Dragon Age Inquisition Review Ps4
Need To Know
Hope you enjoyed reading this review. Easily the best game on PS4 right now. Dragon Age Inquisition skipped over the hack and slash style of Dragon Age 2 to. Dragon Age™: Inquisition - Game of the Year Edition. EA Swiss Sarl Bundle Released 6 Oct 2015. More for Dragon Age™: Inquisition Explore more games and downloadable content for Dragon Age™: Inquisition! One-time licence fee to download to multiple PS4 systems. Sign in to PlayStation Network is not required to use this on your.
What is it? The third in Bioware's series of fantasy RPGs.
Copy protection: Origin
Price: £50/$60
Release date: 18 November
Publisher: EA
Developer: Bioware
Multiplayer: 4-player co-op
Website: Official site
Here’s a quick Dragon Age quiz. Who are the Seekers of Truth? What’s their relation to the Chantry? If Divine Justinia V is killed in a massive explosion that creates a breach in the fabric of reality, do her closest advisors have the political authority to reform the Inquisition? What is the Inquisition? What was the Inquisition? If a person walks out alive from the now swirling green demon hole, are they the Herald of Andraste? What do the Tevinter Imperium have to do with anything?
If you don’t know these things, Dragon Age: Inquisition’s opening lore-maelstrom threatens to drown you. Over two previous games, an expansion, and numerous tie-in comics and novels, BioWare has created a rich and broad history, much of which shapes the events of this enormous third RPG. It’s initially overwhelming, as names of people, places and events are tossed casually into the narrative.
My advice? Stick with it. Inquisition is taking you on a long and satisfying journey, with plenty of time to work out what’s what and who’s who. Now, after the 50-plus hours it took me to finish the main campaign, I feel more versed in the intricacies of the world than ever. More than that, I feel like I’ve had a bigger impact on it than in either previous game. I’ve navigated the polite intrigue of Orlesian politics, recruited powerful and dangerous allies, and elevated the Inquisition from a band of fringe heretics into one of the most feared and admired orders in all of Thedas. Also, I’ve fought a dragon or two.
The game opens in the village of Haven. It’s ten years after the events of Dragon Age: Origins, a few weeks after the epilogue of Dragon Age 2, and the exact moment that the Temple of Sacred Ashes is destroyed in a sky-tearing blast of unknown origin. Inside, the head of the Chantry—the world’s main religious organisation—was attempting to negotiate peace between the warring Templars and mages. Where the temple once stood, there is now only a dangerous and growing vortex that threatens to engulf the world. You are the only survivor.
Who you are, and why you were at the peace talks, depends on the character you create. There are four races to pick from: human, dwarf, elf or hulking grey Qunari. This choice will provide plenty of special dialogue options based on your character’s culture and history, but it doesn’t affect the setup. You emerge from the breach with no memory of what happened, and with the power to close rifts—mini-tears in reality from which demons can cross into the world.
Whatever your choice, you’re a curiously humanised Inquisitor. I played as a Dalish Elf—a people known for their insular nature and distrust of outsiders. Yet I didn’t—and couldn’t—act like any of the Dalish I’d met in the previous games. Similarly, Qunari Inquisitors are described as having rejected the Qun—the strict philosophy that made DA:O’s Sten such a fun guy to have at parties. The world does its best to respond to your race, and the differences add a welcome flavour. In terms of the range of your dialogue and actions, however, it can feel like a mostly aesthetic choice.
Seeking closure
The breach is the story bridge that links the high-level political posturing of the world’s factions to your own need to venture out and kill things. Closing it requires power, and that, initially, means securing the support of either the rebel mages or the now autonomous Templars. To approach either, you’ll first need to increase the Inquisition’s support—by completing quests. Successfully check something off your to-do list, and you’re awarded Power and Influence. Power lets you unlock new areas and progress the story, while Influence unlocks perks, from new conversation options to enhanced lockpicking for your party’s rogues.
You’ll have plenty of opportunities to earn both, because the world is huge and packed full of things to do. The first main area you unlock is the Hinterlands. It’s an enormous expanse, filled with hills and cliffs, and crammed with nooks and crannies hiding secrets, sidequests and lush, verdant scenery. About 30 hours into the game, I returned to check off another in my long list of tasks. I’d been poking and prodding the area throughout, gradually uncovering the borders of the map. This time, I encountered a dragon: first flying overhead, then landing in a bowl of charred trees and scorched rocks. It was only the second I’d seen, and its presence wasn’t tied to a quest. It was just out there, waiting to be found.
Not all areas are this big. The Orlesian city of Val Royeaux is a mere marketplace square, used for only a handful of quests throughout the campaign. Then there’s The Fallow Mire, which acts as an almost standalone undead vignette across a mostly linear area. Predominantly, though, you’ll be charting massive, open spaces, each offering a distinct environment and ecosystem. Some, like the forests of the Emerald Graves, are absolutely beautiful—filled with wild and vibrant plant life in a multitude of primary colours.
In terms of the size and scope of the environments, Dragon Age: Inquisition is the total opposite of Dragon Age 2. For the most part, that’s welcome, but I do miss the presence of a proper, bustling city. Inquisition is a game about taming hostile lands, which means there’s nowhere as dense with people as DA2’s Kirkwall, or even DA:O’s main city of Denerim. Instead, the most populated area of the game is the Inquisition’s headquarters. You’ll return here between missions to talk to companions, assign tasks to advisors, and optionally behead the odd criminal or two.
The advisors are a nice addition. Like your companions, they offer personal quests and will chat between missions. Unlike your companions, you can’t take them out into the field. Instead they can be summoned to the War Council, to be given tasks through a map view of Ferelden and Orlais. Each assignment can be tackled through diplomacy, intrigue or military force, with different results and completion times depending on the advisor used. Once assigned, a timer ticks down, after which you can collect your reward.
The time for completion can vary from ten minutes to the best part of a day, but it ticks down even when you’re not in the game. This is a great touch. For one thing, it means you’ll have a reward waiting whenever you resume the game. More importantly, it gives a sense of the Inquisition as a growing political force. It was these indirect tasks, as much as my own actions through the story and questing, that sold the sense of the order’s ascendance to legitimacy and fame.
Performance & Settings
Reviewed on: Core i5-3570K, 8GB RAM, GeForce GTX 670
Variable framerate: Yes
Anti-aliasing: Post-Processing and MSAA
Misc. graphics options: Lots, including individual quality settings for textures, shadows, terrain, water and vegetation.
Remappable controls: Yes
Gamepad support: Yes
Alas, my two-year old rig couldn't handle Dragon Age: Inquisition on its Ultra preset, and frequently dipped below 30 fps. With some tinkering, I was able to average around 40-50 fps, while still keeping the majority of its settings at High. There's plenty to tweak if you're experiencing slow-down, and the environments still look beautiful even with some settings turned down.
Inquisition does suffer lengthy loading times as you move between zones. Loading is infrequent—there's none as you travel the open world—but if you're jumping around for quest completion, be prepared for some delays.
Ram raider
Out in the world, there’s plenty of busywork to bulk out each zone. Inquisition’s sidequests are a variable bunch, and the worst resemble MMO fetch quests. Context is important here. For instance, early in the Hinterlands, you’re asked to gather the meat from ten rams in order to feed a camp of refugees. This makes sense—it’s early in the story, and the Inquisition is still weak. Such charitable acts will naturally raise the order’s standing. Fine. Elsewhere in that zone, you can pick up a quest to kill three large bears. It’s triggered when you find a note—addressed to someone else—that can be glibly summarised as “first you get the bear claws, then you get the power, then you get the women.” There is no reason at all for the Inquisitor to do this, other than it provides a flimsy excuse to visit that part of the map.
Fortunately, there’s plenty of substance too. The campaign’s story is gated by both the suggested experience level, and the Power cost of unlocking each mission. I was easily able to earn enough of both while focusing only on the most interesting objectives. As long as you’re exploring the world, righting wrongs and fighting hostiles, there’s no need to churn through the padding. Even so, the open-world activities are different in nature to past BioWare games. Many have a clear and rigid goal, with little room for on-the-fly moral choices. However you wield the Inquisition, its intentions are good. When tasked with clearing an area of evil, there’s little room to question whether things are really what they seem. They are. Now go and kill the evil.
To counterbalance this, the main story missions are filled with tough, world-shifting decisions. They are, almost without exception, wonderful scenarios. Each mission is distinct, memorable, and significantly moves the story along. Initially, the forming of the Inquisition seemed hurried, and underwhelming because of it. After about 20 hours, that was revealed to be a deliberate move—through a sequence that entirely changed my perception of what the order was, and my character’s relationship to it. Before that point, her involvement seemed born out of necessity. Afterwards, it was strengthened by conviction.
The story also provides Inquisition’s few instances of lengthy, linear combat encounters. The combat system has been significantly changed for this incarnation. You still have Dragon Age’s classic trio of Warrior, Rogue and Mage—each with multiple skill trees to further define the role. Now, though, the emphasis is on direct attacks, using the left mouse button to swipe away at enemies between activation of the skills assigned to your hotbar.
For the most part, it works, but there are persistent minor annoyances. I played as a rogue, and found the combat animations too slow for my liking. You can avoid a lot of damage by dodging the heaviest, most telegraphed enemy strikes, but your movement is limited while attacking. Without a way to instantly cancel out of an attack, I found myself having to wait for the animation to finish—often being hit as a result. Targeting enemies can be troublesome, too. There are few things more frustrating than activating your Inquisitor’s leaping strike, only for her to vault off in the wrong direction because the game hasn’t registered that you’re attacking the enemy in front of you. The best I can say is that I learned to compensate for these issues, and by the end could manoeuvre through fights with something approaching grace.
Control over the party’s tactics has been simplified. In previous games, orders resembled absurd algebra puzzles. If Morrigan drops below 25% health, should she turn into a swarm of insects? Sure, but only if she stops being insects at lesser than or equal to 50% mana. In Inquisition, you have some agency over when healing items are consumed, but skills can only be enabled, disabled or marked as preferential—giving them priority over other skills.
I miss the fine-tuning the old system enabled. Controlling Inquisition’s party requires either accepting the inefficiencies of the AI, or spending a lot of time micro-managing. Choose the latter, and you’ll find the tactics battle screen—used to assign orders to the party members you’re not currently controlling—has its own issues, all of which are with the camera. It gives you a top-down view of the battlefield, but is awkward to move and doesn’t zoom out quite far enough. There are times when it shines, such as during battles with dragons where there’s a large space and a single target. Against multiple enemies, things can get confusing.
Supply and demand
The biggest combat change is in how healing works. Mages can no longer cast restorative spells, and characters don’t regenerate health between fights. Instead, your entire party has a shared pool of potions—eight initially, with the possibility of upgrading. These can only be restocked at the camps you set up out in the world, or from supply caches found scattered along the path of a main mission. It’s a decent system, and completely changes how battles are arranged. For one thing, difficulty is no longer tied to the number of enemies, but rather their composition. Even when fighting three or four bandits, the presence of a shield-carrying Templar can provide a significant challenge. Gone too are the long crawls through enemy-infested caves. Most battles are against small and often avoidable groups out in the open world, with spelunking a limited and often short distraction.
That this review has highlighted plenty of issues is because Inquisition is imperfect in lots of small, yet noticeable ways. Make no mistake, though: I love so much of what this game is. The story is something I’m eager to discuss with people as they play through the game—to discover what they did, and learn of the breadth of divergence possible in each person’s campaign. More than that, Inquisition is filled with moments that make it such a fulfilling and worthy sequel for the series. The heartwarming interactions with those companions I befriended. The brief touches of humour and levity. The way that, through the Dragon Age: Keep website, my decisions across the previous games have been woven into the fabric of this one. My first fight with a dragon—the way its animations perfectly conveyed arrogance, annoyance, and eventually exhaustion—will be one of my most enduring gaming memories of this year.
There’s even co-op multiplayer, in the style of Mass Effect 3’s horde mode. As I write this, the servers are empty, and so I’ve been unable to test it. Whatever its quality, it doesn’t affect a singleplayer campaign that, all things considered, is a resounding success. How much you enjoy Inquisition will likely depend on what it is you enjoy about RPGs. If you want complex systems and hardcore challenge, it could potentially disappoint. I don’t. I want a rich world, interesting characters, and a dramatic and memorable plot. Judged on those criteria, Dragon Age: Inquisition sits happily alongside BioWare’s best.
I’m going to need a bigger dagger.
Why ride a horse when you can ride a weird, purple reindeer thing?
Only the Inquisitor can close Fade Rifts. So, you know, do that.
There’s a dying hyena somewhere under all this.
You can turn on friendly fire, if you want mages to kill everyone constantly.
The accepted posture for “oh dear, a rogue has phased through me.”
Use the tactics screen to learn the strengths of your foes.
BioWare's vast RPG makes up for a slight lack of focus with a deeply generous spirit.
There's a definite end of an era feel to much of Dragon Age: Inquisition, whether or not BioWare has a fourth in the pipeline. This is what everything's been leading towards; all those choices, all the adventure, all the drama, and all the epic battles so far - of good vs. evil, of mages vs. templars and, of course, of RPG fans everywhere vs. Dragon Age 2.
Love or loathe that game, Inquisition feels like an open attempt to atone for its sins - a comeback play from a company that knows that still being one of the genre's heaviest hitters doesn't mean its reputation isn't on the line. Luckily, lessons have been learned. No longer does one cave try to pass for ten, or has streamlining taken all the choice out of adventuring. This is still firmly a modern BioWare RPG rather than a return to Origins' long abandoned old-school aspirations, but one bursting in ambition and scale.
That scale isn't just in its maps, though those are the first hint of it, and the difference between them and what came before is night and day. Finally, Thedas feels like a world rather than a series of glorified corridors - one open for exploration. It's not fully open, a la Skyrim; each major area is neatly packed in its own box, linked by a map as before. Those boxes however now stretch out as far as the eye can see, across valleys and mountains, with waves smashing the coast, villages, enemy camps, caves, swamps and temples all littering the landscape.. along with a number of smaller maps for specific stories and major interiors.. and both a horse and fast travel needed to zip around on your many jobs. How beautiful does everything look turned up to full? Enough that I put this review on hold for a day so that I could get a GeForce 970 to replace my old 660. It was clear it deserved nothing less.
Once the shine had worn off though, disappointment began setting in. Inquisition zips quickly through its set-up, in which you're a survivor of a mysterious breach in the sky that's spitting out demon spawning tears, but not quickly enough to hide that you're an amnesiac hero, the threat is basically Oblivion's gates recoloured green, and that the villain of the piece is referred to as 'The Elder One', as if the entire writing team had just thrown their hands up in defeat. The role-playing too, pretty as it is, didn't feel like BioWare. There are straight up MMO style quests, like collecting 10 bits of meat, which at least make sense in context - that you're helping refugees and refugees need food. Others, however, are thrown in with no finesse whatsoever. You find a letter that says, in about as many words, 'Girls really dig people who can kill bears!' and then ping, your Quest Journal suddenly thinks you're interested in bear-hunting. The first hour of a game is a bad, bad time for it to be resorting to this crap.
The reason for the sack of activities where normally there'd be more involved quests is that Inquisition takes as many cues from the likes of Assassin's Creed as other RPGs, with its maps a sack of quests, collectibles, secret bits and general things to do. These in turn provide levels and gives the Inquisition the power to take on bigger problems in more traditional quests, like preventing the assassination of the Empress of Orlais, home of some of the dodgiest accents this side of 'Allo 'Allo. The further you get, the more of that good stuff there is to do, including spin-offs from the main quest like your companions' personal quests. Early on though, it's just busy-work. The big threat is boring, and it's hard to take everyone seriously when they rattle on about its urgency but still have time to make fancy Inquisition banners and armour, and the basic solution is openly 'Just get some mages to help zap the green swirly thing.'
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No-one expects the Inquisition
Like Mass Effect 3, Inquisition features a multiplayer mode. It's a relatively simple seeming four-player co-op where you face waves of enemies while exploring locations like a set of Elven Ruins, with a choice of characters that can be unlocked through play or by spending money. As the bulk of the game is single-player though, and we've not had a chance to play it on live servers, it hasn't had any bearing on this review. We'll take a look after launch.
Dragon Age Inquisition Pc Review
Thankfully, a fifth or so of the way in the villain finally tips their hand, and amateur hour ends. Now you're officially in charge of the Inquisition instead of simply the only person in it able to get anything done, the stakes become meaningful and dramatic, the mysteries become interesting. Most importantly, there's a beautiful sense of actually having power, of sitting in judgement over defeated foes, of dispatching spies and soldiers around Thedas to do your bidding, of conquering forts that fill with your people instead of just setting up campsites, of going from this small heretical organisation to a major power that decides the outcome of elections and gets called up by the King for favours, and seeing your home base go from a ruined, desolate castle into the salvation of the land. At least, if all goes well.
None of this is remotely deep or strategic. When asked if a situation calls for diplomacy, spies or military strength, any of them will work and few require any more effort on your part than actively not declaring 'Zhu Li, do the thing!' at an unlistening monitor. There's enough of it to compensate for that though, and more than enough wrapping to sell the illusion, while still justifying why you're always in the field instead of consigned to a desk. Most stories and decisions just provide trinkets or Dragon Age's equivalent of Mass Effect 3's War Assets, though others can unlock their own stories and decisions further down the story. Somewhat oddly they have timers of the kind you'd expect to see in an F2P mobile game, but those don't get in the way. Actual story quests are clearly labelled, and the flavour ones optional.
Much of the time though, the only way to get things done is to head out with swords, shields, staffs and spells and crack some skulls. Inquisition changes up the combat dramatically, with the biggest difference being that there are now no healers or out-of-combat health recharges. Instead you have camps where you can heal up and replenish your stock of healing potions, with more opening up as you push through each map. Regular potions are free, and all I ever used. You can discover better and different ones though, which require ingredients to make, as well as upgrade the ones you've got, providing a good middle ground between Dragon Age's constant herb farming and automatic healing. This is also much how the whole game works when it comes to aspects like crafting custom gear, upgrading weapons and ticking off all the quests on each map. You can if you like, but at least on Normal difficulty, you never actually have to if you just want to plug on with the story.
Combat tries to offer a similar compromise, though it's not entirely successful. By default fights are much like Dragon Age 2's pausable action, with other party members controlled by basic scripts. By default, for instance, they'll glug potions until you're down to two, so that you can choose who gets the last couple yourself. It's also possible to zoom out to a tactical view as in Origins and play from afar. In practice though, everyone moves around far too much and too quickly, with mages especially just spamming endless pyrotechnic attacks limited only by a slight cooldown. There were many exciting battles on the main story, but none I could say were tactically very interesting, and none of them against one of the oddly unimaginative damage-sponge bosses, with Rift clean-up detail especially wearing out its welcome. Like the equally boring Oblivion gates, every one is basically the same - deal with a couple of demon waves, don't stand on exploding ground, close rift. Yawn. At least there are meatier bonus challenges elsewhere, not least taking on the huge dragons around the world.
While that side provides most of the raw action though, it's the adventure and political parts of the game that make Inquisition work - its understanding that a party in Orlais, where the Great Game is played for the highest stakes, should be just as dangerous as anything that happens in a dungeon. After two games of controlling a ragtag bunch of misfits, it's also interesting to be in a position of genuine power for once; to be the one who directly makes and lives with calls on controversies like whether mages deserve their freedom.
At times though, it can still be oddly.. not bland as such, but definitely flatter than it should be, with an odd reluctance to follow through on anything that might create a sense of vulnerability or ambiguity. Case in point: the Inquisition is constantly sold as being controversial and deeply mistrusted, but in practice just about everyone except all-out evil factions tend to be reasonably happy to see you, and often desperate to sign up. Your first proper enemy meanwhile literally introduces himself by punching a nun in the face.
This is all especially notable because the whole concept, and your position at its head, feels like it was invented specifically to offer interesting moral choices and difficult decisions. Very rarely though are you given a choice whether the best option isn't obvious, and I can't think of a single one that rebounded in an interesting way later on. There's nothing wrong with classic heroic fantasy and do-gooding of course, but here the shades of grey are notable by their absence rather than their intrigue, especially in the wake of other recent offerings like The Witcher 2 and Game of Thrones, where decisions constantly have huge implications. Here, everything remains insular, confined to its own bit of the story rather than being intertwined and paying off when you least expect it. At least, unless I was just unlucky.
It doesn't help that the cast is ridiculously big for a group of people that you're meant to forge connections with. In BioWare tradition, new party members come thick and fast, but here you also have a team of up to four advisors with their own storylines, a castle full of people, a big board of operations and all kinds of distractions. It's just too much at once, with the inevitable result being that most of the team just ends up standing around waiting to be called on.
Easily my favourite of the ones I used was Dorian, the amusingly moustached Tevinter mage and the Inquisition's designated snarker (also BioWare's first gay party member, though that only really comes up in his personal quest - a somewhat on-the-nose PSA with experience points), who tended to be partnered with the slowly defrosting Cassandra from the last game and a Qunari warrior called Iron Bull. The rest of the team run the gamut from a childlike elf to a mysterious spirit, but having no particular need of them, I had to go out of my way to even say hello. I'd have made an exception and brought Varric along on quests even though I didn't need a rogue, but he and Leliana (now your spymistress rather than a party member) have gone through the same thing as Anders, with much of their humour surgically removed between sequels. Leliana in particular is barely recognisable as the bard who was once up for a foursome with Isabella the pirate queen, and the ambient dialogue in general never got close to the zip of Dragon Age 2's banter or the squabbling between Morrigan and Alistair. BioWare games usually do a great job of making your group feel like family. Here, they were assets.
Despite this and its shaky start though, Inquisition does come together into a very worthy Dragon Age sequel that never stopped being compelling once it had the chance to build up its momentum. To some extent the quieter moments throughout even help to amplify the bigger quests and more dramatic plot points, while the free choice of where to spend your attention afterwards makes for a refreshingly open RPG that's still focused on the story it's telling - one that goes from strength to strength as the stakes ramp up and the war for Thedas begins.
Its not-so-fatal flaw is that in offering so much, both in terms of player choice and in going for peak-BioWare in every aspect of the game, those individual moments, characters, activities and plot beats often don't benefit from the focus and importance needed to unlock their full potential. Still, that's hardly a crime, and one more than made up for by the many high points that I can't name directly for fear of spoilers, the hours and hours both adventuring in Thedas as it was always meant to be, and sitting at the highest levels of its politics. The true power of the Inquisition may be illusory, but that doesn't stop it being satisfying to wield while it lasts.
8 /10
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Dragon Age Inquisition Rating
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