Dragon Age 3: Inquisition announced

[bystander36]

Sure, you have that option if you so choose. I imagine if you spend 15 hours in the starting zone you are going to considerably over-leveled for the next few areas. I think my character was level 7 when I decided to look for new areas and even that was more than I needed.

I just mentioned it because I felt like I needed to complete every little side quest before moving on, which is an option of course, but not necessary. I also ran into some areas in the starting zone that were obviously meant to be cleared at a later time.

I agree with you on this topic. I was starting to wonder if this game was going to have much of a story, until I figured out I could leave the Hinterlands and head for Haven.

 

[JeffNY35]

The controls are not that bad. In fact i am warming up to them. Ive got a couple gripes like no way to loot everything in a sack.

The search looting is interesting and turns off people. But ive got to say folks, ive been waiting years for someone to make searching actually an interesting element to the game and they pulled it off. Its not perfect and can be tedious. Ill resist any spoilers here to elaborate further .

This is shaping up possibly to be my favorite rpg of all time. We will see there are still some things i am not a huge fan of in any Dragon age game like the ability tree . Don't feel like i can do anything but cookie cutter builds.

This game in my opinion is almost meant to be played on hard. The battles and scaling seem perfect! Its a challenge for sure. Some rift fights are freaking tough. I have one now with a revenant and pride demons and shit , wondering if i am too low level. I actually find this rather refreshing .

Incredible Game so far. Its Oblivion, Bioware style.

 

[poohbear]

In all honestly The Witcher 3 looks gorgeous in still shots. As soon as you see it in action you can tell where the engine falls short. The animations are not realistic, the graphics look blocky, and almost fake.

Really? Thats ur opinion... witcher 2 is still the best looking rpg ever (imho). DA:I is a close 2nd but the hardware needed for DA:I makes witcher 2 better (mind u i played witcher 2 after it was fully optimized, so maybe DAI can catch up when patched up.)

 

[bystander36]

The Witcher 2 faces don't even compare to DA:I, and I don't think in technical terms The Witcher 2 is nearly as good in most ways graphically, but stylistically The Witcher 2's graphics may be liked better. The Witcher 2 also limits you tremendously on how much you can move around. It's very rat maze like, which can be good for story driven games, but it definitely is easier to pull off than an open world game like DA: I.

 

[dougp]

Any opinions on choosing DAI or FarCry 4?

 

[nurturedhate]

Any opinions on choosing DAI or FarCry 4?

Farcry feels more like Farcry 3.5 or even 3.25. DA:I is MASSIVE, gorgeous, and has a great story going for it so far (about 20 hours in).

 

[frozentundra123456]

I played the game through the prologue last night. I am enjoying it so far. The controls are OK to me for kb/m, but that is probably because I played DA:O and am used to them somewhat. I rebound pause, since every other game used space for this. I agree also that not moving to items to pick them up is annoying to say the least. The graphics are good, but dont seem exceptional for the resources required. I can barely run high on my lower end system (i52320 and HD7770). It looks good on high, but the framerate is marginal. If I go to medium, the textures look awful, really fake and plasticky. The biggest reservation I have so far is the healing mechanic or lack thereof. Only 8 healing potions and no heal spells for the whole party seems like it will make battles very difficult later on in the game.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Farcry feels more like Farcry 3.5 or even 3.25. DA:I is MASSIVE, gorgeous, and has a great story going for it so far (about 20 hours in).

They are two very different types of games. I like RPGs, so it would definitely be DA:I for me. I am not really interested in FC4, since I started all 3 previous games and didnt finish any.

 

[bystander36]

If you are having troubles picking up items, use the F key. It seems to be a lot easier than having to move, then moving the mouse over the item. The F key has you pick up anything that is glowing near you.

 

[ControlD]

I played the game through the prologue last night. I am enjoying it so far. The controls are OK to me for kb/m, but that is probably because I played DA:O and am used to them somewhat. I rebound pause, since every other game used space for this. I agree also that not moving to items to pick them up is annoying to say the least. The graphics are good, but dont seem exceptional for the resources required. I can barely run high on my lower end system (i52320 and HD7770). It looks good on high, but the framerate is marginal. If I go to medium, the textures look awful, really fake and plasticky. The biggest reservation I have so far is the healing mechanic or lack thereof. Only 8 healing potions and no heal spells for the whole party seems like it will make battles very difficult later on in the game.

I was worried about this as well, but the entire Barrier progression for one of your mages seems to make this much less of an issue. I am actually liking the way buffing/healing works in this game and it makes a support mage more fun to play.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I was worried about this as well, but the entire Barrier progression for one of your mages seems to make this much less of an issue. I am actually liking the way buffing/healing works in this game and it makes a support mage more fun to play.

I am confused about the Barrier spell. Do you cast it on yourself, your party or the enemy?
I am playing a mage and it was one of the first spell I took, but I dont seem to be using it correctly.

I am planning to start some other classes soon to play around with. Any suggestions for good combinations?

 

[Eric1987]

They are two very different types of games. I like RPGs, so it would definitely be DA:I for me. I am not really interested in FC4, since I started all 3 previous games and didnt finish any.

Far Cry 4 is an RPG...

 

[Eric1987]

I am confused about the Barrier spell. Do you cast it on yourself, your party or the enemy?
I am playing a mage and it was one of the first spell I took, but I dont seem to be using it correctly.

I am planning to start some other classes soon to play around with. Any suggestions for good combinations?

I don't even think you've ever even played the game with those questions.

 

[heisenberg1987]

Did I mention esquared is a bitch?




Creating second accounts under vacation is a bannable offense.

Especially to call out moderators.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[frozentundra123456]

Far Cry 4 is an RPG...

Technically, yes, but I consider it more of a shooter with RPG elements. It is a far different kind of game than say DA:I with its different races and classes.

 

[bystander36]

I am confused about the Barrier spell. Do you cast it on yourself, your party or the enemy?
I am playing a mage and it was one of the first spell I took, but I dont seem to be using it correctly.

I am planning to start some other classes soon to play around with. Any suggestions for good combinations?

It's useful to get the barrier spell on any mage. After that, I'd stick to one primary mage type. Learn when to use the spells to their best effect. Ice mages are good to slow down the fights, fire mages do good damage and induce panic/fear in enemy. Lightning has pretty good damage and stuns.

As far as how to use the barrier, you just click it, and it shows an outline of the area of effect. Click an area to get the most party members as possible and click. It seems to reach a bit larger than the circle is shows.

 

[ControlD]

As far as how to use the barrier, you just click it, and it shows an outline of the area of effect. Click an area to get the most party members as possible and click. It seems to reach a bit larger than the circle is shows.

Pretty much this. I often use the barrier on my tank when she is in the middle of a bunch of enemies. Essentially barrier is like a second health bar and someone under attack will not start losing health until the blue barrier bar has been depleted. As you upgrade the barrier with extra talents then there are other benefits to casting it as well.

I am running a party with two mages (one is my character) and both of them have at least the initial barrier spell. Having two mages able to cast barrier means your tank rarely needs to rely on healing potions for normal battles. Just make sure you keep your ranged attackers away from the mobs.

 

[poohbear]

Are all the areas as big as hinterlands? i was doing every quest in hinterlands before moving on....just my playstyle. Now finished everything there & ready to move to another area. Are they as big? Thinking sword coast next

 

[bystander36]

Not all areas, but there are others that are as big or close to it. You really can't just do all the quests. At least, you won't want to, or you'll get bored. This game is similar to Skyrim in that manner. You simply don't do all the side quests.

 

[alcoholbob]

Not all areas, but there are others that are as big or close to it. You really can't just do all the quests. At least, you won't want to, or you'll get bored. This game is similar to Skyrim in that manner. You simply don't do all the side quests.

I think Dragon Age Inquisition must be bigger than Skyrim though. Because in 100-120 hours you can do like 95% of the sidequests in Skyrim. The only things that take a long time are quests that require repetitive backtracking.

 

[Zenoth]

I'm skipping posts to avoid potential spoilers since I'm still playing my first playthrough.

But I just wanted to give a fair warning concerning what I'd consider quite an important (if not to say 'major') bug I experienced. I was creating a new character (I'm crazy enough to do two completionist playthroughs and alternate between each characters, yeah) and right after the character creation was done (gave the name, and then accepted) the intro played out as usual...

Then the bug occurred. After the intro is over the very next thing that loaded was in fact the intro's map itself. In other words my character ended up within the ruins with the long stairway leading up to the top (where I presume is Andraste), except of course that there's nothing in the map other than the environment itself.

Then obviously I checked to see if the new character I had just made had in fact been given a new save slot (with the "Switch Character" function)... aaaaaand... nope, nothing there. Which means - and I didn't know, but now I do - that right after you create your character the game doesn't save it yet. I don't know what's the frequency of that bug occurring but it "breaks" the game in the sense that I have to completely start all over again and of course I don't remember all the facial features by heart nor did I think about taking pictures of the whole character creation process just in case it'd bug and basically make me lose my time (I wasted about three hours making my Inquisitor).

It's excessively frustrating. I guess that I have to actually record my character creation process with FRAPS from this point on. That way if I get the same bug in the future I'll be able to just watch the record to remember how I made my character...

I don't know how that bug got past QA/Testing bug it did. So yeah, just wanted to give a heads up about that. Back to character creation for the next two hours... at this rate I won't actually have enough time to play the game today, fantastic.

 

[zinfamous]

I am confused about the Barrier spell. Do you cast it on yourself, your party or the enemy?
I am playing a mage and it was one of the first spell I took, but I dont seem to be using it correctly.

I am planning to start some other classes soon to play around with. Any suggestions for good combinations?

yeah, as others have said, it's an AoE. I always cast it in tactical before a fight, when I have everyone grouped together, advance time jsut for the cast, then slot my mage for his next attack. It's a very, very useful spell. I lok forward to speccing into the trait that causes AoE damage blast when the mage's barrier falls (I think this is just for his own personal passive barrier trait, but that's still nice).

Playing a sword and board warrior so far and loving it. I started a dual-wield rogue, but made a new character before finishing prologue on that one. I really liked the dual wield rogue in DA: O, so it might be my next class if I stick with this game long.


as for the controls--I did switch to the X360 pad on my second toon, and it feels smoother for me...unfortunately. Not just with tactical menu, but you can tell that movement with WASD was barely an afterthought int he dev's minds. It's like your character moves in two plains, and it's just so blocky.

I sacrifice all the good of KB/M: individual menu keys (the importance of this is probably very understated. this is huge for RPGs, imo), and with the gamepad, it's a single button for jump/interact/talk. This is absurdly annoying, as the prompt to loot will lag a bit, and the range for looting/interacting is abysmal. I'm trying to talk to someone...instead I'm jumping around on their face for a few seconds. ><

Surprisingly, the skill set up with the gamepad feels pretty solid. Something I really did not expect, as I'm very much used to 1-8 or mouse-binding, or whatever. If only I could keep KB active while using gamepad, I'd like to have something like target select and toggle to be a quick key press, and then the various menu buttons and activate/talk also separate.


Further, I spent maybe the first 3 total hours of this game with endless crashes, freezes, insanely hilarious graphical bits, and a super hot-running GPU....that bit kinda freaked me out, b/c I purchased this 280X about a month ago. I'm thinking--no way in hell is this thing struggling like this. (High settings--not even touching ultra because I am CPU limited in a hilarious way (Phenom II 960 BE ).

anyhoo, I was about 1.5 months old on my drivers. Current Catalyst beta (14.11, I think--with DA:I performance tweak) seems to have fixed everything. And, the bastard is running much cooler.

 

[zinfamous]

I'm skipping posts to avoid potential spoilers since I'm still playing my first playthrough.

But I just wanted to give a fair warning concerning what I'd consider quite an important (if not to say 'major') bug I experienced. I was creating a new character (I'm crazy enough to do two completionist playthroughs and alternate between each characters, yeah) and right after the character creation was done (gave the name, and then accepted) the intro played out as usual...

Then the bug occurred. After the intro is over the very next thing that loaded was in fact the intro's map itself. In other words my character ended up within the ruins with the long stairway leading up to the top (where I presume is Andraste), except of course that there's nothing in the map other than the environment itself.

Then obviously I checked to see if the new character I had just made had in fact been given a new save slot (with the "Switch Character" function)... aaaaaand... nope, nothing there. Which means - and I didn't know, but now I do - that right after you create your character the game doesn't save it yet. I don't know what's the frequency of that bug occurring but it "breaks" the game in the sense that I have to completely start all over again and of course I don't remember all the facial features by heart nor did I think about taking pictures of the whole character creation process just in case it'd bug and basically make me lose my time (I wasted about three hours making my Inquisitor).

It's excessively frustrating. I guess that I have to actually record my character creation process with FRAPS from this point on. That way if I get the same bug in the future I'll be able to just watch the record to remember how I made my character...

I don't know how that bug got past QA/Testing bug it did. So yeah, just wanted to give a heads up about that. Back to character creation for the next two hours... at this rate I won't actually have enough time to play the game today, fantastic.

SO, were you able to beat the game in record time?

yeah, that's frustrating. I was spending some hour or more int he same process, notice only in the light of day that shading on eyebrows or eyes or other crap you can't see in character creation are way off. You're right at the start so you feel tempted to just do it all voer because it may seem like a little thing, but with a game this long and the conversational style--if there is just one thing that annoys you about your toon at the start, it will only get worse (sounds minor--but that happened with me in DA:O, when I wasn't doing the 360 view making my elf dude--about an hour in the game I realize he has this jacked out nose, and his whole face on profile looked like a smashed pumpkin, where someone punched his forward in and shoved it into his chin....that annoyed me to no end but I was like, fuck it)


Anyhoo--because of this, I realized that character creation is not saving on name, which is strange--and I imagine that is a bug because it is the first time I have seen this.

 

[Larnz]

The controls are not that bad. In fact i am warming up to them. Ive got a couple gripes like no way to loot everything in a

Just press space to "Loot All' from a sack or chest or corpse etc. If you press the "F" key to loot then just hit space it loots everything. If you highlight an item in the loot window and hit space it only loots that item.

 

[Bateluer]

Far Cry 4 is an RPG...

I don't think anyone considers Far Cry 4 an RPG. It has some skill elements, but its not an RPG.

Whatever I can level against DAI's shoddy combat system, healing system, and controls, it is most certainly an RPG.