Even though it’s seen commercial success and even some critical acclaim, Dragon Age Inquisition (the third installment of the franchise) remains a divisive game. Some fans love it and praise it as the culmination of the series, while others have so much to complain about. With that in mind, and to give a bit more space to the latter, here are the top five things that the Dragon Age Inquisition did wrong.
1. Wartable missions are based on real-time (not game time)
One of the most nonsensical things that the Dragon Age Inquisition did was introduce wartable missions that are based on real-time (not in-game time). It’s not like in games like The Witcher, where you just click on a button to meditate for 12 hours before you can have a boss fight. In Dragon Age Inquisition, you are actually expected to wait for 5-7 hours.
The idea was that you play the game while this mission runs in the background so that you can return to it later, but this wasn’t good enough.
Naturally, gamers would take none of it, so they started making exploits from mods all the way to moving the clock on their computer (and their locale) so that they could just skip past it.
This is a trick as old as time, and it’s far easier to execute on a desktop computer than on a mobile. Even on mobile, you can just use a VPN to change your time zone, thus advancing the time. You would just have to take a look at the list compiled by Techopedia and pick one, then use it to change the time. After all, Dragon Age Inquisition is not an online game and there’s no reason why this exploit wouldn’t work.
So much work to avoid a feature that never should have made it into the game, to begin with.
2. A feeling like a PC port is an afterthought
From the very start, the controls feel like they were made for a console, and porting the game to the PC was an afterthought.
Sure, the ability to jump is nothing unusual for an action RPG; however, it’s really off in a Dragon Age game or a Bioware game, to begin with. You couldn’t jump in KOTOR, and you couldn’t really jump in the Mass Effect trilogy, either. Sure, you could jump across the obstacle, but this was a core mechanic in their cover system, not something intricate.
Then, there’s no auto-attack option, and you have to click (and a keyboard button at that) in order to auto-attack, which is just outright preposterous. It doesn’t scream more console than that.
Lastly, the entire UI screams console, from inventory management to minimap. The game feels console, which is fine, but there are other games that were developed to be console-friendly (Skyrim, for instance) without leaving you feeling like a PC version of the game was an afterthought.
3. The open world just feels… off
One thing that you have to keep in mind about Dragon Age Inquisition is the fact that its main quest is actually decent… when you eventually get to it. The problem is that, in order to get to it, you have to handle so many open-world quests that aren’t even real side quests. You would expect to see them in World of Warcraft, not Dragon Age.
Not to mention all the memes about the amount of time it takes you to leave the Hinterlands (which is a starting zone).
Most importantly, there’s a general loss of direction. Sure, you’re supposed to leave the Hinterlands, level up, and return to clear up the rest of the zone, but this train of thought is so counterintuitive. The game does a generally poor job of telling you where you should (or can) go next.
Don’t get us wrong; there’s nothing bad with an RPG being open-world. However, this is not as easy to pull off. We’re not even purists to claim that only Bethesda can make an open world. After all, The Witcher III was an open world, while its two prequels were not, and it was the first open world done by CDPR.
4. Fewer spells, less of an emphasis on tactics
In Dragon Age Origins, by playing a mage and taking a different set of spells, you can feel like you’re playing a completely different class. This is not just restricted to a mage. As a mele rogue, you can go with a dual-wielding specialization or a stun-lock-based backstabbing character, dealing an insane amount of damage before an opponent can even move.
In Dragon Age Inquisition, builds lack this sort of tactical depth. In Origins, you could set up the behavior of your party members and even pick which abilities/spells they use in what order.
In fact, tactical view was one of the fan-favorite things in Origins, but it was abandoned in later games.
The change didn’t come out of the blue, seeing as how Dragon Age II already abandoned the slow, tactical, RPG-like combat in favor of a quicker-paced action-adventure style of combat. Even then, the game didn’t take the souls-like route or anything of the kind. It’s still a dice-based combat, just a bit quicker and simpler.
On the positive side, this has allowed the game even to have a Co-Op; however, this co-op just changes the nature (the genre) of the game. In Co-Op mode, the game becomes a dungeon crawler, which… is an interesting choice, to say the least.
5. The story pivoted… again
One of the biggest storytelling problems of Dragon Age Origins was in the fact that it built up Blight as this big, existential threat to the universe and Gray Wardens as some sort of medieval Jedi Knights, only for the threat to end in the first game and never to be brought up again.
Then, the entire second game feels like Hawke’s origin story, only for him/her to end up being a side character in the second game.
It seems like every time there’s a new game, there’s a massive pivot in story direction.
Now, some may defend the position that this is deliberate and that the franchise always intended that each game be standalone; however, it’s so easy to dispute this idea.
First of all, there are so many hints near the end of Origins (especially in Witch Hunt DLC) that the Warden’s story will carry on into the next game. Then, you have the entire narrative style of Dragon Age II, where
With the coming of the Veilguard (the fourth installment in the series), it’s more than clear that we have yet another pivot. Sure, it gives writers more creative freedom, but at the same time, it kills the consistency and leaves the impression in players that stakes are really not as high as you would hope. Already in DA:I, it feels this way compared to the original threat of Blight when you really thought the world would end.
Not to mention other inconsistencies and flaws (in the story), but this major threat shift is really a big one.
The fourth one will be even more divisive
The problem with the trilogy (soon to be a tetralogy) is that they’re all completely different games, which means that people who loved the first game don’t have much to appreciate in the second one. Each game is too… unique, and it’s almost certain that they would be far more appreciated under different names instead of belonging to the same franchise. The current reception of the fourth game is just one example of this.
