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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.

This is the first game I've played in a while where it felt like maybe the heroes were TOO GOOD at their job. The bad guy has a complex webwork of connections and plots and minions, and you run around cutting the threads and ganking or subverting the minions until they're all gone. Which means the final mission is like... "You walk up to the Last Guy and beat him in the face until he dies. Then everything is happy forever. Go you."

I was expecting like a BIG TWIST or an EXCITING CLIMAX but I guess after Mass Effect 3 they are literally terrified to fuck around with their endings too much.

And then the credits roll and HOOOOOLY SHIT FUCKING NUCLEAR BOMB DROPPED ON THE LORE START YOUR FANDOM ENGINES LADIES AND GENTLEMEN so Dragon Age 4 is gonna be this bananas del loco festival of repercussions to that I am pretty sure.

On the whole, great time. Glad I showed up.