Thursday, July 16, 2015

Platinum 45: Dragon Age Inquisition

I got DA:I for my birthday in April and I've been playing it nearly nonstop since then. Between my wife and me, we've played probably 250 hours or so. I just completed it on the hardest difficulty, Nightmare, wrapping up the platinum at the same time.
I wish I had been writing about this game as I was playing it. In a word, it is incredible. It is certainly one of the most impressive and enjoyable games I've played in a while. Playing on the PS4, the graphics are pretty astounding, especially the landscape and terrain design and the level design. BioWare has really taken their already stellar performance to new heights. The story was engaging, though perhaps not quite as compelling as, say, Mass Effect 2 or 3. The sheer number of quests and the enormous size of each of the 10+ locations is mind blowing. Like I said, I put in at least 250 goes across 2 playthroughs and I was still finding new things all the way to the end.
Without a doubt, the weakest part of DAI is the character animations during cut scenes and dialogue. They are really terrible. I guess with such a huge game, you gotta cut the budget somewhere, and the lip syncing was the first to go. It is a little jarring, especially after how good ME3 and even DA2 are. However, it is a small complaint in such an otherwise great game.
As to Nightmare, it really wasn't very tough for me. I did consult a couple guides online, but only for tips on building a mage. I tried the Qunari character, which was interesting, and built him around the Knight Enchanter specialisation. By "What Pride Had Wrought", the penultimate quest, I was nearly unstoppable. The final boss fight took me only about ten minutes. Much less difficult than ME2 on Insanity.
Inquisition is one of the best RPGs I've played in a long time. I had an absolute blast working on and nabbing this platinum. I wonder what I'll do next.

Reading Goals for 2018

I have lots of goals for this year. The big one is to listen to all 500 albums listed on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of A...