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[Ranma]

Origins.
Main reason being DA:I is BORING AS HELL. Is like watching flies fuck.

 

[Dice]

I can understand missing most of the good stuff in Inquisition, as there is a lot of filler and you have to dig in on purpose, but so many people must have played a different Origins than the one I played.

 

[Currygan]

Origins is slightly better due to restricted areas, meaning a tighter experience and better pacing; it's also got a better balanced difficulty and way more tactical gameplay; Inquisition suffers from the usual issues found in 99% of open world games; filler content and easy combat, but at the same time it's also an explorer's dream; a massive, beautiful world, top notch presentation, abundance of quests; Origins is overall a better experience, but it's not that wide of a gap

 

[levyjl1988]

Origins is leagues above Inquisition.

Inquisition is too much padding, fluff, and stupid chore stuff that I lost interest in the first 30 min. I loved Origins. But it seems like Dragon Age is dead to me after playing Inquisition. It doesn't feel epic enough or grips me like the first one did.

I was afraid Bioware will get its game design wrong wrong with collectables and item fetching, I was right. At least Dark Souls and Bloodborne doesn't pull that shit, everything there is focused and applicable in some useful way.

Dragon Age Inqusition is a clusterfuck of managing inventory, it doesn't know what it wants to be.

 

[jgwhiteus]

Origins, even though I like Inquisition and have put a huge number of hours into it (by necessity).

I prefer the combat in Origins, at least on PC - I felt I actually had to use strategies (splitting up my party and attacking different enemy groups, telling them to hold back, etc.) and I preferred having the full array of powers available rather than just 8 skills. With Inquisition, most of the time I'm just spamming the attack or skill buttons - even on Nightmare - and I have no idea what the rest of my party is doing unless they're at low health and they have to drink a potion. Giving them commands is a bit of a mess (and it seems they don't follow my commands half the time anyway).

Even though the games have somewhat similar mission-based structures, I felt the overall plot of Origins made more sense and was more cohesive (form alliances with various groups to defeat the Blight) than the overall plot of Inquisition ("gain influence" by doing some of the most random tasks around and dawdling to gather Elfroot while the world burns).

That being said, presentation-wise Inquisition is gorgeous, but Origins is still a very decent-looking game on PC. I like having a voiced Inquisitor rather than the random battle cries of Origins since it gives the player character a bit more life. And I think both games have some great and memorable characters and voice-acting, and some interesting bits of lore. Inquisition just suffers from a bit too much filler and a battle system that tries to mix being an action RPG and tactical RPG, and ends up being really neither.

 

[Tekomandor]

How about my conception (? lets just roll with "conception" for laughs) is based on Dragon Age Origins, a game in the same series?

That is also what the thread is about.

If Origins is a RPG, and I think we can all agree that it is, then Inquisition is intentionally some hybrid action/f2p/psuedo rpg nonsense designed to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible, which are the people who wouldn't buy a real rpg game. They also did exactly the same thing with Mass Effect 3, so I don't know what Bioware games you have played recently.

It fails on all fronts. This is what Bioware does now.

Inquisition is most certainly an RPG. It still has (and I'd argue has more, due to better dialogue reactivity) significant player agency in terms of story and character, as well as agency in the mechanical development of characters. Players still undertake quests, there is still a boatload of lore to find, there's even an evil wizard villain.

How is it not an rpg?

 

[Mendax]

Origins.
Main reason being DA:I is BORING AS HELL. Is like watching flies fuck.

What about it is boring....? Inquisition has combat that is a lot faster and more interesting and engaging and the story is faar better and doesnt have the slow parts that DA:O has plenty of.

 

[Atraveller]

Inquisition destroyed my expectation of Bioware making anything good again.

 

[Dark_castle]

Wouldn't DA2 vs DA:I be a better question considering Origins is much more universally well-received than the other two?

 

[Tekomandor]

Origins.
Main reason being DA:I is BORING AS HELL. Is like watching flies fuck.

There is nothing as boring as the Deep Roads or going through the Fade any time after the first in Inquisition. Nothing.

 

[MDSVeritas]

Playing through Inquisition now and having played through and utterly loved Origins, I'd have to side with Inquisition.

I feel like I'm actually exploring a fantasy worlds, and I'm drawn to interact with each character because each one is super unique and intriguing. It's just an easy world to get drawn into; building up Skyhold, furthering relationships, gaining levels and skills; Inquisition prepares a lot of that in a really nice package. Origins was excellent, and I love the characters of that game and the overall story was great, but the sense of building an organization from the ground up and exploring a really interesting world draws me more to Inquisition.

Also, while Inquisition has a lot of non-main-story content, I still dig how fleshed out a lot of it is, and overall the pacing feels pretty brisk going from quest to quest. The one big issue I had with origins was the Deep Roads and the Fade quests felt pretty badly paced.

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

Inquisition destroyed my expectation of Bioware making anything good again.

Even worse, it made me hold off on Witcher 3 because I cannot handle an open world RPG after Inquisition.

 

[Staf]

Inquisition is most certainly an RPG. It still has (and I'd argue has more, due to better dialogue reactivity) significant player agency in terms of story and character, as well as agency in the mechanical development of characters. Players still undertake quests, there is still a boatload of lore to find, there's even an evil wizard villain.

How is it not an rpg?

Dialogue reactivity doesn't mean shit if the dialogue options you choose in those sequences isn't the same as the character says. I constantly reloaded DA:I due to being fooled by those paraphrased answers until i finally gave up and removed it from my PS4 harddrive. Worst dialogue mechanic ever.

DA:I is an RPG for sure, it's just a piss poor one.

 

[John Kowalski]

I liked them both a lot. The Deep Roads were boring as shitfuck dry ejaculate, but i ended up console'ing my way through the last bit of the game, and Morrigan was really whiny in Origins and super cool in Inquisition.

 

[Chaos17]

Dragon age origin becaue I dislike Inquisition for all these reasons :
http://forum.bioware.com/topic/539488-an-exhaustive-review-of-dai/
http://forum.bioware.com/topic/5216...es-shall-we-general-feedback-and-suggestions/
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=964027
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=961552&page=9

 

[Bornstellar]

Just finished up the winter palace and I'm starting to warm up more to inquisition.

The abyssal elder dragon fight was great.

 

[Atraveller]

Even worse, it made me hold off on Witcher 3 because I cannot handle an open world RPG after Inquisition.

Don't you want to see CDPR schooling Bioware?

 

[Skii]

Inquisition because Origins was playing at 15fps on my PS3.

I don't even like Inquisition lol.

 

[Sulik2]

Combat in Origins is vastly superior to Inquisition. On top of of not being just a collectathon. Origins is far better.

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

Don't you want to see CDPR schooling Bioware?

I'm sure it will be better than Inquisition but I don't have the stomach to do any fetch quests right now. I'm thinking of grabbing a 970 so I'll end up with the game but I'd rather finish MCC and get started on Ori tbh.

 

[fester]

Origins gave me hope that BioWare was going to return to the formula that made them great. It wasn't perfect, but definitely an enjoyable experience. Inquisition confirmed that everything I loved about the company was dead and their "vision" for RPGs was genre-destroying shit. Thank god Pillars of Eternity came along and made things right.

 

[toddhunter]

Inquisition is most certainly an RPG. It still has (and I'd argue has more, due to better dialogue reactivity) significant player agency in terms of story and character, as well as agency in the mechanical development of characters. Players still undertake quests, there is still a boatload of lore to find, there's even an evil wizard villain.

How is it not an rpg?

Is it also a shooter? You shoot stuff. Is it a racing game? You can race around on a horse.

The point is that it isn't a rpg like Origins is. What is the gameplay more like, Baldurs Gate or Diablo? Now all you do is run around and spam one or two buttons over and over, so you tell me.

 

[Schweinehund]

I liked origins combat system and sidequests better. Everything else inquisition did better.

Cole's story already craps on all of DAO's party put together.

 

[Qassim]

Origins without a doubt. On PC (at least) the combat was far more interesting and just fun. Inquisition lured me in with claims they learned from what people liked about Origin's combat, but they hadn't really.

Even outside of combat I felt like Origins was better, it just felt like a better game overall. Obviously not as pretty or as large or even necessarily as polished, but I really enjoyed Origin's whereas I had to struggle my way through Inquisition.

 

[Ranma]

What about it is boring....? Inquisition has combat that is a lot faster and more interesting and engaging and the story is faar better and doesnt have the slow parts that DA:O has plenty of.

DA:I story is boring (Origins is better)
Sidedequests are WAY boring (Origins is better)
combat has an AI that sucks ass (Origins is better)
Oh and i forgot: Origins characters are better.
Had to force myself into finishing DA:I while i played Origins two times completely.

 

[Tekomandor]

Dialogue reactivity doesn't mean shit if the dialogue options you choose in those sequences isn't the same as the character says. I constantly reloaded DA:I due to being fooled by those paraphrased answers until i finally gave up and removed it from my PS4 harddrive. Worst dialogue mechanic ever.

DA:I is an RPG for sure, it's just a piss poor one.

I'm sorry paraphrasing is beyond you. Maybe you should stick to games with easier dialogue systems.

Is it also a shooter? You shoot stuff. Is it a racing game? You can race around on a horse.

The point is that it isn't a rpg like Origins is. What is the gameplay more like, Baldurs Gate or Diablo? Now all you do is run around and spam one or two buttons over and over, so you tell me.

Baldur's Gate. That isn't even a question - in what world is DAI like Diablo except that in both games you have activated abilities and that they're both in the very vague space of "fantasy RPG"?

 

[Shai-Tan]

Wouldn't DA2 vs DA:I be a better question considering Origins is much more universally well-received than the other two?

Sure. Some of the flaws in DA:I seem like an attempt to solve the problems with DA:2 but I think it became a little too ambitious for their release schedule. They have built numerous large levels to roam around in which is clearly better than repeating the same 5 little maps over and over (DA2) but this sadly caused one of the major flaws in the game which is MMO quest structure that is devoid of story or active events. This may have been intentional rather than a consequence of time pressure but this leads to the second major fault.

There was a complaint about Dragon Age 2 that it was about fluorishes (press A for awesome) rather than strategy and that's true to some extent. Every major combat was about waves of enemies appearing which obviously gets in the way of strategy. The problem is that they never found an identity for the inqusition combat. They slowed it down but failed to recover the strategy from Origins. So the combat is unresponsive and they were worried about slowing the game down too much so all the abilities are spammy aoe spells. DA2 at least had some specific crowd control and active positioning was relevant. I think if they weren't going to recover the strategy from Origins that they would have been far better off making it play like an action game (like Dragon's Dogma) -- what they have built is incredibly dull - it almost plays like Final Fantasy XII but they of course decided that the programming of characters for combat (gambits in FF XII, tactics in Dragon Age) was too complicated; FF XII was fun because the player would be optimizing the gambits for the current enemies being encountered. in Inquisition there's no point because every combat plays out exactly the same wiay with spamming of generic AOE spells that only have minor differences in effects. That's one of the main reasons it's dull to run around and fight enemies in the open world.

The other of course is that there isn't much of a reward for exploration (only seeing how beautiful the world is). The loot is all bad, one doesn't stumble upon active quest lines or dialogue and there's not much in the way of minibosses (FF XII had hunts which were contracts to fight minibosses that progresssed in difficulty, Dragons Dogma had a progression of enemies that the player works their way up to being able to defeat with some tougher enemies looming over the levels and kicking your ass when you first encounter them). DA2 wasn't an open world game so it's obviously lacking in those respects but going open world obviously brings problems of its own that they weren't ready to solve with Inquisition. DA2 at least had active quest lines. Ultimately though the problem is how dull the combat in Inquisition. It's hard to lay a good game down when the core gameplay is so flawed.

 

[UnrealEck]

I haven't finished Inquisition yet (played for over 100 hours though) and finished Origins twice.
I was about to say I liked Origins' more detailed and mandatory strategy elements than Inquisition's more freely flowing combat, but now that I think about it, Inquisition did offer a fair bit of strategy too.

I don't know really. I like them both. I think I maybe liked Origins more when it came out than I did Inquisition when it came out. But I don't get into games as much as I used to in general.

 

[Zombegoast]

Inquisition looks nicer but has too much padding. It's hampered by modern day AAA sensibilities (the Ubisoft collectible stratagem)

Was planning on buying it when it was on sale. My mind made up now.

 

[Staf]

I'm sorry paraphrasing is beyond you. Maybe you should stick to games with easier dialogue systems.

Beyond me? It's a question of being given sufficient information to make a informed decision regarding what answer is most suited the character i've created.

 

[Pinko Marx]

Both are just OK RPGs for me.
Inquisition comes out on top for me. I didn't mind the padding because it gave me more excuse to travel and get into more battles which was the highlight of the game imo. I basically just treated Inquisition as a hack N slash,gathering loot or materials, leveling up and customizing my characters, the whole loop was just fine better in DAI.
DAO just failed as a RTWP RPG for me. I had felt too much been there done that and nothing was done particularly well for me to care about.
At least DAI had the pretty graphics and fun combat to keep me going.
If I had to give a rating I'd say DAO is a 5/10 while DAI edges out a solid 7/10

 

[Tekomandor]

Beyond me? It's a question of being given sufficient information to make a informed decision regarding what answer is most suited the character i've created.

If you can't get sufficient information from the prompts, as well as the pictures, then you must really have problems with the game's social systems. it's okay though, not everyone can be good at every game.

 

[Staf]

If you can't get sufficient information from the prompts, as well as the pictures, then you must really have problems with the game's social systems. it's okay though, not everyone can be good at every game.

Guess i do. Just think it's incredibly stupid and unnecessary to force you to try and infer what is going to be said from a paraphrase, and as you say a picture, instead of actually telling you what is going to be said. They are basically making a game out of the dialogue system instead of treating it as a tool to interact with the world.

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

Inquisition was a game I really liked at first, but after completing it, and thinking about it, it's really not that good great of a game. It's alright. Origins though is still really good. So year, Origins.

 

[Cyrus_Saren]

While I have only played a couple hours of Inquisition, I would have to say Origins. With Origins, the combat was a lot more strategic and the story made me want to continue. I enjoyed Origins so much that I ended up going through it 4 times. Inquisition has not grabbed me as much as Origins did.

 

[kencey]

Origins is better because is darker, bloodier and has a more gothic feel. Has better pacing throughout the game. Richer story and a very focused game.

Inquisition, apart from the beatiful graphics, feels... "streched". The maps are way too big with nothing much interesting to see (Hinterlands anyone? fuck that map).
The main quest, the companion quests and templar/mage quests are good, other than that ... side quests are un-inspired, feels the Mmorpg-quests.
And the pattern of the maps, they are all the same: explore the camps, collect shards, astrarium puzzle, close rifts and kill the dragon.... every single map... the same.
But still, a big step from dragon age 2, i even 100%'ed the game with all achievements completed.

 

[Terra_Ex]

Origins and it's not even close. A shame what the series has become, but hey, Origins was designed as a CRPG first while Inquisition caters to the lowest common denominator in its design sensibilities so the outcome was hardly a surprise.

 

[GGNKovalski]

I never finished Origins. I just hated actually playing it. I liked the story and characters but my god the combat. I play on consoles so maybe that's why? I absolutely love Inquisition. The world, the characters, the art style, the combat, all so good. I wish I could manage my attribute points though and there is a fair amount of filler.

 

[Yeul]

I love the entire DA series dearly but honestly? I like Inquisition better than Origins. This is personal preference ofc but I'm not too big on the entire tac cam combat. I'll play it just fine, but I can't lie and say I liked it better than Inquisition's faster paced combat. I think the combat suits the games they are in, I just happen to like Inquisition's more. Also besides the fact that Inquisition is much more open and more gorgeous than Origins is a plus and I don't think I ever felt like I wanted to skip an area in Inquisition like I did with Origins (i.e.: Deep Roads and the Fade - both areas were extremely drawn out). Graphics is obviously just due to the years they were released, but I still play Inquisition because I can roam around.

In terms of story, I love that Inquisition breaks down all the walls that Origins built up. It is a world that very much so has had history shaped by the victor, and Inquisition addresses this in a lot of really great lore revelations. The only real edge I'd give Origins over Inquisition was dialogue options. Obviously having a silent protagonist allows for a lot more options in terms of what to say because hiring a VA = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Inquisition was in no way a perfect game, it did have pacing problems and there were many secondary quests that were a bit too blatantly "fetch"-y (the key is masking it properly), but I don't doubt that BioWare have learned from their first foray into a more open-world game.

 

[Moonstone]

DA:O>DA2>DA:I

Strategic view and gameplay with pause is a complete mess in DA:I (playing on PC).
I bought all DLCs for the first 2 games and finished them twice. Didn't finish DA:I yet.

To much grind, combat sucks and there are combos to break the game (with Rogues you can instagib Dragons at some point).

 

[DylanTackoor]

I just wanted Inquisition to be more Origins. Shame it wasn't, but it wasn't garbage or anything.

 

[toddhunter]

Baldur's Gate. That isn't even a question - in what world is DAI like Diablo except that in both games you have activated abilities and that they're both in the very vague space of "fantasy RPG"?

... Now I get it. When I say Baldurs Gate you are thinking about the PS2 games!

Cute.

You enter combat, you hold down the fire button and then hit a face button when a cool down timer lets you. Assuming you have enough DPS, you win. If not, you drink a potion to top up your health.

Now you tell me what game I'm describing.

 

[bonkeng]

Origins. By far.

Dual Wield Long Sword and Axe looks bad ass.

Seriously though, I never got bored with Origins, even after playing 200hrs (including dlc). While i got bored with Inquisition around the 80hr mark.

 

[Scipio]

There is nothing as boring as the Deep Roads or going through the Fade any time after the first in Inquisition. Nothing.

Grinding/Sidequests in the Hinterlands is much worse.

At least the Deep Roads had awesome side quests.

 

[Jibbajabbawockky]

Origins is by far and away my favorite DA game thus far. Its not perfect by any means but its a fantastic starting point and foundation on which BioWare could have built something really special but so far they've been completely incapable of following up.


Inquisition is good and fun up until you get to the end of the Haven arc, about 1/3 or so into the game. I was having a blast up until then. But the game peaks there. The main villain has a great intro but then he disappears basically right until the end of the game when he becomes a Scooby Doo villain, utterly incapable of doing anything right, just bumbling around shouting at the sky.

Post Haven I was all excited to see the open world zones open up even more. But once I started exploring all of these new zones, once the luster of how pretty they were wore off I came to the realization that the actual activities I was doing in these new zones was pretty much exactly the same as what I had been doing in the Hinterlands. Just that instead of destroying Fade Rifts in a forest, I was doing it in a snowy forest or a desert. Same shit, different setting.

The companions in Origins are leagues better than DAI. Sure, your Inquisition companions are all right but it was always telling to me that I was way more excited to see old companions from Origins return than I was actually getting new story content or dialogues with the Inquisition characters. The way banter was handled, whether buggy or not, certainly hurt my ability to really give a shit about any of the Inquisition companions that much too.

Combat in Origins was better. I think a lot of the people that praise Inquisition's combat probably tried to play Origins on consoles instead of PC. Granted, I don't think I'd praise Origins combat over much but on PC at least it was a good starting point. Yet Inquisition's combat is just so damn boring. And even when the progression elements started to get interesting with your abilities, for whatever reason BioWare thought it would be a great idea to limit you to only having access to 8 abilities at a time. Which maybe makes sense given that they give you a bunch of buffs to earlier abilities. Except that just makes it worse since by the time you unlock a specialization, there is no way you'll be able to use all of your specialization abilities and your class abilities. So at a certain point in leveling up, its no longer a fun exercise in picking cool, new abilities to try out, it just becomes a slog of what ability do I want to stop using because some designer thought it would be great to make your early abilities useful even later on in the game but artificially handicap the player into not being able to use them if they want to try new abilities too. Just really stupid design.

Inquisition is by no means a bad game. But its just extraordinarily mediocre past a certain point and to me came across not as something being designed with any kind of singular vision but being designed in such a way that it was just trying to check off boxes that would hit home with focus groups and mimic other well selling games.


And Origins had dual wielding warriors and you could romance Morrigan, so yeah, Origins is leagues better than Inquisition.

Cole's story already craps on all of DAO's party put together.

Haha. Cole? Cole? Cole came across as some emo Pinnochio. "Am I a real boy or a spooky ghost boy?"

 

[Majima Everywhere System]

I finally was able to start Origins again around the release of Inquisition, this time finishing the last 3/4ths of the game I missed.

Origins was more memorable to me. It was tough, but it could always try harder to get through a challenge and be happy when a new tactic worked. The story and characters are great and I gave a crap about what was going on.

It's actually one of my favorite games now. Inquisition isn't, but it's a good game.

 

[ScatheZombie]

They are both very boring, tedious games.

Origins shines in character development and story. Most of the content is equivalent in quality across the board. Both main quests and side quests are varying degrees of interesting and engaging and, in some cases, it's hard to distinguish between the two. That's the hallmark of a solid content experience.

Inquisition, on the other hand, is far more mechanically sound and well-paced ... unless you stumbled down the road of a completionist and try to do every little thing. This game is padded as fuck with a ton of content that isn't worth a shit. The characters are far less interesting and diverse as Origins but there's far more content to do with your companions in Inquisition. Origins might give you 2 or 3 quests that are really good with a companion, Inquisition will give you 10 uninteresting, anti-climactic quests instead.

If Inquisition cut out about 60% of it's horribly implemented, meaningless side-content this wouldn't even be a question. Inquisition in the better game. But Origins is the better experience. It depends on what your preferences are. If you value content over gameplay in your RPGs, it's Origins by a mile. If you're looking for solid RPG mechanics and combat, I feel like Inquisition is superior, if just barely.

 

[domlolz]

i thought the consensus on inquisition was that it was pretty good, has there been a backlash/was it all just launch hype?

 

[Skelter]

What about it is boring....? Inquisition has combat that is a lot faster and more interesting and engaging and the story is faar better and doesnt have the slow parts that DA:O has plenty of.

Story is not far better. It's stupid. Huge hole in the sky and only we can close it. Oh great. Magic is used as a crutch for everything in Dragon Age even in Origins but it only gets worse as the series goes on. DA2 It was demons, demons, demons, and in Inquisition it's no better.

There is also the terrible quest design. Being forced to do menial shit to advance the story all because we need power or whatever the mechanic is called. It slows the game down every bit as much as Origin's slow parts and probably worse because I'm aware of it more. It's as bad as grinding in Dragon Quest to beat a boss.

Characters are worse and of course this is my opinion so please feel free to not have to say "imo". There are two characters I liked. Ironbull and Varric. They're awesome but one isn't even a new character. Could not stand Solas, the Tevinter mage and the other rogue. Sera was okay but that's it. She has a punchable face.

Environment design is ass. Huge areas with no towns or settlements filled to the brim with collectathons and other ideas take from Ubisoft that don't really make the game any better. Which is optional or I would say if I didn't have to struggle to get enough power to progress in the damn game.


Origins is definitely the better choice but it doesn't hold up against Baldur's Gate the game it was supposedly the spiritual successor to. It has some great characters though which does help the cliché story. The combat is bad definitely. Mages were too strong and rogue archers could always crit on autoattacks which made the game far too easy or at least they could if Shale was in the party. I admit, it was pretty fun though.

 

[ShooterMcGavin]

Inquisition was my GOTY 2014 but Origins is one of my favorite RPGs of all time...and this is coming from someone who played through it on PS3 (13 FPS max).

The characters, story, and BioWare's incredible ability to create lore...all fantastic.

i thought the consensus on inquisition was that it was pretty good, has there been a backlash/was it all just launch hype?

Inquisition gets absolutely destroyed here. Just one of "those" games.