Overall Score 5/10 | A Decent Story Full of Boring Wonders – BY ERIK PILLAR

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Dragon Age Inquisition provides some epic cut-scene moments that brings about true emotion from the player, but their open world model of play bores beyond belief and plot pacing is laughable at best – bringing down what could have been great.

Plot and Character:

The main story of Inquisition, not the side quest content, is actually pretty epic. Your character is essentially put into power through what is seen as divine intervention, and you are set to fight one of the darkest evils the world had ever seen. It’s up to you and your motley bunch of followers to raise armies and fight back the encroaching darkness.

I enjoyed the main story of the game, and wish there had been more of it. The ratio of main story content to side quests though is pitifully low. For every one fun main mission there is typically around a dozen dull side ventures. Due to this poor ratio, the game pacing feels very off. You’ll spend hours and hours in Inquisition essentially doing nothing as you track down raw materials or help with minor quests, to be thrust into something amazingly epic on the rare occasion that you get to take part in the main story. In the end, Inquisition feels like a exercise in patience and feels like a good example of a writer’s primer on ‘How to Write Filler’ to artificially add time to their game.

For the most part, I have little to complain or praise about the characters of this epic. Some of the cast are deep, and have incredibly integrated pasts and histories that link in with the game plot – others not so much. Overall, the characters of Inquisition do what they’re supposed to and add a bonding elements of player to their followers. You’ll probably end up picking favorites, and will leave Inquisition a little sad to see them the last.

On the other hand, almost every character comes off as an ideal in character form. For instance, the gay character is flaming and is clearly meant to be viewed as such, the haunted character spends his days drinking away his sorrows in cliched fashion, and so on and such. In fact, I often had the impression that the developers were intentionally trying to beat me over the head with their ideals of right and wrong, and their takes on gender and sexuality. They’re take is a progressive one, and I see nothing wrong with that, but it was annoying that at times they went too far in their portrayals and it only served to pull me out of the story. In the end, a game I spent money on is the last place I want to see a debate on social justice warrior issues that lessons the characters they use to do so- despite my liberal ideals on the topic.

Mood and Atmosphere:

In this area Inquisition does wonders. The graphics are amazing, even for a little bit of an older game now, and the music and lore is a blast to experience. The developers set the stage early with an incredible opening scene, and everything world-wise is spot on. Each zone you traverse has its own vibe and enemies – for the most part – and when the characters and plot were not pulling me out of the game I was deeply enthralled by the world having been built.

The game is set in what loosely equates to a fantasy world version of Europe – centralizing in medieval France. As such, you can expect lots of flamboyant costumes, balls, french accents.

Game Mechanics

This is the area in which I feel Bioware, the studio responsible for Dragon Age, failed fans the most. The biggest flaw, out of many, is in their open world design. Open world gameplay is often seen as a positive to players, and a thing given much praise for its ambitions.  In the case of Inquisition, however, the studio seemed unable to decide on the type of game they were making, and as such failed in the worst way imagined; the game felt like work. Many of the zones were very grind-heavy, reminiscent of a massive multiplayer game, and were fully devoid of main story content.

My second main issue with Inquisition’s gameplay is in the poor PC support. This game was clearly made to be played with a controller. Mouse and keyboard movements were hacky, uncomfortable, and at time unusable. Bioware’s much-touted tactical camera, a method of camera and gameplay control which enables gamers more strategic combat, was horridly implemented on PC. Since its release the game has seen some improvements in handling, but it still clearly comes off as a console port.

Also, Inquisition is the first of the Dragon Age games to use the Frostbite engine. Doing so makes the game may look incredible, but this engine is notorious for being unwieldy. It is a toolset which makes game mod creation practically impossible for the average modder, and difficult for the experienced. There are mods to be found for sure, but they are generally less game changing than those created for the last two games of the series.

Final:

Fans of the Dragon Age series will probably still enjoy the experience proffered by Inquisition, but I highly suggest newbies check out the first and second of the series instead, as this installment is by far the worst.

Dragon Age: Inquisition was released by developing studio Bioware, and publisher Electronic Arts, in 2015.

 

BUY INFO:

Dragon Age- Inquisition is available for purchase on the PC Origin platform, for PlayStation systems, and Xbox consoles.