I finally beat the tutorial level of Dragon Age: Inquisition and, once again, I found myself in awe of their ability to do “The Big Reveal”.
Without getting into spoilers, I’ll just say that the game shows you a huge problem with the world. “Dang”, you think, “That’s gotta be what we’re building up to resolve. I’m going to have to fix the world.”
So you build a team and go up a bunch of levels and build a bunch of armor and weapons and learn a bunch of skills and spells and you go and resolve the issue. At which point the game says “okay, I guess you know how to play” and then it tells you “here’s the *REAL* problem you have to resolve.”
At this point, instead of thinking “I have to fix the world”, you shift into thinking “I’m going to have to fix the world as preparations for resolving this problem.”
And it is at this point that they show you how big the world really is (it’s huge, by the way).
Meanwhile, the game takes all of the stuff that happened in the first two games and uses these events as little embellishments for what you’re interacting with now… for example, the dwarven adolescent girl that you nudged toward following her dream and learning about magic in the first game? Now she’s working for you and helping enchant weapons. Little things like that that make you say “what I did in the first two games really and truly mattered…” and you sigh happily.
Quite honestly, it puts Mass Effect 3 to shame. Though, I’ll grant, I haven’t seen the ending yet.
So… what are you playing?
(Picture is HG Wells playing a war game from Illustrated London News (25 January 1913[/efn_note]
I played inquisition through once. It was some damn good stuff. Have you gotten to your actual castle yet?Report
I got to my actual castle and am having a delightful time with the mission table and trying to figure out the best ingredients to have my various people chase.
It’s reached the point where I wake up, get dressed, turn on the game collect the stuff from the night before, give my guys new missions, feed the cats, assemble meals for the day, get ready to get in the car, go back and check on the game and collect the stuff, give my guys new missions, then go to work.
I try to time the longer-than-12-minutes missions for during sleep or during work.
Gosh, I love that table.Report
I started it, and then forgot I had it because I hadn’t finished DA 2. Which I went to finish, then put down again. (Even though I’m practically done).
And on the upcoming docket: Deus Ex 2 (which is already getting promising reviews), Xcom 2 for PS4, and an upgraded, mod-supported PS4 Skyrim.Report
I like that most of the reviews pointed out that the previous game was… uneven… and that that problem had been addressed for the most part.Report
“If you liked Human Revolution, but hated the boss fights, this is for you. Story is kinda weak, but so was HRs!”.
YES PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY.Report
i think it will be decent enough. or so says the preloading copy i just bought on steam.
rock paper shotgun – who, generally, publish very thorough and thoughtful reviews – had a decent rundown along those lines of “better boss fights based in your actual skills and approach; feels like dx; story still weak a la hr.”
which, i mean, i can live with that. probably. will find out next week.Report
Tomorrow we are hosting my nephews 13th birthday. My b-i-l found the red box D&D at a yard sale so we are playing old schoolReport
My daughter and her husband are converting an old school bus into a camper. The brake lights quit working this week, so her husband and I spent the entire morning working through the wiring and fixing both the real problem (switch on the brake pedal) as well as corroded sockets and bulbs here and there. This afternoon was my granddaughter’s (their daughter’s) third birthday party, so that was fun.
I’ve been tasked with assembling an inexpensive MP3 player suitable for the bus, to be controlled from iPhones.Report
That’s awesome. I used to live in an old school bus and have great memories. I built a bed with storage underneath, a small kitchen with a fridge, installed a couch and book shelves, and so on. Sweet livin. In the summertime.Report
A liberal type who used to live in an old school bus. Well of course. What about making your own hemp clothing. ( insert smiley face here)Report
I’m playing through Inquisition again at the moment, While the interface for PC is bad and there’s really too much stuff to do in it, its still a really good game.Report
Fallout 4. Waiting on the last DLC: Nuka World. One of the best games I;ve ever played.Report
Yeah, waiting for Nuka-World too.
I’ve ended up in a weird state in my second, Survival run-though, I went with the Minutemen without doing, well, *any* over faction questions…and the game, oddly, seems over, as I can’t seem to do anything about the BoS. (I guess I could just start *shooting* them…)
So Nuka-World is what I’ve got left. I wonder if I can beat it before Dragon Con?
After that…I’m probably done with this character, getting a new one. He’s level 99, will certainly end up over 105 by the end, and 100 seems a nice definitely ‘You won at life’ level.
I’m thinking next time, I play on Very Hard. I like the *combat* difficulty of survival, I do not like the other stuff. I current use a mod for fast travel between settlements, and saving at area transitions (But still no quick save), and I find myself wishing for some sort of ‘automatically eat food’ hotkey…
…so it seems the game I actually want is just Very Hard with no save scumming in the middle of an area unless I find a bed.Report
I forgot to mention this.
The true ending is in the DLC. If I had an Xbone, I would buy this game again (although I understand that there was some….thing….where, if you bought it for the 360, you could get a free copy of the game for the Xbone) and buy all the DLC just so I could experience the true ending outside of Youtube. (The last DLCs didn’t come for 360.)Report
I picked up a PS4 “Game Of The Year” version used from the Entertainmart allowing me to keep my “NOT ONE RED CENT” pledge.Report