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I can't even imagine playing Wicked Hearts without reading Masked Empire. There's almost no context for the mission and decision at the end otherwise. Just another missed opportunity to use the Exalted Plains/Emerald Graves to flesh out that conflict beforehand.
A lot of the areas in Inquisition could've served a bigger purpose for the main story, and some of the areas really make me question now why they were in the game in the first place. For example, I still wonder why The Hissing Wastes is a thing when hardly anything happens there and we already have two other desert areas in The Western Approach and Forbidden Oasis.
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I shudder to think of a Dragon Age with terrain traversal like BOTW, or maybe not that extreme... but at least an easy to navigate environment like Witcher 3. I feel like I had gotten to some locations by sheer luck or by switching to a character that had gotten to a ledge I wanted to be in Inquisition.
Also, oh boy is Hinterlands a slog. And once I completed all objectives from it 25 hours later, I discover the other locations are just as bloated in tasks. I'm 90 hours in and just finally completed the ball recently. I can't bring myself to pick up and play it anymore... but I'll try. I feel like again, Witcher 3 addressed these issues with side quests that have more gravity towards character development (or interesting scenarios with consequences).
Solas is the dullest character I've ever had on a team. Either I have posh Vivianne or my sweet Dorian... Never Solas. I hope he has no impact on the endgame, since I never even speak to him.
Also, oh boy is Hinterlands a slog. And once I completed all objectives from it 25 hours later, I discover the other locations are just as bloated in tasks. I'm 90 hours in and just finally completed the ball recently. I can't bring myself to pick up and play it anymore... but I'll try. I feel like again, Witcher 3 addressed these issues with side quests that have more gravity towards character development (or interesting scenarios with consequences).
Solas is the dullest character I've ever had on a team. Either I have posh Vivianne or my sweet Dorian... Never Solas. I hope he has no impact on the endgame, since I never even speak to him.
All I want is for them to ditch the crafting system from Inquisition and Andromeda, and to focus on coming up with good rewards and quests. Both games had horrible junk loot, and the best gear was really just stuff you could make with recipes, and in Inquisition the best recipes didn't even come from gameplay but from that war table system.
Also give me Varric and actually let the companions have things to do. The side cast in Inquisition was promising but ultimately their personal quests were dull and kind of pointless for the most part. Give me a tighter more reactive game, where quests have an impact and the story isn't separated by long stretches of pointless wandering. None of the stuff you did outside of the main questline felt like it mattered in Inquisition and when the bulk of the game feels like busywork it kind of dilutes the fun of the good but limited story segments.
I would love to see them take more inspiration from the ball mission. Solving a mystery by collecting items and passing social checks instead of a lot of combat would be amazing.
Also give me Varric and actually let the companions have things to do. The side cast in Inquisition was promising but ultimately their personal quests were dull and kind of pointless for the most part. Give me a tighter more reactive game, where quests have an impact and the story isn't separated by long stretches of pointless wandering. None of the stuff you did outside of the main questline felt like it mattered in Inquisition and when the bulk of the game feels like busywork it kind of dilutes the fun of the good but limited story segments.
I would love to see them take more inspiration from the ball mission. Solving a mystery by collecting items and passing social checks instead of a lot of combat would be amazing.
I feel like some of those areas were supposed to have strongholds but ended up empty because development time was running short and the stronghold mechanic was cut anyways. In the end, only Emprise du Lion ended up with one because it was finished already. I also feel like it's a much better one as well, because there's an actual plot over there.
I really like crafting systems, but Inquisition's has a lot of room for improvement. It suffers from a lack of variety of types of armor for each class, so each tier is just a bit different from the previous one and you have three styles and that's it. It's great, however, that materials heavily change how armors and weapons look, though. Tintinf gear was also a nice update.
The other downside is how you need to collect resources. And it's just a chore. When you reach Tier 4 you need upwards of 30 pieces of the main material for each armor, which is somewhat less of a chore when it's metal, but it's awful when it's cloth or leather because hunting is boring. Metals are just there for you to pick up, but it's not much better, it's just faster.
So I think they could tie the strongholds and the crafting system. I don't want to stop playing the interesting part of the game to go gather resources, and it's ridiculous that the Inquisition is a big ass military force and its leader just has to go mining themselves lol
So, instead, having some sort of macromanaged system of strongholds where you decide their role like trading, mining, etc, and each one of them would generate gold or resources and you can just go about your day not having to worry about this stuff, would be a marked improvement.
lol I'll take that L... But I honestly wouldn't have minded if objectives had a bit more substance to them.
I want to understand her, but I don't even understand her hair.
Saw this and though it was interesting:
Seems EA is giving Dragon Age more resources and lending staff from other studios. I don't know if it's that unusual as I'm pretty sure that Criterion helped with Mass Effect Andromeda in particular the car (which is good it was soooo much better to control then in the trilogy) but interesting anyway and it's nice to see devs excited.
Seems EA is giving Dragon Age more resources and lending staff from other studios. I don't know if it's that unusual as I'm pretty sure that Criterion helped with Mass Effect Andromeda in particular the car (which is good it was soooo much better to control then in the trilogy) but interesting anyway and it's nice to see devs excited.
Or "Never spoke to character because his interactions were dull"
But I get what you're saying. ;)
I mean, you can hate Solas, you can love him, or you can do both at once, and those are absolutely legitimate reactions to the character, but dull sure isn't a word I'd use to describe him :'D
But I guess this is something you'll have to discover for yourself while playing :3
But I guess this is something you'll have to discover for yourself while playing :3
I present without comment Patrick Weekes' introductory article to Solas back in 2014:
https://www.ea.com/games/dragon-age/dragon-age-inquisition/news/character-profile-solas
https://www.ea.com/games/dragon-age/dragon-age-inquisition/news/character-profile-solas
i hate solas. but he's not boring lmao. also i want da4 but at the same time i know i'll need to get either a ps5 or a proper gaming pc to play it and im not ready to shell out that much money ;a;
I sure would have loved to be inside Weekes' head when they had to answer that question while keeping a straight face lmao.
Same! I'm kinda hoping that by the time DA4 comes out, cloud gaming will be a lot better so I don't have to spend a small fortune to upgrade my computer
That interview highlighted one of the weirdness of the mage classes in Inquisition for me.
" On the battlefield, Solas's expertise with the Fade lets him manipulate magic in ways that would never occur to most mages. "
Solas is actually the Rift Mage, which is easily the most vanilla of the three mage sub-classes. Meteor swarms and hurling boulders isn't exactly new ground here. Same with Dorian as a Necromancer - it just doesn't fit him or his character at all. Even Vivienne doesn't strike you as a "charge into combat weilding a lightsabre" type of character. It felt very much like the mages characters and the classes assigned to them didn't mesh at all.
" On the battlefield, Solas's expertise with the Fade lets him manipulate magic in ways that would never occur to most mages. "
Solas is actually the Rift Mage, which is easily the most vanilla of the three mage sub-classes. Meteor swarms and hurling boulders isn't exactly new ground here. Same with Dorian as a Necromancer - it just doesn't fit him or his character at all. Even Vivienne doesn't strike you as a "charge into combat weilding a lightsabre" type of character. It felt very much like the mages characters and the classes assigned to them didn't mesh at all.
I won't forget unlocking Knight Enchanter for my Inquisitor the first time and then becoming immune/highly resistant to most enemy damage after that. 👍
Powerful, but I think I had the most fun with Rift Mage.
Powerful, but I think I had the most fun with Rift Mage.
Lol I loved playing as a Knight Enchanter it was so broken with the barrier you'd generate.They patched it later but someone modded it back in and I kept using that since I enjoyed it so much.
I love Vivienne from a writing standpoint. In-game, I dispise her; she's a privileged mage that forgot about the oppression they suffer because she no longer feels it in her mansion in Orlais, so she's 100% fine jailing up everyone else.
But she's a damn good character precisely because she makes me dislike her so much. That's successful writing.
I think the only character I find boring is, really, Blackwall. He's just there.
Really? Even after the reveal? He's one of the choices were I'm never fully sure if I've picked the right one.
I feel the same way about Viv. Similarly, I don't "like" Sera per se, but I don't think her writing is bad. She's young and desires a simplicity that just doesn't always exist in the world and that causes friction between her and everything else. However, the conversation about when she was a young girl and the cookies was genuinely a great character moment. It's interesting that she's the only character you can actively dismiss because I'm sure they knew how polarizing she'd be.
It's a testament to the game that I feel value in the whole cast of Inquisition. Even with regards to Blackwall the story around his reveal was, in my eyes, interesting.
You should look up coles banter with Black wall, interesting stuff there
Honestly, look up Cole's banter for pretty much all the companions, it adds so much to them.
Yeah, sometimes I have to wonder if my love for Inquisition has a bit too much to do with being a fan of all the franchise's media tie-ins as well. The fact that I speak with folks who still enjoy that quest even without being the Dragon Age nerd that I am is perhaps a testament to its innate presentation, but without "The Masked Empire" it's simply not on the same level narratively.
I tried to get Cassandra set up as the Divine to straighten shit out but it ended up being Vivienne anyways. That whole election subplot is one of my favorites, since you really can't tell what choices lead where and it's such a huge, consequential thing that feels MOSTLY out of your hands, since it's not transparent at all. No one gets "divine points" or anything.
I hope it has a meaningful impact on DA4, because I think it's got to be one of the bigger ripples you can make. That and the Empress.
I hope it has a meaningful impact on DA4, because I think it's got to be one of the bigger ripples you can make. That and the Empress.
Lol this is so true. Honestly the books and such add so much to the world, they're really well done.
I think one of the things about Dragon Age in pretty much all the games is if you don't know the lore or backstory, you are still going to have a fun time , you'll still get lovable companions, you'll still get emotional moments, you'll still get an epic story. But if you chose to , you can dive into the lore and extra stuff and it will add a lot. Masked Empire adds a lot of depth to Halamshiral and even a bit more to Solas. Reading The Last Flight or The Calling or playing Dragon Age Origins will give you a better understanding of what lead the Wardens to do what they did at Adament. Reading Asunder gives more interesting dimensions to Cole that you can miss. And that's just the surface. There's a lot of codex entries that add so much as well. You don't need these materials to enjoy the games but they add so much if you chose to do so. Kinda like how at the end of Inquisition no one really didn't see the ending as wrapped up or the story of the game incomplete. And then a long cane Trespasser which added another full dimension to the game and there's a lot who would now say it's needed as a proper ending to the game.
Imagine thinking Divine Victoria is wrong after Solas reveals what he did and what he wants to do. After an ancient Tevinter Magister with cool stockings tore the sky apart. All of that with magic. Nobody without magic can so powerfully affect the lives of others as magic users can.
Not to mention so many other smaller scale horrible things like what happened to our mom in Kirkwall.
Divine Victoria has been right all along: Mages need a tower to protect them and to protect us from them.
Long may her huge hat cast a comforting shadow on us all.
Not to mention so many other smaller scale horrible things like what happened to our mom in Kirkwall.
Divine Victoria has been right all along: Mages need a tower to protect them and to protect us from them.
Long may her huge hat cast a comforting shadow on us all.
I'd prefer if a non-party member joined up. Much as I like Varric, he was a known quantity, gimmie more new(ish) people!
I want Maryden.
I hope it still happens. It wouldn't be the first time a character's ending is completely ignored in the sequel. Wasn't Cullen a murdering psycho in one of the endings of Origins. So maybe there is hope for Vivienne.
Oh, the twist is great, I really like it. I just don't think he's much interesting as far as dialogue and banter go. At least not compared to other companions. It don't dislike him, though.I don't think I dislike any of the companions, actually.
I'm slightly annoyed by Sera's personality because she gets too close to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope at times, but her ideals save the character for me. It's a pity that she's a bit abrasive right when you meet her, I feel people often put her aside because of that. And I can't blame them.
I love Cole's banter with pretty much everyone actually, but given I rarely use Blackwall, I haven't seen much of their banter. I'll try to check it on Youtube.
Yeah I don't blame them either. She's definitely abrasive and there are plenty of moments where she annoyed me. My Inquisitor is also an elf, but the nuances of their perspectives constantly clash. Then every now and then she has a character moment where she actually sits down and talks to you and exposes her insecurities and it's one of those things where I can appreciate the writing behind the character. The desire to make her more realistic and complicated than simply just agreeable.
To me it's the rough edges that make her feel so real to me. There's times she lets you in to see some of the real trauma she has beneath which the tough , funny act is used to hide and forgot. Sometimes I would say realistically of all the characters I would probably be most like Sera of trying to say stupid funny stuff to try and forgot about all the shittyness and I also recognise the defensiveness and aggressiveness when something gets too close to that trauma. Though Sera's trauma is directly related to how the world has treated her as not Elfy enough and the blight she saw in Denerim made her afraid of magic so it puts her at odds with the Pro Dalish and Pro mage players which is an awful lot of players.
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It's always amusing to see other interpretations of Sera. It's certainly hard not to feel strongly about her, like most of Inquisition's cast.
I thought she was ridiculous when I first met her and felt like I needed a translator, but I eventually came to enjoy her nonexistent filter and how little she gives a fuck about what others think of her. She's the fun kind of mess.
I thought she was ridiculous when I first met her and felt like I needed a translator, but I eventually came to enjoy her nonexistent filter and how little she gives a fuck about what others think of her. She's the fun kind of mess.
Yeah it's interesting, I didn't even play my Inquisitor as extraordinarily "all Dalish all the time", but she was regardless certainly "too elfy" and too into "weird magic" for Sera's liking. Even still, you're totally right and I like her enough for those reasons. She wasn't in my main rotation of companions when I would do quests, that was Solas, Cass, and Dorian for the most part, but I love her banter with Iron Bull in particular. Though honestly all of the game's banter is great. It's too bad the game had that banter bug. I had to use a cheat engine table to circumvent it and hear everything.
I agree. I'll take Vivienne and her asshole-ry over goody-two-shoes motherly figure mage lady.
I thought Cole was a throwaway character at first
Blow my mind when I learned he know Solas true nature from the start.
(their banter is cryptic on first playthrough, then became clear on second playthrough).
(their banter is cryptic on first playthrough, then became clear on second playthrough).
Cole knows literally everything! Unfortunately the same powers of being a spirit that let him know everything also is the same thing that gives him zero social awareness to tell us those things.
da4 had better have a knight in shining armour m/f romance. my canon boys are Alistair, Sebastian and Blackwall. My mage girls have a type ok!!!
In my completely unbiased opinion, I think it's time for a gay knight in shining armor tbh.
I know it won't happen tho. ;_;