Comparing AoC to Dragon Age Inquisition

I wrote this in early 2015 and never posted it.  With a 4th Dragon Age game being talked about, might as well throw this into the internet ether.

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Robert E. Howard's Hyboria is my favorite fantasy world.  It's a great mix of grim realism, fantastic places, heroes, dark magic, and voluptuous women.  As this is going on an AoC blog, I don't need to further detail what makes this Hyboria so engaging besides its most famous residents.

My second favorite is BioWare's Thedas, the setting of their Dragon Age games.

Thedas is a dark fantasy that has dwarves hiding from their world in their underground kingdoms, elves enslaved and suppressed in ghettos throughout the land under the leadership of a powerful Theocracy.  Mages imprisoned in towers, the world afraid of their powers and guarded by specially trained Templar warriors to strike them down if needed. And then there's the darkspawn, more or less mindless creatures that come up from the crumbling ruins of ancient dwarven cities and destroy everything in their path.  Even the realm's protectors, the Grey Wardens, carry dark secrets.

The third Dragon Age game, Inquisition, came out in December 2014 to mostly positive reviews.  While comparing an MMO to a single player game is challenging as they are very different animals, the games do share some similarities.

Graphics: DAI, being a newer game looks better.  This is most clearly noticed with the waves of the Storm Coast swelling onto the shore (they don't crash) and the foliage of areas like the Hinterlands, where the wildflowers are of many various colors.  The sky and clouds are beautiful and when it rains, you almost feel bad for your avatar and his/her companions as they slog through the muddy roads and climb water soaked rocky hills.

There's clipping around some armors (including one of the crafted ones that's meant for your protagonist) and things often appear too shiny for such a drab world.

Visual Style: The visual style of Thedas is partially low fantasy, and partially refined Baroque depending on the area.  The wooden shields covered with skin, leather and chain armor.  Some of the weapons start to cross into the realm of fantasy where they are impractical, particularly the mage's staves, which go to great lengths to say 'I'm powerful and have no fashion sense.'

Certain armors are meant for certain characters and much is fairly impractical as armor.  The women aren't unnecessarily clad, like AoC, but cleavage flaunting tops don't make much sense for armor, even for a mage, unless she's using her boobs to mesmerize her opponents.  I should note, I never found that spell in the game.

Characters: As a single player game, DAI has an interesting mix of characters for you to meet and interact with as the game progresses.  Not all of these people are good people and you have to choose what you'd like to believe.  Everyone's motivations are different and there's a lot of worldly politics, affectionately called 'The Game' at play, much like R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice stories.

I've enjoyed how Thedas dwarves aren't the stereotypical gruff, beards, big axes, and beer dwarves of most high fantasy.  One of the main companions is a sarcastic, beardless, crossbow toting dwarf who's occupation, besides rogue, is author of popular serials. He refers to one of your allies, an Orlesian (think Baroque era French) scribe alternately as "Scribbles" and "Ruffles" for carrying a note pad and her puffy blouse.

One of the things I enjoyed most in the Dragon Age games is the party banter as you walk around.  The people traveling with you don't always get along and are often quite happy to vocalize it.  Most of it is playful banter between characters, who can even have their own relationships.

The main villain wasn't as fleshed out as you'd hope but was always vexing as his influence stretched across all the areas you traveled.

Story: A story in a single player game is critical while in an MMO, it just guides you to the next quest hub.  In this regard, DAI felt a little like AoC.  There was a large over-arching story arc but as you went through an area, you'd pick up a lot of side quests.  Then I got distracted by those until I forgot the one reason I was stomping around the Western Approach.

Like all Dragon Age games, there are some tough choices to make, but not as many as in previous games.  But, unlike previous games, there are sometimes no way out of choosing between two bad outcomes.

It is an epic tale that has you go from prisoner to leader of a large and diverse army.  You'll make allies and you'll make enemies.  Part of this leadership becomes sending your allies to do various quests (you send them off, and after a time you get the result/reward).  These can open new areas of maps, gather resources, gain influence, or even grant equipment.

Combat: How engaging the combat is can be as an important part of a game as it's story and immersion.  Here DAI fails horribly compared to AoC.  Each character can have a maximum of 8 abilities plus up to 3 potions/grenades.  You can switch between your character and their three companions during combat and, like Dragon Age Origins, can pause combat to issue commands.  While doing that gives you utmost control, it also slows the game down.

Most of combat is clicking away like mad waiting for your cool downs to expire.  I played through as a tank, and would have to keep one or two combos for breaking guard (an auxiliary health bar) available until needed, meaning that besides my two charge abilities, and special main character ability, I had 3 abilities to cycle between.  In AoC terms, it's like fighting mobs using 70% white hits.

One interesting change to most games was DAI's approach to healing.  There, basically, isn't any.  Your party carries some health potions (8 and can go up to 12, if I recall correctly) and then you can craft some different ones (regeneration, or an AOE healing grenade).  After that, your best defense is to use abilities to grant secondary health bars like mage's Barrier spell and soldier's guard abilities.  These secondary (and tertiary if you can get both up) health bars take damage first before your health drops.

Outside of a few boss fights, there's not a lot of really challenging battles besides the High Dragons.  There's 10 dragons sprinkled throughout the world and chances are, the first time you engage one, you're going to get rocked pretty bad.  But once you are powerful enough, you can plow through them without breaking a sweat.  The first one you take down will feel like an accomplishment.

Cities: In AoC you can build a guild city through a lot of grinding.  In DAI you get to upgrade a big keep and make some cosmetic changes to areas through resources gathered.  You can also change your bed, windows, and decorations (because these are important in a RPG).

Game Length: People are saying DAI is about 150 hours to play through.  I finished the main quest and most side quests (like 99%) in about 100-110 hours (stupid dragons).  Part of the "ease" for me, may have been from playing more challenging games like AoC and getting concepts like moving in combat easier.

AoC, if using double XP potions, takes about 100 hours to get from the beaches of Tortage to level 80, so pretty equivalent to "see the world".

Glitches: Does DAI have some game-breaking glitches? Oh yeah!  At one point, after leaving one Zone, if you return, you can't leave again.  Ever, essentially ending your game (until you revert your save game).  There's visual glitches, lag spikes (in a single player game!), and broken abilities.  It should make any AoC player feel at home.

Music: DAI has some rousing epic scores.  But almost too many.  There were more climaxes than your average porno film.  While amazing to listen to, it sometimes felt like too much.  AoC's soundtrack, in contrast, had better atmospheric music with only a few epic hero tracks.

The special edition of the DAI game came with the digital soundtrack. In listening to it, I realized that they took a few songs, rearranged them, and gave them different titles.  For example, the songs Val Royeaux and the Orleasian Theme are exactly the same outside of some subtle arrangement details.  That, my friends, is mailing it in hard. Adding the second violins doesn't make something a new song, that's called a new arrangement.  Ask Vanilla Ice if a subtle tweak to a song turns it into a different one.

Nudity/Sex: DAI has the opportunity for the protagonist to have a romantic relationship with one of their companions.  If you're playing a game for 50+ hours just to see some boobs, I suggest logging in to AoC, make a female toon and run topless through Tortage.  And, being a BioWare game, there's options for same sex relations.  The cinematics for the romances are tastefully done but definitely adult themed (think an R-rated movie or Cinemax on a Saturday night).

Miscellaneous: It had some annoyances (including 'find all of me quests' like shards (think datacrons from SWTOR), mosaics (never completed one), alcohol of Thedas (that either), all landmarks in a zone (found all in most of the zones), etc...

Overall: DAI is a game that was fun to play through and a game, much like Origins, I'll play through again, to see how different options affect the outcome.  I'd read that there are 40 different endings. Will it replace AoC as my go-to game?  No.  The combat isn't engaging enough to entice me to play again and again (for reference, I have 10 80's and the first 3 didn't have double XP potions).  But every once in a while, I need to step away from Hyboria, but only so I can be grateful for what it provides when I come back.  As expansions have been released I haven't had the interest to go check them out.