February Progress Pick: Dragon Age Inquisition

The last game that took me 100 hours to finish was Dragon Age: Origins, almost exactly a year ago. While I don’t consider Inquisition to be as good, there are so many positives that are huge improvements over DA:II that made me glad to have completed it, even if there was way too much filler content that wasn’t worthwhile.

It’s widely accepted that the best and most important aspect of any Bioware game are the romances. I’m kidding of course but like Cassandra’s secret love for Varric’s books, they are a guilty pleasure, as another level of roleplaying, yeah. Moving on, the cast of characters are a highlight as always, Dorian (the moustache), Iron Bull (that drinking cutscene and his “training exercise”) and Vivienne (she’s delightful, my dear) especially stood out from the rest, the party banter is as good as ever, and there are 3 different companions for each class, with their own unique skill trees you later unlock which helps give you more reasons to try out different party compositions. The party approval system was also something to watch out for as you can trigger cutscenes which reflect a hostile or friendly relationship, and speaking of cutscenes there were a few that really made me laugh which is always welcome. And it was great seeing a few old faces return, even if some were handled much better than others.

The Hinterlands… perhaps it was because this was my first real taste of a new AAA game (I’m aware this came out in 2014!) that I was so easily impressed by the graphics, or the fact I don’t think I’ve played such a big open world game since Skyrim, that helped make the exploration and massive maps more tolerable, yet I find it very easy to see why the Hinterlands has the reputation it does and why it’s advised to leave it if you’re starting to tire of it. I was shocked at the amount of side quests, it felt like everyone you met had something they wanted fetched or killed. The fade rifts dotted around the world reminded me of closing the Oblivion gates, thankfully the dragon fights in Inquisition are a spectacle that actually felt rewarding compared with fighting a few rounds of demons, I wish there had been more higher level boss fights like these that required some preparation and combat tactics. I also had an issue with the minimap being completely pointless, it shows no detail at all meaning I was frequently pausing to consult the main map. Thankfully the Hinterlands, despite being the first zone you visit, does not set a precedent for every map, many are smaller and feel like they don’t take a whole day just to establish the camps in the region, the Emprise du Lion with the snowy biome and red templars was my favourite alongside Storm Coast, Hissing Wastes was my least as it was a Hinterlands in size without anything actually in it.

Yet once you’ve amassed enough influence and power from escorting Druffalos, the main story itself is fantastic. Honestly Haven to Skyhold may be one of my favourite quests ever. It’s a real shame there isn’t more of it, they never disappointed and truly felt epic at times with sieges, time travel, and an assassination plot being the most memorable. I was looking forward to playing this and it delivered a great experience overall, maybe if I played nearer its release and had less of a backlog I’d have collected all those shards and bottles… but I’m more than content to mark this as finished and it’s unlikely I’ll return for a second playthrough as I think I’ve seen enough.

Steam games

• Last Day of June
  

  10 hours playtime

  21 of 21 achievements

• The Norwood Suite
  

  3 hours playtime

  17 of 17 achievements

• Refunct
  

  4 hours playtime

  9 of 10 achievements

• Tiny Echo
  

  4 hours playtime

  6 of 6 achievements

Having spent almost all of February and early March just playing Dragon Age I don’t have much progress to report on my Steam backlog, I did try to squeeze in a few short games and I removed around 100 games I realised I had no interest in, which always helps lower that never played percentage!

Last Day of June - It’s been a while since I last had my heart broken which is nice. I’ve played a few games now with sad endings, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and The Walking Dead immediately come to mind, and this is right up there with the best. The groundhog day side to it got a bit tiring but it’s well worth it for the feels.

The Norwood Suite - And the award for weirdest game goes to… this strange first person exploration game that involves finding things (things is the perfect word here) for strangers in this hotel so you can enter their rooms to use secret passages to collect costumes parts to access this underground party… actually quite fun though!

Refunct - I asked a while ago about some relaxing games and this came up as a suggestion. The first playthrough was great but if you’re going for 100% then there is nothing relaxing about the timed achievements! Speed runs aside, I loved just painting each tile with colour and collecting cubes with that nice surprise ending.

Tiny Echo - It seems like everyone’s played this going by the activity feed when the Humble Monthly was released, it was an okay point and click that didn’t take long to finish, it would have been quicker if the movement wasn’t so sluggish. I’m usually quite patient but it felt like I was wasting my time with this one.

What next?

I want to take a short break from open world RPGs so I won’t jump into Witcher 3 right away, I was pressing V for search like I was doing every few steps in Dragon Age when I played Norwood Suite, a game which doesn’t even require any searching, that habit is going to take a while to go away! I have my eye on Dishonored 2 for some stealth fun after being gifted Death of the Outsider by an amazing friend. Other than that I recently reordered my backlog priority lists so I should hopefully have an easier task choosing in the future, surely I can’t be alone in having difficulty deciding what to play each month!