Dragon Age 3

Yeah, I couldn't stand Liara. Being one of the few characters impossible to kill off over the course of the series really emphasised what a Creator's Pet she was.

Not impossible. It just involves completely screwing up... which is true for most major characters you can kill off.

As for Qunari romance, according to one of the writers, it's there, you just can't see it. Of course she was joking, but still.

She gets no more love, I'd argue, than Tali or Garrus. She's as much a victim of Bioware's crappy structural decisions as the ending.

Reviving a 3 year old thread because I bought Dragon Age: Inquisition on Games with Gold for my Xbox One on Saturday, and promptly lost 28 hours to it.

Reading everyone's complaints about Bioware's voice acting isn't surprising to me. I remember thinking about how flat Male!Shepard was in the first Mass Effect and how the only convincing inflection I got from Fem!Shep was when I chose Renegade options and she sounded like a psychopath. A very effective psycho, but definitely thirsty for the blood of her enemies. My Fem!Shep was a lesbian human supremecist though and that was apparently the role that Jennifer Hale was born to play.

However, my male mage elf Inquisitor is very convincing. I feel like I'm deeply involved and invested in the conversations with the people I'm talking to.

This definitely is Bioware back at their roots though. The second they showed me tactical mode, I was 13 again, trying to bumble my way through a bargain-bin-purchased copy of Baldur's Gate. I was impressed with the difficulty; I haven't played a game that really challenged me outside of a Hardcore or Insane mode in quite a while and Hard was more than enough. The D&D qualities of navigating the battlefield, choosing the best actions for the situation, optimizing my team, these were things I deeply missed without even realizing it.

Sure, the action is exponentially slower in this game, more methodical and cerebral compared to Mass Effect or Skyrim. However, I've gotten really invested in the battles that sometimes can seem to last for a while. The last RPG I played before this was The Elder Scrolls Online, and that one sometimes felt like it moved at a breakneck pace. Having to step back and look at a battlefield, the obstacles between me and the opponent, what the best way to organize my party is, these are actually very fun and engaging activities.

The story has me engaged as well. I'm excited to learn where these Rifts have come from and what my gives my character power over those rifts. I just took on a man by the name of Alexius and picked up a new mage, Dorian. I hate time travel missions 99% of the time, but this one was poignant, well done, compact, and effective. During this sequence a father seems to sustain his dying son through undeath, or the setting-equivalent. My character made the choice to have the son given a merciful death. I couldn't believe how just I felt doing that and how I felt it established a very specific detail about my character. He doesn't sympathize with the father because the very concept of undeath is anathema to my character. I made the decision that this was how I would play the character from that point forward.

This game is very effective at making me feel like I'm playing a character in a world where my choices matter and there are waves made by my actions. I haven't had a game where my opinions are asked so frequently and remembered for a later discussion in such a natural way. When I change my mind about something the character I'm speaking with acknowledges it. I vehemently disagree with Vivienne, for example, but our discussions are in-depth and respectful debates, where my character raises as good of points as she does.

Dialogue has the tell-tale Bioware direct way of asking things. With a character like Solas who has a voice actor that is most at home sounding like an enthusiastic community college professor discussing the Fade and the Veil, the dialogue option of "Tell me about the Fade" works very well. My character sounds sufficiently curious and Solas' voice actor delivers his lecture in a way that I leave feeling educated. On the other hand, with a character like Sera the direct way that the character grills her generates responses that don't always feel like they're related to what I was saying. I'm hoping that she improves as the game goes on.

Initial reaction is an 8/10, most of the game publications rated this thing off the chart. I'll continue this as I get farther in the game.

There's a regular Dragon Age thread where we already talk about all three games.