Dragon Age: Inquisition is concerned with the fate of the world, not text size

Like many, the millisecond I saw that one of Amazon’s major Cyber Monday bargains was for $15.00 off the very still new Dragon Age: Inquisition, I dropped whatever I was holding/doing and purchased a copy…for the PlayStation 3. It arrived a few days later and sat on my kitchen table, waiting patiently for me to finish up some artwork projects, as well as Suikoden II. Here’s a quick life lesson for y’all that I’ve learned over my thirty-one years of doing this grind called living: don’t start one massive RPG before completing another.

Anyways, over the weekend, I put about an hour and a half into Dragon Age: Inquisition, and all I got to show for it is this t-shirt that says “Leave the Hinterlands” in big, bold, bloody lettering. Nah, that’s not true. What I actually got is a female dwarven warrior named Girgna, who likes to charge right into the thick of things and even taunt enemies as she swings a sword into their necks. This style of fighting is very much the opposite of my usual path, but my friend Tom is also playing the game, walking the good, wholesome path of a nice wizard lady named Dandelion, and I wanted us to have different experiences to talk about.

Dragon Age: Inquisition evidently picks up immediately the events of Dragon Age II, where mages and Templars are finally at ends with each other. However, there are talks of a peace treaty in the works, but those deals and promises are interrupted by a magical explosion, leaving a single survivor. Yup, that’s you, the one with the green-colored hand. Some believe you caused this explosion, while others think you’re a blessing from the prophet Andraste. Either way, demons are now emerging from the rift in the sky, and you are the only one who can do anything about it. Get ready to age a dragon or something.

So far, I’m finding my return to Ferelden…a bit underwhelming. Granted, I’ve not touched the series seriously since Dragon Age: Origins, deciding after trying the demo and listening to the Internet that Dragon Age II was not for me. Now, I really really liked Dragon Age: Origins; it had characters and scope and deeply integrated lore and tough, but rewarding combat. It also had some problems, such as tiny text, glitched Achievements because I know I killed at least 500 darkspawn (though not 1,000), clunky inventory menus, and that whole side quest surrounding the Fade. Still, the good outweighed the bad, and that banter while wandering around towns or the forest really gave me the warmest of warm feelings.

However, in just an hour and a half with Dragon Age: Inquisition, I’m experiencing a ton of issues. The graphics on the PlayStation 3 version are sub-par; I mean, it looks like the first game, which came out four years ago, and I know we can have nicer visuals at this point thanks to Grand Theft Auto V and even Destiny. Many textures are garbled and flat or late to load in when a cutscene starts. Again, graphics are certainly not everything to me, but working graphics is a whole different issue. Audio sync is also off, and there was one moment where characters left the scene, but the camera remained fixed on the forest for a few extra seconds, while nothing happened. And this all brings me to the thorniest of roadblocks: the tiny text. I cannot sit on the couch and read most of the text, which is, y’know, frustrating for a roleplaying game where you make important decisions. I cannot read weapon descriptions or newly added lore blurbs. I cannot see the numbers for my character’s experience bar. Sounds like it doesn’t matter if you have an SD or HD television either, and I’m not the only one upset about this.

I’ll hold out hope (but not much) for a future patch to increase the font size. Until then, I’m relying on other elements to tell me what’s going on. When you examine an item, you’ll see some bars below your character go up in green or down in red, thus telling you if it is helpful or not. That said, I don’t know exactly what each bar is measuring. Some dialogue choices are accompanied by a small graphic, indicating what kind of response you are about to give, even if you can’t read it. Girgna has now finished the prologue section and been told about the Hinterlands, but I’m still hanging around the opening area, trying to find some crafting items to make weapons and armor before I move ahead to the zone everyone says to not linger in. Plus, there’s plenty of hairless nugs running around, begging to be target practice.

Not the best start for Dragon Age: Inquisition. Call me crazy, but I like reading the text in my videogames, even if it is badly translated.

The Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning demo is brimming with color

Chances are high that, thanks to some quality time with the demo for Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, I won’t be getting the full release when it drops next month. Boo hoo. And that has nothing to do with how the game plays, as it’s quite a fun action-adventure RPG with bright colors and the potential to be huge and vast and a total timesink. Nope, that’s all well and good. Alas, it suffers from tiny text syndrome.

Why can’t every game just be like Saints Row: The Third? I mean, when that game tells me to drive a tiger around the city and keep it calm and relaxed by not running into other cars, I can totally read those instructions on the screen with no problem whatsoever. Big and bold font versus what seems to be a growing standard of tiny and scrunched. It’s all I ever want

But let’s start at the beginning. The beginning of the demo, that is. It opens with a lore-heavy cutscene, voiced by a woman that desperately wants to evoke Galadriel telling the tale of those rings forged in darkness. Amalur is a world of many races–gnomes, elves, magical beings called Fae, and smelly ol’ humans–and, from what I can tell, a Winter Fae named Gadflow and his followers, the Tuatha, have decided to kill all the younger races. I think it has something to do with a prophecy. And you, whoever you are. You are dead at the beginning of the game–SPOILERS!–brought back to life by the Well of Souls, something the Tuatha also want to see destroyed. Plot-wise, it seems like you will be investigating how exactly you came to be reborn, as well as get mixed up in all this bitter conflict.

The escape from the pit of dead bodies is clearly a tutorial level, wherein you’ll learn how to use weapons, equip stuff, kill rats and giant spiders, have some dialogue, and fight a rock troll. Afterwards, you are given 45 minutes to explore as much of Amalur as you want, doing whatever you want. The game even makes it explicitly clear that the 45 minutes will pause during dialogue so nothing needs to be skipped. Regardless, I skipped a lot of dialogue; it’s not the game’s strongest bullet point.

The game looks like Fable II and plays like Dragon Age II, and you can interpret that how you like. Vibrant colors abound and combat is fast, heavy on action and rolling. I really like the visuals in Amalur, with all the flowers and colorful trees and billowing grass. Even dungeons look nice and non-gloomy. In an industry washed with browns and grays, it is nice to see something a little brighter, even if it draws comparison to World of Warcraft‘s cartoony style. I did notice some odd quirks during the demo that have me worried about the game as a whole: my avatar glitched in and out of cutscenes a few times and everything seems to glow, which can be overwhelming once outside in the wild.

I mentioned combat is fast, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s a play style here for everyone. You can do range with bows and staff spells or stealthy with sneaky daggers or full-on force with swords and such. From the selection of weapons so far, I actually prefer to just go in swinging contrary to my normal stealthy ways. Third-person stealth is always harder to do for me than first-person. The magic spells and Fate Combo Thingies look pretty fantastic, with nice particle effects all around.

By the end of my 45 minutes of free time, I had killed some smugglers, froze a bear to death, found a magical sword, and stole some peasant clothes from a stranger’s house. Y’know…RPG stuff. I liked the demo a lot and can see the potential here, but alas, I won’t be picking it up until I get a new TV, which might never happen. Sorry, citizens of Amalur. Save yourselves.

30 Days of Gaming, #22 – A game sequel which disappointed you

I remember it well, tearing apart the floor of my bedroom closet in search of the original case for PlayStation’s Metal Gear Solid; unfortunately, as a younger fleshling, I was not as good as I am now about being organized and keeping good care of my videogame purchases, and I desperately needed this case. Without it, I could no longer progress. See, on the back of the jewel CD case was a screenshot of Solid Snake communicating with Meryl, giving her codec frequency the limelight. In-game, ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker mentions all of this, and it’s up to you, the gamer, to put it all together. I do believe the Internet was happening back then, but it was much slower to look things up on, and so, without the case to find that special codec signal, all future stealthiness was lost.

Visual proof for y’all:

It was magical, for sure; a wall-breaker, a mind-twist, a clever punch to make the moment truly have a lasting effect, a foreshadowing of what was to come. There’s plenty of other great things in Metal Gear Solid to talk about–Psycho Mantis was impressed by how long I’d been playing Suikoden–but alas, we’ll have to save it for a GAMES I REGRET PARTING WITH posting as I did, for some unknown reason, trade it in. Boo. Anyways, this 30 Days of Gaming topic is about sequels…

There was no such magical moment in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Yup, there were twists and turns and surprises, but nothing really hit the mark as well as the former title did. MGS 2‘s biggest letdown was, naturally, removing the character we all loved playing as and replacing him with…Raiden. Snake handled missions with force and raw determination; Raiden, with his effeminate looks and high-pitched voice, handled them less-enthused with the occasional argument between his girlfriend Rose. Cruelty burns bright knowing that Snake is still around, disguised as a marine and offering advice during the mission. And then, of course, there’s nude Raiden, a sequence that was bewildering and baffling, that more or less summed up the entire MGS 2 experience in that, yes, we’d all been had.

Now, there’s a lot I do like about MGS 2. Namely the first chunk of the game where you get to play as Snake, the boss battle against Vamp, and shooting bad guys with tranquilizer darts and then stuffing them into lockers for non-lethal kills. But overall, it just did not live up to the same thrilling, dramatic experience as in Metal Gear Solid. If anything, it got more zany, and while a little insane humor has always been peppered into the franchise, it was usually deftly balanced with a great story and characters to care about. I never grew to care about Raiden, and I did attempt to throw himself from Big Shell numerous times; it’s unfortunate to see that he’s still an important character in the franchise years later. Doesn’t Rose know anything about smothering lovers in their sleep with pillows?

Other nominees for disappointing sequels include: Jak II, Colony Wars: Vengeance, and Dragon Age II (saying this without haven’t even played more than the demo yet). What game sequel disappointed you, dear Grinding Down readers, the most?

DEMO IMPRESSIONS – Dragon Age II

Sigh. More like Dragon Age II jumps the ogre-shark. Where do I begin?

The demo opens up with a typical RPG choice: who do you want to play as? Dragon Age: Origins offered a solid selection of races (human, dwarf, elf) and classes (warrior, rogue, mage) to pick from. Here, you can either be a male or female warrior/rogue/mage. No more pointy ears or ale-stained beards for you. This is one of the sacrifices BioWare made to streamline the sequel and focus on a tighter narrative.

Anyways, after selecting a female mage, the demo moves into cinematic territory. Varric, a dwarf, is being heatedly questioned by a templar. This woman is trying to hunt down Hawke, the legendary hero of Kirkwall, “the Champion” as she puts it.

Varric is an unreliable narrator, and his retelling of Hawke’s rise to fame is full of embellishing. According to him, Hawke’s story begins with her family fleeing from Lothering, making for Kirkwall. Alas, they are quickly surrounded by Darkspawn, and it’s here that the demo teaches you the basics of combat. The “A” button serves as your primary attack, with the rest of the face buttons designated for assigned abilities, just like in Dragon Age: Origins. Holding the left-trigger brings up a radial menu for more options. However, the most dramatic change has to be combat speed; it’s fast, and when I say fast, I mean Devil May Cry 3 fast. No joke, at one point I thought Hawke was going to knock a Darkspawn into the sky and finish it off with an air combo. So yeah, you fight a couple waves of Darkspawn and feel like you’re playing an entirely different RPG series.

After Hawke rips an ogre apart with her bare hands, Varric is called out for embellishing the story too much. The demo then jumps ahead to a later portion to allow the player to experience combat at a higher level. Here we fight some more Darkspawn and gain new companions. Dialogue is handled via a chat wheel akin to what’s found in the Mass Effect series, and I think it’s a step down. Now it clearly shows when you are being evil or good or sarcastic instead of letting you figure it out for yourself. Let go of my hand, BioWare devs! LET GO!

The demo is more of the same thing over and over again. Fight some Darkspawn, fight some more, talk, fight a boss. The boss ogre at the end killed all my companions fast, and then Hawke fell shortly after. I didn’t bother trying again. In fact, I went and deleted the demo off my Xbox 360, content in knowing that I had seen enough. The changes are too dramatic, and from what I’ve read, party companions are no longer as customizable in terms of armor and weapons. Only Hawke. This is not good. This is basically Dragon Effect II for pigeonholding purposes, and I’m not slamming Mass Effect II here as I know many love it and accept its streamlining as a good thing, but why couldn’t BioWare have the best of both worlds? Y’know, one streamlined sci-fi RPG and one deep, engrossing fantasy RPG for D&D fanatics.

Curse the Maker.

I guess, ultimately, if I want more of what I like about this text-heavy RPG series I’ll have to pick up Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening.

Felicia Day is Tallis, the snarky, Elven assassin

Felicia Day just announced today that she’s starring in a new, six-part webseries based on the Dragon Age video game series, which will come out later this year. She’s playing Tallis, an elven assassin hired by the Qunari to find a rogue mage who is pretty much up to no good. She won’t be tracking down this mage alone either, backed by a varied band of followers. It’s a little hard to tell from press releases and interviews with Day if this is gonna be a serious webseries or something less heavy…or something in-between. I mean, between Alistair and Morrigan, there was actually a lot of snark in Dragon Age: Origins.

I’m not a watcher of The Guild, as World of Warcraft isn’t my thing, but I’ll definitely be looking forward to this. And no, not just because it stars a redhead. I mean, yeah, sure, that’s a big part of it. Like 65% or so. Maybe 70% even. But I do also really enjoy the lore and history of Ferelden, the stories of the Maker and the clash between the numerous races and cultures, and everyone’s thoughts on darkspawn taint and–okay, okay. And the many, many redheads. I love my redheads.