Everything you've heard? Completely true.
I liked it a lot when it first came out, but it hasn't held up particularly well in retrospect. It still has its moments, but I really don't think about the game itself much anymore, but rather think of it as the final signpost of Bioware's golden age before its precipitous decline. Certainly not their best game, but still much, much better than what was to come in its wake.
The writing is simultaneously its strongest point and one of its most fatal flaws. The game is at its best when making its biggest moves: Toying with the franchise's established lore in interesting and oftentimes revelatory ways that play off of and subvert expectations of the series' longtime fans. That stuff is killer throughout, and the DLC, in particular, was very good at this. The other side of the coin, however, is what I refer to as the "millenialization" of Bioware, as typified in the writing style of the much-maligned Mass Effect: Andromeda. Though it strays not nearly as far down that particular path as ME:A does, there is still a distinct air of quipiness, of cloying representation, and of the "You are the speshull guy chosen one!!!!!!" style of narrative that I think really really does the game a disservice when compared the its eldest sibling, DA: Origins.
Bioware REALLY tried to make every protagonist in their games "THE Commander Shepard" after the success of Mass Effect 2. You had to play some sort of famous/infamous/legendary/big fat HERO that everyone in the world knows the name/title of from the jump, and they would contort the narrative through any contrivance they had to to get there. They did it in DA 2 (Hawke being a semi-well-known mercenary after the prologue), they did it in ME: Andromeda (Ryder/Pathfinder being famous through... well, just nepotism, actually), and they do it here with THE HERALD OF ANDRASTE. It's not the worst it's been handled (See ME:A), but it's still a rather obvious contrivance, and it's a rather limiting one from a role-playing perspective. There can be little variance in, say, how character introductions can play out in a narrative when nearly every NPC already knows about who you are and what you are famous for. Maybe interesting to explore once (as in, say, the Mass Effect Trilogy, where it was mostly handled pretty well and made sense), and not in EVERY SINGLE ONE of your games thereafter.
Look, I'm all for thoughtful representation in games (not to get too specific, but some specific types of organic representation in games helped me figure out who I am, personally!) and honestly I DO think Inquisition pulls it off more than it fumbles, but I can't escape the sense that the game taking a few too many steps in the patronizing direction for my taste. Again, not nearly as bad as ME:A (which may as well just be the video game adaption of a coexist bumper sticker), but there are still moments that feel "Check-box"-y to me. "Oh, Dragon Age has never had a character specifically with this sexuality/ideology/perspective? Then we must MAKE SURE there's an important character just like that in this one!" Again, I think it hits more than it misses and I DO appreciate real, organic representation, but some of it does come off as manufactured in this game.
Finally, the quips. The sarcastic=cool and funny characterization trope. The Whedoning of a franchise that didn't really need it and probably shouldn't have had it. Okay, this wasn't Bioware's most egregious example of their attempted Marvelization of their dialogue (can you guess which game is though? Such a mystery! The answer will definitelynot surprise you!!), but its still pretty jarring when it does crop up. Like, Varric actually pulled it off pretty well in DA2, but now almost every character (except Varric most of the time, bizarrely) has to peel off at least one or two Tony Stark-esque hum-dingers over the course of the game (The first and hopefully last MCU reference you will ever see me make. God help me.) Juxtaposed with the somewhat grittier, darker nature of both the standard that Origins set and the broader DA lore, it falls very flat.
While I actually broadly enjoy the combat gameplay of Inquisition and think its art design is fantastic, the game often feels held back by by the MMO-ification of its worldspaces and non-combat gameplay loop. The areas CAN be beautiful, but they are mostly over-large and devoid of anything interesting to do in them. Mostly resource gathering and closing Rifts. The best areas of the game tend to be the smallest ones; the ones that lead you down a set singular path or choice of paths organically. The larger spaces tend to feel aimless, like the game just shrugging its shoulders and saying, "I dunno. You figure it out." Outside of the very well-designed combat arenas of Mass Effect 3, however, engaging gameplay spaces have always felt like something Bioware has struggled with. This ultimately makes Inquisition feel like yet another tentative step in a random direction from a company who has only ever taken timid steps in random directions when designing the actual play space of their games (with the exception of... you guessed it! Mass Effect Andr... oh wait, no, that had it, too. Oh, Anthem! Anthem was what felt like their first ever confident step into what they wanted the actual gameplay space of one of their games to be. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it was a very confident step off of a very confident fucking cliff. Whoops!). Bioware was, when at its best, incredible at world building, but never incredible at GAMEworld building. This one isn't terrible, but it isn't good. It's fine. At least it's pretty.
Is that enough stream-of-conscious word vomit for me to wrap this thing up? Okay, cool.
I liked it a lot when it first came out, but it hasn't held up particularly well in retrospect. It still has its moments, but I really don't think about the game itself much anymore, but rather think of it as the final signpost of Bioware's golden age before its precipitous decline. Certainly not their best game, but still much, much better than what was to come in its wake.
The writing is simultaneously its strongest point and one of its most fatal flaws. The game is at its best when making its biggest moves: Toying with the franchise's established lore in interesting and oftentimes revelatory ways that play off of and subvert expectations of the series' longtime fans. That stuff is killer throughout, and the DLC, in particular, was very good at this. The other side of the coin, however, is what I refer to as the "millenialization" of Bioware, as typified in the writing style of the much-maligned Mass Effect: Andromeda. Though it strays not nearly as far down that particular path as ME:A does, there is still a distinct air of quipiness, of cloying representation, and of the "You are the speshull guy chosen one!!!!!!" style of narrative that I think really really does the game a disservice when compared the its eldest sibling, DA: Origins.
Bioware REALLY tried to make every protagonist in their games "THE Commander Shepard" after the success of Mass Effect 2. You had to play some sort of famous/infamous/legendary/big fat HERO that everyone in the world knows the name/title of from the jump, and they would contort the narrative through any contrivance they had to to get there. They did it in DA 2 (Hawke being a semi-well-known mercenary after the prologue), they did it in ME: Andromeda (Ryder/Pathfinder being famous through... well, just nepotism, actually), and they do it here with THE HERALD OF ANDRASTE. It's not the worst it's been handled (See ME:A), but it's still a rather obvious contrivance, and it's a rather limiting one from a role-playing perspective. There can be little variance in, say, how character introductions can play out in a narrative when nearly every NPC already knows about who you are and what you are famous for. Maybe interesting to explore once (as in, say, the Mass Effect Trilogy, where it was mostly handled pretty well and made sense), and not in EVERY SINGLE ONE of your games thereafter.
Look, I'm all for thoughtful representation in games (not to get too specific, but some specific types of organic representation in games helped me figure out who I am, personally!) and honestly I DO think Inquisition pulls it off more than it fumbles, but I can't escape the sense that the game taking a few too many steps in the patronizing direction for my taste. Again, not nearly as bad as ME:A (which may as well just be the video game adaption of a coexist bumper sticker), but there are still moments that feel "Check-box"-y to me. "Oh, Dragon Age has never had a character specifically with this sexuality/ideology/perspective? Then we must MAKE SURE there's an important character just like that in this one!" Again, I think it hits more than it misses and I DO appreciate real, organic representation, but some of it does come off as manufactured in this game.
Finally, the quips. The sarcastic=cool and funny characterization trope. The Whedoning of a franchise that didn't really need it and probably shouldn't have had it. Okay, this wasn't Bioware's most egregious example of their attempted Marvelization of their dialogue (can you guess which game is though? Such a mystery! The answer will definitely
While I actually broadly enjoy the combat gameplay of Inquisition and think its art design is fantastic, the game often feels held back by by the MMO-ification of its worldspaces and non-combat gameplay loop. The areas CAN be beautiful, but they are mostly over-large and devoid of anything interesting to do in them. Mostly resource gathering and closing Rifts. The best areas of the game tend to be the smallest ones; the ones that lead you down a set singular path or choice of paths organically. The larger spaces tend to feel aimless, like the game just shrugging its shoulders and saying, "I dunno. You figure it out." Outside of the very well-designed combat arenas of Mass Effect 3, however, engaging gameplay spaces have always felt like something Bioware has struggled with. This ultimately makes Inquisition feel like yet another tentative step in a random direction from a company who has only ever taken timid steps in random directions when designing the actual play space of their games (with the exception of... you guessed it! Mass Effect Andr... oh wait, no, that had it, too. Oh, Anthem! Anthem was what felt like their first ever confident step into what they wanted the actual gameplay space of one of their games to be. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it was a very confident step off of a very confident fucking cliff. Whoops!). Bioware was, when at its best, incredible at world building, but never incredible at GAMEworld building. This one isn't terrible, but it isn't good. It's fine. At least it's pretty.
Is that enough stream-of-conscious word vomit for me to wrap this thing up? Okay, cool.