Dragon Age: Inquisition on PS3 – The DVDfever Review

Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third instalment in Bioware’s fantasy universe is upon us, it is welcoming to new and old players alike. You don’t have to have played Origins or Dragon Age 2 to understand the story or what is going on, you literally just jump into this new game and start off questing to unite the world and band together towards a common enemy.

The plot itself sees you waking at the start of the game; you have lost your memory and you get captured within the first few minutes of play. After being taken to a keep it is decided that you may not have caused the demonic rift to tear open the sky and spewing demons into the world. They decide to let you live for the moment as you bear a green mark on your hand that could be put to some good use in closing a nearby rift.

During this opening scene just after you wake you are taken to the character creation screen, here you can choose from Human, Elf, Dwarf or Qunari (both male and female variations are available) and select the usual RPG character classes such as Mage, Rogue or Warrior. The warrior does have different sub classes like 2-handed weapons specialist, sword and shield and a tree that is setup so you are at the forefront taking damage protecting your party. Mages have different disciplines based on elements and the spirit world and Rogues can typically be combat stealth as well as thieves etc. Customisation of your character is very extensive, much in the same way as the last 2 Elder Scrolls games where you can change cheek bone, eye, forehead, ears, hairstyle & colour and way too many more to list.

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So after the decision is made to let you live you head out with Cassandra and meet up with Varric and Solas on the way, giving you a party of 4. This opening section will teach you the basics of the game and serves as a tutorial area, how to close rifts, battle pause and general combat. This section of the game is direct in approach with not much available in the way of exploration or collectibles.

Once you have closed the first rift and secured the area it is time to head back to Haven which is essentially your base of operations, here you can chat with companions, complete requisition quests, make new potions and craft/upgrade weapons and armour. This section though plays host to your war room and is integral to your success. The main story is literally about the huge rift that is above you at all times that needs closing. However, there is also a civil war going on between the Templars and Mages. You have to venture out and play the political game. To close this rift you need to somehow stop the civil war to get everyone to band together with a common united front. The main story itself feels a bit washed out in comparison to the civil war; thankfully the smaller story arcs which feel at times like fetch quests keep you engrossed, not forgetting with this being a Bioware game you do get specific character quests once characters get to know and trust you after questing with them and through conversation.

Once you have completed the opening area, I mentioned the war room. Here you can send agents out to different areas to complete specific duties and quests. As an example after completing a quest for setting out locations for watchtowers in the Hinterlands, I was then able to send one of my advisors out to build them. These activities are usually timed, depending on who you select depends how long it actually takes them to complete it so you need to pick the correct person for the job at hand. It would be quite pointless to send an ex-templar on a diplomatic mission to see the mages etc.

Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game.

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Some missions, after scouting out the area, you will take on yourself, for example: the Storm Coast you need to go and meet a mercenary group lead by Iron Bull who you can then have join your Inquisition if you so please. This in turn makes him available to add to your party and other perks involve an exchange of information between himself and his council. The reason for heading out to the Storm Coast, initially, was rumour of Grey Wardens in the area and your spy operative wanted you to check it out. Completing these side quests grants you extra power and levels up your Inquisition experience as well as character. The Inquisition levelling grants you 1 point per level and you can then spend the points on perks, these perks range from better combat, better social skills for diplomats and the likes. You will also gain power points; these are needed for some of the missions you can send your operatives out. Everything ties in together; if you decide against doing side quests you will have fewer points and may find that you cannot send someone out on a mission.

The world itself is split into large areas, you will head to these areas to complete side quests, close rifts and progress the story. Here you will come across various small story arcs like the one I mentioned about the watchtowers. The thing is though these areas are huge, when you set up camp more icons appear on the map giving you even more to be doing and exploring. It can be a little overwhelming at times. The first main area (Hinterlands) I decided to do everything available and explore a bit. One section of the map was too high a level for me involving a Dragon so I had to revisit it later after levelling up, there is also a closed off keep which I had to revisit later along in the story. So far in that area and after completing the tutorial area I had already spent around 9 hours playing!

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Combat tends to work better as a 3rd person ARPG: you hold R2 on the pad after locking on with R3 to keep doing the basic attack. Extra more powerful attacks get assigned to the buttons on the fascia and R1. There is also a switch where holding L2 lets you access another 4 skills that you can assign. You also have the option to pause combat and assign specific attacks and movement to party members. In most cases though this option isn’t needed and feels a little tacked on. So far, I have only really needed to use it when hunting animals. Set your mage to cast ‘freeze’ to slow the creature down so your other party members can then catch it for melee damage. I also don’t like the fact that you cannot appear to zoom out when using this tactical mode – a zoom would be handy here for you to survey the battlefield to find best places to put characters and see enemies etc.

Unfortunately, during combat and accessing menus, I have found that there can be a bit of controller lag. When pressing start, for example, to bring up the ‘Hero’ menu where you access the map, inventory, character sheet etc, it doesn’t instantly appear. The same goes for selecting items within this menu. During combat, when a lot is happening, I have also noticed that additional actions don’t immediately respond to controller input. This is usually the additional attacks you assign to your standard buttons.

Go to page 3 for more thoughts on the game.

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Visually, the game itself has been a mixed bag which ranges from excellent to extremely poor in places. The viewing distance on this game is absolutely fantastic – you can literally see for miles. However, at times, the textures on the ground and characters can be really low resolution, while the trees look almost like a painting. It has been quite reminiscent of The Painted World in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but doesn’t look as nice. The issue with this, though, is the look tends to clash with the way your characters look, kind of like dropping a real life person into a cartoon. Main character models do look great – their hair though looks like shiny shaped play dough, I have also noticed that items like shields, when talking to someone and the camera is zoomed in, can also be really low resolution which took me back to the PS2 days.

The visuals at times are also quite buggy, I have seen seagulls sitting mid-air at the coast, it looks like they are supposed to be sitting on a rock or fallen tree, whilst looking through the skulls to find shards I have seen debris floating mid air above destroyed buildings, I have seen characters fall through the floor as if one leg is walking on normal ground and the other is in a trench (this makes it look like a scene from Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks). Depth of field seems to be quite messed up at times also: for one scene during the war room, it zoomed into the scout and everything behind her was blurry. Trouble here, though, is that the wall behind her was less than a foot in distance – it just looked odd and out of place.

Cutscenes have also been really choppy, the game has a mandatory 5.4Gb install on PS3 which should help when it comes to streaming textures. During the cutscenes you get really low resolution textures on characters and pop-in, voices can be out of sync and poor general performance makes the scene stutter. I am certainly hoping Bioware will address these issues sooner rather than later.

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Audio is certainly a high point thankfully when it is in sync on the cutscenes and throughout the world. You do get a lot of banter between the characters in your party the same as the previous games in the series and the Mass Effect Trilogy. All of the cutscenes are voiced and you really start to gel with the NPCs in the world. Once again, though, at times this can be contrasting. As an example, returning to Haven, the sound starts up in stages. You appear outside the doors to the town and, initially, for a few seconds you will get silence. Then you will start getting a few local-type sounds from the world and then the training army sounds with sword clashes etc stream in last. I feel it can break the immersion which is unfortunate as you can see a lot of work has been put into the sound direction.

There is some decent voice talent used in Dragon Age: Inquisition, Freddy Prinze Jr (Scooby Doo, 24 Day 8), Gareth David–Lloyd (The Bill, Torchwood), Indira Varma (Game of Thrones, Rome, Torchwood) and many other voice talents that have years of experience in the games industry, including Star Trek Voyager‘s Kate Mulgrew, Danny Webb, Zoe Telford, Olivia Poulet, Stephen Campbell Moore, Don Gilet, Mark Frost, Shaun Dingwall, Peter Egan, Morven Christie, Laura Bailey and Laura Aikman. The list is immense and can be seen in full here.

Go to page 4 for the conclusions on this game.

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Conclusion

I am a little conflicted writing this review and just how to go about scoring the game. It is a great game but on the PS3 it feels like the ageing hardware is starting to struggle. It is either that or the developers haven’t ported over with full commitment on the previous generation consoles. With the issues I have outlined in the review it can make you feel a bit disconnected from the world.

Additionally the main story feels less important than the personal stories of the characters you have in your party and smaller arcs you will play through in the areas.

Overall the game is addictive, if extremely buggy.

There is also a Co-Op Multiplayer mode which is played over 3 maps; you start out with a party of 3 other players and are then given objectives at the start to complete within the map. It is pretty good and does add a little extra value to the game. A gripe here, though, is that you can either grind for a good while to upgrade your character or you can purchase platinum with real world currency to speed up the process.

If you have a decent enough PC, Xbox One or PS4 I would say get it for one of those systems (I have also read in other reviews that there are issues on all platforms). I have reached out to Bioware about the issues on Twitter but they did not respond. Maybe I should jump onto their official forums and outline the issues there. When they inevitably fix the game on PS3, then I will have no issues highly recommending it to anyone. In this utterly broken state though it is hard to recommend.

There is plenty content to play through. In the past week I have spent around 70 hours playing this game and have enjoyed the stories it has told. I just can’t get past the bugs that are there. For me personally the controller lag and the stuttering are the things that annoy most, at times stuttering has caused me a migraine and I have had to turn the game off for a few hours to recover.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is released on the following formats:

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Important info:

• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• Players: single player; 4-player co-op multi-player

GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT	6.5 7 7 7
OVERALL	7