed, but he deserves hella props for finding a way to save everyone in Haven but the Inquisitor.
The fact that this is necessary is goddamn ridiculous. Just fucking tell me if they're going to approve or disapprove beforehand so I don't have to save scum.
Hidden statistics are shit.
That would remove all the fun from conversations. Losing a little approval isn't unrecoverable. If there was a point marker next to each option that would be the so terrible.
I like the obfuscation of the relationship mechanic. Bioware is trying to tell a story (a lot of stories really) and have learned how turning it into a min-maxing stat system has perverted their intention in the past. Hiding the numbers, while still giving very clear conversational and pop-up clues to the reactions of your companions, eliminates this and improves the game as a story and experience.
I find a similar problem with how the "ping" search function works. I realized a couple dozen hours in that I wasn't enjoying just walking around the map and exploring the way I did in Skyrim, even though the world in Inquisition is a lot richer. I had turned walking around into a constant item hunt, pinging every few steps. This was getting me a lot of crafting materials, but it was hurting my immersion in the game. When I relaxed and stopped doing it, I found that I was looking at the environments as environments again and appreciating the sights as more than obstructions between waypoint icons.
Systems can do that, especially if there is a definite benefit to gaming the system. Sometimes it is better, from a gameplay perspective, to not give the player the option to minmax, because it actually ends up diminishing their experience.
Did they just drop a Bond movie into my fantasy RPG? That was great, but having my court approval decay slowly when I ducked out of the party was BRUTAL. Disappointed that all my Inqusition dudes wore the same outfit though. Really wanted to see what Sera would have put together for that soirée.
Post-Wicked
Now Morrigan has to hang out at the war table? This is proof more than anything that I'm not the Maker's favored or whatever. And dammit she's still wearing that stupid bikini top thing. Girl, it's been TEN YEARS. Go shopping occasionally! Leliana's got a new outfit. Cullen and Varric have new outfits. It's not hard!
Is there a way to command someone to revive? I get that I can go to the tactical menu and click A on a fallen dude, and it tells me that they will revive them. But they don't
I would rather not have to focus on one character during this dragon fight, who is doing nothing but reviving this other character
Is there a way to command someone to revive? I get that I can go to the tactical menu and click A on a fallen dude, and it tells me that they will revive them. But they don't
I would rather not have to focus on one character during this dragon fight, who is doing nothing but reviving this other character
Take a Knight Enchanter and ignore the rest of the party, because Knight Enchanters are immortal gods who cannot die if controlled by the player.
PSN|AspectVoid
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Well no I don't think game makers should set options that people should flip at the beginning of each game to make it suddenly cater to every ones specific needs.
Games have some things you like and some you don't. Just like any other form of media. That's just how it works.
That's... that's crazy talk.
Crazy talk, huh? You mean like the option in Star Wars: The Old Republic to show Light Side / Dark Side conversation choices?
Because that is literally all I am asking for. It's not crazy talk, it has precedent in several games, and to pretend that it's somehow some sort of extravagant, outlandish, ridiculous request is disingenuous at best.
And I understand that there were more "options" in Origins regarding combat, but the complexity translates. Combining skills and abilities and squad synergy are all elemental. I really think that the people who think the combat was better in DA:O are just telling themselves that because they loved DA:O and everyone wants their first love to have that thing that sets it apart which they can look back on and go "Yeah, but it's no ___________".
I didn't say the combat was better (neither did you), I said it was more complex. Because it was. There was way more moving parts, I could do a ton more things, and I actually had a useful battlefield map instead of this hampered over the shoulder nonsense.
But the complexity they threw out (like healing) ostensibly led to BioWare being able to better gauge fights difficulty, especially in dungeons. I can't say that I agree or disagree with the combat difficulty being better, as I'm playing on Hard and the only difficulty I've had were dragons. But moving my character around and holding right trigger to attack and sometimes tossing off one of three combat abilities... yeah, that's a shitload less complex than managing a squad of characters with a ton of different combat abilities including area denial and fun effects.
Also, Knight Enchanter is still ridiculously, stupidly broken.
I was basing the approval rating stuff on the strategy guide as that's how they have it listed.
And just because one game does something doesn't suddenly mean every game can or has to. I didn't say the one option was crazy. I said allowing for all options is crazy. My point is why expect them to choose the one option that affects you and not the thousands of other options that people would be /are asking for?
That was my entire point. Every game has the things it chooses to do. Those things are things that different people like. This is super simple.
As a completionist, replaying Inquisition scares the hell out of me. I'm 30 hours into the game! I've barely done anything!
To me, replaying seems like a foolhardy endeavor. I am most certainly not going around the Hinterlands a second time to find the same 22 shards and 17 points of interest. That was too much of a grind. Which is unfortunate. But if I play this game for over 100 hours, and it seems like that is very likely, I am not sure how badly I need to replay it.
I totally want to replay the game, but.... I want to replay the game for the story and combat from a different perspective. Some of the stuff that was marginally amusing one time (gathering/scouring the map for bricka bracka), won't be at all amusing in a second run. I am hoping I can cheat in some gathering resources so I don't have to run around gathering all the stuff I did in my first run.
If, OK, when, I decide to replay the game, I hope I can control myself enough to let myself get more sleep than I am getting in my first run. Real Life is getting in the way of my gaming. I hate it when that happens.
Is there a way to command someone to revive? I get that I can go to the tactical menu and click A on a fallen dude, and it tells me that they will revive them. But they don't
I would rather not have to focus on one character during this dragon fight, who is doing nothing but reviving this other character
Take a Knight Enchanter and ignore the rest of the party, because Knight Enchanters are immortal gods who cannot die if controlled by the player.
After a certain point I just let my party die, because it is ridiculously hard to micromanage in this game, and got the dragon to half health with only my S+B warrior. I could definitely do the whole thing if he didn't spawn minions. Buuuut he does so I guess I should try to get better at this
edit: I should say, this is the first dragon I've tried fighting and it is pretty freaking cool. In concept. In reality it is highlighting what a terrible decision it was to remove drag to select companions. It is doing this by throwing fireballs at me every 5 seconds which I have to manually and individually move dudes out of the way of, because otherwise that is -1 healing potion for each guy it hits, which is bad
Well no I don't think game makers should set options that people should flip at the beginning of each game to make it suddenly cater to every ones specific needs.
Games have some things you like and some you don't. Just like any other form of media. That's just how it works.
That's... that's crazy talk.
Crazy talk, huh? You mean like the option in Star Wars: The Old Republic to show Light Side / Dark Side conversation choices?
Because that is literally all I am asking for. It's not crazy talk, it has precedent in several games, and to pretend that it's somehow some sort of extravagant, outlandish, ridiculous request is disingenuous at best.
And I understand that there were more "options" in Origins regarding combat, but the complexity translates. Combining skills and abilities and squad synergy are all elemental. I really think that the people who think the combat was better in DA:O are just telling themselves that because they loved DA:O and everyone wants their first love to have that thing that sets it apart which they can look back on and go "Yeah, but it's no ___________".
I didn't say the combat was better (neither did you), I said it was more complex. Because it was. There was way more moving parts, I could do a ton more things, and I actually had a useful battlefield map instead of this hampered over the shoulder nonsense.
But the complexity they threw out (like healing) ostensibly led to BioWare being able to better gauge fights difficulty, especially in dungeons. I can't say that I agree or disagree with the combat difficulty being better, as I'm playing on Hard and the only difficulty I've had were dragons. But moving my character around and holding right trigger to attack and sometimes tossing off one of three combat abilities... yeah, that's a shitload less complex than managing a squad of characters with a ton of different combat abilities including area denial and fun effects.
Also, Knight Enchanter is still ridiculously, stupidly broken.
SWTOR only previewed light & dark side point gains in conversations, not companion approval.
If you talk to your party members and get to know them a bit, it should be fairly easy to predict what they will and will not agree with.
Making it so transparent as to show affection gains before picking a dialogue choice would be really boring.
Posts
Well damn.
And here I just thought banter was intentionally few and far between to space it all out. I've gone hours without any at all.
Rats.
Me too. The banter is really so rare. I'm bugged, gosh darnit. But when I do get banter, it is really awesome. That said, I have been basically using Cassandra, Iron Bull, and Sera as my "team". So I haven't changed it up at all because keeping track of 10 different characters and their weapons and their armor and their amulets and their rings is just too much. The game is so big.
So maybe the fact that I'm not changing it up is causing the banter to be limited?
Last night I went through and finished exploring and talking to people. Took me another hour to finish up. Then I went to Val Royeux to check the vendor for house stuff and went back...
And the whole place changed. I had to re-explore the whole place. Talk to new people. Talk to old people again.
I... I have spent 3 full hours now running around that place just talking to people and reading notes/books... and I'm not done yet. I'm never going to get around to stabbing anything again, am I?
Like 95% of the quests in the game will give general area waypoints (directed exploration)... Except the specialization quests.
The kbm controls really don't work for a lot of people, but pc controller integration is seamless.
The character creator is detailed and pretty amazing... But the lighting isn't great and there is no way to fix imperfections after creation.
It is huge, so big that it might be TOO big.
I'm not sure I like it better than da1, but da3 is certainly a great game.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Replayability's going to be a big issue for me.
As a completionist, replaying Inquisition scares the hell out of me. I'm 30 hours into the game! I've barely done anything!
The man who explains it best, also explains it quite poetically.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/11/26/iron-horse
It's not that it does what the other games do better or that it does one thing best or is the best of a certain thing. It's the way the fabric of the game weaves together seamlessly while still exhibiting some of the most enjoyable features from two previous yet entirely different titles.
It's hard for reviewers to review because there's just so much game and there's literally no ONE way to play it, in fact there's likely infinite number of ways to achieve "The End". You could likely just explore until you get bored and never finish at all, like Skyrim. However, it's not as simplistic as Skyrim. There are complexities and webs of minutiae which you can either indulge in or completely ignore, meanwhile everything has some bearing on the way the game pans out. Kill a dragon? People will be talking about you. Clear some Darkspawn from a silverite mine? An Orlesian countess is going to notice you for that one.
The combat is extremely satisfying, as well. It has the complexity of Origins with the pacing of DA:II, but entirely unlike the first two chapters, the worlds in which you do this combat are rich and complete. And encounters are routinely cinematic and interesting. There are no recycled maps or awkward zones with limited space that seem cramped or thrown together like motley. Standing on the precipice of a cliff in Emprise du Lion is entirely different from peering over a rocky hillock in the Hinterlands. Furthermore, the maps are enormous and they're dotted with caves and crypts and mountain fortresses, etc., etc.
I don't really care if I'm sounding like a fanboy at his point. The game has it's share of bugs but I chose to ignore them. To me, it's like griping about the frame when the painting is a masterpiece. Granted I haven't experienced any of the debilitating bugs but that's just my good fortune I suppose. I've had a few CTD's but you're not asking about the stability of the game you're asking about the quality.
It's everything Origins couldn't be and DA:II should have been had it been given the proper attention and amount of time to become a complete game.
My girlfriend made her first character yesterday afternoon and she asked if she should play DA:O and DA:II before she dives into this game.
I said no. To me that would be less like eating my whole dinner to get to dessert and more like eating a loaf of bread today, a jar of mayonnaise tomorrow, and then FINALLY making a delicious sandwich this weekend.
Needless to say her elf 2 hand tank is coming along nicely.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
That would remove all the fun from conversations. Losing a little approval isn't unrecoverable. If there was a point marker next to each option that would be the so terrible.
To me, replaying seems like a foolhardy endeavor. I am most certainly not going around the Hinterlands a second time to find the same 22 shards and 17 points of interest. That was too much of a grind. Which is unfortunate. But if I play this game for over 100 hours, and it seems like that is very likely, I am not sure how badly I need to replay it.
Edit: Nevermind, I got it.
I'm gonna whisper something in your ear and it's gonna blow your mind - if you do a replay, you are not duty-bound to do everything all over again. In fact, since you've done it once you will likely feel less inclined to do it "for completion" again. Doing a replay lets you see different parts of the story and frees you up from having to do the more grindy side stuff if you don't want to.
And let's not pretend stuff like "greatly disapproves" is easily recoverable in a limited resource system.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
She's been watching me play Inquisition for a week now, backseat gaming like a boss. I've explained the story from the first two as best I can and even went so far as to reinstall DA:O and bust out my 360 for DA:II. The expression on her face while I showed her the first two games was expected. It was a combination of mild interest mixed with disappointment. They're both good games in their own right and I for one don't hate DA:II as much as most people do. But there's a difference between a series like Mass Effect and a series like Dragon Age. While the fiction is the same through the DA series and the stories coincide, it's not a flight of stairs like Mass Effect. It's more like two islands and a continent. Mass Effect was always Mass Effect and it sought only to hone its edge with every installment. Inquisition isn't the cherry on top. It's the whole cake where DA:O and DA:II are merely the recipe and the ingredients set out on the kitchen counter.
And I understand that there were more "options" in Origins regarding combat, but the complexity translates. Combining skills and abilities and squad synergy are all elemental. I really think that the people who think the combat was better in DA:O are just telling themselves that because they loved DA:O and everyone wants their first love to have that thing that sets it apart which they can look back on and go "Yeah, but it's no ___________".
So explore every corner and read all the books/notes scattered around while spamming v. The enemies basically ignore you, so no need to fight.
Well no I don't think game makers should set options that people should flip at the beginning of each game to make it suddenly cater to every ones specific needs.
Games have some things you like and some you don't. Just like any other form of media. That's just how it works.
That's... that's crazy talk.
And Greatly disapproves is worth like 3 slightly approves.
So yea, probably not that big of a deal.
Your thought process only makes sense in a very meta-game "I played DA:O and all the stuff I learned in it that was very much obscure or even secret is common knowledge" way.
Their ability to combat blights relies upon them being able to bring the nations of Thadeus into line, giving them troops and resources. You make it sound like a blight happens and you just need to aim a few wardens at the conveniently located archdemon and let them go. That's retarded, not how it works, and not even how it happened in DA:O.
Lastly, the wardens falling into disrepute and getting mostly kicked out of Ferelden is why the 5th blight almost became incredibly serious.
If you had ever played Darkspawn Chronicles you would know that the 5th blight was literally one warden recruit dying during the joining away from complete disaster.
So no, kicking the wardens out of Orlais, the country where their power base is, after they've been decimated doesn't strike me as a safe idea. In fact, it's a remarkably shortsighted one.
I suppose that is correct, the blight in DA:O feels... very unthreatening.
However.
I never played legacy in DA2, but the way the warden commander reacted like she knew who he was when I namedropped him seems to indicate they knew who he was and what he had done. The organisation being stupid enough to start some hilariously skeevy blood magic rituals they barely understand at the hands of some random Tevinter asshole probably means the organisation needs to burn to the ground. It is likely a bad decision, but leaving the wardens as is feels as bad, since they are clearly not capable of governing themselves.
It is a shortsighted decision though, that much is true.
Yeah, this. I'm on a second play through and first of all I changed my world state in the keep to explore what it's like with different choices in DA:O and DA2. Then I changed gender, race and class and type of character (from snarky/good to snarky/evil). And because I know much better what I need to do, I'm proceeding much much quicker and more efficiently than first time around.
The Inquisition.
End of list. No allies. No one. I mean, I guess there would be some peasants and some unimportant Orlesian nobility who were too unimportant for the venatori to bother with.
But certainly you'd have no ally on the throne of Orlais, you wouldn't have mages or templars (and thus, wouldn't even be able to try to close the rift FYI).
True I guess. Everybody in Thedas seems to have a fascination with making the worst possible choice in every given situation. So I might as well tag along!
I mean, REDACTED was pretty awesome.
Gimme some more of them fellows.
God dang this is so good. How about freddie prinz jr? So good.
I also love the fact sometimes your chars approve or disapprove silently to banter they are not involved in.
The closer in perspective and bigger enviros make this game feel so good. Does anyone even miss full on top down?
Yeah, honestly except for the protagonist and his or her crew, one thing you can count on in a DA game is a serious epidemic of the stupid affecting everyone.
You have to be forgiving, or else there will be no one left!
-edit-
Except Logain, feel free to execute that prick.
It's quite depressing, because I feel like it has palpably lessened my experience. I could always listen to a compilation of them later ,but it won't be the same. Dorian and the bull never got together in my world, because despite lugging them around together for hours they just never talked.
(Her appropriate honorific was "your royal highness")
Because that is literally all I am asking for. It's not crazy talk, it has precedent in several games, and to pretend that it's somehow some sort of extravagant, outlandish, ridiculous request is disingenuous at best.
I'd like to believe you, but with no concrete numbers showing me that "slight approve" is +1 and "greatly disapprove" is -3, you're just guessing.
I didn't say the combat was better (neither did you), I said it was more complex. Because it was. There was way more moving parts, I could do a ton more things, and I actually had a useful battlefield map instead of this hampered over the shoulder nonsense.
But the complexity they threw out (like healing) ostensibly led to BioWare being able to better gauge fights difficulty, especially in dungeons. I can't say that I agree or disagree with the combat difficulty being better, as I'm playing on Hard and the only difficulty I've had were dragons. But moving my character around and holding right trigger to attack and sometimes tossing off one of three combat abilities... yeah, that's a shitload less complex than managing a squad of characters with a ton of different combat abilities including area denial and fun effects.
Also, Knight Enchanter is still ridiculously, stupidly broken.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I like the obfuscation of the relationship mechanic. Bioware is trying to tell a story (a lot of stories really) and have learned how turning it into a min-maxing stat system has perverted their intention in the past. Hiding the numbers, while still giving very clear conversational and pop-up clues to the reactions of your companions, eliminates this and improves the game as a story and experience.
I find a similar problem with how the "ping" search function works. I realized a couple dozen hours in that I wasn't enjoying just walking around the map and exploring the way I did in Skyrim, even though the world in Inquisition is a lot richer. I had turned walking around into a constant item hunt, pinging every few steps. This was getting me a lot of crafting materials, but it was hurting my immersion in the game. When I relaxed and stopped doing it, I found that I was looking at the environments as environments again and appreciating the sights as more than obstructions between waypoint icons.
Systems can do that, especially if there is a definite benefit to gaming the system. Sometimes it is better, from a gameplay perspective, to not give the player the option to minmax, because it actually ends up diminishing their experience.
Post-Wicked
This has been your Dragon Age Fashion Minute.
I would rather not have to focus on one character during this dragon fight, who is doing nothing but reviving this other character
Take a Knight Enchanter and ignore the rest of the party, because Knight Enchanters are immortal gods who cannot die if controlled by the player.
I was basing the approval rating stuff on the strategy guide as that's how they have it listed.
And just because one game does something doesn't suddenly mean every game can or has to. I didn't say the one option was crazy. I said allowing for all options is crazy. My point is why expect them to choose the one option that affects you and not the thousands of other options that people would be /are asking for?
That was my entire point. Every game has the things it chooses to do. Those things are things that different people like. This is super simple.
I totally want to replay the game, but.... I want to replay the game for the story and combat from a different perspective. Some of the stuff that was marginally amusing one time (gathering/scouring the map for bricka bracka), won't be at all amusing in a second run. I am hoping I can cheat in some gathering resources so I don't have to run around gathering all the stuff I did in my first run.
If, OK, when, I decide to replay the game, I hope I can control myself enough to let myself get more sleep than I am getting in my first run. Real Life is getting in the way of my gaming. I hate it when that happens.
After a certain point I just let my party die, because it is ridiculously hard to micromanage in this game, and got the dragon to half health with only my S+B warrior. I could definitely do the whole thing if he didn't spawn minions. Buuuut he does so I guess I should try to get better at this
edit: I should say, this is the first dragon I've tried fighting and it is pretty freaking cool. In concept. In reality it is highlighting what a terrible decision it was to remove drag to select companions. It is doing this by throwing fireballs at me every 5 seconds which I have to manually and individually move dudes out of the way of, because otherwise that is -1 healing potion for each guy it hits, which is bad
SWTOR only previewed light & dark side point gains in conversations, not companion approval.
If you talk to your party members and get to know them a bit, it should be fairly easy to predict what they will and will not agree with.
Making it so transparent as to show affection gains before picking a dialogue choice would be really boring.