I've been playing the trial version on Origin for about 2 hours, still got about three to go before I get kicked out. Got a bunch of questions / comments.
I expected this game to be utter rubbish, because the trend after TW3 came out was to shit on it, but it's really not that bad. Each game does different things. My biggest problem is performance.
What is going on with the PC version? I run an i5 2320 3.30Ghz, GTX960 and 8GB DDR3 1666Mhz RAM at 1440x900, and it's impossible to keep this thing at a smooth 60. It jutters like crazy. Is this one of those titles that needs an SSD or really fast RAM? Load times also take forever. In comparison, TW3 runs (and looks
) better and loads like lighting with no stutter.
I've turned off MSAA and FXAA, and it still doesn't help. In fact, even turning everything to low doesn't really make a difference. Do guys with more powerful systems have this issue too? I'm doing a complete system rebuild in July (Skylake unlocked i5 at 4.0Ghz, 16GB 2400Mhz DDR4, GTX 1070 - or whatever they call it, and a nice SSD). I'm thinking I might just wait until I do that new build to play this one, as the hitching and stuttering is driving me nuts. I'd rather play a low framerate that's stable, than at a higher one that's all over the place.
Anyway, anyone have any essential tips? The biggest I've seen is to GTFO of the Hinterlands. Do a bit in each area, and then come back to keep things fresh. Also to avoid shards or something, I haven't seen those yet.
I rolled a Dwarf Sword and Board called Harold. My main issue with the combat is how the basic attacks are done. I played the previous two games on PC, so I don't know if it's always been like this on console. The PC controls were weird, so I'm sticking with the controller. In most action games, when you press the attack button, the character does one attack move. You get that, like "reward" in your brain. Oh, I pressed the button and shit happened, you know? DA:I seems to encourage you to hold down the RT to attack, and to me, that makes the combat more boring that it really is. You don't get that feedback. Obviously, you can just spam the RT instead, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to break my trigger doing that. Am I the only one who feels like this?
Are the only two female romance options Cassandra and Josephine? They seem like nice characters, but it terms of role-playing, can I romance the dwarf scout, Harding? Is there a proper option for that? If that's not possible then I think I'll go with Cassandra, although knowing me I'll probably mess it up. When I replay with a female character (male VA isn't that great IMO), I'll probably go Josephine. I actually thought about romancing Iron Bull as Harold.
I'm straight but I don't really care about those things. It would be hilarious! Bioware romances always have that cheese factor that makes me laugh. Considering the janky animation and often weirdly written romance plots, I mean, these things have to be in their games for the humour, right? I think people often take these things way too seriously.
I also really liked using the Keep to setup my previous world state. That's a cool idea, and an easy to use site. I hope they do the same for ME4, and I think other companies should copy that model. I see that it even saves Inquisition progress there, so if DA4 happens, then everything is sorted. Really clever idea.