What I Learned from Dragon Age: Inquisition

I understand that this is a month and then some in the making, but I wanted to have at least a good solid number of hours behind this game before I started on this list, and now that I've breached 90+ I finally feel qualified to put my two cents (or coin) on the matter while hopefully not coming off as an ungrateful fan.

Before I start, as a huge BioWare lover I just want to say that this game did not disappoint. This is not going to be a 500+ word rant on what could have been made better because I said so - something I am not wholly qualified to do regardless. While I will admit, had much bigger fears than was rational, I could honestly come away from this without any complaints save for the graphical and dialogue glitches inherent in the past-gen systems. Truly, it could have been much worse, and for that I thank you BioWare. I know that Dragon Age isn't the money maker that Mass Effect is, but you showed that you didn't forget those of us who still prefer the fantasy over sci-fi genre most days of the week. Again, thank you.

Okay, so, here it goes!

This game did a lot of things right. I will forever harp on the biggest issue with Dragon Age II being its copy-paste dungeons, but I think BioWare knew that the stakes with this game were much higher and I knew that we would not be seeing that again here, especially when they promised a more expansive world similar to the likes of Skyrim. I was very happy to see areas of Ferelden that I had not seen before, or having seeing Orlais at all which was a treat (and I don't care what anyone says, I loved the Grand Game). I loved that we revisited Redcliffe and The Temple of Sacred Ashes (or maybe only its ashes...haha, see what I did there?) and truthfully, I would have really loved to have re-seen a lot more of the country that I gave 45 hours to in Dragon Age: Origins. I would have loved to revisit Denerim (now rebuilt, much like Redcliffe was I'm assuming?) or even Ostagar where both Origins and DA:II began, and given that we were so close to it when we went to hunt down the Avvar I'm surprised we didn't at least get a glimpse of those old Tevinter ruins, but I digress. We still got quite a bit, in fact there were plenty of generated memes and articles out there about players never leaving the Hinterlands!

Secondly, thank you for bringing back Hawke and Varric. This is more a personal note than anything designer related, although it also makes sense from a high concept/story related aspect since Hawke and Varric really were at the heart of so many of the instances that have lead up to this point. I still haven't quite forgiven BioWare for making Varric a non-romanceable character, but this is more than they were ever required to give us, so for that, I thank them for that lovely continuation and that attention to detail.

Excess. You guys gave us a LOT to do in this game, to the point where it honest to god was overwhelming. Often. At first this felt like a really bad thing - I was drawn away from the story so often that I forgot what I was doing and where I was supposed to be going, but over time I realized that this gave the story some depth that could have easily just been omitted by the dev team for the ease of just getting us from point A to point B throughout the game. Instead they gave us the option, not the obligation, to get more out of the game if we wanted without making it all necessary. While I still think this could have been balanced slightly better, just exactly as to how has yet to come to me, and since I'm a huge DA lore buff that could just be me.

Crafting. This is probably the first Dragon Age game where I not only did any crafting, but both enjoyed and looked forward to it! I'm generally not a believer in creating items for my character when looting corpses I've just bludgeoned to death, or hidden treasure chests usually offer more than my coffers can ever hope to hold. Inquisition changed that though which I'm pleased about. I'm not going to go too in depth with the system here, but I can say that I'm very pleased with all of the options you have with armor and weapons, not to mention the amazing modifications you can find and create for you and your companions. This was amazing.

All right, now that that's out of my system, it's time to bring up a few things that I did not like about this game or things that I felt could have been done better. Depending on the scenario I will either list it as a problem, or offer a solution if I feel there is a viable one. Beware, many reaction gifs ahead.

Specialization classes...why did I need to use the war map to find a trainer in these areas? Before I had the option to just upgrade automatically to four chosen ones and if I was clever I found someone who would open up a bonus class in the game (like Isabela and the duelist class in DA:O). That's all I'm going to say about this, BioWare. Never. Do. This. Again.

You gave me a jump button, but if I'm a rogue there's a skill tree node that gives me...jumping. What are you doing here guys?

I'm hoping I've just missed this, but with crafting being such an essential component of the game, I have yet to see an option to upgrade my inventory space. There's so much shit to collect in this game that I literally need Hermione's bottomless purse to get all of the resources between Masterworks, crafting, and filling requisition orders. Please, give me this, or someone please tell me what I'm missing!

Banter. We need more of this, and I know it was addressed in the patch, but here's the thing - before I left the Hinterlands for the first time, Cassandra dropped a line of dialogue that mentioned Corypheus and the Red Templars. This was clearly not supposed to happen, but because I've played the DLC Legacy, I knew exactly who that was and, in turn, I knew exactly who and what my enemy was for this game. This was a massive plot spoiler and I can only hope I was an isolated case, but yeah - this is a problem! Please bring back more sarcasm and insults, and less spoilers.

Balancing. Combat goes without say. I could waste a dragon with only a few potions after a certain point but could still be completely flattened by a Marksman or a Red Templar Shadow. Something's off here, and I don't know what it is, but it needs some fixing.

That being said, Inquisition Perks were impossible to come by while Power Points were practically showered on you like templar initiate coin at The Blooming Rose. Is there a way those points could have been exchanged for perks? That would have been nice. Or maybe even sold off to allies for their own use so I could actually buy something? Seriously, my forces were practically fighting with rags and wooden swords we were so poor because the only way to apparently earn gold was to waste my advisers' forces with redoing the same "get gold" quest when I really needed them each to work on that one mission that took, literally, 24 hours. Thank god that wasn't in game time or I'd have probably said fuck it and moved on to trying to sleep with Cullen again.

Before I get down to the last two spoiler-ific issues, here is my biggest issue with Inquisition: for all the time I spent filling requisition orders, closing rifts, gathering shards & other magical items, while also smoothing over diplomatic issues with allies and potential allies...all the time I put forth into these tasks literally felt like they added nothing to my end game experience. This is the one thing I really felt that Dragon Age was going to take out of Mass Effect which gave you different endings depending on your overall battle readiness. That would have been a sensible mechanic to add to this considering you needed so much of what you were doing to theoretically win this battle with as few hiccups as possible...in the end a lot of this didn't seem to matter. Again.  At least its not detrimental to the plot but at least reward me for the time I wasted doing things that didn't really matter anyway.

SPOILER ALERT:
Killing Hawke/Alistair/Loghain/Stroud

These are all incredibly skilled warriors. Why does one have to die so the rest can get free? Why couldn't they all just kill that damned giant spider? This is ridiculous. I sacrificed Hawke because it felt like the right thing to do, but if she doesn't fall out of an Eluvian in DA:4 to help save the day I'm going to be very, very angry. Oh, and on that note:

Story's End:

Wasn't what Corypheus wanted was a way into the Fade? Why did we give him that at the end of the game? Is he trapped? We were shown that with enough power the Eluvians can be rerouted to the Fade and not the crossroads, a power that Corypheus clearly has, so...what does this mean for DA:4? Is he coming back? Or is it a convenient fix that he might not be able to find a way out now that he's in the Fade? Or will we find Hawke later carrying around his head because he/she was waiting for him this whole time? Seriously, I need this explained to me. I don't get it.

All right, that's it. I feel like my balance of pros and cons with this game is heavily weighted toward the cons, but that's honestly not true. I really did love this game, I just feel that there were overlooked aspects that could have made it better. If you haven't picked it up yet, I honestly recommend you do so, even if you haven't played the other two, and if you haven't played those...you're doing something wrong with your life.

Again, thank you BioWare, and I cannot wait to see what the next installment of this series looks like.