Dragon Age: Inquisition Was Too Big

The huge game world did not necessarily increase the game's content.

[bomboclaat_gamer]

no it wasnt
shut up

[WESKER2015]

it was mate,but it is still one of the best games on next gen consoles so far

[Ark_]

... which is kind of sad.

[ScubbaSteve]

It would have been fine if the every quest was interesting and worth doing, but it felt like one of those boring mmos quests at times.

[showtimefolks]

yes it was and that's my opinion which like the author i am entitled to. It was a way too big of a game, too many side quests(fetch quests)

what would you rather have 40 hours of solid polished content or 100 hours of fetch quests out of that 100 we may get 10-15 hours of good content

[WildArmed]

Them shard collecting made me go insane.

Waaay too many repetitive quests. I do like how certain areas has a unique tie in to The story, but out of 30 quests maybe one effected the game at all.

I still love the game, I just don't think it ever respecteD my time.

The story itself was about 10 missions long.

[DragonKnight]

Nah, the game wasn't too big. If it was then it wouldn't have felt as rushed as it did. The ending was so slapped together it was laughable. Sounds like your gripe wasn't the size or length, it was the lame quests, which I agree with.

[showtimefolks]

WildArmed

give me great content over game length

DragonKnight

yes sir i am just talking about quests, overall the game was fine

[traumadisaster]

I hate fetch quests. I can't stand doing something that doesn't develop the story.

Over the years I learned why I don't finish games, cause it turns into work.

[Name Last Name]

I had no problems with the maps except the one in a dessert at night with dwarven puzzles. That was one was TOO big.

[FullmetalRoyale]

Very creative counterpoint..

[bomboclaat_gamer]

so ironic that your comment wasn't creative either

[ThunderPulse]

The mother of who ever wrote this article is too big.

[kraenk12]

I loved both Dragon Age games before but yes, DAI was a tedious and boring game with lots of meaningless side quests. A step back. Better to have 30-40 great hours than 100 of boredom and occasional surprises.

[zeroskie]

it was perfect

[lipton101]

I don't know. I'd rather more content than less, personally. But also, I didn't finish the game. Mostly because I all but stopped playing games over the past few weeks as I'm super busy writing a screenplay. I do think I'll finish it eventually though. It is a good game. You can tell they took their time with it. It's better than Dragon Age 2 but misses the epic mark set by Dragon Age Origins. That first game was about story. This one is more quantity of game (side quests) vs the quality/quantity ratio of the (so far) very good main quest line.

[Kosic]

I agree to a lot of this review. I found the Hinterlands one of the better places. I've not completed the game yet, but found the Hinter Lands zone really filling compared to the next 5 or so zones after it.

I felt the quests thined out really quickly after The Hinterlands.

The skull/rune quest is horrible. I tried my best to avoid them, but finding the temple which requires them was a huge kick in the nuts.

I've put in about 40 hours or so, and I'm putting the game on hold due to I don't think I've made a major dent into it. So instead of getting fully bored. I'm giving it a small break and picking it up a gain down the line.

There's only so much repeatable quest styles one person can take.

[WildArmed]

Lol I thought it was obvious that those shards would add up. Esp since they say that they are some sort of keys...' But to where?'

But if it helps, the rewards of that quests aren't worth it unless you are playing nightmare. And even then, by the time you get all the rewards from that quest, you'll be over powered for even nightmare mode

[kraenk12]

It completely felt as if they took years to create these huge environments but in the end didn't have the ideas or the time to fill them with anything but boring fetch quests.

[Tdmd]

It was perfect and more games should look at it for inspiration!

[annoyedgamer]

Absolutely not, I do not want my Open world RPG's muddled with politics and shallow gameplay cluttered with fetch quests.

[dcj0524]

Dude I loved the politics. Fetch quest can indeed gtfo though

[wakeNbake]

Skyrim was so much better its not even funny. This game felt like an mmo with all the crappy filler quests. Kill rams for a bunch of lazy villagers, nice one Bioware putting socialist propaganda in a game.

[DragonKnight]

This game was even prone to worse bugs than Skyrim if you can believe it. I faced a dragon that literally corkscrewed in the air endlessly. I could attack it and it could shoot balls of electricity at me, but after a certain point its life would not decrease so I had to stop.

Not to mention how many times my character decided to channel Michael Jackson and moonwalk, or how the game would crash and then when it reloaded the world itself would load in pieces to the point where my character was literally underground for 2 minutes.

[JaredH]

I agree. One of the reasons I love Skyrim and Elder Scrolls games in general is because the side missions actually have fun little stories to them. Skyrim has fetch quests that seemed infinite but those are classified as "miscellaneous quests" and are almost hidden in the mission menu.

Dragon Age Inquisition was fun, and a good rpg overall, but the game climaxed at the end of the first act imo.

[Summons75]

I'm not saying it wasn't good but it felt like an offline MMO with how many side quests completely buried the main story. I enjoyed the game but it had a lot of flaws.

[DragonKnight]

I thought it was more like Kingdoms of Amalur with more politics, more talking, and worse combat.

[Roccetarius]

Yep, Kingdoms of Amalur was suffering from the same problem. The main quest was meh pretty soon into the game, but there was a ton of side quests that buried it as well.

Not to mention they used KoA's crafting as well.

[Gore-Content]

It was filled with.... fillers.

[bnoyes]

I liked the game, but a lot of the quests did feel like padding. I wish more games took the Dark Souls approach to level design. I don't necessarily need my open worlds to be sprawling--I prefer an interconnected world with smaller individual environments that are packed densely with content, as opposed to huge, mostly empty environments with lots of fetch-quests.

[MilkMan]

WTF! This game was brilliant!
The only issue I had is that EA/Bioware said that this would be a good entry point for non-fans to get on board. That's a negative.
The game is heavy with lore and mythos.
If you don't know what the heck is going on you will get lost by the weight of the narrative.

Other than that? The game is one of the best RPG's I've played.
Next up The Witcher 3, which guess what? Will ALSO be heavy in lore and narrative.

UPDATE: I see what the issue is. Folks want to power through the RPG. This is an old school rpg from soup to nuts. This isn't a hybrid like Mass Effect. With limited narrative and lots of gun-play.
(no offense, I loved ME also)

One is not meant to rush through these games, we should praise EA/Bioware for giving us such an rpg and not give us the shaft like they did before. Dragon Age demands that kind of attention. There are hundreds of other action/RPG hybrids or any number of action games with some kind of experience point system that will satisfy the itchy trigger fingers or short attention spans.
(also no offense)

This game however was meant to be taken nice and slow just like Dark Souls, The Witcher and even Elder Scrolls. Not a marathon but a jog.

[DragonKnight]

But.. you can power through this game though. People just don't know how to.

The problem I have with this is the war table machines. Some of them are unnecessarily long. One of them was 18 hours. And that's only because I used Cullen and had agents lowering the time by 15%.

[kraenk12]

No it wasn't an oldschool RPG. If it was it would have meaningful quests not MMO like fetch quests which are tideous and boring after the 3rd time.

[Ark_]

It was anything, but brilliant and an oldschool RPG.
Pls stay serious.

[TheRaven476]

I agree with this. At about the 35 hour mark I was getting bored. When I got to the last zone I just sighed and though “I don’t want to do this. Where is the schematic vendor, where is the dragon. Then I’m out of here to finally finish this game”. Took me 50 hours to finish the game and kill all dragons/get full T3. Could have done with being shortened by about 20%.

I loved the Hinterlands, Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves and the Winter Zone at the end. Pretty much 100% completed those zones. But there was no reason to do much of the other areas, especially since it’s so easy to “Level Past the content”. I also didn’t find some of the zones particularly interesting.

[rextraordinaire]

Only problem is that it is wayyyy too easy. Knight Enchanter is downright unkillable and that makes the game highly boring...

[DragonKnight]

Yep. I solo'ed most of the dragons with my KE. Spamming the sword attack with infinite barrier means bye bye dragon no matter what it wants to do.

[Myze]

You could always not play as a Knight Enchanter, because it's been clearly established they are pretty much broken and boring. I just look at the KE as a bug, and avoid it. Even if the spec wasn't OP, it's the most boring Mage spec by a long shot.

As for the topic, and the complaints, I never understood the complaints about too many side quests. None of them are required. The most recurring ones are the shard quests and the requisition quests. Both of those types are completely skippable, and the rewards are worthless for requisition quests, and crap for the shard doors (except maybe for cold path for the MC amulet of power). They give the Inquisitor a lot of resistance, but it's completely overboard, even on the hardest setting.

Anyway, I say just skip those two types of quests, and pretend they aren't there, and the gametime will go down about 15 hours and lose a lot of the tedium.

[rextraordinaire]

Yeah well there was no warning about that when I started playing. Played the game once and it's been enough...

[Myze]

Fair point. I haven't played in a while, so I'm not sure if they've updated it or not (or are going to with that big upcoming PC only patch).

[bnoyes]

There were times I felt that the side quests became a bit repetitive, but the combat was fun enough to offset it and I really enjoyed the variety in the environments (other than the deserts, which I didn't think needed three different areas). It wasn't perfect, but it was still a really good game--good enough that I wouldn't go out of my way to gripe about there being too much content.

[Clumpy]

Is there anything people won't complain about in this industry? I bet this very site would make a article about the Dragon Age world being too small, if it was any smaller...*sigh*.

[MrSwankSinatra]

Learn the difference between complaining and critiquing.

[Clumpy]

I repeat, is there anything people won't complain about. XD

[Bathyj]

I havent played the game, I cant comment on whether it had the balance right or not, but I agree bigger does not necessarily mean better.

Just Cause 2, fantastic game, but a huge barren wasteland in a lot of areas as far as having things to do.

Theres nothing wrong with having a smaller area with more detail and tighter scripting and pacing. This idea that everything has to be open world and huge is ridiculous.

What if someone made a game the size of the entire planet, but then you found out it would take you a week to drive from New York to LA? Nice for site seeing maybe, but not necessarily for gameplay.

[bnoyes]

I agree. Also, I'm not sure why, but I really dislike huge sprawling worlds in third-person games. If I'm going to be exploring a big ass world I just prefer to do it in first-person. I think that's why I don't mind the big spaces in Bethesda's games.

[Tex117]

I disagree. I enjoyed the size.

[Roccetarius]

Inquisition has a few issues worth mentioning, but size is what's talked about here. Yes. the game was too big for its own good, considering it was designed like an MMO to begin with before it was changed. The filler is a dead giveaway that something isn't right. You get the feeling it was padded with nonsense on purpose, because that's what happened.

The minor amount of worthwhile story content is beyond words, but it was still praised because 2014 was a terrible year.

[jznrpg]

It could have been bigger imo.

[Ark_]

That's what she said ... ?

:P

[toddybad]

Aaa games in general are obsessed with huge maps and pointless side quests. Many games are far too big these days.

[Roccetarius]

I'm honestly not sure why developers insist that they have to make it even bigger next time. Just make sure it has equal or more worthwhile content like the last game.

[Xavior_Reigns]

It was and it wasn't. Open world soon becomes a dead world and the fetching are the real issue. It was a good game, but it wasn't revolutionary either. DAI would've been destroyed had it been exclusive to either console.

[deadfrag]

Origins and Witcher 2 are older an better than inquisition!

[Antifan]

Morrowind is also much order and much better than Inquisition.

[Xavior_Reigns]

A lot of games are better than Inquisition. The only reason why Inquisition seems like a superb game is because it's Bioware's possible redemption. ME(enter subtitle) 4 is where we see if Bioware is truly returning to legacy or not.

[shammgod]

Never satisfied. Bash a game for being "too short". DAI too big. Gaming journalists are never satisfied.

[MonkeyOne]

After hundreds of hours in Skyrim I couldn't stand Dragon Age Inquisition.

[Saijahn]

It may be filled with fetch quests but it's still a quality game worth the price, unlike other titles that offer probably 5% of the content at full price.

[lemoncake]

my biggest problem was that by the time I had finished a zone I had leveled up to a point where I had out leveled the next batch of maps and it was just too easy. I think they should have increased the player level cap and then made the level requirements of the maps more spread out.

[AstroCyborg]

gotta hate casuals

[stormswrath]

I loved Dragon Age Inquisition. I put in 120 hours with my first character and loved every minute of it. I don't mind fetch quests and exploring a world as awesome as the one in Dragon Age Inquisition. Just my opinion. I want more. Hopefully the Witcher 3 will be the next game to feed my appetite for rpgs with tons of exploration and wonderful characters with awesome stories within the world. I just can't get enough of these types of games.

[MilkMan]

Spoken like a true believer. Salud!