Fair enough. I guess if you're one of the few people who doesn't like it, unfortunately there's not much you can do.
Yes, that much I had figured out for myself,
but thank you, lmao.
but thank you, lmao.
Yep.
Agreed, though the previous ones (both crafting and character creator) didn't exactly set the bar very high.
PC Gamer's review, accompanying a score of 94. A lowlight of games journalism.
DA 2 has a critic Metacritic score of 82 and Fallout New Vegas has an 84. That just tells you how meaningless are media reviews. User reviews aren't much better, of course. What is often telling is when the media score and user score widely diverge.
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It's a mixed blessing for me, because I tend to waste a bit too much time on character creation, if the editor is good. If it's band I could always say "Screw it!" and pick some default face. Looks really great though, here's hoping it does not have an issue with actual in-game faces looking significantly different from the ones you created in editor.
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Another low point was Greg Tito's review in 'The Escapist': 'A pinnacle of role-playing games with well-designed mechanics and excellent story-telling, Dragon Age II is what videogames are meant to be.'
By way of a (hopefully not too appropriate) parallel, long ago there was a legendary studio, with a legendary RPG franchise, that, after a disappointing sequel in that franchise with the number '8' promised a stupendously better sequel ('9') which fell on its face. Oh, and the studio had been taken over by a certain big publisher a few years earlier...
There's a (somewhat hysterical but occasionally funny) extended review by Noah Antwiler of that game. Note what he has to say about the role of the press from 6:10 onward:
There are also some other parallels in the sense that this was a long project which had its ups and downs. I don't think (and certainly don't hope) that DA:I will resemble this in the end, but it does help to be cautious. There are enough games around to just wait and see; still plenty of time left to reward Bio if they did the job properly and pay full-price and play the game before Witcher III comes out.
Here we go:
http://www.gamecritics.com/brad-gallaway/dragon-age-inquisition-preview-an-errand-girl-for-the-kingdom
Preview of the first 5 hours. I wanted to quote certain lines and paragraphs from the article but found myself with a list that was a bit too long. So instead I just highly recommend reading it.
His main point is that there's an influence he attributes to Skyrim, in the form of a flood of uncompelling fetch quests that left him a bit overwhelmed with the length of his laundry list. He also mentions that from a story point of view the beginning was a bit hurried; that he felt the game was rushing him towards the exploration and that its establishment of your character as the leader of the Inquisition isn't convincing. He didn't have any "story hooks" to keep him motivated and the characters didn't interest him.
This made me think about Origins. The beginning, the way I see it - before you're truly given the reins - was pretty damn long, and I really liked its pace. You started with your origin story, then Ostagar (which had its own episodes), then Lothering. Only then they felt they had a solid enough foundation to give you control and keep you invested. It's a good build-up that draws you in. Inquisition, considering how the stakes are so much bigger, may have benefited from something similar, instead of sticking to the dogma of Open World freedom that's becoming a tad too prevalent.
I'm even a bit surprised. Since they're not going for a classic Open World but instead a multi-region formula, BioWare could have taken a bit more control in the story's pacing and directed you for the first few hours. I guess this is retrospect wisdom, though, because if the preview would have been positive I wouldn't have cared.
A shame. This preview mirrors many of the concerns I had. Also @ReptilePZ he touches the matter of collectibles. In that there are - as gleaned from the videos - too many of them.
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Interesting preview. I don't particularly mind having a large-ish amount of quests to do, as long as there's context for them and they work well together to establish a general feel and background to the main events. As for the collectables - yeah, not a fan, personally.
On the pacing, getting quickly into the thick of things isn't necessarly a bad thing, it all depends on how it's handled. I imagine it's going to actually benefit the game quite a bit when you do subsequent playthroughs, so that's probably why they went with that approach. As long as they provide a story lead to follow that's just tangible enough, it should be fine. That remains to be seen, of course.
On the pacing, getting quickly into the thick of things isn't necessarly a bad thing, it all depends on how it's handled. I imagine it's going to actually benefit the game quite a bit when you do subsequent playthroughs, so that's probably why they went with that approach. As long as they provide a story lead to follow that's just tangible enough, it should be fine. That remains to be seen, of course.
Now that is a very damning review. I'm glad he spoke his mind though and didn't just say it was great bc Bioware let him play the game early.
That said, I've read some very negative reviews of the Witcher 2 in the past that almost persuaded me to not buy the game. That would have been an awful mistake. So I'm not going to let this bother me too much.
I enjoyed Skyrim, I'm already interested in the party characters (unlike the author), so perhaps I will enjoy it far more than he did.
I just really really really hope this isn't a Skyrim version of Dragon Age 2 or I'm going to be disappointed. I'd rather a Skyrim version of Dragon Age Origins. Because I did feel Origins would have been nicer if it had been more open. Maybe I'll get my wish.
Lol reading these reviews is killing me, I just want to try the game for myself.
If what is said in this review turns out to be true for the entire game, I would be disappointed. While it’s great that bioware is trying to introduce something new into their games, sometimes I wish the devs would just stick to their own thing and improve it, instead of trying to include just about everything and stretching themselves too thin. That just leads to "Jack of all trades, master of none" type of game that is mediocre in pretty much every aspect.
That's a problem inherent to open world games. I bet CDPR will face similar criticisms.
Perhaps, but TW is a different type of story, that I feel might work better with an open world. I doubt there would be fetch quest galore in it, and monster hunts as side quests do not seem so immersion breaking to me, Geralt is a witcher after all.
Fetch quests and other menial tasks made sense in DA:O, because you do not really find yourself in the position of power right off the bat. Judging from that review that does not seem to be the case with Inquisition. And the world they made is not really all that open, since every location has certain level of enemies in it that, unlike in Skyrim, never changes. Which makes me wonder if it was worth sacrificing certain things for that.
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From what I read, you aren't made the "top guy" right away, but you do join the Inquisition as a partnership, as it's only after you prove yourself with a few quests that you get promoted to Inquisitor.
Maybe that's not the case but I'm almost certain I've heard that from Bioware.
Brad Gallaway loved DA:O and absolutely hated DA2; he wrote a devastating critique of that game.
I don't entirely agree with his 'Skyrim' comments - I loved Skyrim, warts and all - and to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Skyrim fans won't like DA:I at all. It is a very different game, and an MMO-ish, quasi-open, multi-region gameworld that still has a lot of tunnels-and-caverns design in it with lots of fetch quests / filler content is NOT what I would have ordered if I needed another Skyrim.
I have to admit that between Brad Gallaway's preview, that last Russian gameplay vid and various other vids, comments, screenshots, articles etc, I keep being unenthusiastic. Glad I did not preorder, and I'll wait until the dust settles by, oh, january. Plenty of games in my backlog .
I don't entirely agree with his 'Skyrim' comments - I loved Skyrim, warts and all - and to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Skyrim fans won't like DA:I at all. It is a very different game, and an MMO-ish, quasi-open, multi-region gameworld that still has a lot of tunnels-and-caverns design in it with lots of fetch quests / filler content is NOT what I would have ordered if I needed another Skyrim.
I have to admit that between Brad Gallaway's preview, that last Russian gameplay vid and various other vids, comments, screenshots, articles etc, I keep being unenthusiastic. Glad I did not preorder, and I'll wait until the dust settles by, oh, january. Plenty of games in my backlog
.I guess whether it was too soon or not is kind of relative and everyone will see it differently. The main problem I saw mentioned in that mini-review is that fetching/poaching and the like are plentiful even after you gained your promotion. Maybe the game will prove me wrong, but I'm inclined to belive this guy because he says that he liked DAO(I did too), and the Inquisition is nothing like it in terms of build up.
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It sounds like they didn't heed the criticisms of DA2's rushed first area and lack of back story for Hawke. These guys are still focused on making it an actiony game. Bleh.