Yeah, I agree…the loot system is pretty annoying. Also, if you haven’t learned it yet, use the V key often…it shows you where the loot is for about 10 seconds, otherwise it can be hard to pick out of the background clutter. I’ve found a lot of stuff since I discovered the key and what it does (by accident, despite the fact that it’s one of the things built into the early story to teach you the game…it didn’t click until I accidentally used it while walking and a bunch of loot icons popped up :smack:).
The range thing is also annoying, though as an archer it’s less of a concern I guess. The thing that I didn’t get was the whole camp system where you get your potions replenished and can rest…I was trying to figure out how to make heal potions and down to almost no health when I figured it out. I’m obviously not firing on all cylinders with this game yet.
Other than that, it’s pretty fun so far. A bit like Skyrim in the exploration part, very open and lots to find and do. I guess my previous experience or whatever in earlier games was also saved somehow, though I have no idea what that does. I logged into their web site and see a bunch of heroes or whatever but no idea what that impacts unless I restart the game (I seem to recall them asking if I wanted a custom world, but I started playing before I discovered the web site and imported my earlier experience).
I can already tell, though, that this game is going to be huge and vast and it’s going to suck down hundreds of hours of my time. I played maybe 6 hours today and I’ve hardly scratched the surface…hell, it took me around an hour or so just to get to the initial credits.
Models seem ok, but hair is super shiny at least with my graphics settings. Met a guy with silver hair and it looked like he had a molten blob of metal on his head.
To fix the super shiny hair, at least on the PC, go into option > graphics > mesh and set from medium or low to high. It worked wonders for me. Also, turning shadows down to low was a very noticeable performance improvement.
I succumbed to the lure of this game last night. I’m enjoying it so far, although I don’t feel as if I have as much control in the tactical combat as I did in DA:O. Also, I’ve got an odd bug where everyone is referring to my male Inquisitor with female pronouns and getting called “my lady”.
I didn’t think five o’clock shadow was that feminine!
Can anyone tell me how to level-up? I have the flashing level up arrow on my character’s icon, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get to the menu to level up. Thanks.
Picked it up on PS4 and played a few hours. A lot of fun so far. There is so much to do on the map that I’m a bit unsure of how much I should do before moving on with the main quest line. For the moment I’m having a good time running around and finding quests and whatnot.
For me, it’s lips that are really shiny. My guy looks like he has a bad Vaseline habit. The texture on some of the metal armors make them look like cloth, too, so some of them look bad cosplayers.
Overall though, I’m having a great time so far. I like the conceit that sets up your character as the nominal leader of the Inquisition almost immediately. It may feel slightly rushed, but I like that it gets to the meat of the game quickly. Go forth and, you know, inquire.
Thanks Arrognce, I guess I’m showing my age, but I miss when you had a little paper game manual in your hand while playing the game to look stuff like that up.
Bought that and Farcry 4 last night for my PS4. Started with FC4 for a bit. Leaving for a week for Thanksgiving tomorrow so won’t be able to put this in for a while.
This is only the third Dragon Age. You may be thinking of some other series.
From what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think it’s too important that you played the previous games, but there’s a lot of love for those who did. You’ll be missing out on a lot of nods and references to past characters, locations, and events.
There’s a fairly heavy exposition dump in the beginning of the game and it’s helpful to already know what the nations of Orelais, Fereldan and Antiva are, what the Chantry is and its relation to the Mage’s Circle, etc. But there’s also documents a plenty laying around for you to read which give the back story, conversation options usually include stuff designed to explain the world and much of it is obvious in context. The game was obviously designed to bring in a lot of new people.
As Johnny Bravo said, this is only the third game and the previous two had wildly different control schemes from one another. Dragon Age Origins was very tactical where you’d set conditions for your party members (“If more than 4 enemies are bunched together, cast Sleep”) and Dragon Age 2 was a much more “action” oriented clickfest. This game hybridizes the two – more active combat than DA:O but with more tactical options than DA2. So even if you’re remembering one of the Dragon Age games and disliked the combat, combat in this one is different.
Those were great, yeah. I wouldn’t really need one for the user interface stuff, but having some lore in a book form would be awesome. Maps, some character stuff, a bit of a background about the different nation states and so on.
I had the chance to play around with this a bit on both PC and PS4 over the last couple of days (loved DA:O, didn’t particularly care for DA2). Probably a good thing - with the pre-release word of mouth I was probably just going to buy it outright on the PC. Now it’s much more of a choice between PS4 now or waiting on the PC version… not so much for price but for patches to get to a point where the K&M UI is significantly less terrible. That’s really my preferred method for this kind of game, so I’ll probably wait.
Also, this really screams for being installed on a SSD for PC, more than probably any other game I’ve played. Not an issue for me but if you don’t have that option, here there be loading times.
On the other hand, it really is beautiful, on both platforms, and I haven’t gotten much gaming use out of my PS4 so far, so I’m really tempted there. We’ll see how the holiday season goes.
The PC controls are very awkward, and the tactical cam isn’t what I hoped, but the game itelf is giving me incentive to look past these and enjoy the story and exploration.
The main difference between the platforms is 60 FPS obviously, which is a pretty big deal, IMHO, PC’s HBAO implementation, and PC’s better LOD system which means a lot less pop-in, specially when it comes to foliage, which on consoles materializes from thin air a few feet away from you.
Here’s a website with comparison shots for the various graphics options on PC. HBAO, IMHO, makes a HUGE difference.
On PC, forget about mouse and keyboard, just play with a gamepad.
Yikes. If it plays better on gamepad it sounds like a successor to DA2, not DA1. That’s unfortunate. I guess it’s kind of a fluke that something as thoughtful and detailed was made by an AAA publisher in recent times and we can’t expect it to be repeated.
Dragon Age: Origins is the name of the first game. There’s no “Dragon Age”. There is Dragon Age: Awakening which is an expansion pack to Dragon Age: Origins. You may be thinking of that.
Yeah there was Dragon Age: Origins, followed by an expansion DA:Awakening, followed by Dragon Age 2, and now DA: Inquisition.
So I’m 10 hours into this game, and I’ve explored oh, 40% or so of THE FIRST AREA. And it’s not even the largest area in the game.
Some observations so far:
I’ve only recruited three companions plus another three advisors. They are all interesting and feel fleshed out. I enjoy having conversations with them, and those conversations can be contentious, touching, funny.
The areas, as noted, appear to be gigantic. 10 hours and I feel like there’s so much of this map I haven’t’ even seen. I figured I would 100% each area before moving on, but I’m thinking of moving on to the next part of the story and coming back later. It’s just too much!
The first open area at least, the Hinterlands, is just amazing. This is what I would imagine as a kid playing zelda games, or what I pictured when reading fantasy novels. There’s nothing like stumbling unto this huge, majestic waterfall, and yes, there is a cave behind it!
So far the quests are very much DA2 style/MMO’ish. Just a lot of fetch quests, a lot of collect 10 of this and 20 of that. Usually with only bare bones context as to why. They all reward you with things that help move along the story and open paths to more interesting quests, which is why you still want to do them! Also because…
The sense of exploration is amazing. Definitely feel like playing BG2 traipsing over the countryside never knowing what’s on the other side of that hill/valley. And it COULD be anything. From a haunted castle, a crumbling ruin, a village of cultists, anything. One time I made my way through a narrow ravine and I found myself face to face with a bear. After a TOUGH fight, a little down the ways and it’s two wild mabari dogs AND a bear, fighting each other, then attacking me. Even the wild-life can be dangerous.
Yeah, I’m pretty hooked. So sad that the mouse and keyboard controls suck.
