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All right, that was absolutely the best way I could've started the year. Dragon Age Inquisition was a damn good time and I'm happy to have played it, but it requires a difference in approach from how I went at Dragon Age 2. I almost, ALMOST hated this game.
For starters, I was aware of the "LEAVE THE HINTERLANDS" meme, but nobody had bothered to explain HOW or WHEN. There's an absolute ton of sidequests in this game and they all give you a resource called Power which is what you use to unlock the REAL quests. My problem was, I was treating this like a Bethesda game where you want to avoid the main quest as long as possible, right?
WRONG.
It's a BIOWARE game.
Get all up on that main questline. Do the plot. Find out what your friends are into. Do their plot. Go to a zone, there's usually some obvious "main zone plot" you're likely to stumble into. Do that. Then and only then if you need MORE POWER do you go galumphing off into the mountains trying to help farmers count their own buttholes or whatever fucking thing.
So once I learned that and got all that kicked off the game went fantastic. In-game save file says 51 hours, Origin time-tracking says 60 hours, there were ENTIRE AREAS I barely touched, I did not optimize my weapons or armor or grind out crafting stuff or go hunting rare mounts or go flumping off to find dragons or deliberately recruit new Agents or ANYTHING LIKE THAT. This game could take a LOT MORE TIME if you wanted it to and that's awesome.
I liked the companions, I liked the gameplay, I liked everything here, I may have a little crush on Cole. What didn't I like? Uh very very mild spoilers so let's duck under a cut for the rest of this.
( Down here. )
On the whole, great time. Glad I showed up.
For starters, I was aware of the "LEAVE THE HINTERLANDS" meme, but nobody had bothered to explain HOW or WHEN. There's an absolute ton of sidequests in this game and they all give you a resource called Power which is what you use to unlock the REAL quests. My problem was, I was treating this like a Bethesda game where you want to avoid the main quest as long as possible, right?
WRONG.
It's a BIOWARE game.
Get all up on that main questline. Do the plot. Find out what your friends are into. Do their plot. Go to a zone, there's usually some obvious "main zone plot" you're likely to stumble into. Do that. Then and only then if you need MORE POWER do you go galumphing off into the mountains trying to help farmers count their own buttholes or whatever fucking thing.
So once I learned that and got all that kicked off the game went fantastic. In-game save file says 51 hours, Origin time-tracking says 60 hours, there were ENTIRE AREAS I barely touched, I did not optimize my weapons or armor or grind out crafting stuff or go hunting rare mounts or go flumping off to find dragons or deliberately recruit new Agents or ANYTHING LIKE THAT. This game could take a LOT MORE TIME if you wanted it to and that's awesome.
I liked the companions, I liked the gameplay, I liked everything here, I may have a little crush on Cole. What didn't I like? Uh very very mild spoilers so let's duck under a cut for the rest of this.
( Down here. )
On the whole, great time. Glad I showed up.
