Skyhold Wardrobe
New wardrobe/golden nug/multiplayer patch went live yesterday! Pros and cons as always, though I won’t lie, I was a bit disappointed this go around in the base game material that was added.
Let me just say that I’m really glad that they patched in the wardrobe. So, one way or another the fact that they addressed it is great. I’m definitely glad to have an option at this point. Still…
Wardrobe: The cons of this option are the outfits themselves. They’re…kind of awful. Not all of them, and not for all characters, it’s just that as far as any non-human character goes, we still have the exact same problem as all base game armors, etc: they just look completely bizarre and non-human bodies don’t really work in them. Elves still have shoulders that are far too narrow and noodle arms (though the formal Halamshiral outfit helps this somewhat). Plus, it’s kind of irksome that even though we’re in Skyhold, and there’s no need whatsoever for straddling a horse, etc, we still don’t have any dress/robe options or any of the NPC formalwear that’s obviously already in the game and could have been adapted. It’s a bummer that the descriptions of the outfits are way more intriguing than the outfits themselves.
Golden Nug: This is a nice feature. The lack of reward/payoff for gathering things made it a real pain to make myself want to recollect everything each runthrough. As a heads up, you have to use the golden nug with a post game save file first for it to be accessible and appear in other your other games.
Multiplayer: The MP patches continue to be the most entertaining and innovative, honestly. I would encourage people to play just to experience the classes they’re thinking up. The new Saarebas class is a load of fun once you get the hang of the combos and I love that the last two characters have been ‘female’ additions (I don’t really know if we can say what Saarebas’ gender is specifically, but they use the female Qunari body/head). Bard, Duelist, Silent Sister, and Saarebas have been awesome character additions, and they’re all completely new playstyles (that creatively use existing abilities as well as adding new ones) and completely new armor/character models.
Honestly, I would love if these classes could be made available for the Inquisitor to specialize in instead of all the characters/companions having exactly the same abilities. You don’t really feel like the mages in the base game are from different backgrounds, because their base abilities are all the same outside of their specialization, which they don’t gain until later (rather than having it from the get-go). MP avoids this by streamlining each character to a constrained class because of the promotion system. It’s fun to puzzle out the best build and play each distinctive style within the class parameters. Each character feels very distinctive because of this as well.
It’s frustrating that MP can add really innovative great content, but the base game can’t allot the time to even create a few completely new outfits or hairstyles to give via free patches (the mirror was a great opportunity to add more customization options, especially for Qunari). Even just stealing the new outfits in MP and putting them in the wardrobe/base game would have been great. I know the MP and the storyline teams are separate and that the base game people have been working on DLC in addition to patches, but…come on. The Black Emporium added nothing new, unlike in DA:2 where I was seriously surprised at the amount of entertainment I got out of that one freebie. The Emporium patch didn’t even include a mabari this go around, and didn’t have as many dialogue/exploration/codex options around the store.
Now, the wardrobe has no new outfits, just the same problematic old ones, and I once again face the realization that none of the free patches have actually added new content or levels to the game like they sort of hinted they might do (”We didn’t get to put everything we wanted into the game so we’ll be releasing it in free patches”). Mostly, they just add content that’s actually a rehash of the original material.
It’s…continually disappointing, even as they address the completely lowest base of ‘responding to players’. So, on one hand I feel bad about complaining, but on the other hand I’m constantly annoyed at how expensive the DLC is just to get some new armor/gameplay and how absurdly little we get in the free patches when they talk such a great game about what they’re going to add in for free for those who paid for the base game.
