Inquisition is a very strange creature where I could rant for virtually hours about all of the facets of this game I genuinely dislike with a passion, and yet when it comes to it, I still enjoyed it. There's so much to be annoyed by:
- Typical empty open-world RPG that gives me awful Ubisoft vibes and where "our map is so big and expansive!" really just means you'll be walking for 20 minutes through hills.
- Filler quests upon filler quests. I do not want objectives like "Collect 20 deer hides" in my Dragon Age games, particularly not as almost every single side quest.
- Say what you will about DA2, but it had genuinely original, creative ideas, and Inquisition throws them all out of the window. No more inventive, subversive plot; we're back to the generic Chosen One fantasy storyline. No more complex and nuanced politics and grey morality; we're back to clear-cut good guys and bad guys.
- The companions are good, some of them I even got genuinely attached to, but unlike DA2 I can never quite forget they're just characters on rails. DA2's companions felt like complicated people, people with emotions and conflict, a real core friend group that sticks around through the plot because they care about each other and that's what you do for your friends. Inquisition's companions, by comparison, feel like co-workers who are just there to pull the plot along. The fact that you can just skip recruiting multiple companions, or tell them to leave at any time, and have the story not feel different at all is very telling.
- I don't care about Solas, and the game hinges on you caring about Solas. In fact, it hinges on you caring about Solas so much that the entire sequel looks to also be hinged on you caring about Solas. This is not a good sign for me continuing to enjoy the series.
- They sold you the real ending of the game as paid DLC. Come on.
- Your race/background/class changes absolutely nothing about the game except for what essentially boils down to flavour text. I can think of a very scant handful of dialogue options you get, mostly in one conversation where Josephine asks you about your history and where what you tell her affects absolutely nothing ever again, and there's the one Winter Ball quest where being a Qunari, elf, or mage docks you a very small number of points at the beginning (which you can effortlessly make up for regardless). Comparing this to Origins, which was constantly reacting to and acknowledging your character, is disappointing.
- It's nigh impossible to roleplay in this game. You could be an evil bastard in Origins and DA2. In Inquisition, your dialogue options boil down to "Good Guy", "Good Guy who jokes around", and "Good Guy who's blunt". You have absolutely no room to play around with any other motivations or personalities.
- There's so much grinding. So much. Plenty of people have compared this to MMO gameplay, and I concur; you have to put off the story quests all the time to run around doing your "Collect 20 deer hides", "Close 50 rifts", "Kill 10 darkspawn" type beats to gather enough Power points to progress with the next actually interesting thing. If it wasn't for the fact that I can mod that out on replays, I likely wouldn't have been able to force myself to get through the game more than once.
- The war table. Not the quests themselves, mind; a lot of the quests on there should have been full-fledged cutscenes with dialogue vs. text on a screen, and were clearly just relegated there due to a lack of effort, but they weren't unenjoyable to do. However, why are there arbitrary time limits in my single-player RPG? Why do I have to wait 12 real-life hours to progress with this war table mission in my single-player RPG?
- I could never put my finger on my issue with the English VA's voice for the female Inquisitor, but someone else compared her to a text-to-speech program in their review, and that's exactly it. She sounds flat and artificial.
- The animations are... questionable. The Inquisitor's "sad" and "scared" expressions just look like they're sucking on a lemon.
- Combat feels clunky and clumsy. It's not as tactical as Origins, not as fast-paced and sharp as DA2, just... you firing arrow after arrow at someone, or very slowly swinging around a giant sword until something dies.
- Mounts are useless. They clearly know their open world is a pain to trudge through, hence their inclusion, and yet all they accomplish is ensuring you never hear party banter (because for some reason your party just vanishes if you're using a mount and doesn't speak at all), and they don't even function properly. A dev straight-up confirmed on Twitter that galloping on a mount doesn't even make it go faster, they just added speed lines and a blur effect to the screen to make it seem like it did.
- Speaking of party banter, bugs, such as banter simply not triggering, have still never been fixed ten years after release.
I find it interesting that Inquisition was generally beloved upon release vs. Mass Effect: Andromeda being widely panned, because honestly I'd put them near enough in the same category when it comes to how they feel to play and the general quality.
AND YET.
After all that, I still like Inquisition. A disappointing Dragon Age game is still a good game. I've replayed it several times and enjoyed it, the soundtrack is beautiful, it has some of my favourite characters in fiction (Cole, Dorian, Josephine, and though I'm not quite as invested in him I found Blackwall's story arc genuinely fascinating and refreshing), and I cared about where everyone ended up and what ending I got.
Like I said, a strange creature.
Seriously, though, Bioware, start putting some damn effort into your hair selections in character creation. It's not difficult to add long hair. It's not. Every other company is managing it.
- Typical empty open-world RPG that gives me awful Ubisoft vibes and where "our map is so big and expansive!" really just means you'll be walking for 20 minutes through hills.
- Filler quests upon filler quests. I do not want objectives like "Collect 20 deer hides" in my Dragon Age games, particularly not as almost every single side quest.
- Say what you will about DA2, but it had genuinely original, creative ideas, and Inquisition throws them all out of the window. No more inventive, subversive plot; we're back to the generic Chosen One fantasy storyline. No more complex and nuanced politics and grey morality; we're back to clear-cut good guys and bad guys.
- The companions are good, some of them I even got genuinely attached to, but unlike DA2 I can never quite forget they're just characters on rails. DA2's companions felt like complicated people, people with emotions and conflict, a real core friend group that sticks around through the plot because they care about each other and that's what you do for your friends. Inquisition's companions, by comparison, feel like co-workers who are just there to pull the plot along. The fact that you can just skip recruiting multiple companions, or tell them to leave at any time, and have the story not feel different at all is very telling.
- I don't care about Solas, and the game hinges on you caring about Solas. In fact, it hinges on you caring about Solas so much that the entire sequel looks to also be hinged on you caring about Solas. This is not a good sign for me continuing to enjoy the series.
- They sold you the real ending of the game as paid DLC. Come on.
- Your race/background/class changes absolutely nothing about the game except for what essentially boils down to flavour text. I can think of a very scant handful of dialogue options you get, mostly in one conversation where Josephine asks you about your history and where what you tell her affects absolutely nothing ever again, and there's the one Winter Ball quest where being a Qunari, elf, or mage docks you a very small number of points at the beginning (which you can effortlessly make up for regardless). Comparing this to Origins, which was constantly reacting to and acknowledging your character, is disappointing.
- It's nigh impossible to roleplay in this game. You could be an evil bastard in Origins and DA2. In Inquisition, your dialogue options boil down to "Good Guy", "Good Guy who jokes around", and "Good Guy who's blunt". You have absolutely no room to play around with any other motivations or personalities.
- There's so much grinding. So much. Plenty of people have compared this to MMO gameplay, and I concur; you have to put off the story quests all the time to run around doing your "Collect 20 deer hides", "Close 50 rifts", "Kill 10 darkspawn" type beats to gather enough Power points to progress with the next actually interesting thing. If it wasn't for the fact that I can mod that out on replays, I likely wouldn't have been able to force myself to get through the game more than once.
- The war table. Not the quests themselves, mind; a lot of the quests on there should have been full-fledged cutscenes with dialogue vs. text on a screen, and were clearly just relegated there due to a lack of effort, but they weren't unenjoyable to do. However, why are there arbitrary time limits in my single-player RPG? Why do I have to wait 12 real-life hours to progress with this war table mission in my single-player RPG?
- I could never put my finger on my issue with the English VA's voice for the female Inquisitor, but someone else compared her to a text-to-speech program in their review, and that's exactly it. She sounds flat and artificial.
- The animations are... questionable. The Inquisitor's "sad" and "scared" expressions just look like they're sucking on a lemon.
- Combat feels clunky and clumsy. It's not as tactical as Origins, not as fast-paced and sharp as DA2, just... you firing arrow after arrow at someone, or very slowly swinging around a giant sword until something dies.
- Mounts are useless. They clearly know their open world is a pain to trudge through, hence their inclusion, and yet all they accomplish is ensuring you never hear party banter (because for some reason your party just vanishes if you're using a mount and doesn't speak at all), and they don't even function properly. A dev straight-up confirmed on Twitter that galloping on a mount doesn't even make it go faster, they just added speed lines and a blur effect to the screen to make it seem like it did.
- Speaking of party banter, bugs, such as banter simply not triggering, have still never been fixed ten years after release.
I find it interesting that Inquisition was generally beloved upon release vs. Mass Effect: Andromeda being widely panned, because honestly I'd put them near enough in the same category when it comes to how they feel to play and the general quality.
AND YET.
After all that, I still like Inquisition. A disappointing Dragon Age game is still a good game. I've replayed it several times and enjoyed it, the soundtrack is beautiful, it has some of my favourite characters in fiction (Cole, Dorian, Josephine, and though I'm not quite as invested in him I found Blackwall's story arc genuinely fascinating and refreshing), and I cared about where everyone ended up and what ending I got.
Like I said, a strange creature.
Seriously, though, Bioware, start putting some damn effort into your hair selections in character creation. It's not difficult to add long hair. It's not. Every other company is managing it.