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Dragon Age: Inquisition |OT2| Leave the damn Hinterlands!

Varna

Member
This game really needed like one more skill tree per class or at least more open skill trees with more interesting passives to select. On nightmare you kind of have to have certain skills to survive. Like Iron Bull for example. I can't imagine anyone letting the AI handle him and not have him invest in guard building abilities. He would be dead in seconds. Same with the Rogues. AI does horrible as close range skirmisher. Seem like I choose different party members because of flavor and not functionality.
 
just checking in.... been a couple weeks now since i posted about a bit of story/character help as I was downloading the game.

last night I just finished
the Winter Palace ball and I had down Adamant Fortress before it
, and I'm about 90 hours in.

one of the best games I've played in the last 10 years. maybe the best or 2nd best RPG in that time, for sure.

basically, what I love is that it combines my favorite parts of various games

castle and army - best parts of Suikoden's castles and FF Tactic's Propositions

grinding and travel - game reminds me a lot of early WoW, oddly enough... which at least, I love. sometimes I'll play all night and feel I barely accomplished anything lol but i'm almost 100 hours in and I'm loving it.

combat - can either be tactical and cinematic like a sort of mix of Icewind Dale and Final Fantasy XII, or more visceral like a Dark Souls (at least when the game is 'difficult)...

I'm beginning to find it easier as I level up, but especially when I try to always go into areas/missions 1-3 levels under-leveled... I try not to abuse a very specific abilities (KE especially)... or rely to heavily on potions (so don't return to camp mid-mission... just try survive)... i've had a tonne of moments were I was barely surviving by the skin of my finger nails, getting my shit kicked in, and just praying for blocks as I manually try tank higher level bears or fighters as I pray my dps burn them down before i fall.

one of the best moments i had was underleveled in western hinterlands getting destroyed by bears haha... or later a bit underleveled, getting destroyed by those giants in the
Ishmael
keep.


worst part so far is probably the story... the plot has been OK but I feel like I'm more driven by the core plot and the characters than the story... a lot of the missions feel out of left field or poorly supported.
In Your Heart Shall Burn
was incredible but
it started of incredibly anticlimactic... I put a lot of effort to grinding, leveling, building up my army to close the breach, and all we got was like 8 templars and 3 characters waltz right up and close up? =/ luckly, the rest of the mission, from the siege, to the amazing walk through the snow, to skyhold, was just incredible. wow. Adamant Fortress was pretty awesome, too. the rebel mage/time travel mission was so silly but the templar one was pretty awesome (so I chose it)... the ball was... cool in concept... cool in a sort of Final Fantasy VI 'dinner with the Emperor' way but fast became an annoying collection event.


overall though, incredible game and best rpg i've played in a long time. i am still excited every night to continue playing the SP, and even then after that I hope the MP is good because I really enjoy the raw combat (especially the warrior combat).


what really makes the game for me though is the War Effort... the building of power, the collection of resources, the crafting of your own personalized gear... I spend hours updating and personalizing the perfect set of items and abilities... the customization of your castle.. and then just taking that army and group out into the field and just adventuring.
 

DY_nasty

NeoGAF's official "was this shooting justified" consultant
I swear the multiplayer is painfully unrewarding...

but maybe I'm doing it wrong.
 
The War Table stuff seems like they could have done a ton more with it. Conceptually I really like it. A lot. In practice though, its far too basic and mundane. I was expecting we'd have to upgrade the various Keeps across the War Table that you can capture and that might lead to maybe certain quests unlocking on the map based on choices you made on the War Table. Instead, just about the only integration between the War Table and actual in game quests is by building a bridge here and there. Same with Skyhold itself- I'm in a similar place game wise (about to do What Pride Hath Wrought) and so far Skyhold is an overly large party camp. Coming out of Haven, I was totally expecting
Corypheus to really start tearing Thedas up. But nope, apparently you don't really interact with him very much until the last mission boss fight.

I agree that the game basically collapses under its own weight once you get to Skyhold. Its really cool at first when you get to the War Table and see all of the new zones but once the shine wears off of seeing them, you realize they mostly just have the same sort of quests you've been grinding away at in the Hinterlands for the past dozen hours.

I've been doing most every quest, so of course that's tainted my view of the game's pacing. If I do a second playthrough, I'm definitely going to do as little side content as possible and just stick to the core story material. Still wouldn't fix the problems with the antagonist disappearing post Haven but I imagine it would feel like a tighter experience.
Yeah I completed the game last night and there was maybe 2-3 hours left straight running from What Pride Hath Wrought and my suspicions are to my mind confirmed. Right before the mission starts they play a pre-rendered cut scene that shows your advisors shoving in 'their' pieces on the war table to the objective. This notable both because I didn't recognise the counters they were shoving and there is a subsequent scene showing each member's troops being rallied or looking cool or what have you.
Then when you get to the woods prior to reaching the temple there is a sort of hedge maze with little pockets of soldiers fighting. Their 'barks' appear to reference things you'd done in the main game as if this was meant to be an area where you saw the forces you had accumulated fighting alongside you before the final fight.

Like you I love my shinies in these games but I sour quickly when the payoff is crap and boy howdy there was just no payoff here for all that grinding at all, it's just as bad as the damn ME3 ending in that regard. If you're going to do the gotta catch em' all schtick you need to reward the player, AC knows this, at least that game gave you daft overpowered armour for diligently hunting all over the map.

There is just no point to the whole of Act 2 now, what was I presume was supposed to be a build-keeps-through-grind for the endgame has had the endgame neutered to
a single fight that is now a doddle
. Power was presumably meant to be spent as a currency on these keeps alongside your strange abundance of wood camps and quarries.

That's not to say this was a bad game just that I thought it was great until I realised it was hollow. A strong 7/10 that has left a bad taste, I wish they had just dumped half of the collect-a-thon quests as right now they are telling you they matter when they quite plainly do not. RPGs are not meant to have pointless time sinks, those are for MMOs Bioware FFS.
 
The entire definition of the rpg genre is 'pointless timesink'. "hi adventurer, please go to this cave in the middle of bumfuck nowhere to find the rod of eleven swamp songs even though you need to rescue the world from this evil wizard."

Which is fine and all, but lets not pretend rpg's arent filled to the brim with pointless timesinks since the beginning of time.
 
The entire definition of the rpg genre is 'pointless timesink'. "hi adventurer, please go to this cave in the middle of bumfuck nowhere to find the rod of eleven swamp songs even though you need to rescue the world from this evil wizard."

Which is fine and all, but lets not pretend rpg's arent filled to the brim with pointless timesinks since the beginning of time.

:D Well I wasn't going for the wider meta analysis but yes you are right. In this specific case I'm not asking for rival to the Total War or Crusader King series in terms of strategy. A simple insert of a few seconds clip of the forces I have accumulated bashing things very well indeed because of the fancy armors and weapons I ran around the wilds for would have been enough.

Really I'm easy to please, the ending to ME2 barely diverged at all based on your actions but there was enough there in the shields deflecting the big laser, etc to make me feel 'grinding that stupid mining minigame was totally worth hours of my life'. In this game I wasted the same hours but got nothing except a larger integer for my troubles, I'd say 'just like ME3' but there actually were consequences to a low War Rating in ME3 (good lord DA:I you have me praising the ME3 ending!).
 
Any had issues with the 10 agents trophy/achievement popping? By my count in the perks list, I have 11, but no achievement triggered.

That's on top of the dragon achievement not popping when I took the last one down. That fight was a pain, so I'll reload the save after I finish the game and cross my fingers it works that time.
 

Icefire1424

Member
Apologies if this has already been asked (as I'm sure it has), but any confirmation of PS4 players unable to / having difficulty accessing EA's servers? Had the game for a few weeks now, but didn't want to start a game since I've yet to connect to the servers and I really want to import my DA:O and DA:2 data in from the Keep. Checked through EA's forums and it seems that this is a fairly common complaint, but no mention if a fix is even being investigated. My PSN and Origin email address are the same, which I know was causing some issues as well. So damn frustrating.
 
Apologies if this has already been asked (as I'm sure it has), but any confirmation of PS4 players unable to / having difficulty accessing EA's servers? Had the game for a few weeks now, but didn't want to start a game since I've yet to connect to the servers and I really want to import my DA:O and DA:2 data in from the Keep. Checked through EA's forums and it seems that this is a fairly common complaint, but no mention if a fix is even being investigated. My PSN and Origin email address are the same, which I know was causing some issues as well. So damn frustrating.

I believe someone earlier in the thread commented that this can happen if you had an old EA online ID and had associated your PSN with that before they rolled out origin. If you contact them via text chat they should be able to fix that for you.
 
How can you tell who you are "friends" with? Also is there a meter for it?

No visible in game meter but the Bioware games have always worked so that as long as you express interest in a character by talking to them enough they'll pledge their undying loyalty to you. I had quite a few 'Greatly Disapproves' messages from Vivienne in my game but she still asked me to her loyalty quest and was singing my praises by the end of the game. There are characters who will leave but unless you go 'purist' mage or templar you can still maintain friendship with most of the characters, I never had any pro-Templar characters leave despite being pretty pro-Mage the whole game.
 

Icefire1424

Member
I believe someone earlier in the thread commented that this can happen if you had an old EA online ID and had associated your PSN with that before they rolled out origin. If you contact them via text chat they should be able to fix that for you.

That might be possible, thanks mate!
 
The moment where
you have just escaped Corypheus and returned, you're being asked to be the leader, the Chantry lady starts singing, then everyone joins in and you end up with the sword as the Inquisition leader.

That is one of the top five moments I've ever experienced in a video game. I, literally, had chills from it. I can't remember the last time that happened.

Truthfully, I'm about 75 hours in and have to say that this is by far the best PS4 game I've played. It's one of the best games I've played in a while. It might even make my top ten of all time. Just a fantastic experience. It even screwed up my DA:O import from the Keep and I can't even bring myself to care. It's just that good.
 
...It might even make my top ten of all time. Just a fantastic experience. It even screwed up my DA:O import from the Keep and I can't even bring myself to care. It's just that good.

Don't worry I manually tuned my DA:O import using the DA:O codex entries for each quest to ensure it was correct (whole swathes of stuff were wrong) and I barely noticed. There was a lot more DA2 love if you played that game though but agai I'd say you have to manually tune your Keep to get it accurate.
 

Chitown B

Member
No visible in game meter but the Bioware games have always worked so that as long as you express interest in a character by talking to them enough they'll pledge their undying loyalty to you. I had quite a few 'Greatly Disapproves' messages from Vivienne in my game but she still asked me to her loyalty quest and was singing my praises by the end of the game. There are characters who will leave but unless you go 'purist' mage or templar you can still maintain friendship with most of the characters, I never had any pro-Templar characters leave despite being pretty pro-Mage the whole game.

yeah, thanks - I know in the past other entries have had some sort of paragon meter which sort of coincided with your companions.

I just got my 3 friends achieve though so I'm good.

I like that it doesn't matter who is with you, so you don't have to keep swapping people out at different times.
 
I like that it doesn't matter who is with you, so you don't have to keep swapping people out at different times.

I completely agree, I find it frustrating in other titles when I have to bring a companion who is not a good fit for my play style for levelling or relationship reasons. Sure I get why it makes sense that they don't 'build a relationship' with your character if they're not around but I just don't have time to replay a really long game multiple times for companion stories.
 

Ralemont

not me
Are you perhaps confused with Mass Effect 3?

Or perhaps the three endings are who gets picked to be Divine.

I was wrong about the number, but here's the post in question:

"Hey guys,
I just want to clarify the endings in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Dragon Age Inquisition's endings variations come in three levels:
1. Minor variations based upon choices you make in the game or previous games. There are HUNDREDS of these variations.
2. Major variations based upon larger decisions in the game. There are about forty of these.
3. Completely unique endings. There are a small number of these."

This was posted in March, which I think is still early enough for content cuts to be made later (or not, I don't really know). I'd certainly say the Divine thing falls into #2, though I guess I could maybe possibly see it being #3. But I took #3 to me the actual ending itself plays out differently, similar to Dark Ritual/Ultimate Sacrifice/Let Someone Else Die like in Origins. The Divine choice is only represented in the epilogue and is based on your choices during the game which is why I'd say it's closer to 2.
 
Apologies if this has already been asked (as I'm sure it has), but any confirmation of PS4 players unable to / having difficulty accessing EA's servers? Had the game for a few weeks now, but didn't want to start a game since I've yet to connect to the servers and I really want to import my DA:O and DA:2 data in from the Keep. Checked through EA's forums and it seems that this is a fairly common complaint, but no mention if a fix is even being investigated. My PSN and Origin email address are the same, which I know was causing some issues as well. So damn frustrating.

I ran into an issue where the most recent patch didn't install correctly, which meant I wasn't allowed to connect to the EA servers. Had to delete the game completely from my hard drive, then reinstalled, and the patch installed correctly that time. No problems since then.
 
So on my second run where I'm pretty much doing the opposite of my first run i got to try the templar mission.

Both that and the mage one are great missions, possibly the best two in the game and it's such a shame that you can only do one in a playthrough so most people will only experience one.

I think i slightly prefer the mage story as it gives a bit more insight but also partly because the templar boss was an absolute bastard
 

Auctopus

Member
I'm gonna post my full impressions once I've platinumed but I think one of my main pieces of advice to enjoying the game is to really take your time...

There's such a vast amount of content here and the pacing is pretty, in search of a better word, epic. I've enjoyed the game more on my Nightmare run as the thought-out combat encounters made me slow down the rate at which I enjoy the game. Learn to read your quest objectives, in your journal and in your War room and properly listen to your companions.
 
I've played the game for about 15 hours (level 8 mage) and NOTHING is clicking with me in this game. Combat is lame and lacks any kind of "tactile" feedback (like Diablo does for example), story is pretty much non existent so far, supporting characters are boring. The whole mage conflict is poorly fleshed out. Exploration is pretty dull. I stumbled upon giant fighting a dragon and even that failed to capture my attention.... War table is just waste of time... Is there any reason for me to continue? I feel like I'm wasting my time with this game...
 

Ralemont

not me
I've played the game for about 15 hours (level 8 mage) and NOTHING is clicking with me in this game. Combat is lame and lacks any kind of "tactile" feedback (like Diablo does for example), story is pretty much non existent so far, supporting characters are boring. The whole mage conflict is poorly fleshed out. Exploration is pretty dull. I stumbled upon giant fighting a dragon and even that failed to capture my attention.... War table is just waste of time... Is there any reason for me to continue? I feel like I'm wasting my time with this game...

Have you gotten to Skyhold yet? If you have and still feel the story sucks and you hate the exploration already, then yeah it's time to stop.
 
Have you gotten to Skyhold yet? If you have and still feel the story sucks and you hate the exploration already, then yeah it's time to stop.

No, not yet. Maybe I will try to get to that point. I usually enjoy Bioware games (even DA2) but I feel lost here. Not even sure what the main mission is or how to get there. Character missions so far look like collecting various things... I'm probably missing something, but the structure of this game confuses me.
 

Melchiah

Member
No, not yet. Maybe I will try to get to that point. I usually enjoy Bioware games (even DA2) but I feel lost here. Not even sure what the main mission is or how to get there. Character missions so far look like collecting various things... I'm probably missing something, but the structure of this game confuses me.

I felt similarly in the beginning, when I entered Hinterlands. It didn't help, that I hadn't played the previous games, and all the lore presented to me felt overwhelming. At some point it just clicked with me though, and I really enjoyed the ride. I think the missions leading to Skyhold were the turning point.
 

Maybesew

Member
Does anyone know if its possible to change the origin account tied to a PS4? I think I logged into the wrong origin account when I started up the game, and now I can't switch it, even if i log out and log in, it doesn't ask for the account again.
 

Ralemont

not me
No, not yet. Maybe I will try to get to that point. I usually enjoy Bioware games (even DA2) but I feel lost here. Not even sure what the main mission is or how to get there. Character missions so far look like collecting various things... I'm probably missing something, but the structure of this game confuses me.

Main story missions have a green rift above them on the War Table if you need to unlock the zone for them. Otherwise they will be listed in the "Inquisitor's Path" section of your quest journal.

The character collection stuff is just a way to grind approval, it's not their actual story quest. Those come after getting to Skyhold, more or less.
 

_woLf

Member
I'm considering picking this game up, but I can't decide if I want it on PS4 or PC. I've heard the PC version has some nasty bugs, is that true?
 
I'm considering picking this game up, but I can't decide if I want it on PS4 or PC. I've heard the PC version has some nasty bugs, is that true?

Not in my experience, in my 80 hour playthrough I had a handful of crashes but the autosaves are pretty good so I didn't lose much progress. It does seem to have a memory leak or two as long play sessions tanked my framerate, quitting and reloading fixed this though
 

Voror

Member
I've been doing another run through on Nightmare alongside my normal run and ran into a possible issue. I ended up exploring a lot more of the Hinterlands during the initial part and completing quests and what not.

One part was going into the mercenary fortress and taking everyone out. Got the Valammar key too. Problem is, I forgot I never triggered the quest in the first place. So did I screw myself out of a quest by accident?
 

Melchiah

Member
I've been doing another run through on Nightmare alongside my normal run and ran into a possible issue. I ended up exploring a lot more of the Hinterlands during the initial part and completing quests and what not.

One part was going into the mercenary fortress and taking everyone out. Got the Valammar key too. Problem is, I forgot I never triggered the quest in the first place. So did I screw myself out of a quest by accident?

I went to Valammar to hunt the mercenaries first as well, and still got the
Varric/Bianca
quest afterwards.
 

Voror

Member
I went to Valammar to hunt the mercenaries first as well, and still got the
Varric/Bianca
quest afterwards.

I meant The Mercenary Fortress quest where you can obtain the key for it. It's alright though since I managed to find the note that started the quest and once I got it, the quest automatically completed since I'd taken out the Mercenaries.
 

Melchiah

Member
I meant The Mercenary Fortress quest where you can obtain the key for it. It's alright though since I managed to find the note that started the quest and once I got it, the quest automatically completed since I'd taken out the Mercenaries.

Ah, I forgot there was another mercenary base. I just remembered Valammar being one.
 

wolfhowwl

Banned
I'm considering picking this game up, but I can't decide if I want it on PS4 or PC. I've heard the PC version has some nasty bugs, is that true?

I had a couple of crashes across my playthrough. The bigger problem was that the PC controls are poor so I would recommend using a controller.
 
I had a couple of crashes across my playthrough. The bigger problem was that the PC controls are poor so I would recommend using a controller.

Very good call, I tried Keyb/mouse for all of 5 minutes before realising this was not the way the game was designed to be controlled at all. It's frustrating to be restricted to 8 skills because of it (especially when I have the keyboard right there) but it's been designed that way and the k/m support is very crudely patched in.
 

MrNelson

Banned
So, my brother is trying to add his Dragon Age Keep data to his DA:I save, but he keeps getting errors saying that it cannot connect to Dragon Age Keep. Is/has anyone had this issue before and know a way around it? He's tried everything from restoring licenses to making sure that the time and date settings were correct.

I've tried using Google-fu, but all posts about it are either from launch, or when PSN was down around Christmas.

Edit: Scratch that, he got it working.
 

Gattsu25

Banned
So, after 109 hours and 47 minutes I am done.

Basilius: Dwarven Dual Dagger Rogue

Played through the game on PS4 and didn't really make any choices that I disagree with.

Here are a few screens of my guy along on his adventures:

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qNBNRkD.jpg
c7MMQE3.jpg


fJkSAt0.jpg
Axi5qYB.jpg


EOyqWft.jpg


*salutes*
 
Okay, so the certain point of no return...

Okay so I just did most of the "In Your Heart Shall Burn" quest and I'm starting to realize this is the point where Haven will be gone. I know I didn't complete everything available, but I'm just wondering if there is anything *important* that can be permanently missed.

By Important, I'm mainly talking gameplay-wise - powerful weapons/items/crafting materials, characters (I believe I've gotten all the characters-three for each class- so that shouldn't be an issue), or anything else that would be sorely missed. I don't really care about story stuff or trophies or stuff just for completion sake
 

Trojan

Member
Holy shit, the Hissing Wastes is huge. I had kind of avoided this area earlier because the enemies were higher level and I'm back now to collect this Dwarven treasure. Probably my favorite area of the game and I easily could have never seen it if I was in a hurry to finish.

If only I didn't run at an incredibly slow pace in this game
 
Its kind of baffling how in so many respects it seems Inquisition is aping Skyrim but yet they totally miss the mark in some respects, like storage. For me anyway, one of the cool things with Skyrim was getting your own house and then being able to store and/or display some of your loot there.

So you get to Skyhold, this huge castle all your own and yet not only can't you even store any loot anywhere within it but they don't even give you a trophy room or an armory to display some of your unique rare/weapons that you've found. Thought it would be cool to have a big trophy room to display dragon skulls of all the dragons you killed or just a big armory type room to display the rare weapons you've found. But nope, you pretty much have to destroy those once you start running low on inventory.
 
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