User Review : Dragon Age 3: Inquisition

Ups

• Story
• Environments
• Characters

Downs

• Repetitiveness of Combat

Dragons & Demons be damned.

For its initial hours, Dragon Age Inquisition feels decidedly formulaic.

You, the Herald of Andraste, the focal point of this next Dragon Age tale, spend your time jutting between lush forest and snow-coated plane, lending a helping hand to luckless townsfolk and steadily familiarising yourself with combat at the expense of the regions resident bandit enclaves. At a steady pace and with a rigid consistency, you recruit new members to your Inquisition that are ready to fight on your behalf, each another axe or bow to help stem the ever-rising tide. You harvest a few plants, rid the land of its many perils and then return home to rest, in what quickly becomes a cyclical, grating monotony.

But, as the Inquisition story teeters on the precipice of change, so does the very makeup of the game itself. At roughly twenty hours in and with its otherwise enticing lure steadily waning, Dragon Age Inquisition comes to the fore, its predictability and simplicity shed like the skin of the game it once was. From this point on, Inquisition plays more like the entity that it is striving to be, rather than the predecessor it is hoping to leave behind in its wake. It's something different, something grander and something that time and again left me yearning for another chance to leave my mark on this much maligned world.

With the tumultuous roar that signals the end of Inquisition's hefty prologue having now receded to that of a diminutive whir, for the first time, I felt as though I had the entire region of Thedas ready to charter. This, of course, was due in part to my anointment as the next in a long line of Grand Inquisitors, a simple moniker that at the very least, allows me to see the world as Bioware would've intended.

It's rather easy to place a crown atop the head of the player and call them a king. What isn't so easy is making that crown seem equal parts burden and blessing. In Inquisition, it isn't long before you're given the chance to take your position as Thedas' resident sceptre-wielding figurehead, but rather than limiting your role to something more ambassadorial, you're instead given free reign over castle improvements, the operations you undertake and the order in which you approach the games several salient story chapters. It's here that Inquisition really begins to excel, with its strengths only ever exemplified by the now striking level of freedom afforded to the player.

At the heart of the games post-prologue adventure is Skyhold, a fitting physical representation of the budding Inquisition on the rise. Skyhold is your central hub and the home to each and every one of your fellow inquisitors. As well as procuring many things out in the wild that will each lend a hand towards improving the hold, Skyhold is where you'll plan your next move and decide which cause would benefit from the intervention of the Inquisition most. And keeping the Inquisition constantly clued in on the ever changing landscape of Thedas is the War Table, a tool of strategy that encourages a segmented progression of the Inquisition story, as well as serving as an outlet for procuring influence that you can use to increase the Inquisition's reach.

Oddly, the War Table operates in real time, meaning that sending an agent away to intimidate a noble may take anywhere from fifteen minutes to around four hours. The saving grace here is that with so many things to do, you rarely find yourself staring at the clock and waiting for an operation to complete. Most notably though, the War Table catalogues every single pathway currently accessible on the main quest-line, meaning that if you're not content with progressing until you've extracted every single secret and wrung every quest dry across the games many biomes, then there's no chance that you'll be hurried into delving back into the crux of the story. As Grand Inquisitor, and an individual powerful enough to have a castle at their back and a legion of willing soldiers at their front, that's just one of the many perks that comes with the job.

Aside from taking trips back and forth the War Table, Skyhold's presence in the game is more than that of a simple stop-gap in between missions. Skyhold is where you'll come when you want to detach yourself from your battles with mages, marauders and monsters, and rather than simply serving as a place to collect quest rewards, it's perhaps best used as an environment for the dissection of your fellow Inquisitors.

Standing alongside you in the fight against the demons of the fade are a clutch of warriors each with their own unmistakable style, beliefs and reasons to loathe the current state of the world. As you'll come to see, it isn't simply the hordes of undead pouring from the glimmering rifts dotted around the land that are getting people down, with existing political struggles and fragile alliances making for an unnerving undercurrent of issues that you'll need to deal with en route to unifying the Inquisition.

With each character offering a different perspective on the events unfolding, it's easy to become swayed by their opinion, which in turn leads to the duality of games character interaction. Do you forge a path all your own and risk alienating certain members of your flock, or do you accept the advice of others even when it is in direct conflict with your own outstanding opinions? It's this delicate balancing act that has led me to reload the game on several occasions, if only to save myself from the embarrassment of infringing upon the joyful exuberance of Sera of the unquestionable loyalty of Cassandra.

In the context of the story, Inquisition presents a chapter in the Dragon Age universe far more impactful and far more expansive than those before it. For one thing, you have an entire army at your back, which helps toward epitomizing the sheer scale of the adventure that's unfolding before your very eyes. Every single interaction, be it one with a humble village healer or a crazed templar warrior feels as though it will resonate with the story in some way, and that in turn lends a tremendous weight to each of your decisions on the road to the games grand finale.

Perhaps most evident though is the part that the games main antagonist, Corypheus, has to play in regards to the story at large. Cut from the same cloth as classic Bioware villains such as Saren or the Illusive Man, Corypheus represents the lingering evil that has blanketed the entire land. Conversations with him are typically chilling and a constant reminder of the threat that seeks to turn Thedas into nothing more than a charred crater. But rather than existing solely for the sake of a handful of cut-scenes and a climactic final battle, Corypheus, his army and his allies across the planes of Thedas loom large like a cloud of dense black fog, suffocating those caught beneath its growing reach. It's this ever-present and wholly daunting threat that propels your journey throughout the game, seeking to remind you that even when you're tending to the Skyhold garden, the armies of Corypheus continue to march in earnest.

As the sky above tears itself apart with volleys of vociferous green and white thunder, and the land beneath it begins to succumb to the vitrification of an unworldly demonic horde, you may be left wondering if there's any part of Thedas actually left to save. Lucky for you, the onslaught is only just beginning, and there are still more than enough locations across the region in dire need of your help.

Not only are Inquisition's environments bigger than ever before, but they're also designed in a way that makes each particular location feel like a whole new experience. You may already consider yourself a well-versed adventurer by the time that you've scoured the Hinterlands, but the sheer verticality of Oasis and the openness of the Western Approach are but two of another seven expansive areas for you to lay claim to on behalf of the Inquisition. And although locations in Inquisition are each sequestered behind a loading screen, the staggered nature behind loading each respective area rarely obstructs the flow of the story, with each environment boasting enough content to keep you busy for hours upon hours. And as you prepare to gather your party for a jaunt to a bustling city or a whispering wasteland, you do so knowing that the sheer glut of quests to undertake that lay ahead of you will each be unique to that area, adding an unmistakable level of diversity that goes far beyond that of aesthetics.

When it comes to brawling with the many evil protrusions that have mired the otherwise picturesque towns, cities and coasts of Thedas, Inquisition's combat system serves its purpose as something well-tailored to the games familiar feeling battles. At the heart of this is the perfect tool for those lengthy fights that take you and your party to the very brink; the brand new tactical camera. Although rather cumbersome and unnecessary for each and every skirmish across the wilderness, the tactical camera allows you to dole out individual instructions to your followers in the heat of battle that range from the targeting of specific limbs to the focused defence of other players. As well as giving you the chance to scope out the battlefield and move your fellow Inquisitor's around the combat zone like pieces on a chess board, the tactical camera also allows you to pause and advance time at your whim, allowing you to adjust a failing stratagem accordingly and regroup before the battle ends with your untimely defeat.

Outside of the tactical camera, generic combat in Inquisition is atypical of the action-RPG genre, with progressively improving characters acting as the perfect barometer for your gradual increase in power. With several classes to choose from and a handful of sub-classes within them, there are a great number of ways to approach the games fighting sections, with more than enough variety when it comes to assembling a perfectly balanced team of Inquisitors.

My qualm with combat in Inquisition is that, after a while, it just starts to become tiresome. Unless you're a particularly high level, using the same attacks over and over again can become quite the chore, whilst seeing enemies spawn in front of your very eyes is a bit of an insult after you've just slain a troupe of foes only moments earlier. But the variety in attack styles tends to make up for the eventual tediousness that combat brings, with an Inquisition fighting together in harmony a fitting reward for all your time spent painstakingly tailoring each of their skill sets to suit your needs.

The scope of Dragon Age Inquisition is undeniable, its characters inimitable and the sheer depth of its universe unfathomable. From the moment Inquisition opens its gates and lets free its wealth of content, the game begins to play like a true evolution of the series, improved in almost every aspect and with a story that almost demands seeing through to the end. Not simply a good game bearing the Dragon Age moniker, Inquisition is a stellar game in its own right and a wonderful reintroduction to the series anew.

Score

9.0

Graphics

Some pop-in textures do little to affect the sheer grandeur of some of the most impeccably crafted locations I've ever played in any game. Diversity of environments another huge coup.

9.5

Sound

An incredible soundtrack helps make epic moments feel that much more grand. Character voices, weapon SFX and ambient sounds are all also superb.

8.5

Gameplay

Slick and accessible. Varied difficulties pose new challenges, whilst smaller gameplay aspects like the tactical camera and looting are also well handled.

8.5

Fun Factor

This isn't a game to play in short bursts. Inquisition is at its most fun when you haven't checked your phone for 10 minutes and it turns out 4 hours has passed.

Overall

9.0

[thorstein]

Great review. I was wondering about the beginning. And I agree with the graphics.

I have the PS4 version and was disappointed at some of the graphical hiccups that I don't see in other games. Even the character models seem dated. However, the rest of the game more than makes up for this. The combat feels chaotic enough to give it a good feel but not so chaotic as to feel cheap.

The story is great and I am doing all I can to take down the Chantry, but I also feel compelled to completely explore the Hinterlands, which is funny because I have not really dealt with the main story as much.

[AshHD]

Good points.

Since writing this review I've put in another twenty hours, and one thing I've picked up on is the frequency of graphical discrepancies. A clipping character model here, a tear in scenery there...the game's nothing if not consistent, though!

Thanks for commenting too, it's appreciated.