Sten began to address me as Kadan (a sign of respect) and even began smiling when I talked to him, which up to that point I thought was physiologically impossible for a Qunari. He was no longer the standoffish and hostile brute I met back in Lothering…well okay he was, but not to me. When I helped Sten find his lost sword in Dragon Age: Origins, it had a lasting impact on his character throughout the story.
Nor did any of the character’s side quests ever come to affect the ending or even the characters themselves. It was a thing that might as well never have existed. Though with a beard that magnificent, I can forgive him his nonchalance at the news of the Darkspawns defeat.Īnd speaking of character approval, I never once saw a character’s approval rating come into play. It didn’t even affect my approval rating with Blackwall, and he was the one guy I thought would be pleased with my destroying a darkspawn army. For instance my siding with Celene didn’t affect Orlesian support, nor did my destroying the Darkspawn army in anyway weaken Corypheus, and any troops I lost to fighting the darkspawn didn’t affect my army’s performance when I finally attacked Corpyheus’s army in the Arbor wilds. Unfortunately this feeling is completely undermined by the fact that the story doesn’t affect, nor is it affected, by anything else happening in the game. It’s a fine story in and of itself, and it really makes you feel like larger things are happening all around you. After all, I didn’t want to deplete my own army when Corypheus might appear with his own at any time. Still any little bit would help, or so I thought. I thought this would help limit the Inquisition’s casualties in battle, though I was conscious of the fact that since Empress Celene’s treacherous cousin had held the loyalty of Orlais’s Chevaliers, I might not be getting their best troops. Fortunately I had just saved Empress Celene’s life and secured Orlesian support for the Inquisition and thanks to Josephine’s skillful diplomacy I was able to call upon my new Orlesian allies to aid me. When Darkspawn appeared in southern Orlais I felt dread, for surely this was a sign that Corypheus was somehow summoning these creatures to aid him. Not only did it make me feel like I was really running a kingdom, but it allowed the game to tell me stories that impacted the entire world of Thedas rather than just the isolated corner my character was inhabiting. They all take place in their own isolated little corners of the main story, sometimes being peripherally mentioned but never really impacting anything.įor instance, at first glance, I felt the new War Table was a wonderful new method of storytelling. Yet very few of those stories actually interact with any of the others. Dragon Age: Inquisition has some remarkably good stories and some of the best characters I’ve encountered since Mass Effect 2. Dragon Age: Origins remains one of my favorite RPGs because of how well all the stories meshed together, regardless of which origin story you chose or which choices you made along the way. Interactive storytelling is hard, I get that, but that’s also why it’s so amazing when it comes together beautifully. Every Story is Isolated Don’t let the other people fool you. It avoids all of the horrendous mistakes made by Mass Effect 3, but at the same time we get such a pitiful and anticlimactic ending that it renders all the awesome stuff we experienced along the way seem less special. It’s not even really a bad ending, it’s just so…underwhelming.
Inquisition’s ending didn’t throw out the established rules, lore and setting of all the other Dragon Ages, or end with a stupid closing soliloquy from an omnipotent god caught in a feedback loop of stupid. And why that halfhearted ending makes an otherwise remarkable game…less than the sum of its parts.įirst of all I should say that I was exaggerating when I said this was a worse ending than Mass Effect 3. So let me take a moment, now that I’ve calmed down, to reiterate the reasons I think Dragon Age: Inquisition failed in its ending.
By contrast, when I wrote my critique of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s ending, it was a stream of consciousness straight from my raging, bitterly disappointed mind onto the vast wastes of the internet. When I wrote my breakdown of Mass Effect 3’s ending debacle, I took several days to properly organize my thoughts and make sure everything I was saying made sense.
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