What The Hell Happened To Dragon Age?

'Be-Mpowered.com: "I was, and am, a huge fan of Dragon Age: Origins. It took me by surprise back in 2009, and as a mark for Knights Of The Old Republic it was wonderful to play a similar experience that took advantage of a fantasy setting.

I bought into the narrative; I warmed to the cast of characters and, most importantly, I scrutinised every choice to ensure I made what I thought was the right one. It felt like a game with unlimited potential… until Dragon Age II came along in 2011."

[Mutant-Spud]

Over the course of the second and third games the morality system of Origins has been employed in support of a moralising narrative.

[Aloren]

How so ?

[Paprika]

Origins > Inquisition > migraine > the CIA > dragon age 2

Origins and inquisition are two great games. Origins just has so much charm and character!

[thekhurg]

You're likely remembering Origins incorrectly. Everything Origins did, Inquisition expanded on and improved. It's full of lore, great dialog, amazing fight sequences, deeper class system, and of course significantly larger than both of the previous games in the series combined.

[Lev1903]

I do not agree with the deeper class system. While drag age inquisition has a good skill tree its nowhere near th depth of Origins.Take the skill tree of a mage. You got Arcane, primal, creation, spirit and entrpoy. Which got 4 different spell forms each. And on top of that you got specializations skills.

And your party is more memorable then Inquisition IMO. But other than that i totally agree with you.

[anticlimax]

Inquisition had less abilities, a limited and often broken tac cam, no origin stories, less dark morally ambiguous storylines, more bugs, ...

Plus I find the barrier/guard system a lot worse compared to healing. It's just way to easy to make an unkillable guard character.

I played the game like an action RPG because tactical play just wasn't well done. Certainly not compared to Origins or something like Divinity: OS.

So you just might have to state you found Inquisition better, instead of stating it was better.

[Roccetarius]

@Lev1903 don't forget the spell combinations in Origins either, which seems to have been removed or play a even lesser role in Inquisition.

[Nerdmaster]

The thing that's keeping me from buying Inquisition (apart from being exclusive to Origin) is the low level cap of the zones. It's the same problem I had with Kingdoms of Amalur, I didn't have any reason to explore too much because really quickly I was past the level cap from most zones, so the enemies got too easy, and doing quests and exploring didn't reward me with enough experience and good items.

[Paprika]

I found dragons dogma had s great sense of progression with its areas. If you ventured too far too soon, you would be punished and older areas you felt the reversal of that by feeling stronger. Worked great.

[Aloren]

Works the same in DAI.

[rextraordinaire]

Yep. That game absolutely nailed difficulty scaling, even more so with Dark Arisen.

[thekhurg]

It's not really a problem in Inquisition unless you just run in circles while in the Hinterlands fighting the same enemies for days on end. The game opens up areas early on in a manner that you aren't going to out-level the zone to the point that it's a waste.

[rextraordinaire]

I agree with you. I've been mindlessly auto attacking everything for the past 30 hours. Even high dragons require no strategy whatsoever except popping a regen potion now and then.

[Balsanoid]

So play at a higher difficulty? I started with Nightmare difficulty & I can assure you that you can't just haphazardly approach fights without strategy. You'll die too quick.

[rextraordinaire]

@Balsanoid

I play on hard.

My point is, a game shouldn't have to be set to the hardest difficulty for it to have some kind of challenge. It should have had a "enable level scaling" option or something.

[Dewitt]

Level scaling KILLS rpgs, why would I spend 50 hours leveling somebody just to be the same level as everyone in the world. I love fact I go back to HL and annihilate everything. It didn't work in FF, it didn't work in Oblivion. Leave it alone.

[rextraordinaire]

@Dewitt

It could work if implemented like in Disgaea games.

A simple oprion to "Raise all levels by 10, 20, 30" etc.

[kingdip90]

Dragons age origins got me excited because it was heralded as the spiritual successor to balders gate (a series I love) and it did a reasonable job and was enjoyable. Each iteration since has strayed from the original vision for the series as a strategy rpg based on the style of balders gate more and more with each iteration and it's sad.

The original intention was awesome and the story felt like it was going in a completely different direction than the series took it which is very unsatisfying.

[Talgrath]

Personally, I was not impressed with Dragon Age: Origins; I felt it was good but not great (I skipped the second game due to lack of interest). The lore and story of the series didn't really capture my attention (still doesn't, really), and for all the talk of moral ambiguity there wasn't a whole lot that I recall, aside from the choice between dwarven leaders where both sucked. Maybe if Origins had come out earlier, before The Witcher, it would have seemed darker and edgier, but Origins was stuck in developer limbo for way too long. Inquisition seems to have a better idea of where it's at, the world is a crappy place but you are one of the few good guys who will put at least some things to right, in your own way. Origins felt like a teenager trying to be dark and edgy, while Inquisition feels like a more balanced outlook on the world from a mature perspective.