Nitpicking about Dragon Age Inquisition
I recently started playing dragon age inquisition, (yeah, I know, I'm not late to that party at all) and I've got some things to say about my impression of the game but before that I should explain my history with the dragon age series.
I've never actually finished the first or second dragon age games. I've tried to start Origins a number of times, but it always managed to lose me early on. The problem is, it's a very generic fantasy game. It might do some interesting stuff with its lore and its characters later on, but I wouldn't know because to get to that interesting stuff I have to wade through so much bland bullshit that I just can't be bothered.
It's been a few years since I last played the game but when a game makes a good first impression, you're going to remember that for years. Origins unfortunately was so forgettable that all I can recall about it are a few vague plot points. I know you start off in a castle that gets attacked by generic evil enemy faction #1. You escape and then you're with some group of demon hunters or something and you perform a ritual of some sort. Then you go into a swamp to look for a witch who joins your party and... yeah that's usually around the time I stop. Riveting stuff.
My problem isn't just that the game's world and story are bland, it's that it has no other hook to pull me along until I get to the interesting parts. RPGs often have slow beginnings to be sure, but there's usually something there to keep you going weather it's a bizarre setting like in the SMT games or a fun combat system like in Kingdoms of Amalur, there's usually something.
Speaking of combat, I was honestly pretty impressed by how bad the combat in Origins was. It's not terrible from a mechanical standpoint but from a visual standpoint it's a fucking mess and I don't know why. Origin's combat is essentially the same as the combat in Knights of the Old Republic but with all of the fun visual flare stripped right out of it. In KOTOR characters actually looked (more or less) like they were actually fighting each other, this was especially true when you had characters with vibroswords and lightsabers going at it. They'd trade blows! Their swords would clash! It actually looked like something was happening! I never saw that in origins. Characters just swung their weapons around like they were in a really badly choreographed LARP fight. It sucked away any of the fun I might have had with the game's combat. I've tried to power through those first few hours, I really have, but with nothing to pull me along, I just couldn't do it.
Now then, the point of this whole rant is to say that I did not go into Dragon Age Inquisition with high expectations. That being said, my impressions after about two or so hours have been mixed. It's certainly better than I expected, but I've got some gripes I want to rant about. Let's start with the largest one.
Let's talk warriors
I love playing warriors in RPGs. Give me some heavy armor, a sword and a shield and I'm more than happy to go murder monsters or demons or bandits or whatever it is that needs to die, or at least, that used to be the case. I'll admit, it's not entirely fair to blame this on DAI, but this is the game that finally made me hang up my sword and shield.
When I started off the game I was actually pretty impressed with the combat. DAI's combat is a mix of real time and tactical systems. You can pause the game whenever you want to issue orders to your party, not unlike in KOTOR, but the actual combat itself is much faster and much more active. You don't have to stand around waiting for auto attacks like you did in KOTOR. If you want to attack, you just click the left mouse button. If you want to use an ability you just press the button on the hotbar. No more queuing up abilities and waiting for them to go off. The actual attack animations themselves are a huge improvement over Origin's impact-less LARP fighting. Each swing of your sword feels like it actually has some weight behind it.
The two abilities I got at the start were kind of boring. Just a shout that grabbed aggro and a counter that did more damage if it was used it right after getting hit. Nothing special, but surely I'd get something more interesting later on, right? Eventually I leveled up and I took a look at the warrior's skill trees. I stared at them for about five minutes. ESC. Quit to main menu. New game. Human. Male. Mage.
Let's play a game shall we? I'm going to describe a set of warrior skills. I want you to tell me what game you think it's from, alright? Here goes:
Bull charge: You charge straight into to an enemy dealing a small amount of damage to it and maybe stunning it.
Shout: You shout, aggroing every enemy in a small area around you
Provoke: You shout, aggroing one specific enemy.
Chain pull: You throw out a chain that latches on to an enemy and pulls them towards you
Shield bash: You hit an enemy with your shield, stunning them
Whirlwind attack: You spin around, dealing damage to all enemies around you
Ground pound: You slam your weapon against the ground causing it to crack open, dealing damage to all enemies in front of/around you.
So, what's your answer? Yes. It's from that one. Yes, it's also from that other one you were thinking about. In fact, this is the move set every warrior gets in every RPG ever, including DAI. I understand that warriors are typically the easy, beginner friendly class but why is that the case? Why does every single warrior have to be so mind numbingly dull? There are games out there that have managed to make playing a warrior fun. Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising immediately come to mind. Now, I know those aren't RPGs, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to look at how fighting is handled in those games and translate that over to a slower paced game like an RPG. Let me give you an example of how I envision a character action style warrior would work in an RPG:
Imagining what could be
A character action style warrior would be based around the idea of putting enemies into states that can then be exploited by certain attacks, which then puts them into another state that can then be exploited by a different set of attacks. This cycle goes on until the you either finish a combo chain or drop/get knocked out of your combo.
Your combo would start with counter skill, much like Bayo's dodge or Raiden's parry. Upon using this skill you'd get a buff that lasts about a second or so. If an enemy attacks you while this buff is up, you counter them, putting them into a staggered state. Once the enemy is staggered, you'd gain access to a number of attacks all of which either continue or end your combo. You could, for example, charge into the staggered enemy and start slashing away at them. The style meter often used in character action games could then be emulated here through the use of grey health.
Basically, while you're slashing away at the enemy, only a small fraction of your damage actually goes through. The rest of it is converted to grey damage on the enemy's life bar. Each consecutive normal slash does less and less grey damage and if you just keep slashing, you'll eventually drop your combo, restoring the enemy's grey health back to normal health. Needless to say, if you get attacked while slashing at the enemy, you'll get knocked out of the combo, which will also restore their health. If however you use another ability that exploits and changes the enemy's current state your slashes not only go back to doing their full damage, they'll do more damage because you've extended your combo and each step of the combo adds a multiplier to the amount of grey damage you deal. You could, for example, knock an enemy into the air. Each consecutive normal attack after that will do more grey damage and juggle the enemy until finally you finish the combo by using an attack that exploits the enemy's "juggled" state, like say, a jumping slash that slams them into the ground. At that point all of the grey health the enemy has accumulated is converted into actual damage.
A system like this would allow less skilled players to have their easy warrior class by giving them the option to just go straight into a finisher after staggering the enemy while also giving more skilled players a more challenging, interesting and ultimately more rewarding class to play by giving them a risk vs reward system that encourages quick thinking and quick reflexes. Of course, a system like this isn't something that's ever going to happen but a guy can dream right?
Anyways, the entire point of this little aside here has been to say that warriors in DAI are terrible. So terrible in fact, that my first response to the class was to quit, roll up a mage and cry for a while as I imagined what the class could have been.
Compared to my issues with the warrior class, my next two gripes are really just me being a nitpicky asshole, but there were two scenes that really stood out to me.
The fuck is going on with your cameraman DAI?
There was a scene, (either right before or right after the formation of the inquisition, I forget) in which the protagonist, the French knight lady and some other character who's name escapes me at the moment were standing around in front of a table, talking. They weren't looking at anything on the table for but for whatever reason their bodies were all facing it. They were all just standing there in a line, awkwardly turning their heads to talk to each other. I guess they wanted the character's bodies to be facing the camera, but why? They should have all been facing each other. As it was, the whole scene look really stiff and unnatural. It might be hard to visualize what I'm talking about and understand why it was so odd without screenshots but unfortunately it didn't occur to me to take any at the time. If I run into any more strange scenes in the future I'll be sure to take a picture, but for now you're just going to have to take my word for it. Shit looked weird.
Not long after that there was another scene in which your character went to talk to some sort of priestess or nun or something along those lines. The scene started off normal enough but while they spoke camera suddenly zoomed in on the priestess's face. She wasn't trying to whisper anything conspiratorially, she was just talking, so what the fuck happened? To make matters worse, the next shot after that was another extreme close up, this time of the protagonist. Then the camera zoomed out. Then it zoomed the fuck back in again. It just kept doing this to both the priestess and the protagonist as they talked. The bizarre camerawork turned what should have been a normal conversation between two characters into something really odd and off-putting.
Now then, none of these complaints have managed to turn me away from DAI. The mage class is actually somewhat fun to play and while the camerawork during the cut scenes is a little strange, it's nothing to quit the game over. That being said, I am a nitpicker at heart so I'm sure I'll find a million different things to bitch about at some point or another but who knows? Maybe this'll be the dragon age game that finally keeps my interest through past the first few hours.