Dragon Age - An Entire Series Retrospective and Analysis

if you ever follow a video game developer over a long period of time you'll know they always change maybe it's because of the high staff turnover in the industry or the way both markets and technologies continue to evolve or just the nature of success and failure doesn't matter the results always the same companies change and not always for the better the problem is for those who reach the top there's really only one direction to go and the dragon age games show that there's a clear duality at the heart of the dragon age series old verse new third person perspectives first isometric action combat verse tactical consoles vs pcs and of course all-time highs and record lows particularly for its developer bioware by the mid-2000s bioware had cemented their name as one of the most important developers of rpgs in the industry but their success had always come at the hands of well-established licenses chiefly their dungeons and dragons licensed with boulder's gate and neverwinter knights as well as star wars with knights of the old republic licenses might provide great opportunities for marketing and brand recognition but they also involve restrictions and fees and so bioware wanted a chance to create something new franchises they could call their own in universes they designed it's from this that dragon age and mass effect came into being but while mass effect would be released first it was actually dragon age origins that started development earlier all the way back in 2002 and while its development may have been rocky as is so often the case there was also a really strong sense that bioware were onto something at the start of the decade the lord of the rings movies proved beyond doubt that fantasy can sell and with dungeons and dragons based video games just starting to fall out of fashion a very noticeable high fantasy shaped hole was emerging in the gaming market that was just waiting to be filled this was before skyrim had catapulted the older scrolls into the mainstream when the word witcher still sounded foreign to most people and when game of thrones was still just the book so dragon age is mixture of a tolkien-esque setting with extra blood and sex and new twists on old tropes came at the perfect time it was dark heroic fantasy catered for a mature audience and the things people recognize and expect were all bare which meant you had elves dwarves magic and dragons except the elves were oppressed victims of racism the dwarfs were driven from their ancestral homes and barely clinging to survival the mages were ticking demonic time bombs and the dragons were just dragons actually but hey that's what people like you can tell a lot about the feel this series was going for by its early trailers [Applause] looking back marilyn manson seems a strange choice even for 2009 but it played into the image dragon age was going for it was a darker grittier and edgier older cousin to the classic fantasy people knew and loved but underneath that simple marketable exterior things were a bit more complicated dragon age wasn't just designed to be a new fantasy series to follow in the now firmly established bioware tradition it was also meant to be a spiritual successor to bioware's older rpgs like boulder's gate and neverwinter knights with kotor jade empire and mass effect bioware had made significant grounds with reaching new rpg audiences particularly with players who primarily played on consoles but this came at a cost things had become more cinematic but this move also involved streamlining and for the classic rpg audience who had grown up on the pc titles of the late 90s this move towards consoles cutscenes and casualization wasn't necessarily appreciated so dragon age origins was a chance to remedy this that bioware had more planned than simply throwing a bone to old fans origins was going to be a chance for bioware to combine the two sides of the role-playing genre to take the presentation and accessibility of their newer titles and combine it with the intricacies and flavor of their older games what's more bioware's spin on the classic high fantasy setting would prove to be particularly fertile grounds for what the developer was meant to be all about role playing with their last three games bioware had featured some form of binary morality system in each where players would have two broadly defined extremes that were combined with gameplay systems that encouraged players to pick one of these options and stick with it it wasn't just bioware who had used this system games like fable fallout 3 bioshock and others also all followed this trend but while this may have been novel in 2003 the limitations of this system had quickly become apparent with its simplicity drawing criticism this was largely because by offering two well-defined paths players no longer had to consider the merits of each choice they faced on a case-by-case basis instead players would choose either to play as good or bad jedi or sith renegade or paragon and then they would simply follow that path to the game's conclusion by defining choice in this way these games had simplified both the choices they would feature as well as morality itself but dragon age origins instead removed these systems entirely and then embraced the true moral ambiguity this newfound freedom could afford in real terms this was simply a return to the old rpg standard but in 2009 it felt like a breath of fresh air imagine how this must have felt to a younger audience whose only exposure to rpgs had been on consoles playing kotor or fable or fallout 3. suddenly there were no predetermined paths to tell players what to choose instead you had to think for yourself and rather than making decisions based on whether you wanted a red lightsaber or blue now you had to consider things like the value of self-determination versus collective safety whether the sins of the father are justification for revenge and whether the means really do justify the ends this shouldn't have been revolutionary but for the right players it was choice and consequence is a term people use a lot for role-playing games this term refers to both the ability of a game to create situations that allow for player expression as well as the way in which the game connects these moments of expression with tangible ramifications whether your actions are your own and whether these actions matter choice and consequence and this is probably dragon age origin's greatest strength with its selection of choices being both frequent and engaging and enough consequence for your actions to feel like they matter this was in part because the setting lent itself to interesting morally great scenarios and that bioware's writers no longer had to adhere to a set binary morality but it's also because with dragon age bioware really tried to commit to this idea even more so than usual just look at the feature which gives this game its name the origin system the first dragon age game had six origin stories for players to choose from human noble dwarf noble dwarf commoner city elf dalish elf and mage most rpgs already give players a choice of race and class so on paper this might seem like a downgrade after all three classes and three races could lead to nine distinct combinations and there are plenty of games with more race and class choices than this however what the origin system might have lacked in breadth of choice it made up for in depth these six origins weren't just background details there to exist as boxes to tick on a character creation screen instead each origin had its own one to two hour prologue that provided an introduction to the world and established your character's background and motivation the places and people in each origin story will also play a role in the main story meaning that when the main quest takes you back to the dwarven city of orzammar or the circle of magi's tower your familiarity with the location will be acknowledged and will lead to small shifts in events it's good stuff you might look at this game and argue that in terms of pure reactivity there are other games that offer more but the important thing to remember is that the origin system really nailed the feeling of player choice right from the game's opening the player's experience is radically different because of a choice you made and none of these six openings feel like they suffering quality just because there's six of them ironically the one area where these openings do somewhat lack is in their own selection of choices each story railroads the player pretty hard into a set course of events that will end by putting you in a situation where you're forced to join the grey wardens for example in the mage origin you discover that your friend and fellow mage is planning to escape from the tower because he fears if he stays he'll be made a tranquil which is a type of mage who has had their connection to the fade severed the fade is a sort of metaphysical realm that is connected to magic and so this rite of tranquility removes the mage's magical ability and also as a side effect removes almost all of their human emotion leaving them numb and empty so being made tranquil is sort of like a magical castration but is justified by the fact that mages are uniquely vulnerable to demonic possession and a mage who loses control or abuses their power can have devastating consequences to the lives of innocents so a mage who is considered to be unable to control their power might be forcibly made tranquil and this is the position that your friend has discovered he's in this setup tells you a bit about the tone that dragon age origins goes for this world is dark and the moral dilemmas you face can be quite complicated in this first major choice however you have just two options to help your friend escape the tower or report your friend to the senior enchanter who will then ask you to pretend to help your friends so he can be caught in the act the problem with this is that there are no other options even though alternatives make sense if you tell the senior enchanter about your friend's plan there is no option to refuse to do what the senior enchanter asks you to do if you try he literally just tells you that you're not supposed to disobey him and then the game just presents you with the same choice but with only one option available being i will do as you ask what kind of choice only has one option to choose from here there's also an option to return to your friends and tell him the senior enchanter now knows and there's also no option with either of them to just refuse to get involved you have to either betray the mage circle to help your friend or betray your friends this scenario succeeds at being morally grey but it fails at giving the player the options that a morally grey situation demands instead it's just a choice between a and b just like in all those games with binary morality systems but i still think a binary choice is better in dragon age simply because a and b don't represent something as simple as good and bad and it's also understandable how the narrative will have to sometimes limit player choice to drive the story in the direction it needs to go as it does here by forcing the player into a situation where they have to join the grey wardens if you don't know what the grey wardens are then i feel i should point out that over the course of this video i'll be talking about each game's story including how these stories end and any important twists along the way so there will be spoilers for each game and there may also be times when i use words that someone who hasn't played these games won't understand that said i will try to give a basic overview of the most important things so that someone who doesn't know can still follow what i'm saying and those whose memory may be rusty can be reminded of key details so grey wardens are an order of warriors dedicated to fighting the darkspawn the darkspawn of a dragon age equivalent to tolkien's orcs they are vaguely humanoid creatures evil in nature that have been tainted by an ancient corruption and usually dwell underground their corruption leads them to continually search for beings known as the old gods which have the body of dragons and when the darts won't find one they spread their corruption to it turning it into an arch demon who then leads the darkspawn in an all-out attack against the surface world which is called a blight dragon age origins is the story of the fifth blight where you become a grey warden and then dick about in the country of ferelden as you try to muster some allies before heroically leading the charge against the darkspawn to slay the archdemon and save the world from destruction if this might sound a little bit generic it's because it is the core of this story is cliche but there's a few things you need to consider that help elevate this world and its law to being something more the first is that this law is very fleshed out on its own this doesn't mean that much but it's clear that a lot of effort has gone into filling in the details of this picture so even if the picture itself isn't that original it is at least high resolution secondly great effort has also gone into the way in which this law is presented rather than just giving the player factual information about this world this information is instead delivered as part of the world's history for example going back to the darkspawn there is a religious origin story of how these creatures came to exist involving the hubris of a group of tevinter mages which is taught by the chantry dragon age's dominant religion however the dwarves who don't follow the chantry view this as nonsense and posit a more pragmatic origin and the tevinter imperium itself a different nation with their own completely separate branch of the chantry have a different version of events as well which conveniently absolves their ancestors of any wrongdoing or guilt so what is the truth of the matter well questions like that are the reason why the law can often be quite interesting even if its broadest concepts aren't very inventive and throughout the course of the series these questions will sometimes lead to answers even volvo's answers do usually come with even more questions finally the last reason why the law and world building of dragon age are deserving of praise is that even stories that are simple or unoriginal can still manage to be engaging if they're told well and most of the time dragon age does tell its story well although having said that i do think it's worth drawing attention to the fact that this game and both its sequels unfortunately have a huge amount of information that is only told through codex entries information delivered solely for a codex is dry and boring and there is far too much of it throughout each game in this series wikipedia is a great website but nobody's praising it for its storytelling anyway to return to the game's main story no matter which origin you complete you have now been recruited into the grey wardens but you won't be a full member of the organization until you go for a secret ritual called the joining while you make preparations for this the armies of ferelden are assembling in the ruins of an old fortress called ostagar as they prepare to meet the blight head on after a few errands the moment of your joining is upon you and no other scene in this game will do a better job at communicating the tone of this world the joining involves drinking a mixture containing the blood of a dark spawn in an act which seems a little like injecting a small amount of a disease in the form of a vaccine to build up an immunity the joining makes a grey warden forever connected to the darkspawn they gain the ability to sense darkspawn as well as to hear the cries of the archdemon and perhaps most important of all they also gain the ability to kill an archdemon something non-grey wardens can't do however the joining effectively involves drinking poison and the majority of those who undergo this ritual don't survive alongside you in this scene are two potential grey wardens who have been your party members for the last couple of hours the first to undergo the ritual succumbs to the poison and dies so is the price a potential grey warden must pay but the second member disagrees with this as he now knows what the ritual involves and having seen his companion already lose his life he refuses to go through with the act himself and then the man who recruits you named duncan a senior member of the great wardens who is in many ways a kind of gandalf or dumbledore or obi-wan kenobi in this story you know the wise mental archetype who is soft-spoken and kind and teaches you about the world and your new role in it before being lost too soon well that guy then does this step forward but i have a wife a child how'd i know there is no turning back no you asked too much there is no glory in this i am sorry but the joining is not yet complete so if there were any doubts about the game's commitment to that morally ambiguous grayness and dark fantasy aesthetic then this scene where the man who is really the main good guy in this story straight up murders someone for quite understandably getting cold feet really dispels any notion that this is just a gimmick for marketing this fantasy world really is as dark as it claims to be and as a big fan of bleak settings and grim dark elements i love that about it and even if that's something you're not a fan of in moments like this when the execution is just right and the narrative is emotionally impactful and unpredictable it's hard not to be impressed i'm going to come back to this scene much much later on in this video for now though let's get back to the story with the ritual complete it's time for the armies of ferelden to meet the darkspawn in battle the player is tasked with lighting a beacon to signal the main body of the army led by legendary general tare logan to charge in and flank the darkspawn once the battle is underway however when this moment comes logan instead orders his army to retreat leaving the rest of the forces including duncan and the other grey wardens as well as the young king of ferelden kailyn to perish at the hands of the darkspawn this cutscene also shows off the high level of presentation bioware was just starting to really be known for there was a time when rpgs tended to prioritize gameplay and systems over cinematics and graphics more so than many other genres and it was bioware who did more than any other developer to really change this whether you think this change is worth it is a different question but it does have a clear advantage in moments like this where a cutscene can take advantage of for their time high quality animations set to an impressive soundtrack to really give these important moments the epic feeling they deserve overall the presentation of dragon age origins is quite hard to judge although it certainly wasn't bad for its time as you can now see the cut scenes were great and a clear step up from most other rpgs dialogue also employed a wide range of camera angles along with very high quality voice acting other things like character models were not quite as polished with facial animations being good but not great and details like hairstyles repeating far more often than they should making many npcs look overly similar it gets really noticeable when you see people with the exact same hairstyle as an important npc alistar's hair is the worst for this everywhere you go it feels like you're finding off-brand versions of him alistar but ugly alistair on meth alistair with an extra chromosome really was it that difficult to just give alistar his own unique hairstyle still probably the worst thing about origin's presentation were the environments they're not terrible but they're always fairly basic textures are low quality and the art style is overwhelmingly dominated by different shades of brown i have no idea why 50 shades of brown was ever seen as a preferable stylistic choice i guess 2009 was a different time but in origins this approach feels particularly disappointing it really reaches breaking points in my mind when you go to the fade this is an otherworldly magical dimension a great opportunity for artistic freedom and expression where designers can make something really out there and yet what we get is this drab brown on brown with a slight piss colored filter on top and it's not just about color or lack thereof just compare the game's main city the ferelden capital denrum with something like the citadel from mass effect 1 a game released two years earlier so graphically this game wasn't bad but it certainly wasn't that good and the particularly lackluster environments have meant the game has aged a little less gracefully than you might have hoped to its credit though origins has two fully playable different camera styles in addition to the standard third-person over-the-shoulder style the game also featured a more classical top-down down isometric style this shows bioware's attempt to satisfy its two different audiences older rpg fans and new pc players and console players both styles have their advantage with third person being a more immersive and cinematic way to explore environments and top down style being superior in any battle where you need a good view of the action or to micromanage your party members positions still what was really nice about the way this was handled here was how effortless switching between the two styles was you simply had to scroll the mouse wheel in or out and it transitioned smoothly this meant players could switch between them as they wish while utilizing the benefits of both styles as and when needed and on the subject of things bioware did to appeal to more traditional rpg fans dragon age also didn't feature a voiced protagonist for what would be the final time in a bioware game anyway after ostagar and the death of the king ferelden is thrown into chaos in its first big confrontation the blight is overwhelmingly victorious and the grey wardens of ferelden are all but destroyed with the only exception being you and alistair which basically means just you it's at this point that the game opens up in the traditional bioware way by offering the player a selection of four different areas to go to next and letting the player decide what order to tackle them this small amount of open-endedness goes a long way at preventing a feeling of linearity which was probably why bioware took to using this approach in all their games but origins even more so than many others did a good job at making its world feel big and open with frequent encounters taking place as you travel its world map and a main city that you can go to whenever you wish of the four main areas you can go to next all of them focus on telling their own self-contained story that is connected to the main narrative because you travel to each place to invoke an ancient treaty to request aid against the blight it does strike me as incredibly convenient how in each area you seem to arrive just at the precipice of complete disaster as if each area has been stuck in time just waiting for the perfect moment for our hero to arrive and time to resume back up again still this does have the advantage of meaning each area is quick to throw you into an interesting scenario and each of these scenarios builds to a central moral dilemma at the tower of magi you'll find it overrun by demons and abominations after one major earlier turn to blood magic leading to all-out disaster the templars and knightly order of the chantry tasked with strictly controlling all uses of magic have completely lost control so it's up to the player to purge for tower of evil and decide how severely to deal with the remaining potentially corrupted mages meanwhile at the brasilian forest the player will meet a camp of dalish elves who are being destroyed by an unknown disease that is turning them into werewolfs you investigate this mystery and find out that the elven leader has actually cursed a group of humans long ago with lycanthropy after they killed his family the werewolves now fighting the dalish of a descendant of peace humans but rather than being mindless animals they're really just looking for a way to escape the torment of the curse the player is given a choice of siding with either the elven leader or the werewolves as well as attempting to force each side to reach a compromise in the third location the dwarven city of orzammar the player is thrown into a vicious political field between two nobles vying for the recently vacated throne and then you set off on an expedition into the deep roads an underground network of roads and tunnels that once formed the bulk of a great dwarven empire that has long since been completely abandoned after it was overrun by darkspawn this section takes the player deeper and deeper into enemy territory while providing a glimpse into the disturbing nature of the darkspawn including their reproduction finally you meet two former dwarven paragons and have to decide which to side with over the use of an ancient piece of technology called the envelope of void that was used to create golems at the cost of dwarven souls the last area is the town of redcliffe where you arrive to find the local lords has fallen sick and now the inhabitants are facing waves of undead each night that rise to attack the town you rally the town's defenses and then investigate the castle to find the lord's son under demonic possession this area is the best of the four with choices over how to help the town as well as how to save the child with the child dealt with there is still the problem of the comatose lord and so you end up searching for a holy grail type artifact called the urn of sacred ashes that will bring you into contact with cults dragons and religious trials as you explore some of the more interesting parts of the dragon age law really all four of these areas are narratively well designed with plenty of opportunity for role playing and a range of side quests that always connect to the zone storylines where these areas don't always succeed tends to be with their gameplay origins takes a fairly standard approach to character building to go along with the three straightforward classes you have six easy to understand stats where each class effectively has its own primary stats strength for warriors dexterity for rogues and magic for mages you'll want to focus on raising this primary stat as much as possible while picking up however much constitution you need to survive and maybe a little bit of willpower to increase your mana pool for mages and cunning for rogues they can pick up certain abilities you then get one talent or spell for mages that you can select per level up allowing you to pick up a range of abilities to use in combat that ideally will provide you with an ever growing toolset to deal with enemy encounters lastly there's also a separate list of skills like lock picking or trap making of note is the skill coercion which is the character's ability to persuade others in conversation making it very useful and very boring origins unfortunately doesn't use any other type of skill checking conversations so coercion acts as a one conversation skill for all occasions type ability that is unsatisfying to use in how simplistic and cheap its implementation comes across other than that things are mostly as you'd expect these systems take clear inspiration from rule sets like dungeons and dragons but everything is much easier to understand than something like the advanced dnd seen in baldur's gate meaning it's unlikely to frustrate or confuse players for most people these systems will still feel like they have enough depth to be interesting although it's hard not to make direct comparisons to the rule sets they took inspiration from which can leave dragon age origins feeling a little simplistic it should also be said that not all classes are equal mages are fun you have lots of spells to choose from and those spells will have a variety of effects with debuffs aoes crowd control abilities support skills and so on this means it's easy to find the use for multiple different types of spells and there's even a spell combo system that can be used to create further synergies however not everything is well balanced and spells which do both aoe damage and crowd control like fireball and cone of cold can seem overpowered as they're so effective in so many situations still there's something immensely satisfying about placing different aoes to hit as many enemies as possible as you tweak your party placement to allow your mage to become an aoe god so mages are great and i'd recommend you take two in your party because warriors and rogues feel like second-class citizens to their fiable hurling brethren this is partly because warriors and rogues just don't have the same range of abilities as mages they have the odd defensive or utility ability but most things are just upgraded auto attacks adding a little bit of extra damage or crowd control that when compared to a mage fireball that's hitting multiple enemies and knocking all of them back just feel a bit boring this problem is then exacerbated by the fact that those abilities cost stamina and warriors and rogues will run dry far quicker than mages while also not having the option to use a mana potion to keep on going like a mage can lastly warriors and rogues also don't have the same breadth of choice in what abilities to take as mages do as their talent trees are much more specialized for example warriors have talent trees dedicated to two-handed dual wielding and sword and shield styles but the player will only ever want to invest in one of these so in reality the amount of choice on offer is quite a bit smaller but overall origin's character building is decent it isn't as deep as something like third edition d but it's not trying to be either and for the most part it's successful in meeting its goals with mages in particular being a lot of fun so if the core systems are fine what is the problem with origins [Music] and this is a gameplay thing to be criticizing this game for because it's going to be far worse in the sequels but regardless that doesn't mean the encounter design in origins is good there are a range of different enemies and so you will have to adapt your strategy sometimes dealing with enemy mages in particular is important so there is some degree of target prioritizing that players will have to consider and the game will try to vary the encounters you come across over the course of a dungeon so it's not just the same encounter over and over there's also customizable tactics that act as a simple and surprisingly effective way to automate your teammates behavior to increase the speed of individual encounters but it's not enough there's not enough enemy variety not enough distinctive encounters and not enough foes that require their own strategies there's a lot of combat in this game and just not enough variation to go with it this means some of the combat heavy dungeon sections can drag with the deep road sections in particular feeling like both the best and worst example on the one hand given the context behind this area it's completely appropriate that this place would be full of enemies but at the same time their repetitive and drawn-out nature can also turn it into a bit of a slog even worse than an area like for deep roads is something like the carter hideout this is the hideout of a dwarven gang that you have to go to as part of the main story where you fight the same enemies over and over and it just feels so unnecessarily long this is not an interesting dungeon hell this section could have just been one single fight the final one and nothing would be lost there are a few more examples like this and i don't even think origins needs to add much more enemy variety it just needs to remove a bit of the padding at 50 to 60 hours dragon age origins is already a pretty chunky land but it just needs to lose about 5 hours of unneeded weight there's no need for filler in a game like this it's long enough and has good replayability but does this very noticeable flaw ruin the experience no not even close still there are some other problems that need to at least be mentioned like the inventory limit which you can spend gold to increase but even so you'll still find your inventory filling up over and over and it's really annoying how often you'll reach the cap in the middle of a dungeon and how time-consuming selling and dropping items gets to be then there are a few more combat problems like the fact that there's no tooltips of any kind for enemies in this game this means you can't see vital information like whether an enemy has a debuff or how long a stun will last then there's the way that the isometric camera is locked to your selected character meaning you can't always see parts of the battlefield when you need to still mostly origins feels like a polished and well-designed rpg that strikes a winning balance between accessibility and depth and so as long as you don't burn out and become a victim of deep rodeitis your grey warden will journey to these four distinct areas to find new allies as the blight begins its march north and logain takes to the capital of denarim to rally his own political support in a bid to secure the throne of ferelden for his daughter anora the wife of the now deceased king conscious of rumors blaming the defeater ostagar on himself logan looks to shift the blame by naming the great wardens as the real guilty party which puts you and logan in direct opposition with the threat of the blight ever increasing the problem your party faces however is that a nora has a more legitimate claim to the throne than anyone else or so it seems what comes next is the greatest section of the game and one of the greatest examples of choice and consequence in rpg history but before that we probably need to talk a bit about the characters before rpgs became synonymous with video games they were known for the pen and paper experience of sitting around a table with a monster manual a set of dice and a few of a strange kind of fantasy creature commonly referred to as friends the experience of traditional role-playing centered quite largely around its social site but when video games looked to adapt these role-playing games into video form it was usually the gameplay mechanics that took center stage the real genius of bioware's rpg design was that whether intentionally or otherwise they looked to remedy this emission by placing an ever larger focus back on the thing that was missing friends just rather than using anything as unreliable as real-life friends they offered an alternative virtual friends companions party members who had their own personalities and backstories for you to interact with as early as boulder's gates bioware was placing an increased focus on this part of their game design with fleshed out characters party banter that could occur randomly as you traveled about and even characters that could be romanced as time went on these things became what defined bioware's approach to rpgs more and more bioware's games weren't just about telling interesting stories or allowing role-playing they were games about characters and dragon age origins helped push this idea more than any other rpg bioware had made before it for one thing party banter was back and there was far more of it than ever before dragon age origins wasn't the game that invented party banter but it might be the game that made it an rpg staple and that's because hearing your party members tell each other jokes or exchange insults between battles as you explore the environment was a simple way to flesh out these characters and add witty moments of dialogue in a way that felt natural as for the characters themselves they generally came across as likable and well written there are six main companions plus one dog one dwarf one dlc character and one hidden party member some of them felt quite standard like win a mage who plays the role of the older mentor type character or xevron the bisexual assassin whose main personality traits are that he's bisexual and an assassin then there are those who felt a little more unique like sten a qunari warrior who acts as a glimpse into the canary culture and defies rpg trends by refusing to speak to the player about topics unless he actually wants to which most of the time he doesn't origins also features a reputation system where the player's actions can impact your companions opinion of you but while this idea is okay in practice in reality the main thing to impact your companion's reputation are the gifts where the player can give items they find to each companion for an increase in reputation this feels unrealistic and overly gamey the idea that you can just give someone a bunch of jewelry or paintings and it will have a far bigger impact on whether they like you than your leadership style or moral choices undermines the idea that these characters and your relationships with them are meant to be real as well as this there are also romances with four characters classed as romancible and really these romances are completely unremarkable outside of some fairly basic sex scenes and a few cringy lines of dialogue there's not much more to them although that didn't stop them from becoming one of the most focused on and defining parts of the series still outside of banter romances and a flawed reputation system origins did have a couple of other things going for it like how two of his characters did surpass the rpg standard alistar is the first companion to join you on your adventure he's a grey warden who joined just before you and after the event at ostagar that makes him the only other living grey warden in ferelden the burden of stopping the blight and saving the world is placed firmly on his and your shoulders and he wants nothing to do with it not because he's immoral or cowardly his sense of honor and duty is made pretty clear but instead because alistair is not a leader and he knows this which is probably why he looked up to duncan so much and then with duncan gone that meant he looked up to you the only other great warden to play the role he knows he can't alistar is a well-written supporting character he's light-hearted quick to turn to humor and eager to do the right thing but he's also very lacking in conviction he was previously training as a templar but seems unsure on what to think of mages he's a man of the chantry but was unable to live a life of religious devotion and he is the more senior grey warden but shirks that responsibility immediately alistair is likeable but he's not the kind of guy you'd want in charge of your party let alone ruling a country and that turns out to be a bit of a problem because alistair is revealed to be the bastard son of former king merrick the father of the now dead king kaelin which means alistar is the only available alternative to the recently widowed anora for the throne of ferelden and so we come to the lands meet where you must argue your case to the nobles of the realm that logain is guilty of treason and alistar is the rightful ruler of the kingdom of course things aren't quite that simple anora is playing her own games and with a certain noble origin you might want to start thinking about whether you should do the same logain himself is an interesting villain in part because he's so obviously unlikable not only has he betrayed his king and the grey wardens by this point he's also opposed you at every opportunity he's had and as he argues his case for why you're a fool and a fraud it's hard not to start taking it all a little personally but logan's also important because the darkspawn and the archdemon are a personalityless force of evil and so logan's role as a deeply human antagonist with complicated if flawed motivations is needed to balance out the story dragon age is not so much a story about good versus evil as it is a story about the evil within man and the complexities of existing in such a dark world and logain is needed to represent that and here at the lands meet as the fate of the realm and possibly the world is decided and the threads of this story are finally all pulled together your opposition to logain will at long last come to a head but whether you win or lose the debate at the lands meet the proceedings will always turn to violence culminating in a one-on-one duel between logain and either or a champion chosen on his behalf ah wooden no i'm afraid we can't leave the fate of all ferelden up to your dog and with logan finally dealt with you can at long last put the question of the throne to rest there are six possible outcomes from the lands meet 10 if you include those added by the human noble origin they revolve around whether alastair or nora will rule either individually or together if you're a human noble you can marry yourself to either alistar for female wardens or anora for male wardens to open up further possibilities there's also the question of whether you allow logaine to live or die if he lives he will be forced to undergo the right of joining and then become a grey warden through which he becomes a companion although if alistar becomes king alone he will always kill logan himself so with 10 different outcomes this section is already very impressive but you also need to appreciate all the things which influence these events this is not simply a choice where you're presented with options a b or c many different things will impact how these events play out such as completing quests to gain support with other nobles making good arguments at the lands meet offering to support anora who you choose in the duel and completing alistar's companion quest or hardening his personality this is a brilliantly constructed moment and even describing it in this video or showing this table of different outcomes doesn't truly do it justice and even ignoring choice and consequence this is still a fantastic moment in the game's narrative the politics feel believable and nuanced the stakes are suitably high and it completes alistar's journey despite having a range of outcomes there's no happy ending here alistair doesn't want to be king and if you put him on the throne he will dislike you for it there's no cop out fairy tale ending where he instantly rises to the occasion he is still alistair however to not be king might be far worse for him and then there's the question of what is good for the realm anora is a ruthless but tested pragmatist compared to alistar who is untested and in many ways unsuitable but alastair is also kind and anora is logan's daughter in more than just blood so who do you support this question involves many factors like your sense of duty to your friend as well as your duty to the realm as well as whether you believe in a pragmatic or idealistic solution as well as possible feelings of revenge or personal power and it's great this is the stuff that rpg dreams are made of and it is truly remarkable that a section so complicated both narratively and mechanically comes together as well as it does this section is so good that you have to wonder if the actual ending will live up to its standards but origins does have one last twist up its sleeve with ferelden at last united the moment to confront the darkspawn army is finally at hand however before this battle can commence you learn that the joining ritual isn't the only secret the grey wardens have withheld it turns out that to kill an archdemon one grey warden must sacrifice themselves to act as a vassal for the archdemon's essence to go into this is why only grey wardens can kill an archdemon and why grey wardens have to exist and by this point there aren't many grey wardens left only yourself and either alistair or logan and so after everything you've gone through after coming all this way someone will have to die except there is an alternative one last choice for origins to thrust upon you i mentioned that there are two great companions in this game well the other is morrigan a witch of the wild and a daughter to the legendary and enigmatic woman named flemeth morrigan is also well written she has a strong set of ideals and a unique perspective on the world but she's also incredibly naive from her isolated and sheltered upbringing this makes her so much more than just a generic strong independent female character but morrigan also has her own objectives alistair is interesting because he has the backstory of a stereotypical main character the royal bastard who has a hard life and has to rise up to meet his destiny and save the world but that's then combined with the personality of a follower a comedy sidekick more suited to a supporting role morrigan however is interesting because she's revealed to not just be a support character it turns out morrigan has her own plans and has been using you to that purpose she wants to have sex with you or alistair if your agenda means you lack the right equipment because morrigan wants to perform a magical ritual whereby the essence of the archdemon the essence of an old gods won't be absorbed by the grey warden who slays it but instead by her unborn child she won't tell you the reason why or how or what would happen afterwards but she does promise you that by doing this you can save the life of yourself or your friend and so whether you accept this offer or not the story is finally coming to a close the darkspawn march on denaram and you will meet them in battle where you fight alongside your various allies to ultimately slay the archdemon and bring the fifth blight to an end it's a solid conclusion to a very good game and the final epilogue where you can speak to all your companions one last time offers a great deal of closure to an adventure that feels truly epic in scale dragon age origins aim to create an experience for both older and newer rpg players and i think at this it succeeds while also offering some of bioware's best story moments and characters to date origins would also be followed by a number of dlcs and one expansion in 2009 downloadable content was still relatively new and when looking at the dlc for origins there's a sense that bioware was still trying to work out what kind of content works in this format so they made quite a wide range of things split into add-on content and narrative packs of the three main add-ons two of them wardens keep and the return to ostegar a relatively short one-hour or so adventures that add a new area to the main game that adds a little bit to the lore but otherwise feels quite non-essential the third add-on the stone prisoner instead adds a new companion the golem shale who has much of the best dialogue and humor in the game and feels like a much more worthwhile addition the narrative packs are a little different in that they each function as standalone adventures that are one to two hours long and are separate from the rest of the game the golems of amgrak is the most conventional being just a high-level dungeon focused on providing more challenging gameplay at the other end of the experimental extreme you have the darkspawn chronicles where you play through the game's ending as a party of darkspawn in an alternative telling of the game's events where your grey warden had instead died during the joining this is quite novel but i wouldn't go as far as to call it good then you have leliana's song where you play as leliana when she was in orlesian bards and witnessed the events which led to her joining the chantry and witch hunt where you once more play as your grey warden as they investigate the disappearance of morrigan a few years after the game's conclusion these last two feel a little more substantial but they still don't offer a whole lot on their own it's worth pointing out but all of these will reuse a lot of already seen areas and enemies you might think playing as leliana when she was an orlesian bard sounds interesting but this dlc doesn't take place in orlais instead you're just back in denarim and then when you have to break into a noble's house it's the exact same noble house you broke into in the main game still if these dlcs were overall a little lackluster the expansion dragon age origins awakening is anything but at around 15 hours in length awakening picks up where the main story of origins left off with the grey warden now warden commander taking control of the region of amaranthian along with the stronghold of vigil's keep to rebuild the grey warden forces and deal with a new mysterious threat of intelligent darkspawn i don't want to go into too much depth about awakening because for the most part it is just more of dragon age origins delivered at a high quality with no more filler it's good new companions new abilities some ok stronghold management and a new storyline that expands the dark sworn a bit while sticking to the same dark fantasy everything's awful atmosphere this culminates in the player meeting a figure named the architect a rational darkspawn and former tevinter magister who is trying to free the darkspawn from the call of the old gods which is the compulsion that forces them to seek out the arch demons this could potentially end all future blights but evidence in game shows it hasn't always worked as intended so far and by making darkspawn more intelligent they could also potentially be a much greater threat how you deal with this dilemma is left up to you on the one hand i'm not really sure the dark spawn needed to be expanded and humanized in this way they work as antagonists because they have the feel of a mysterious force of nature inhuman and dangerous a constant threat that even in the good times is always lurking under the surface which acts as a perfect metaphor for the darkness that is always underpinning this entire setting but at the same time the new information that awakenings introduces is interesting and has far reaching consequences for the dark spawn and this world and because the player's actions have such far-reaching consequences you can also be sure from this that the story of the darkspawn has more or less come to a close origins was the story of the blight but the blight has ended moving away from the darkspawn was the right decision for the series because there are plenty more parts of the law worth exploring and that is exactly what future games would do however these sequels would change more than just this [Music] following the launch of dragon age origins bioware were officially entering an all-time high in only a couple of months origins had sold 3 million copies making its launch even more successful than mass effect 1 and bioware's next game mass effect 2 became their most critically acclaimed game of all time with a metacritic score of 96 and the majority of game of the year awards for 2010. at this point in time the positivity and hype surrounding bioware was almost unprecedented sure there were a few older rpg fans grumbling in the background about casualization in the good old days but at this point they've been whispering for years and the noise they were making was simply drowned out by an ever-growing mountain of praise it's really not an exaggeration to say that for many people at this time bioware were the best and not just for rpgs in many people's eyes they were the best video game developer in the world and yet in just one year that would all start to come crashing down dragon age 2 released in march 2011. one year later electronic arts would win the consumerist award for worst company in america beating out bank of america in the final round of voting who are under criticism for predatory credit card practices fraudulent mortgage dealings and the role they played in the 2008 global recession the vote was not especially close ea bought bioware in october 2007 and although no one really knows at what exact point in time ea's influence really started to be felt within the company everyone knows with what game it started to be felt by fans dragon age 2 was developed in a much shorter time period than most games of its kind ea gave firewear just 14 to 16 months to finish its development and it shows dragon age 2's problems can loosely be categorized into camps streamlining burst rush development and it's likely that ea played at least some role in both still the idea that everything bad about a game can just be blamed on the publisher is always a narrative that's felt a little too simplistic and totalizing to me and really i just want to focus on the game itself make of ea and their relationship with bioware what you will but that's not the focus of this video anyway from the game's earliest moments the changes are hard to miss while the origin system was one of the first game's most praised features it was now removed entirely as was the possibility of choosing any race other than human instead your only choices are gender and class and while you can still alter your appearance your character will always be known as hawk the game begins with a narrative framing device where a member of the chantry called cassandra is interrogating a dwarf named varric about the events of the game and the story of what has happened in the city-state of kirkwall the story then shifts back to the beginning where hawke and his family are fleeing from the darkspawn invasion of the first game which has forced them to abandon their home in ferelden and journey north to try to escape the blight after less than one hour of this the game then skips forward to hawke and their family arriving in the city of kirkwall where the entire rest of the game takes place i mentioned earlier that criticism of this game can be sorted into two categories the way in which rpg elements have been streamlined and the consequences of a rush development the removal of the origin stories is an example of both but the idea to base the whole game in one single location isn't on its own a bad idea where most rpgs tend to take you on a journey across many different places dragon age 2 instead keeps you in one place and then takes you on a journey across several different moments in time this decision likely was the result of the short development meaning there wasn't time to develop multiple areas but that doesn't mean that this idea lacks potential and it is quite unique still if the game did have to take place in one single location i wish it was a location that was a bit more interesting dragon age origins wasn't a great looking game particularly in terms of its environments but dragon age 2 really isn't much better and the city of kirkwall itself is just underwhelming i know i've already mentioned it once but it's now almost four years since players got to explore the visually captivating citadel in mass effect mass effect 2 also had several great looking locations and to be honest jade empire and kotor had their moments too what's so disappointing about kirkwall is that it just doesn't feel like an actual city the main reason for this might be that there aren't really any buildings it's just walls and open spaces and sure these walls have doors on them sometimes but they're still just walls that's not what cities are like cities have houses and roads and different ages of buildings that were constructed at different times but in kirkwall whether you're in low town or hightown or the docks it's literally just walls and open spaces and spikes why are there so many spikes just casually placed everywhere is this the only way the developers could think to visually indicate that this section is the poor part of the city by putting spikes everywhere you look as if that's what all poor urban areas are like they're just really spiky but i guess that is what they had to do because they can't just have nice houses for shabby houses because there's no actual [ __ ] houses in this entire god forsaken city also i like how there's rows of spikes just lining all the stairs as if they're meant to be railings railings are there for people to hold on to you can't just replace them with great big spikes and act like it's no big deal who was the urban planner for this city [ __ ] lucifer anyway moving on from the visuals of kirkwall which is not an easy thing to do as you will walk back and forth through these streets constantly there are in fact other problems this game has and i think that we should just talk about all the bad things now so we get it all out the way and then can all move on and anything good will be like a nice unexpected surprise at the end of all the negativity so let's take each big problem on its own with the first being the streamlining if origins was bioware's attempt at finding a balance between a more traditional style of rpg with the more modern cinematic style they were coming to be known for then dragon age 2 instead reversed this approach and decided to commit completely to the latter if interviews with its lead developer are to be believed then this shift in approach was a deliberate attempt to appeal to people who fought origins was too complex lead designer mike laidlaw talked about how they wanted to lower the barrier of entry for rpgs he talked of how they noticed many players had stopped playing origins early on and that they wanted to change the game to appeal more to these players but origins was a big commercial and critical success and the people who liked the game you know those things called fans didn't play for one hour and never touched the game again so why did bioware focus their attention on the people who didn't like their game instead of those who did well i guess 4 million sales weren't enough rpg fans weren't enough they wanted more and how do you get more well none of that boring rpg crap bioware had to go to a new level they had to understand the mind of a gamer but what did this mean that's when you press a button something awesome has to happen so button awesome and that's when you press the button something awesome has to happen well can't argue with that logic if only bioware had focused their enormous brains on something more important like world peace or curing cancer instead we got dragon age 2 which means combat is a little bit faster and animation's a little more detailed and that's about it really so it's hard to know what they were even talking about with all that fight like a spartan crap at the same time the top-down camera has been removed entirely making moving your party members around in combat a lot harder but the real problem with combat is the same as it was in origins lack of encounter variety outside of the occasional mages every enemy in dragon age 2 is pretty much the same you have your ranged enemies and melee enemies but it doesn't really matter if they're spiders or bandits they act the same exactly the same and really the only thing that varies are the health bars in dragon age 2 some enemies have normal sized health bars some large and some small these enemies have the exact same character models the exact same names and the exact same behavior so this distinction in the amount of health they have feels completely arbitrary and nonsensical it really enforces the idea that it doesn't matter what you're fighting humans undead darkspawn the only thing you need to look at is the health bars so you can prioritize killing those with small health bars i suppose this means there is at least some target priority to combat but it doesn't change the fact that combat encounters which already felt overly samey in origins now feel exactly the same every time even worse than this however is that enemies now coming waves you will start the fight against say six opponents and then for no apparent reason partway through the fight a new wave of enemies will just spawn in usually just out of thin air if this is something that happened occasionally to keep players on their toes or adding a new level of challenge at the right time then it would be fine because it would actually add a little bit to the encounter variety instead though enemies spawn in waves in every single basic encounter in the game and when it comes to the tactical side of combat this is very counterproductive as even in the middle of battle you have no idea what you'll be fighting you have no way to know how many waves of enemies there are so you have no way to know whether you should use a spell now or hold off to prevent it being on cooldown when the next wave comes or whether to spend all your mana now or save some or whether to stand in that corner out of the way where it's safe or if standing there will mean you're standing where the next enemies will spawn it's just so annoying endless waves of enemies aren't fun and for combat to feel tactically satisfying you have to be given enough information to make tactical decisions which includes knowing what you're actually fighting against but now the game withholds this information increasing the challenge and decreasing the strategy involved when it did come to a challenging encounter in two rather than tweaking my party positions and micromanaging their skills i instead always fell back to the same singular and effective strategy of pulling enemies back to something like a doorway or corridor so they'll group themselves up for my mages this becomes especially effective when new waves spawn in because now those new waves will have to come to you giving you time to breathe and ready your aoe for when they all group up again despite this i do think dragon age 2 is by far the most difficult of the three games it was the only game that i played the whole way through on hard rather than having to turn the difficulty up to nightmare when fights became too trivial and that's largely because enemies particularly mages like to spawn in and kill your ranged characters before you even realize they're there mages were also lethal in origins but because they didn't spawn out of thin air you at least had a chance to counter them or plan your strategy accordingly now if you don't see them when they first spawn it can easily be game over but regardless of these many criticisms the core of dragon age 2's combat is still fine ai behavior still exists and works just as well taking advantage of mage aoe and crowd control is still fun potions and healing spells have a much longer cooldown now which forces you to be more careful with taking damage and rogues and warriors have actually been improved in some ways to give them more reason to use a variety of abilities as well as being given access to stamina potions to provide some more reliable sustain it's just despite these improvements you can't escape how repetitive combat feels combat is faster paced in terms of the time it takes to kill a single enemy but now each fight involves waves so it's not like combat itself is even faster and it's always brought down by how each fight feels exactly the same as for character building it has also been streamlined but the consequences are much less severe there are fewer abilities and spells than before but the game tries to make up for this by allowing you to upgrade your abilities now more thought has also been given to warriors and rogues to provide a better selection of talent trees meanwhile skills have been removed from the game completely but they were so simplistic in origins you probably won't even notice they're gone so overall the reduction in spells makes mages quite a bit more boring but warriors and rogues have arguably been given straight up improvements loot is less positive however with upgrades being more common but feeling less substantial you can also no longer equip any armor on companions meaning finding nice pieces of equipment that aren't used by your main character's class is completely pointless at least the inventory limit has been relaxed a lot and in a game like this you have to appreciate those little positive things anyway outside of the gameplay there's also one other area that's been streamlined under the pretense of modernity which is dialogue where origins offered the players with a range of options presented in a standard menu dragon age 2 follows the same system as the mass effect games where it uses a fixed dialogue wheel that has similar responses in similar positions the player's character is also voiced now the voiced verse unvoiced debate for player characters and rpgs is pretty familiar ground in internet discussions and usually people are happy to default to the basic wisdom that if a character has a predefined personality voiced is better but if a character is a blank slate that the player is meant to role play however they wish then unvoiced is better because it's more immersive and allows for deeper role playing hawke is much much closer to being a blank slate than a predetermined character but he's still one of those characters who sits somewhere in the middle grounds for what it's worth i think the voice actor for hawke the male one at least actually puts in a really solid performance and that a voiced protagonist works better in dragon age 2 than in inquisition that said given the choice i would prefer for the character to be unvoiced but really this isn't even the most impactful change of the new dialogue the real problem is the dialogue will the wheel tends to give you three options in every conversation choice and each option comes with a picture to indicate to the player what the response will be while there are six different pictures these actually correspond to only three different personality types for example the difference between diplomatic and helpful is negligible so in real terms each dialogue choice is between diplomatic humorous and aggressive which means do you want to be nice be an [ __ ] or say a meaningless sarcastic remark this change moves away from the big advantage origins had over bioware's other recent offerings which is that you were forced to consider each dialogue choice on a case-by-case basis and were therefore encouraged to role-play and think for yourself now though even if you don't have to pick a set morality type for your character you'll still probably pick a personality type instead and then will find yourself going for the same option in nearly every scenario it's worth pointing out that what you pick does actually decide hawke's personality and this will impact what they say outside of dialogue choices the thing is if you know this it just provides even more reason to pick the same type of option over and over so this change will lead to a reduction in the amount of role-playing it's important the pictures are there however because without them you'll find the text which is displayed can often be quite misleading and not match what's actually said it's somewhat ironic but the picture is really the thing that tells you what you will say and the text is just there for show in the few moments where the game does do away with the picture system to just give you different options to choose from the dialogue instantly feels more interesting but then the problem with whether the text matches what is said becomes very real here's an example when talking to isabella one of the companions she says you and i have nothing in common anymore you're a champion and i'm just a lying thieving snake to which you have two options no you're not and you're still my friend one of these options is considered good and will give you a huge bonus of 25 reputation with her while the other option is considered very bad and will give you -25 rep so which is which well let's break them down isabella called herself a lying thieving snake and you can effectively say either yeah you are a lion thieving snake but you're still my friend or you can tell her no isabella you're not a snake you're a good person who when it mattered the most came back and did the right thing so it seems pretty obvious no you're not is the good option right wrong because neither dialogue option matches what it's actually said this choice makes absolutely no sense it's almost as if someone was trying to make the text deliberately misleading in order to trick players as if it wants to punish you for reading the text rather than just instinctively assuming that the top option is good and bottom is bad this is the worst example i remember seeing but it's certainly not the only one so the voice protagonist is not something i prefer but it's also not a major problem the dialogue wheel on the other hand comes across as very poorly implemented and feels like a big step down from origins but the developers wanted dragon age 2 to be streamlined and that means stuff like this is the cost the thing is when it comes to all the streamlining bioware might have been able to get away with it without facing any major backlash after all mass effect 2 was pretty popular and there are plenty of people that don't mind streamlining who might appreciate a more accessible modern game but dragon age 2 didn't get away with these changes because it had an even bigger problem one that wasn't just a matter of taste there are a lot of side quests in this game loading up a random save in act 1 that's 6 hours into the game i can see i have 23 different quests already there's a strong feeling of quantity over quality and as you bounce from one quest objective to another it can be hard to even remember what objective corresponds with what quest as you tick off one objective after another the side quests take place either in kirkwood itself or in one of the few different areas outside kirkwall if kirkwood itself looks pretty boring these other areas are certainly no better offering a generic coastal area generic mountain area and a generic rocky area still as you do these quests you'll start to notice something strange every time you enter a cave or a warehouse or a sewers or a mansion it's the same and not just sort of the same as in reusing some of the same assets and textures they are exactly the same with the most variation you can hope for being that you start in a slightly different point these areas aren't interesting in the first place their design is as basic and generic as you get but dragon age 2 just brazenly repeats them over and over and over and when you finish one of the game's main acts those three larger areas outside also fill back up with basic enemies and randomly generated loot so that when you're sent back to them you have to clear out the exact same areas all over again the game even greys the map back out as if trying to convince you that you haven't done this once or twice already and even when you stay inside kirkwood itself you'll still find you're constantly under attack from respawning human enemies every single time you walk the streets at night or go to dark town this doesn't even make any sense firstly why are these enemies attacking you seriously why are mercenaries and highwaymen and dwarves trying to kill you on site everywhere you go this happens right from the very start of the game so it's not like they're trying to kill you as revenge for something you've done and what even are most of these groups you have things like guardsmen pretenders but what is a guardsman pretender and why are they trying to kill me and where are the actual guards or any non-hostile npcs kirkwall literally feels like a war zone where every night it gets completely taken over by a new band of hostile humans who you have to kill and then it just goes straight back to normal the next day before repeating as soon as it's night again maybe that's the reason there's so many spikes because this city is an eternal battlefield really though these enemies are just inserted to pad the game regardless of how little sense they make and it's so blatant and obvious just like all the repeated zones and reused caves at 30 hours this isn't a very long game and even if it wasn't a game with the name bioware on the box a modern game can't just get away with being so lazy in its design but if you have to make a finished game in a single year corners are going to have to be cut somewhere so what about the rest of the game well luckily the story and characters are closer to what people have come to expect from bioware after you arrive in kirkwall you begin act one hawk and his family are living in poverty so to remedy this hawk decides to go on an expedition into the deep roads but he needs to save up some money first to pay a buying fee and that's the story for act one get some money to go on this expedition it's not exactly exciting stuff and act one is definitely the weakest section of the game as a result the side quests although basic in design do start to connect to the overarching themes of the story by focusing on unrest within the city and the conflict between the templars and mages in the first act you'll also be introduced to each of the game's companions who also usually tie into the templar mage conflict by having different perspectives on who they support for example fenris an elven former slave to a tevinter mage is very anti-mage avalyn a guard captain who travels with hawke since the game's opening is slightly anti-mage merrell a dalish mage obsessed with a mysterious artifact called analuvian eluvian is pro-mage and anders another mage and a returning character from origins expansion in awakening is whatever the step above pro-mages radical far-mage extremist or something like that if you've played awakening you might notice that anders is nothing like the character he was in that game his voice actor has changed which is definitely not for the better but his personality is also completely different this is explained as being the result of him being possessed by another character from awakenings a spirit known as justice this is quite odd because of all the characters you've met anders who was a wisecracking free-spirited kind of [ __ ] think chaotic neutral a hand solo but less likable type of character is one of the last people you'd expect to willingly allow himself to be possessed by a spirit after all anders main personality trait was his desperate desire to be free of anyone and anything that tried to control him so it doesn't make any sense that he'd allow justice to possess him even if they did apparently become friends after awakenings ended still there are other things to discuss about anders so it might be best to just ignore this inconsistency and come back to him later the final companions are isabella a busty pirate that seems to want to have sex with anything that moves basically this game zeveron and varrick the dwarf from the game's opening our unreliable narrator who is also the brother of the dwarf leading the deep roads expedition anyway with your teammates assembled and money secured act one will end with hawk and co heading off to the deep roads this leads to a brief excursion from kirkwall where varric's brother discovers an artifact made of red lyrium before betraying the party and leaving them for dead you fight your way out picking up some dwarven treasure on the way and return to kirkwall considerably richer this ends act 1 and act 2 picks up three years later with hawk and his family having moved up in the world leaving the slums behind to take up a new residence in the city's wealthier district of hightown the way dragon age 2 moves forward in time after each act is one of its most interesting features and at this point the story becomes a lot more engaging for one thing all those boring side quests suddenly feel a lot less boring now that you start to see the consequences of your earlier actions you'll meet characters you've already come to know face consequences of earlier decisions and revisit storylines that were started several hours earlier the story of act 2 itself is also better it focuses on a group of qunari immigrants to the city of kirkwall who took up residence within its walls after their ship was destroyed the qunari are a large humanoid race who follow a strict collectivist philosophy known as the kun they believe that every member of society has a defined role to play and that each person must stick to this role all for the good of the [ __ ] unlike hawke or the other refugees from ferelden they have no interest in assimilating into the city or with participating in human culture or even following the city's laws and over the course of act 2 the tension between the qunari and the other residents of kirkwall eventually reaches a boiling point hawk tries to resolve this situation in an attempt to prevent bloodshed but no matter what you do your actions are in vain and the qunari start a war against the residents of kirkwall killing the city's de facto leader the vike out and slaughtering as many humans as they can this storyline is more interesting than act ones largely because the qunari themselves are more interesting immigration seems to be one of the main themes of dragon age 2 with both hawke and the qunari being outsiders who take refuge in the city of kirkwall because of their circumstances that said if immigration is one of the themes of this game it's hard to know what the overall message is because the actions of the qunari are truly awful they do everything they can to undermine the city and its rules they teach hatred towards humans viewing human society as diseased and beyond saving to the point where they have no problem murdering a city full of innocents as soon as the humans anger them the qunari aren't evil which is part of why they're so interesting but they follow a set of beliefs which seems truly incompatible with the human way of life what really ties the qunari story together is that the reason they're incurcal isn't just because their ships were destroyed in a storm it's because they've lost an artifact of their people a book which just so happens to have been stolen by isabella and yet in three years they accomplished nothing other than spreading their hatred when it comes to finding the book and solving their problems they're shown to be utterly impotent and maybe that's because of their isolationist ways the authorities of kirkwood want the qunari gone they would likely be very happy to trade this book if it meant getting the qunari to leave and yet the canary are so unwilling to trust any outsider that they never even tell anyone the reason they're actually here if they worked with the authorities or even if they had decided to trust individuals who proved themselves competent like hawke maybe the book could have been retrieved maybe everything could have been fine but to rely on outsiders is not the canary way and so they do nothing but sit on their newly claimed section of the city letting their hatred build they are victims but not of circumstance they're victims of their own ideology which makes it almost impossible to have any respect or sympathy for them when they start their killing spree and so when the truth is uncovered and the book found and you're given the choice between surrendering isabella to a canary in an act of appeasement or fighting their leader the arashock in single combat i think most people would choose valata it's unfortunate then that this combat encounter is terrible the fight drags on and on with the arrow shock repeatedly chugging health potions and your only option being to continuously kite because if he ever catches up to in melee he can kill you in a single combo still it sure is satisfying to see him finally die and i can't wait for this series to feature more of a qunari because i look forward to killing them and with the current crisis resolved and the city's vice count now dead hawks rise continues as he is named the champion of kirkwall now is probably a good time to mention that there's another side to dragon age 2 story as well which is the journey of hawke in the game's opening hawk is travelling with his mother brother and sister one sibling which one depends on your class will be killed in this section by a darkspawn the other remaining sibling will at first be a companion but will later grow distant and leave although their exact fate depends on your choices finally your mother who continues to live with you as you move up in the world in act 2 is eventually killed by a serial killer apostate that particular quest is quite surprising but like certain other things in dragon age 2 this moment of storytelling is really brought down by the fact that in this quest you are still traveling through the exact same sewer you've been to probably at least five times already killing the exact same enemies as every other unimportant side quest as hawke's journey continues and he goes from a homeless refugee fleeing the darkspawn to a poor immigrant struggling to get by to a wealthy and respected citizen and finally the champion of kirkwood itself he continues to lose that which matters the most to him his family seeing your empty house after your mother's death is surprisingly lonely just as with the theme of immigration i'm not exactly sure what the writers are trying to convey with this this is not a classical story of greed or hubris where a person searches for money or power but lose sight of what matters the most along the way the losses hawk suffers are of no fault of his own still i will say that the focus on family and personal struggle is both a relatable and a refreshing thing for an rpg to incorporate and i do think this small arc makes the player much more invested in hawke as a character anyway with the qunari dealt with the game once more skips forward three years as i said earlier this time progression is a really interesting part of dragon age 2 although i do think a bit more could have been done with it for one the changes to the city are very small and considering there are some major events which happen they could have used this to show a greater visual change within the city's walls it's also a bit weird how some of your companions just seem to have spent the last three years doing nothing but waiting for you to come to talk to them again fenris just sits around in a trashed mansion the whole game that was fine six years ago but you'd have thought he might have tidied up a little bit in the meantime or at least picked up a hobby to pass the time because it really does seem like he spent the last six years just moodily standing here doing nothing anders is another good example too because if anders is meant to be changed from awakenings because of his merging with justice then it would have been nice if anders six years ago had acted more like he did in awakenings so that he could have gradually changed personality over the game's duration as his old self became more and more distant by contrast aveline is a lot better she starts the game as a refugee like you then joins the guards and then becomes the guard's captain and that sense of progression makes her feel both more realistic and a bit more interesting as for the companions overall there are less companions than in origins and i don't think as characters they're quite as good but that doesn't make them bad and there are a few ways dragon age 2 improves for one the gift system has been changed instead of being an artificial way to boost the player's relations gifts are now less common and giving a companion a gift simply starts a conversation this conversation may lead to an increase in reputation but if it does then it's as a result of your dialogue choices and this is both more natural and satisfying than how it was before the rivalry system is also a nice addition as it comes with its own unique rewards and it's good to have a genuine alternative to just being friends with everyone after all pissing your companions off and simply not knowing them very well are two quite different things and so should be represented as such anyway act three story focuses on the conflict between the templars and mages this is something that's been building for the entire game and now as the champion of kirkwall people are increasingly looking to hawk for support still once more despite your best efforts these tensions will continue to rise towards a breaking point and then one man does something truly stupid and that man's name is anders anders is not simply pro mage he's a fanatic and he has been for the entire game and whether justice is still even a spirit of virtue or has instead been transformed completely into a demon of vengeance is unclear but regardless the combination of anders and justice have long since decided that their life mission is to liberate the mages from their templar oppression so they can finally be free from chantry control if you've done ander's companion quest you might have been pulled into this yourself although anders will always hide the full details of his plan from you no matter how much you try to win his trust and it turns out that's for good reason as his plan involves blowing up kirkwall's chantry killing the grand cleric elfina who had up until this point been the main voice of reason in the templar and mage conflict as well as killing many innocents in the explosion this is effectively the last straw with the mages and templars immediately falling into all-out war as the templar commander meredith decides that all mages must be purged from the city so as well as being a massive terrorist anders is basically an accelerationist he's happy to undermine any effort at templar and mage appeasement because he wants things to go wrong he wants the situation to reach breaking point he wants people to die be they mage templar or innocent bystander because for him it's all just a way to reach his true objective freedom for mages justice at least in his eyes up until this point hawke has probably been running around doing all he can to stop something like this from happening and then an act of true evil from a man he probably considered a friend is the thing that brings everything crumbling down it's a dark ending to this story now you will have to pick a side in the templars mage conflict and many more must die before you reach anything close to a resolution but before that you must deal with anders with the deed finally done he is happy to submit to your judgment and while the game does offer you a choice here i personally feel there's little you can do in this moment other than to try to deliver justice the real kind with anders taken care of you must fight through the city to defeat either the templars or mages the templar leader meredith is revealed to have been under the influence of red lyrium the same red lyrium uncovered in the deep road expedition and stolen by varric's brother which has corrupted her exaggerating her paranoia and prejudice against mages you killed meredith and the mage leader orsino who for some reason chooses now to turn to blood magic and transform into an abomination even if you side with the mages and then dragon age 2 comes to an end cassandra now knows the truth at least barracks version of it and the future is then left open the end credits are set to florence in the machine a decidedly different choice in tone compared to the 30 seconds to mars song used in origins but end credits notwithstanding you can hardly suggest that dragon age 2 is any less dark than its predecessor the mage templar conflict acts as the main backdrop for this entire story and it's an interesting dilemma to focus on the power mages have and the very real potential to lose control something shown time and time again in this game do suggest that mages should be controlled but at the same time it is often that very control which is acting to push mages towards the edge how mages should be treated is an interesting question to think about but if there's one way in which this game's exploration of that topic stumbles it's that there's such a large focus on the extremes that you barely get to hear a reasonable voice for the game's entire duration when the game ultimately forces you to pick a side it's very difficult to want to choose either because both of them feel in the wrong if mages could just stop doing blood magic and templars could just stop trying to slaughter mages then you feel that everything might have turned out okay and that really isn't that much to ask still i choose to see this story as being about extremism whether that's of the qunari templars mages or anders and how as dark a place as this world is and as much as people may suffer extremism is still not the answer which makes the way ander's plan worked out perfectly a little annoying after dragon age 2 ends the mages of this world do rise up and the conflict between mages and templars turns to all-out war across multiple countries all as a result of what happened in kirkwall and i can't help but dislike the way in which anders is rewarded whether you take his life or not he wants to start this war he wants to be a martyr and to achieve this he turns to terrorism he kills innocents not templars not the people who have wronged him innocence he needs it to be innocent to die because he needs to provoke a stronger reaction as possible he needs mages to appear evil in the eyes of templars so he needs to do something evil and he does and i can't help but dislike how successful he is here how through terrorism he gets everything he wanted right down to dying as a martyr it gives the ending a strangely pro-terrorist feeling but that's not really a criticism of dragon age 2 itself overall i like this story quite a lot even if its role playing is clearly inferior to origins and even if its good moments are buried amongst a generally disappointing game of course things could have been different if its development had been less rushed but the good news for bioware was that they would get one more chance dragon age 2 was the first major public misstep of bioware's life but in just 12 months it would be followed up by another mass effect 3 was a huge critical success but for fans it was deeply polarizing particularly the ending which generated an unprecedented amount of negative attention as times gone by gaming controversies have become a lot more common but 2012 was different and this was a big deal even weirdo yankovic was [ __ ] on it alright fine let's get right to it why don't you just confess confess yeah admit that the end of this game totally sucked i think you mentioned this everyone did what's more in september of that year both of bioware's founders and ceos left the company and bioware's next game the mmo star wars the old republic came with its own issues and a change of genre that left a lot of bioware's core audience alienated so in terms of both public perception and key staff bioware had changed meaning the pressure to deliver with the next major title was higher than ever everyone loves a redemption arc and i think that might be because we're all addicted to a good story we want ups and downs twists and turns to rise and fall but most of all we want a big finale a moment to tie everything together and make everything okay again because as much as the fans may hate their passion proves that deep down they do care and if they can't have that if redemption is truly off the table then they would rather have a finale with some finality an actual ending to the story the final nail in the coffin a moment to put things to rest bioware didn't just die it was murdered and ea pulled the [Music] trigger or some other such crap people like stories good ending bad ending who cares as long as it's simple and cohesive enough to make for an easily digestible narrative to fit neatly into our brains and give us that smug sense of satisfaction we all crave from thinking we understand something and that's why i'm here today to tell you that inquisition might not be a very satisfying end to this story it didn't bring redemption or ruin instead it's that dreaded third thing the most common thing the bane of teenage relationships it's complicated dragon age origins was a good game and at least by the standards people had come to expect from bioware dragon age 2 wasn't but dragon age inquisition can't be so easily classified and at least part of the reason for that ties back into the duality of this series that i mentioned in the video's opening origins was a game designed to bridge the gap between two audiences to appeal to both sides of the rpg spectrum and if dragon age 2 was a bold step away from that inquisition is a hop skip and a jump even further but at the same time where dragon age 2 was rushed full of cut corners and repeated caverns inquisition is the exact opposite it's a gorgeous sprawling epic of an rpg packed full of content and customization just not always the right kinds still the first thing you'll notice about this game are the graphics no longer bound by the eclipse engine of the last two games bioware instead moved on to ea's frostbite engine and that meant saying goodbye to brown because now color was bioware's best friend alongside the expanded color palette came far larger environments diverse and lavishly detailed just waiting to be explored there was a cost to this engine upgrade though and i'm not talking about money or bioware selling their soul to the devil the frostbite engine has produced some great looking games but it was designed for first person shooters and that meant a lot of work was needed to implement the gameplay systems bioware wanted even basic things like a save system had to be built from the ground up and so despite a longer development time than the previous entry in the series bioware was still left wrestling with a new engine on a new console generation in what was to be their biggest game yet we should probably talk about that last bit size because as every man the wrong side of average knows it does matter how much is a different question but bioware weren't taking any chances no girl was going to talk about their game's girth behind their back but while admittedly impressive at a glance inquisition is a bit more of a shower than a grower which brings us to side quests all of bioware's well-known games have them they're usually a chance to tell shorter stories that will either connect to the main story or relate to its themes while giving players important information about the game's world and its inhabitants but one thing was always the same they told a story until now dragon age inquisition is set in an open world sort of you have 10 distinct zones that vary in size but each have a more or less open structure these are then filled with a range of activities which to their credit are quite varied for example you collect shards which involve looking at the environment for a telescope to find them and then accessing the areas they're located often this involves some very awkward jumping but the goal is to make the player look at and interact with the environment then you have the astrariums which are puzzles where you fiddle around with some dots then you have rifts where you fight two waves of demons and a whole range of kill something or collect something activities you pick up herbs to craft better potions or to make armor enemy reigns to turn in for research and other enemy drops to turn in at the requisition table but you're not done yet you pick up bottles of alcohol for reasons i never worked out and mosaic pieces also for reasons unclear to me but you also pick up journal entries and letters and campsites and quarries and glyphs and on and on it goes my favorites are the landmarks where it says claim and you stick a big flag in the ground while this sound effect plays as if you've just accomplished something important but hang on what is happening here am i really going around this world running up to every landmark i see ancient statues and historical ruins and then just sticking a flag in next to them and pretending that means i own them now because i don't think that's quite how stuff like this works whether you're the chosen one or not but really i don't think this game wants you to question stuff like that you're not supposed to think about what you're doing because there isn't much of a broader meaning everywhere you go there are things to do stuff to click quest trackers to fill up and checklist to tick off but there's one thing almost all of these activities lack and it's a story and so for the first time in a bioware rpg the majority of what you will be doing in game is divorced from any kind of real attempt at storytelling when you arrive in redcliffe in dragon age origins to find the town under attack by undead every single sidequest you pick up in this area connects to the town's plight most of them will have a direct influence on the upcoming battle convince the blacksmith you'll rescue his daughter and he'll make the soldier's armor make a deal with a local mercenary and you'll have an extra ally and so on this isn't revolutionary game design but you might find you miss it when it's gone because when you arrive in a new area in inquisition you just start doing the exact same activities you did in any other zone close rifts collect shards claim landmarks and keep ticking off those checklists all for the road of influence points which equate to next to nothing i'm generalizing a bit here because there are some activities that do have some kind of story and some things you do have some kind of justifiable reward or explanation but it's impossible to escape the feeling and inquisition that everything's a checklist with no greater contextual meaning than being a way to fill up a bar and consume the player's time now i do think it's worth pointing out but in every game you do repetitive things you kill enemy after enemy go to dungeon after dungeon and speak to npc after npc so i guess what's important is whether the game is able to create the illusion but your actions are meaningful do you feel like you're going on an adventure or just ticking off boxes on a list are you invested in a storyline with a genuine desire to see it through or are you just going to the next quest objective because it's what the minimap tells you to do bioware has gone for a quantity over quality approach with this game and the main thing which has been sacrificed with these activities in order to achieve this are the stories even the zones themselves barely have a story to them the most interesting areas are those where this isn't true for example in crestwood you arrive to find it partly flooded and with a local undead problem you then drain the lake leading to a nice visual change and then as you head down into this new area you find out that the mayor had deliberately flooded part of the village during the last blight killing its inhabitants and that's why the undead are being so restless after you get to the bottom of this and make the dead stay that way the weather even changes with the sun coming out and the inclusion of a storyline and the connection to the environmental change really makes this area more interesting but a lot of the other areas have much less effort put into them particularly the early zones your justification for going to them is often little more than the fact that the game's baddies have apparently been spotted there so you should go investigate and what little story there is in these zones is often disconnected to your activities anyway in one zone there's a camp of dalish elves after meeting the first of these elves at the edge of the forest the game lets you start a conversation and he told me a little about his people mentioning their ancestral problems with humans he talked about how he thought maybe it was time to let go of old grudges how our people should move on stop living in the past and so on for an elf he didn't seem like a bad guy and then the very next thing my character did was walk a little past him and slap down a flag to apparently claim this area for logging in the name of the inquisition let that sink in i talked to an elf who told me humans aren't that bad and then immediately claimed his forest to turn it into logs and you know i'm not even really sure if the inquisition actually has a need for logs but [ __ ] it guess it's our forest now i'm probably setting human elf relations back a few hundred years but oh well i'm just doing what the checklist told me to do not my fault anyway if the game had at least acknowledged how ridiculous this is i might have given it a free pass but unsurprisingly it doesn't and i really have to wonder just how much communication there even was between the developers who worked on the environment stories and those who worked on implementing these activities as for the main story itself it takes place almost entirely in self-contained missions so even the main story is separate from this open world overall this is a very different approach to game design than bioware has ever used before this is their first open world game so inexperience might be part of the reason for these shortcomings but the changes seem quite deliberate i think partly it was the fixation on wanting to make a game that's long and wanting to make an open world that's big and then once the game's size came to be understood the developers realized the old style of side quests with stories wouldn't work and so they designed activities that were generic and could just be repeated across each zone when looking through developer interviews i listened to one of the lead designers talk about their inspiration for the open world they mentioned skyrim unsurprisingly the game must have broke sales records for an rpg and it came out right at the time the inquisition's development began but they also mentioned that ubisoft's assassin's creed and far cry series were a big influence and that seems a little ironic to me because after inquisition ubisoft's open world games the assassin's creed series in particular would take more and more inspiration from rpgs like those made by bioware by putting a greater focus on the story for side activities and even adding things like dialogue choices yet bioware failed to see the importance of this and i have to wonder how bioware lost faith in their own style of game design in the first place after all mass effect 2 was ridiculously acclaimed and it released only 4 years ago and mass effect 3 and dragon age 2 were big critical successes as well i can only assume the answer has little to do with critics or fans and it was instead a change designed around sales the skyrim effect if you like and if that's the case it worked in terms of sales inquisition was the most successful launch in bioware's history but i can't say it's a change i'm in favor of and it's a shame because the environments themselves look incredible even the small dungeon type areas you go to have so much detail they look so unique and i'm honestly not sure if any other fantasy game has such a large range of beautiful looking environments i don't prefer this visual style to something more cohesive and immersive in its design like skyrim or the witcher 3 but at times i was blown away playing inquisition by just how many different areas you go to and how high the visual standards are and that's the thing about inquisition you can rant about boring side quests for as long as you like but when some areas of this game are so high quality it can be hard to stay mad at it for too long it is a complicated game to judge do you want a large gorgeous world to play in or do you want interesting side quests the answer depends on what's important to you but it's too bad the game couldn't provide both outside of the open world the next most obvious change is to the combat if dragon age 2 made combat faster in a desperate attempt to win over the action crowd then inquisition seemed to do the opposite it made everything slower in the hopes that maybe this would make those whiny tactical fans shut up at last at this point i feel like someone should probably send a politely worded letter to bioware to explain that speeding up or slowing down player attack and movement speed is not in fact the main thing that determines what audience a combat system appeals to still inquisition's combat is a tale of two stories you probably think i'm referring to action and tactical modes but i'm not because tactical mode is an abomination that i usually try to pretend doesn't exist unlike dragon age 2 inquisition brings back the top down perspective but it never seems to be zoomed out enough to give you as good a view of the battlefield as the normal perspective worse than this is how you move the camera there are two common camera controls for rts games classic rpgs and mobas and probably anything else with a similar perspective they are edge pan where you move the camera by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen and grab panning where you click and hold to move the camera that way almost all games with this type of perspective offer both inquisition has neither instead the only option available is using the wasd keys to move the camera around at a snail pace this mode is slow and awkward and as soon as you switch into it you feel like you're at a disadvantage having to fight not only the enemies but the crappy controls as well the only situation where this tactical mode feels justified is if you need to precisely control your party members positions but even getting them to stand where you want them to feels like a huge undertaking and then if you switch back to action mode they usually just move back to wherever they want which is probably exactly where you don't want them considering how well the dual camera perspectives worked in origins this attempt is really there is one good thing about this mode though which is that for the first time in the history of this series there are tooltips which means you finally have some real proof that debuffs aren't just a figment of the player's imagination thankfully the action combat is better than this it starts very slow as you have less abilities and a smaller mana stamina pool than before this means you spend far more of your time auto attacking which now has to be done by holding down the attack button instead of just pressing it once to start auto attacking at least the targeting system for ranged characters is a bit more intuitive as you will now generally attack in the direction the camera looks meaning you don't have to pause the click to attack a different enemy other than that things start off very simple which can feel like a downgrade to dragon age 2 where mages at least had a range of spells and could enjoy the simple things in life like taking satisfaction from an aoe hitting a big group of enemies now mages have less spells with much more modest effects there are also fewer enemies on screen and the tactical side of combat feels almost non-existent now but stick with it and inquisition's combat improves as your character builds starts to come together you'll find you not only have more abilities to play around with but also that there are more synergies and interactions that might initially be apparent particularly if you have the dlc which gives a greater choice of ability upgrades to provide evidence of this i want to try to explain how my build ended up working and i feel i should point out this is not some fixed build or gimmick i found for a guide it's simply how my character ended up through my attempt at making them a melee mage so my highest damage ability is fire mine i want to use this every time it's off cooldown but i also want to buff it to do more damage so i take advantage of a passive ability that lets me convert some of my barrier for bonus fire spell damage and i also try to use a ring that grants me stealth if i take no actions to allow me to attack from stealth for a guaranteed crit i've also stacked crit damage items to buff this even further when all this works i see a big damage number and the shriveled up dopamine receptors in my video game adult brain tell me i did a good job to do this as often as possible i try to spam a cheap ability while fire mines on cooldown as i also have a passive that reduces abilities cooldowns the more i use other abilities this means there is cooldown management mana management and barrier management that combine to give some degree of depth and this is further complicated by the fact that enemies have very different elemental resistances meaning i have to tweak my strategy against different foes anytime something is resistant to fire this sounds and feels a lot like playing an mmo not the tab targeting world of warcraft side of mmo but one of those more modern action mmos that try to move away from some of the classic mmo trappings but still maintain a big focus on dps because what i'm trying to do in combat is increase my damage per second this allows me to kill things quicker so there is a reason for me to want to do this but there's still something missing from this combat for it to really work which is danger in a good action combat system the player shouldn't just be focusing on doing as much damage as possible they should be focusing on staying alive whether through reading enemy moves chaining attacks to maintain pressure or reacting quickly to dodge attacks and that's what inquisition lacks as an action game which is not to say you don't take damage it's just that avoiding damage isn't a very active part of combat you avoid damage by having a warrior but uses taunt again a bit like an mmo or by being a chad tank melee mage like me that builds barrier through damage and so basically ends up being a god so inquisition's combat isn't bad as long as you don't expect it to be something it's not and overall i'd rate it more highly even dragon age 2. i've tried to describe how my build plays and i can't say for sure how every other build compares but from reading tool tips for other classes they seem to work in a similar way i think this is how the combat was meant to be you have a small range of abilities that are designed to benefit from certain synergies and passives so that you need to use different things at different times to maximize damage and take full advantage of them and this isn't bad but it's easy to miss what this game lacks like being tactical this is the least tactical combat of the series in my opinion or having useful companions in a difficult fighting inquisition i just let the companions die because it's quicker to kill an enemy myself than take time to try to babysit my party members if this combat system is designed to have some depth and intricacies i think someone forgot to tell that to the ai also i miss my mage from origins not only did that game have far more spells 91 compared to 29 in inquisition they also felt more varied and had more flavor inquisition has four base mage ability trees spirits fire ice and lightning and outside of spirits those other three aren't that different it mostly feels like a choice of what color sparkly things you want to shoot from your fingers purple blue or red and specializations are also a bit lacking in identity necromancy's big spell is haste you know that classic necromancy spell where you make your allies move faster then there's also the big problem of the entire dragon age series that still hasn't went away which is for lack of encounter variety to its credit inquisition puts in more effort than dragon age 2 but in a 70-hour long game you will find you fight the same enemies over and over the most interesting of these are the dragons these are very similar to the valkyries in new god of war inquisition has 10 dragon fights plus one in the dlc and they are quite fun definitely the best fights in the game however outside of different elemental strengths and weaknesses they all act the same way which means if you work out a strategy that works for the first dragon you probably won't need to worry much about any others so inquisitions combat is what it is and the most important part of enjoying it is probably realizing that the tactical side is just a flimsy facade the character building is also simplified but in a way that fits with the new combat i do think it's worth pointing out that where dragon age 2 removed skills inquisition now also removes attributes well they still exist but you no longer have any control over what you increase instead they increase automatically through your ability choices and i really have to wonder why bioware thought players couldn't be trusted to decide what attributes to increase themselves the sixth stat system this series uses is not exactly difficult to grasp i also think the loot in this game is a letdown items seem more random than ever before and inquisition has an annoying habit of giving you gear that's the wrong level sometimes particularly early on this means you get items that are too high level for you to use later you have the opposite problem with high level quests giving epic purple items but are far too low level to be of any use i'm sure everyone loves it when you finish a late game dungeon at level 17 only to see the big rewards is a level 8 shield and a level 6 chest piece but enough griping about gameplay systems for most fans this is a series about story and characters dragon age inquisition is a game about the inquisition if you have any historical familiarity with the word inquisition you should try to forget that because the inquisition in inquisition isn't very much like an inquisition this game picks up where the last left off the templars and mages are at war divine justinia who is the leader of the chantry a sort of female pope has called for a peace conference in an attempt to resolve the conflict but at this meeting a sudden explosion kills everyone except for the main character this explosion also causes a rift to open between the physical world and the fade referred to as the breach from which demons can now enter reality this is bad because in the world of dragon age demons are dicks but luckily the player's character now has a magical hand which they can use to close these rifts to keep the demons at bay the demons in dragon age have always been one of the more interesting enemies they prey on human weakness feeding off negative human emotions and manipulating humans to this end they'd probably be big fans of twitter anyway before inquisition there are multiple memorable encounters at the hands of demons and the threat demons pose is an interesting one they can be deceptive influencing humans without ever being seen and you never know when a mage might fall to demonic corruption this means they can function as a kind of unseen enemy which provides a lot of potential for morally ambiguous storytelling and difficult choices how do you act when you don't know who to trust what level of risk is considered acceptable and in such a dark world how do you tell the difference between demonic evil and normal evil it also ramps the templar verse mage conflict up a degree because mages have always been the most susceptible to demonic corruption so if a new demon threat is rapidly spreading in the world the mage templar conflict is bound to escalate now more than ever will templars and commoners have a reason to distrust and hate mages and the question of how mages should be controlled is more pertinent than ever before so you might be thinking that this will be a story about demons where you join the inquisition to root out this new threat facing morally challenging dilemmas as your precarious position forces you to tackle difficult decisions all while the future of the chantry templars and mages hang in the balance but if you fought any of that then you couldn't be more wrong the demons are the new darkspawn generic enemies there to act as cannon fodder for you to cut down and outside of one single demon in one easy to miss story quest they never play any other role in this game than that and it's hard not to find this disappointing the one game in the series that's meant to be about demons actually has the least to do with them and as for the templars mage conflict that the whole of dragon age 2 was designed to set up well this plot point is actually just discarded not long after the game's opening and the complicated questions at the heart of this dilemma are never explored here at all so what is the point of the inquisition and what do you spend all game fighting if not demons well in dragon age the inquisition was an ancient order of the chantry long since disbanded whose purpose was to defend the world against danger and as soon as the divine dies returning characters cassandra and leliana immediately use this opportunity to invoke the name of the inquisition in a cynical attempt to grab power from the now weakened chantry to do this they use religious propaganda to spread a falsified narrative that you are the herald of andraste chosen by divine providence andraste is kind of the dragon age version of jesus but female so i guess that makes you a kind of mohammed type figure except really you're just there tool who has to run around the countryside doing fetch quests and making commoners happy while the real powers cassandra and leliana get to make all the decisions as they maneuver through the world of politics in an attempt to seize for themselves the most powerful position of all the seat of the divine but as effective as their partnership has been deep down both of them know only one can emerge victorious and so as the demons spread and the inquisition's power grows the real war is only just beginning and no enemy is more deadly than a former friend yeah i may have got a little carried away there and reared off into personal fanfic territory i guess that's not quite what happens in the games interpretation of events the inquisition is formed to save the world because the inquisition is like the ultra good guys of this story and they need to stop the ultra bad guy some people accuse the inquisition of just trying to grab power but this is more of a way to set the inquisition up as not just the good guys but also the scrappy underdogs who have to stand against evil all on their own as for the bad guy and the person you spend all game fighting against instead of cool demons meet corypheus who is like a mage and a darkspawn and a tevinter magister and a dragon and an archdemon and an old god all rolled into one so i guess you're not the only chosen one in this story corypheus has been sleeping for the last thousand years and i guess he's not a morning person because now he's awake he seems a little cranky anyway he's the guy who opened the breach and blew everyone up before the game's opening he was originally freed in one of dragon age 2's dlcs and now he wants to he wants to hang on a second played this game twice but i guess i forgot what was corypheus's motivation yeah let's see manchester golden city deep roads delirium ah here we go to restore to vinta by surreptitiously seizing control of or disabling the most powerful factions in southern thedas so he wants to make tevinter great again really that's what he was going for huh i had no idea i thought he just wanted to [ __ ] [ __ ] up because nowhere in the game really hints at any kind of actual motivation but you know now that i do know his plan it does seem a little strange because why attack southern fedus why not one of the nations tevinter is at war with like navarra or maybe the qunari you know the highly militaristic nation on tevinter's border who conquered tevinterlands and who they have been in a bitterly fought war with ever since anyway doesn't matter none of this matters i don't even know if this is corypheus's real motivation a fan wiki isn't exactly the best source the point is you don't find out in game corypheus just seems to want power he's just an evil guy who likes to do evil things and you have to stop him what i find so annoying though isn't the lack of depth characterization or personality it's how every location and nearly every main quest you do is completely centered on corypheus in origins when you went to a new location that location had its own story and that self-contained story was pretty interesting having its own moral dilemma for you to get involved with now everywhere you go it's just corypheus your first main objective is to gain the help of either the templars or mages but whichever one you go to you find they've been taken over by corypheus and now most of them are really evil too so you force the remaining people that haven't contracted evolitis to join you and try to close the breach you initially succeed but then corypheus turns up to attack you forcing the inquisition to retreat into the mountains where they wander around for days in the snow singing songs about what a cool dude you are before arriving at a perfectly intact and defensible castle called skyhold which seems quite fortunate but whatever sky holds great many fancy rpgs have tried to give the player a stronghold it started with baldur's gate 2 and has continued ever since hell dragon age origins did this twice first in the dlc and then in the expansion but few games commit to the idea to this extent and it's clear a lot of effort has went into making skyhold feel like a real base of operations it's very customizable it expands as the game progresses and it has a throne for you to sit on and decide the fate of prisoners there's also the war room which i'd say fits into the quantity over quality sidequest [ __ ] but the war room takes the approach of a facebook game with timed missions making it even worse anyway now you have this neat castle everyone decides you should be the leader don't try to say no here this isn't actually a choice and your party members disprove of any such mischievous attempts at autonomy you then catch up with your old buddy hawk i'm not sure what's gone wrong with his face i guess for years haven't been kind to him but he tells you something's wrong with the grey wardens so you investigate either with the help of alistar if he stayed a great warden and didn't become king or some other guy who looks exactly like my character what the [ __ ] i thought i was being original with my big old mustache you can't just add in some character who looks exactly the same as me how do i even tell which one i am anyway the grey wardens are also being manipulated by corypheus so you end up fighting them and then force the remaining wardens who haven't contracted evolitis to join you this section takes you into the fade and it's nice to see this place finally looking visually interesting at the end you get to choose someone to sacrifice thank [ __ ] because it means i got to get rid of my doppelganger and here you also learn more about the game's opening and how it was you survived a major theme of inquisition is religion and despite the tone i've maintained through the last few paragraphs i think this is something the game handles well the main religion in dragon age world the chantry is similar to christianity but what makes it interesting is the setting itself if jesus performs a miracle in the bible you can either believe this event or not there's no logical explanation either it's an act of god or it's not true in dragon age it's not so simple this is a world with magic and so there's always the possibility that a religious miracle has a logical explanation there's no clear divide between the divine and reality and so the question isn't as simple as whether something is true or false the in between is possible and the details all of them are down to interpretation inquisition takes this further by making you the main character a part of this religious story you are the herald of andraste who survived when no one else did and it's up to you whether you embrace this role or deny it you get to decide whether to play along without believing or set the record straight wherever you go or avoid giving an answer or to truly believe and even when you go to the phase and find out a factual explanation for what has happened it's still left open to interpretation after all you are saved by the spirit of the most holy person in the world if you want that to mean you were chosen by god or andraste well that explanation is still viable the question of religion and belief is at the heart of inquisition it's the main choice of this game and the thing you asked your opinion of over and over in ways both big and small and i think inquisition handles this subject with a degree of grace and maturity anyway as well as dealing with the grey wardens you also get invited to an orlesian palace where you can mingle with high society in a bid to secure aid for the inquisition this is one of the best sections of the game like many parts of inquisition you can really feel how much effort has went into the presentation of this quest the palace is lavish and large and mixed amongst the extravagance is a healthy side of espionage here you investigate which noble is planning to kill who and in doing so can influence who sits on the legion throne still even here there are unnecessary checklists and in true inquisition style the real person planning to murder the empress isn't either of the actual suspects but a third party who is working for corypheus everywhere you go in this game one of corypheus's lackeys is up to no good it's the game's default storyline for everything at the end of this section you also meet morrigan now an advisor to the orlesian empress who decides to come help the inquisition with morrigan's aid you travel to an ancient temple dedicated to the elven gods miphal corypheus is here too but he messes up and gets blown to pieces by the temple's defenses i forgot to mention earlier but corypheus is immortal so this loss of a corporeal form is just a temporary setback still it does mean you and morrigan get a chance to explore the temple where you find the well of sorrow neither you nor morrigan understand what this is but you decide one of you better drink it anyway just in case afterwards you gain knowledge from the well but flemeth morrigan's mother who you probably tried to kill in dragon age origins and then accidentally saved in dragon age 2 now turns up and tells you that whoever drinks the well of sorrow becomes bound to the will of mathal oh also flemeth is miphal anyway with this newfound wisdom you figure out corypheus's weakness and then the game just skips straight to you fighting corypheus in a final showdown outside the breach for some reason it also unequips your character's armor and then starts you in combat so thanks for that weird decision still even if you kept your armor this transition is still jarring after such a long game that has clearly had so much effort put into its presentation this feels incredibly sudden and it's a strange choice for the ending after hours of building up your inquisition and your strongholds a finale where corypheus attacks skyhold would have made much more sense it could have been a haven 2.0 a chance to put all you've learned and acquired to use as it is your castle and the inquisition itself are left feeling a little pointless but regardless here corypheus finally dies a boring end to a boring villain this is the end of the main quest but there are other characters involved in this story bioware might have been willing to remove side quests or stat allocation but they'd never remove companions in fact there's arguably a greater focus on these characters than ever before with nine party members plus three additional advisors that play a very similar role this means more dialogue more banter more companion quests and more romances the dialogue wheel and voice protagonist approach from dragon age 2 return although the dialogue wheel is much improved being less rigidly structured with less pictures and less misleading text as for the side characters their quality in games aren't so easy to judge you can point to individual moments of greatness or take notes of the ways they may transcend their typical role in a story but overall a large part of what makes a companion good is whether the player liked them and found them interesting and that's even more a matter of personal taste than most things just look at sarah with just a bit of searching on the internet you find people who actually like this character lots of them in fact it's weird so if a companion's personality is more subjective for most things maybe it's best to leave the discussion there there are things which are easier to measure like quantity or variety and in these ways inquisition never fails to impress still i have to admit i don't really like these characters and honestly i don't think i like this style of character writing you know the bioware method the same thing which is seen in pretty much every single party based rpg since the turn of the millennium where you get a diverse cast of characters and you can talk to each one individually to go through all their conversation branches to mechanically learn about their backstory and then after you've done some boring quests or raised some arbitrary reputation system they suddenly trust you enough to let you in on a big secret so you learn about their tragic backstory or witness a single rare moment of character development and then that's it your besties for life except you never talk to them again until the game's penultimate moment where they tell you how important you are to them and how much they cherish their time with you and i'm sorry but to return to a point mentioned much earlier bioware may have made an important move with boulder's gate by giving party members more of a personality and that does tie into traditional role playing and how it's a social experience which early role-playing video games seem to forget and so baldur's gates characters may have seemed like a step up from everything else and yet over time i feel like i've seen the exact same structure with every single character in every single rpg and it's too much to go back to that original point if this style of character interaction was meant to simulate real friends to provide some kind of illusion to a real social experience well it doesn't your interactions with these characters in every single one of these games is so obviously artificial and it's always the same thing over and over maybe i'm doing real life wrong but interrogating someone in camp until they give you a companion quest just doesn't seem like a good representation of the way real relationships work and i know that simulating a realistic friendship is hard and i'm not even trying to imply that this or any other rpg this might apply to has bad characters but if this the companions are the most important thing in a bioware rpg then i refuse to accept that this is as good as it gets and honestly i'm a bit surprised that i seem to be alone in this opinion because even if this approach to companions is good well too much of a good thing is still a problem and the way in which every party-based rpg follows the exact same formula just seems a little absurd seriously there's only so many tragic backstories i can listen to like yeah i know daddy doesn't love you your husband's dying you're impersonating a great ward and being a spy is hard you have a serious case of autism i get it i just don't care so inquisition has good companions i just wish they were more than that and honestly i trade an entire cast of well-written but formulaic party members for one single character that feels like something more than that which brings me to solus solus looks like an egg he has a very round head almost perfectly spherical at its top and it's remarkably shiny this creates a sharp contrast to his pointy little elf ears and that's about the most interesting thing about him because for the entire game the only thing he seems to care about are his boring trips to the fade and his lame little spirit friends like hello solos the world's ending out here can you stop wandering off to the fade to jerk off and maybe use your supposed knowledge to say or do something useful for once anyway that's everything for the base game but inquisition's best moments were still to come the first dlc jaws of hacon adds one new zone to explore inquisition's open world areas weren't its greatest feature but this is probably the best one yet it's a bit larger than the others and less densely packed with objectives making for a more immersive environment with a more natural sense of scale it also tries to rectify one of inquisition's most glaring flaws by putting more focus on side quests with stories and trying to tie these smaller stories together with the main narrative of the zone which focuses on the indigenous avar tribes and the fate of the last inquisitor overall it's hardly a must play experience but it's a worthwhile addition that shows clear signs of improvement to the base game the second dlc the descent is a little more interesting if quite a bit shorter it focuses on an expedition into the deep roads which much like everything else are looking great in the new engine the descent takes a very different approach to the first dlc by instead creating a single focused dungeon crawl i really like how for maybe the first time in this game the descent makes a strong connection between the environment you're exploring and the story it's very atmospheric and there's a real sense of mystery and wonder as you delve deeper into this abyss i found the deep roads to feel much more like a real place somewhere i was wandering into uninvited as opposed to the base game zones which always felt a bit like purpose built theme parks packed full of activities just for the player the story focuses on something the series had almost seemed to have forgotten the dwarves and after the elf mage orgies that were the last two games this makes for a nice change this area also has some of the biggest battles in the game and the sudden increase in scale feels pretty epic it also means that mages get to rediscover the fun of aoe but just a word of warning make sure you don't aoe too hard because the game really doesn't like it and finally we come to the best piece of dlc and i guess there's one little thing i forgot to mention remember when flemeth turned up and was like oh surprise i'm actually an elven god well that wasn't the only time that happened in inquisition because at the game's very ending solos wandered off only to show up in the post-credits scene where he kills flemeth and sucks up her power because surprise he's also a member of the elven pamphian one with a much more imposing name the dread wolf for many this was a surprise because the foreshadowing was incredibly subtle and nothing happened as a result this twist came out of nowhere and went nowhere until the final dlc trespasser takes place two years after the end of the base game as head of the inquisition you travel to the winter palace to discuss the order's future amidst criticism from neighbouring kingdoms here you can meet up with old friends which provide the companion focused epilogue to this story that the base game was missing however at this meeting things go wrong when you discover a canary assassination plot involving ancient elven teleportation devices called eluvians at the end of the mystery is solus and answers the dread wolf is portrayed as a kind of trickster god think loki from norse mythology a character not good but not quite evil whose actions have far-reaching negative consequences for the other gods according to solas the elves were once slaves to their gods and he tried to free them by rebelling against the pampion it was this that eventually led to the creation of the veil the barrier between the magical world of the faith and the physical world in an event which banished the elven gods but also robbed the elves of their immortality and forever separated the fade from our physical reality it is a bit more complicated than that and like most of dragon age lore when it's at its best there are elements of uncertainty and interpretation but that's not really the focus of this video anyway for years solas had slumbered but upon awakening he set out to reverse what he put wrong this is how inquisition came to happen corypheus was just meant to be solace's pawn even if the dread wolf's plan didn't work and now having regained his powers solos intends to tear down the veil so that the world of magic and ours will no longer be separate in doing so he will restore things to the way they were and bring back the world of the elves but also destroy the world that we know the next dragon age game which was announced in 2018 is called dread wolf rises i don't think there'll be any awards for guessing who's going to be the main antagonist and what an antagonist he seems to be not only is solas unique in how he was the player's companion but he also has all the things someone like corypheus lacked he is a compelling character with a strong personality and an interesting motivation solus isn't driven by something as simple as power or even a desire to help his people most of all solas wants to put right what he himself put wrong he wants to fix his own mistakes to make amends to find redemption and to achieve this he is willing to do something terrible to destroy this world and its inhabitants which solas knows is awful but is willing to do so anyway because in his eyes it's the only way to make things right i feel that if solas succeeds he will carry the guilt of his actions with him forever and yet it would be worth it so solos has all the potential to be an incredible villain and this final scene makes for an amazing way to end this game this epic adventure that is so flawed but has moments of such greatness it's the perfect setup for what's to come next in fact with all its chips finally on the table all of inquisition starts to look a little like the setup for something better to come who cares if corypheus was boring when you have solus who cares if some companions are formulaic when there's always the potential that one of them won't be who cares if a game has fetch quests when the main story can generate so much hype but whether it will all be worth it remains to be seen bioware are not the company they used to be if one were to continue to tell bioware's story after inquisition then everything would get worse in a darkest timeline kind of way and admits their critical and commercial failures they've also lost key staff including two of the most important people for the dragon age series lead writer david gaider and creative director mike laidlaw who both played an integral part in every dragon age game even dragon age 4 itself seems to have a troubled story having been completely cancelled once already back in 2017 so bioware could focus more on anthem the specter haunting this story hasn't gone away either there's already been talk of how dragon age 4 will feature a live service model as well as some comparisons to anthem that won't strike most fans as favorable so it's not exactly easy to have an abundance of optimism for bioware there's a sense that this time really might be their last chance polarizing fans is one thing critical and commercial failure is another and if one day ea take bioware out back and give them the old yellow treatment well it certainly won't be for the first time but everyone loves a redemption story and bioware have never needed one more and as for the dragon age series itself if the future might involve change then that won't be new territory this series is already different to how it started its rpg elements have been streamlined its attempt to appeal to an older gaming audience abandoned and the environments aren't even overwhelmingly brown anymore but it's not just that the core identity of this setting has changed a lot too the inquisition themselves come across as a group of wacky friends just saving the world and having fun in the inquisition's lowest moment after their defeat at haven the way people respond is to spontaneously break out in song being a member of the inquisition is a good time and the game makes sure you know this now compare that to the grey wardens in origins to join you have to drink poison and risk your life then you hunt darkspawn until the same poison you drink causes you to lose your sanity at which point you wander off to the deep roads to look for a good death as for the one guy that does get to be a hero and kill an archdemon he has to give his life in the process and don't forget the time when duncan the kind mental figure literally killed your companion in cold blood just for having doubts i have never seen a grey warden who seemed happy to be a great warden and i've never seen a member of the inquisition that seems especially unhappy they all want to tell you what an honor it is and how demons pouring from the sky is basically the best thing that's ever happened to them these two institutions couldn't be more different and that follows for the rest of the game in origins tranquility was presented as neutral with a tranquil npc in the mage tower presenting a good argument for why a life without emotion isn't actually a bad thing but by inquisition tranquility is seen as terrible and people talk about it like it's a war crime and inquisition then also reveals that there's now a way to reverse it because we wouldn't want anyone to not be happy origins was unashamedly cynical in its outlook the world was a terrible place full of bad people and that made the decisions you had to make difficult but inquisition isn't that and it doesn't try to be the tone inquisition strives for is much closer to something like a marvel movie you have a big cast of characters and crossover events where characters from old games turn up and then you have this one big villain and a story that tries to be cool and epic and fine there's an audience for that but it's not what the other games were and while i didn't want to make this point a really big thing in this video i still can't help but acknowledge it i miss the darker more mature feel of origins world even if it did mean having to put up with trailers with marilyn manson and 30 seconds to mars and if you're in any doubt about what the future holds you shouldn't be there's no way bioware will ever make something as dark as origins again because even if they wanted to ea wouldn't let them it's just not as mass marketable and there's also a tweet from the narrative director of dragon age 4 which sums up his opinion on the series perfectly quote dragon age has always been about belonging about realizing that family is more important than blood and about celebrating diversity dragon age is about hope about how love and friendship are forces for good and [ __ ] me we must have played different games dragon age is about friendship and love what do you remember when duncan killed his innocent friend just because he didn't want to drink poison remember that part remember when you convince ogrin's lover branca to kill herself and it's considered the good ending remember when you get a chance to sell a young boy's soul to a demon in exchange for power remember when your best friend anders becomes a terrorist kills hundreds of innocent people and then asks you to put him out of his misery honestly it's difficult to think of a single worse description of what this series was than these tweets and this is the guy in charge now but that doesn't mean i'm not excited for the future after three games i am invested in this world and these characters i do care about what happens next and i do look forward to one day finding out dragon age is a strange series it once seemed like the hottest fantasy franchise in gaming and yet despite never releasing a critically unsuccessful game its reputation seems to have fallen so far and i think that's because bioware simply failed to deliver on what fans wanted there's a difference between a good game and a good sequel but now enough time has passed but i don't think there's anyone still out there that expects a faithful sequel to origins and thanks to kickstarter during this time plenty of new old-school rpgs have been released meaning for people who want that kind of game there are alternatives so the standards for bioware aren't exactly high anymore one bad game is a mistake two bad games in a row means that's basically your identity and i don't know if this series will ever regain the magic it once had but i do know there's no better time for bioware to prove everyone wrong a big thank you to everyone who has supported me on patreon this video was actually the result of a poll on patreon where everyone could vote on which big project to tackle next and there should be a new poll for a future project soon so if you want to have a say in future content or just support my channel maybe consider helping me out on patreon anyway every time i make a really long video i tell myself never again that this is the longest i'll ever make and from now on i'll make sure to keep things shorter because things are better that way and i think that's some of the best advice i never listened to but this time this really should hopefully be the longest video i ever make for real for real for real so thank you for taking the time to actually watch it whether you support me on patreon or not i greatly appreciate your viewership and a big thanks to that one guy who's never played a dragon age game in their life and doesn't care about this series and yet watch the entire video anyway tells him what to do nobody [Laughter] quiet uncle

Channel: NeverKnowsBest

Views: 611,342

Rating: 4.8768425 out of 5

Keywords: Dragon Age, Dragon Age review, Dragon age retrospective, dragon age critique, dragon age analysis, dragon age origins, dragon age 2, dragon age inquisition, dragon age 4, bioware, dragon age series review, dragon age series, dragon age series retrospective, dragon age story

Id: Sc8Bn8yqPYQ

Length: 150min 12sec (9012 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ControllerTypeA]

At least dragon age left us with inquisition I hope there next release is just as awesome

But poor mass effect leaving the series with andromeda, I hope from the new me trailer Things get back on track, but what's up with casey Hudson leaving bioware 🥴