This gives me hope to be honest.
I liked Inquisition quite a lot but it also did a lot of the things I despise in open world games. Locking the story progression behind such an arbitrary thing as the power rating is often a sign that there isn't too much meaningful content in there and that is absolutely the case with Inquisition. It's a huge, long game as many of the reviews were saying except that it kind of isn't. I spent a lot of hours in that world but the story quests are rather short, there aren't a lot of them an the progression is generally straight forward. You can make up for that with meaningful sidecontent but BW really missed the mark in that regard. There are a few neat sidequests but they are the exception to the rule. Each area needed at least one questline that involves decisions and takes you more or less through the place. The area with the lake did that best I thought and I was hoping it would get better from that point on but you really are mostly just fetching stuff or killing x amount of y.
In addition to that the companions are sadly underdeveloped. Again, I still managed to get somewhat attached to a few of them but if you compare it to the loyalty missions in Mass Effect it is an enormous step backward. I'd rather have less companions but really get to know the ones I have because that's where Bioware's strengths lie in my opinion. I love most of the character arcs in Mass Effect, same as Leliana and especially Morrigan in Origins and the only arc in Inquisition that comes maybe somewhat close to that was Cassadra's.
I'm still worried about Witcher 3 because it is an enormous task to fill a big open world with meaningful characters, quests and things to explore and to also have an impactful story that doesn't get lost in the vast space. I honestly can't really think of many open world games that managed to hold the balance for me. New Vegas is certainly not a bad reference, I couldn't really get into it but the side content writing was quite good from what I've seen. I also liked Red Dead a lot even though there weren't a lot of sidequests. It's probably my favorite story driven open world game if I had to name one.
I'll give CD Projekt the benefit of the doubt though because they haven't let me down yet. The first two games were excellent, which was surprising given the high expectations I had after reading the books.
I liked Inquisition quite a lot but it also did a lot of the things I despise in open world games. Locking the story progression behind such an arbitrary thing as the power rating is often a sign that there isn't too much meaningful content in there and that is absolutely the case with Inquisition. It's a huge, long game as many of the reviews were saying except that it kind of isn't. I spent a lot of hours in that world but the story quests are rather short, there aren't a lot of them an the progression is generally straight forward. You can make up for that with meaningful sidecontent but BW really missed the mark in that regard. There are a few neat sidequests but they are the exception to the rule. Each area needed at least one questline that involves decisions and takes you more or less through the place. The area with the lake did that best I thought and I was hoping it would get better from that point on but you really are mostly just fetching stuff or killing x amount of y.
In addition to that the companions are sadly underdeveloped. Again, I still managed to get somewhat attached to a few of them but if you compare it to the loyalty missions in Mass Effect it is an enormous step backward. I'd rather have less companions but really get to know the ones I have because that's where Bioware's strengths lie in my opinion. I love most of the character arcs in Mass Effect, same as Leliana and especially Morrigan in Origins and the only arc in Inquisition that comes maybe somewhat close to that was Cassadra's.
I'm still worried about Witcher 3 because it is an enormous task to fill a big open world with meaningful characters, quests and things to explore and to also have an impactful story that doesn't get lost in the vast space. I honestly can't really think of many open world games that managed to hold the balance for me. New Vegas is certainly not a bad reference, I couldn't really get into it but the side content writing was quite good from what I've seen. I also liked Red Dead a lot even though there weren't a lot of sidequests. It's probably my favorite story driven open world game if I had to name one.
I'll give CD Projekt the benefit of the doubt though because they haven't let me down yet. The first two games were excellent, which was surprising given the high expectations I had after reading the books.