No one expects the Dragon Age: Inquisition!

[Enail]

I resisted for a while, but I just finished my second playthrough, and if my brain is entirely consumed with Dragon Age, dagnabbit, why shouldn't my posts be too? So, a thread for Inquisition! (Minor spoilers, but please put major spoilers in spoiler tags, for those poor souls still lost in the Hinterlands)

Anyone playing? Tell me about your game!

Who was your Inquisitor?
First playthrough, human, female mage. She looked alright in the creation screen, but in action, her facial features gave her a perpetually clueless expression, so she may have been a bit of a dim bulb. Generally moderate; as non-committal as possible on religious matters, just wants mages and templars to get along. Tried to romance Cassandra, but she turned out to be straight , so I went with Josephine.

Second playthrough, I was determined to romance Cassandra, but still wanted to play as a woman, so I made the most feminine-looking character the male creation screen would allow and played as an elven, dual-wielding rogue who was extremely pretty but had a surprisingly deep voice, and kept getting confused who everyone was talking about when they referred to me as "he" and "my lord."  As a Dalish, I was polite but unimpressed by all the talk of Andraste. Still fairly moderate, but leaning a touch more pro-mage. Romanced Cassandra (almost landed up going with Dorian, though!)

Favourites!

Companion: Can't pick just one, but I liked Dorian, Cassandra, Varric (of course!) and Cole quite a lot. And the others all had some pretty great moments too, though I thought a couple were less well developed than the others.

Tavern Song: Empress of Fire, can't decide which version.

Region: Probably Emerald Graves, but I also liked the Hissing Wastes despite the slow traveling.

Scene:

Spoiler:

Difficult choices:

Did you side with Templars or Mages?

Templars on my first, "main" playthrough, mages 2nd time. I preferred the storyline for siding with mages, it seemed more involved.

For the Here Lies the Abyss quest,

Spoiler:

For Cole's personal quest,

Spoiler:

For Iron Bull's personal quest,

Spoiler:

Leliana, did you

Spoiler:

The next Divine:

Spoiler:

The ending:

Spoiler:

Who did you force to use the Wedge of Destiny and the Sad Weapon for a ridiculous length of time, even after they weren't good anymore?

Blackwall    It really never got old for me.

Overall impressions?

Great game (is anyone surprised?). Really enjoyed the depth and richness of the setting (my wife and I have caught ourselves having serious political debates about it!), the writing (party banter especially!) and the overall hugeness of the game. I've never been a fan of the lore in fictional settings, but this series has me invested enough that I care about all of it.

There was a bit of the problem I have with open world stuff of 'tons of things to do, none of them matter,' but the characters and the omnipresence of the major conflicts kept me engaged enough not to mind too much.  The ending wasn't that great, but the post-credits cutscene got me enough that I felt it ended on a good note. I did miss getting to play such a specific character and personal story as in DA:II, but I enjoyed all the choice that that enabled enough to not be too disappointed.

[eselle28]

Who was your Inquisitor?
First time: I started with a female human mage, but I imported my old game save incorrectly and abandoned it when I realized I had.

Second time: I had already met and fallen for Dorian, so I made a male human archer. I played him a bit like a Jack Harkness who'd flirt with almost anyone if it was reasonably ethical, but who liked Dorian best. He was rich and spoiled and indulgent, but fundamentally kind. He was agnostic religiously and about his status as Inquisitor, and was generally open-minded about other people's views on things, since he wasn't someone who'd taken live very seriously before the events of the game. I ended up leaning somewhat pro-mage, but in a fairly moderate way.

Third time: This time around, I'm playing a female elven archer. I would have rather played a city elf, so I got around the Dalish label by deciding that she had always felt a bit awkward about her culture and wanted to explore other options. She's anti-Dalish stuff, but also hardcore anti-Andrastian and pro-mage. She's not unkind, but she tends to be a lot more strident than my first character.


Favourites!

Dorian, Cassandra, Varric. I was also quite fond of non-companions Cullen, Josephine, and Scout Harding.

Region: Storm Coast

Scene:

Spoiler:

Difficult choices:

Spoiler:

For the Here Lies the Abyss quest,

Spoiler:

For Cole's personal quest,

Spoiler:

For Iron Bull's personal quest,

Spoiler:

Leliana, did you

Spoiler:

The next Divine:

Spoiler:

The ending:

Spoiler:

Who did you force to use the Wedge of Destiny and the Sad Weapon for a ridiculous length of time, even after they weren't good anymore?

I don't actually think I did that with anyone. I like to try to keep everyone upgraded.

Overall impressions?
It's my favorite game in a long time. I have some quibbles with it - the open-world Hinterlands area should have been structured in later in the game, there were a couple of writing oddities that seemed off - but overall I've enjoyed this game more than a whole lot of others and want to play it several more times.

[Chickpea Sarada]

I don't have the game, as I don't have the platform for it.  But I heard some good things about it and saw some youtube videos.

On one video...

Spoiler:

So does this mean that any Inquisitor can attempt to flirt with anyone?  And that the gender and racial restrictions are manifested by the other characters' reactions rather than just not having a flirt option?  If so, that's awesome!  If I get the game I may try to flirt with characters whose type I don't fit just to see what happens.

[Aggrax]

Never played the game myself, but I have a few friends that are really into it. One of them actually ran a Dragon Age Tabletop game that I played in that was super fun.

[Gman]

Man I still need to get back to this game. Already logged about almost 40 hours and I only just cleared the quest where you fight Terror and need to chose between the death of two characters (not gonna spoil this choice here). This game is maybe to much epicness for me right now - have a statistics exam this wednesday, so no DA:O until that's over :-(

[nearly_takuan]

So does this mean that any Inquisitor can attempt to flirt with anyone?  And that the gender and racial restrictions are manifested by the other characters' reactions rather than just not having a flirt option?  If so, that's awesome!  If I get the game I may try to flirt with characters whose type I don't fit just to see what happens.

Yep, they experimented with one character that way in DA2 (rejects you no matter what you do), and of course she was my favorite regardless, and ever since it's been my somewhat twisted policy to have my characters flirt only with those who will reject them. First playthrough of DA:I did not entirely respect this rule, but I'll post all that later....

[nearly_takuan]

Who was your Inquisitor?
First playthrough: human, male rogue, specialized in daggers/assassination. Whereas in Mass Effect games my Shepards always turn out looking vaguely Asian, my Inquisitor has been the whitest-looking dude I ever created. Speculate away about what it means that making a character while thinking "charismatic/attractive guy" produces someone white. Otherwise, though, his personality and beliefs are generally an extension of my own: a questioning agnostic leaning heavily toward atheism; outwardly respectful of others' beliefs but still somewhat disdainful of the more conservative and faith-driven characters. Liberal/leftist in a lot of ways, though that means something rather different in the Dragon Age 'verse; as an ideal wishes mages could fit in with the rest of the world, but also thinks that regardless, mages should be free to choose their own path. I imported a world-state where the HoF and Hawke did everything they could to make the world better, even if it seemed like the kind of thing that could blow up in everyone's Chantry; heroic idealists everywhere.

I got into a romance with Dorian pretty quickly, but at times kind of regretted it—the sheer tangible affection between Dorian and the Inquisitor honestly got kind of depressing at one point and I found myself mashing my spacebar through scenes that were supposed to be "rewarding". I also wanted more sidequests with Dorian after the first chapter and was kind of disappointed when there weren't any.

I still have not started my second playthrough yet, but I intend to play a Vashoth female mage. Ideals/beliefs/personality will still be more or less the same, because I don't have it in me to play in a dramatically different way, but I'm going to change the setting up quite a lot: HoF and Hawke will now be metal as hell and ludicrously amoral unlikeable anti-heroes (in my mind, at least).

Favourites!

Companion: Solas was the only companion I didn't adore by the end of the game, but to pick three....Dorian, Cole, Vivienne.

Tavern Song: "Maker". Heh.

Region: The Lost Temple. If we're just talking about the big sprawling sidequest areas, though, Storm Coast is probably my pick.

Scene:

Spoiler:

Difficult choices:

Did you side with Templars or Mages?

Mages on my first playthrough; I intend to do Templars on my second, but I'm a little apprehensive having just read that the mage story was "more involved".

For the Here Lies the Abyss quest,

Spoiler:

For Cole's personal quest,

Spoiler:

For Iron Bull's personal quest,

Spoiler:

Leliana, did you

Spoiler:

The next Divine:

Spoiler:

What happened at the Well?

HUGE spoiler:

The ending:

Spoiler:

Overall impressions?

A few of the bugs I encountered while playing were somewhat off-putting (in particular, a memory leak that sometimes made me use 16/16 GB and thrashed my pagefile until I rebooted), as was the obvious ported-from-console-ness of the PC version, but I liked the setting, story, writing, etc. enough that it hasn't totally ruined my opinion of the game. (The fact that none of the published reviews of the game mention all the bugs, though, helps confirm for me that there is a legitimate conversation to be had about Ethics In Games Journalism.)

I was also...not a huge fan of the "open world" elements here; the "find X randomly scattered objects" quests in particular reminded me of the time-wasting bullshit The Old Republic had, seemingly for the express purpose of discouraging those who would dare try to enjoy single-player content.

The "main" plot itself was nothing special, either, but I liked all the themes and details along the way—it's one of very few games where I felt like the interactivity and illusion of player "choice" was appropriately leveraged to explore what it means to be a Messiah, and weigh great power against great responsibility.

ETA: I think the next step for the franchise, as "flirting" mechanics go, is to have an NPC or two attempt to initiate flirting with the player (possibly depending on their choices, but not explicitly as something the player-character wants). Dragon Age 2 had shades of this, with me going "...wait, what?" whenever Merrill got it in her head that I'd somehow asked her to marry me, but I don't think that was intentional....

[Enail]

Scene:

Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts:

Did you bring Sera?

For Iron Bull's personal quest,

Spoiler:

Heh, my wife and I had decided to try and do things completely differently on the second playthrough to see the other content, but we spent pretty much the entire game asking each other "do we really have to do it?" and kept putting off his quest. We're both pretty strongly attached to playing  good and as people-over-ideals type, even when we try to go evil.  If I do a third playthrough, I'm definitely going evil, trying to piss off all my companions, and starting from the worst possible Keep state.

---

On one video...

Spoiler:

So does this mean that any Inquisitor can attempt to flirt with anyone?  And that the gender and racial restrictions are manifested by the other characters' reactions rather than just not having a flirt option?  If so, that's awesome!  If I get the game I may try to flirt with characters whose type I don't fit just to see what happens.

Yep, you can flirt with pretty much anything that moves, but not everyone is interested in your type or in romancing anyone. My first playthrough, I spent half the game flirting with someone who wouldn't have me - I kept thinking she was into me because I got a ton of approval every time I flirted with her, but she just thought I was being friendly. At least I didn't Nice Guy her too badly.

---

I got into a romance with Dorian pretty quickly, but at times kind of regretted it—the sheer tangible affection between Dorian and the Inquisitor honestly got kind of depressing at one point and I found myself mashing my spacebar through scenes that were supposed to be "rewarding". I also wanted more sidequests with Dorian after the first chapter and was kind of disappointed when there weren't any.

I felt like the character sidequests were a bit disappointingly small and lacking in a character arc compared to DA:II and/or to the sheer size of the whole game. Because the game's so big, you get to know them quite well anyway through their banter while running around, but I missed the DA:II feeling that I earned their friendship and had a big impact on their personal growth - as the Inquisitor, I felt like my companions would never forget the struggles we shared together, but as Hawke, I felt like my companions would never forget me.

Spoiler:

Loved that bit!

Did you side with Templars or Mages?

Mages on my first playthrough; I intend to do Templars on my second, but I'm a little apprehensive having just read that the mage story was "more involved".

Don't let me put you off, that might just be my personal feeling about it, I couldn't say that objectively it's longer or better.


For Cole's personal quest,

Spoiler:

That scene was unsettling, eh?  I liked how difficult a choice it was rather than just being a simple good choice/bad choice.

What happened at the Well?

HUGE spoiler:

Oh, I forgot about this one!

Still a huge spoiler:

The ending:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

ETA: I think the next step for the franchise, as "flirting" mechanics go, is to have an NPC or two attempt to initiate flirting with the player (possibly depending on their choices, but not explicitly as something the player-character wants). Dragon Age 2 had shades of this, with me going "...wait, what?" whenever Merrill got it in her head that I'd somehow asked her to marry me, but I don't think that was intentional....

Didn't Anders initiate flirting with you no matter what? I recall quite a few homophobes freaking out about it, though I have to admit that even I felt a little piqued being put in a position of having to get disapproval by turning him down if I wanted to romance someone else. Merrill never got any ideas about me, though, possibly because I rivalled with her first time.

[eselle28]

Scene:

Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts:

Did you bring Sera?

On my mage playthrough - hilarious!

Spoiler:

Loved that bit!

Same! I thought the game had a couple of really good scenes with Cassandra overall, which I think was a great idea, since some people may not have initially been all that warm toward her based on seeing her in DA2.

What happened at the Well?

More huge spoilers!:

ETA: I think the next step for the franchise, as "flirting" mechanics go, is to have an NPC or two attempt to initiate flirting with the player (possibly depending on their choices, but not explicitly as something the player-character wants). Dragon Age 2 had shades of this, with me going "...wait, what?" whenever Merrill got it in her head that I'd somehow asked her to marry me, but I don't think that was intentional....

Didn't Anders initiate flirting with you no matter what? I recall quite a few homophobes freaking out about it, though I have to admit that even I felt a little piqued being put in a position of having to get disapproval by turning him down if I wanted to romance someone else. Merrill never got any ideas about me, though, possibly because I rivalled with her first time.

Yes, there was a very negative reaction to the way the Anders romance began, and some of the reactions from straight male players were really homophobic. That being said, I think part of the problem was the way the game mechanics were tied to romance decisions. I think it might be possible for them to attempt an NPC initiating again if they changed the mechanics. The ME1 companions initiated the romances and didn't get such negative reactions, though there were only two possible characters to reject per PC. I think it might be difficult for writers to handle all of the rejections gracefully with a larger cast, and while receiving unwelcome advances and having to work with the person afterwards is a part of some people's daily lives, I'm not sure if that's a part of daily life that people will enjoy seeing in games.

[Archetype694]

I tend to always make my charicters look somewhat like myself, creation tools and user skill notwithstanding. Too bad I couldn't not make him chubby. (Off topic example: I love my Fat Carebear Sith in SWTOR) I almost always choose the boring white bread of the races, human. My Inquistitor is a pragmatic man, who leans pro mage and well, just wants everyone to get along. He had been so caught up in events that he had not made a romantic choice, though there were some attempts at flirtation that were shot down hard. (Ouch Sera)

Favourites!

Companion: This is hard, I really liked the cast. Almost as much as I cared for them in DAII. I'd say Iron Bull, Cole,  and Varric. I did soften up to Cassandra after she started to open up.

Tavern Song: None, though the mid event song that plays at the start of the game became a favorite tune of mine.

Region: None, I really enjoyed the variety of zones.

Scene:

Spoiler:

Difficult choices:

Did you side with Templars or Mages?

Mage for life. Though I wish I could of somehow pulled a paragon and saved both.


For the Here Lies the Abyss quest,

Spoiler:

For Cole's personal quest,

Spoiler:

For Iron Bull's personal quest,

Spoiler:

Leliana, did you

Spoiler:

The next Divine:

Spoiler:

The ending:

Spoiler:

Overall impressions?

Game of the year for me. In my mind this was a new pinnacle for the series topping both the good of DA I and II.

Spoiler:

Fully worth the price of admission.

[eselle28]

Spoiler:

Fully worth the price of admission.

Spoiler:

I was at a Bioware panel at PAX, and the developers actually said that scene was one they were always worried about, because they thought it would be magic if it worked and would be ridiculous and mockable if it didn't come off quite right.

[Archetype694]

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

I was at a Bioware panel at PAX, and the developers actually said that scene was one they were always worried about, because they thought it would be magic if it worked and would be ridiculous and mockable if it didn't come off quite right.

(Ohh lucky you! I'm looking forward to attending my first panel later this year.)

I was very pleased at how it turned out. I enjoy games and stories that have a way of impacting one on an emotional level and playing DA3 makes me excited for future RPGs from Bioware. They really knocked it out the park with some of the cast.

[Sponsored content]