TIF’s 2014 Game of the Year Awards: Day 2
Article
FOUR
Dragon Age: Inquisition: BioWare (PS4)
If you had asked me three
months ago if I were excited about Dragon Age: Inqusition (DA:I), I would have
quickly scoffed “no.” I have not played either of the previous Dragon Age
games, and never had any interest in the IP. DA:I is a game I picked up based
upon the recommendations of reviewers and sites I trust. And I cannot be more
thankful, as DA:I is one of the best western RPG’s I have played in recent
memory (let alone making it to this illustrious list). DA:I was a game I would
wake up and play, think about while in lab, and play when I got home, until I
beat it. I can tell you honestly: this almost never happens. Let me get into
why it is my number four game of 2014.
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| Dragon Age: Inquisition's world is varied and beautiful. Emprise du Lion is a sight to behold. |
DA:I succeeds on in a number
of ways, but one of the most striking is how expertly the game balances its urgent
and set-piece heavy main story with its expansive (mostly-)open world. Over the
course of the main story you recruit your companions, travel to varied
locations, experience bombastic fights, and embark on an epic fantasy quest.
Though the cheese factor is a little high, I enjoyed the story enough to look
forward to seeing it through. When not doing the story, you have expansive
open-world environments to explore, which are littered with side-quests and
collectables. Games like this struggles to get across any sort of focused
narrative: going around picking flowers or killing random bandits seems odd
when literally the entire world is at
stake. DA:I’s approach to solving this is novel, and worked well. The story is
framed as this huge continent-wide war, where resources and troops need to be carefully
pooled and managed. Things that, if you think about it, would take quite some “real
world” time: giving your Inquisitor the freedom to goof around about the world
while things are being set-up. This idea is further reinforced by war table
missions. The war table is where you send out your advisors to deal with small
uprisings, meet informants, set up diplomatic treaties, etc. The war table
really adds to the feeling of your wide-scale endeavor, and again suggests to
the player that substantial amounts of game-world time must pass to get things
accomplished. With this frame of mind, the normal gameplay vs story dissonance
was mostly ameliorated.
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| The carefully crafted dragon encounters are terrific. |
The open world in DA:I is one
of the best of recent memory. The world is chock full of quests and places to
explore, but not so much that you get overwhelmed with how much there is to do
at any given moment (looking at you, Far Cry 4). The sidequests are, for the
most part, great. I especially enjoyed the sidequests that changed up how you
played the game, like the Astariums or Veilfire ruins. One of the real
standouts in the open world was the dragon encounters. Each fight was
spectacular and evoked the epic fantasy feel you hope for from a game like
this. Dragon fights remained challenging throughout the game, too, unlike in
Skyrim where they eventually became easy and tedious.
BioWare is known for making
games with great characters, and that fact holds true in DA:I. Each of your
main party, and even many of the non-party member characters like Josephine or
Cullen, had distinct and interesting personalities that evolved as you get
further into the game. I’m not ashamed to admit that I exhausted all dialogue
of all characters while playing through—I was always curious to hear what they
had to say. Picking who would come with me during story and sidequest missions
was painfully hard: I liked them all. The banter between party members alone
was worth shuffling up my team with every outing. Significantly, I also felt
that this was the first BioWare game where I felt like I was the protagonist,
versus “playing” the protagonist. In Mass Effect I was playing Commander Shepard; here, I was Justine the elf mage leader of the Inquisition.
Combat in DA:I is good, but
not the best combat I’ve ever seen in an RPG. The developers must have known
that it gets a little stale, as they let you switch freely between your
character and your party members freely while in combat, allowing you to get a
feel of how each class and specialization plays. The game also allowed for a
more action-oriented approach to combat or move-by-move combat using the
tactical camera. I didn’t find the game too difficult (I played on normal) so I
did not make use of the tactical combat, but anecdotally I hear people like it.
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