Dragon Age III: InquisitionFollow

I think she is a pretty good bard. I like her. I've seen some of her other stuff and I also have a soft spot for the fiddle.

In other news Spoilerthe hinterlands are great so far. Really glad I finally got to the walkabout open stuff. The beginning is enough of a on rails corridor feel to dread that DA:2 LIVES. I knew the open areas were coming from reviews but I am really liking the feeling of roaming around options.

Also digging my dash strike and shield bash skills on the SnB. I kind of wish I would not have sold the defenders armor to equip the garish dragon stuff. It just feels wrong for my characters current power level. Not that it is super OP, just too ornate. My guy is a noble but I want him to look like a rough and practical soldier rather than a parade armor victim. I did already find a vendor blue sword that is better. It was not better enough to buy but I was glad that the pre-order power curve was not going to stick me with the bonus weapons for too long.

Also stutter seems gone without post processing. Confirmed. Using Gamepad with no issues so far. I checked out the tactical cam and it seems ok with pad. I made my ranged guys actually shoot the ranged attackers once. Then I decided to just go get them myself with charge since with Cassandra my party already has 2 tanks. So I can just ARPG around and whale on stuff currently. (Normal difficulty)

Whew, put in a bit more time. More stream-of-consciousness thoughts:

Figured out that it was the mesh graphics option that gave me plastic hair. Set it to "High" and now it looks normal. Moreso, at least.
Played through the side quest in the Fallow Mire. Didn't finish all the quests, as I found that stepping into any water in the area spawns 4 level 12 skeletons nearby (I was level 6 or 7 at the time).
Also had my first (two!) party wipes trying to kill my first Revenant. If the tank dies, everyone else goes quick. Unfortunately, Cass seems squishy as heck right now.
The new demons scream like Banshees from ME3, which freaks me out.
I just learned that "F" key is the answer to my prayers. It auto-loots items nearby you (though you need to still accept multiple items; space bar works for that). Beats the point + click method.
I have 37 Power and nothing to spend it on
Mage feels a little underpowered, but every level I gain I like it more and more. Barrier is key, but I found some other spells good as well. I want to expand outside of Spirit, but it's the closest we have to a "healing" tree so... no idea what to pick for now.
Varric feels so much weaker in this game than in DA2, where he was easily one of my best attackers...
Any advice for Inquisition Perks? I've chosen the Inventory expansions so far. Nice to have 80 slots!
I am no longer the king of Elfroot now that I've discovered the amazingness of Regeneration Potions. Down to about 20.
I feel like if I invested some time and effort into item crafting and modification I could probably improve my lot in life. Unfortunately it's a bit intimidating to start...
I found my first dragon in the Hinterlands. I killed the dragonlings (nearly dying myself) and decided to NOPE right out of there.

Still had a blast tonight. I feel like I'm a decent way into the game... then I remember I haven't even picked up any additional companions yet! Next story quest us SpoilerVal Royeaux, so I might get one there. We'll see?

Edit: This may say more about the player than the game, but I feel like so far my times has been broken down like this:

10%: Story, cutscenes, and lore (including reading the cards in the loading screen and codexes)
20%: Warping to a previously visited map and running to where I need to go nearby.
20%: Fighting enemies
20%: Attempting to climb mountains that have an objective behind them according to my map.
30%: Trying to find the freaking item my Detect ability has pinged.

Edited, Nov 18th 2014 11:23pm by LockeColeMA

Origin interrupting my game with bloopy arcade game noises to celebrate my achievements is going to drive me batty.

I just ran into a large yellow dragon that ate my party for lunch. I'm guessing that I'm not supposed to go down there yet...

Another tip I just found out... the "Sell All" function at the merchant sells not only "worthless" valuables but also all the monster items you can turn in to research. Turn them in before you sell off your junk! I've probably made this mistake 4 times...

From reading some GG tweets tonight, I learned something effed up that's DA:I related. Apparently DA:I has been banned in India(and other countries) due to portrayal of homosexuality.

D'oh! My bad.

Edit: Ah, I see where I missed it. Oops. I've mostly only been skimming the thread and must have overlooked it. Did a quick scan of this page and didn't see it there so I figured I was good. As for the other question, I don't want to turn this thread into GG argument part deux, so if you really want to discuss it, feel free to repost on the other thread.


Edited, Nov 20th 2014 1:44am by Poldaran

Comment threads usually are. I only read the first nine or so and called that good enough.

I made a clumsy pass at the Spanglish speakin' Antivan diplomat chick. Shot down!

So, in cross-board shenanigans, elsewhere on the net I was in a conversation about the tactical game. Someone said that he played DA:O on both PC and on the Xbox360 and thought that Xbox was easier, which he extrapolated to mean that it was dumbed down for controller play. I've never played it on console so can't respond to that but said "So jack up the difficulty and go to town". Someone else said that jacking up enemy HP/Damage isn't a replacement for tactical depth.

My response to this was that, in Dragon Age, it is. The game plays as "intelligently" on Easy as it does on Hard, the only difference is how much thought YOU need to put into defeating more powerful (not more intelligent) opponents. But the AI has always been pretty much "attack guy with most aggro". You don't even see it thinking anything even as deep as "We're going to dogpile the mage even though she hasn't cast yet since her AOE capacities exceed any one guy with a sword or bow". The game AI itself tactically sucks, all the tactics come from the players. Anyone disagree? I should mention that he was directly comparing DA:I to DA:O and implying that DA:O had more depth on the part of the AI itself.

Wasn't the tactic of DA:O take two mages, make storm of the century, and laugh at the carnage? Honestly I do remember on my non mage heavy games doing some slightly tactical things early on. For example telling my party to hold behind cover and luring the mobs in through a choke point to focus fire them down from behind the tank.

The AI was not really much beyond "come at me bro " in the most direct way possible. But there were some tactical things you could do beyond AOE to funnel them and not pull to many if you needed to. Such as the battle of Redcliff, choosing your ground and pulling them into kill boxes etc.

I don't think you can really call any DA game an RTS. It's not what makes them good. But some people used to do neat things like soloing the game with a trapping rogue on the hardest difficulty. You can make your fun with whats given.

Yuuuuuuuuuuup.

If anyone had 'balancing dragon age' as part of their job description, they should've been fired.

I started DA:O on console, bought and switched to PC because of "The Fade". The mod to skip it on PC was a lifesaver.