Where are all the towns?!

Ah the good old days of Baldurs Gate! Certainly whilst there is a good variety of landscape in DAI, from desert through to frozen wastes, grassy plains to forest, coastlands to bog, there was a distinct lack of settlements. This is why if DA4 takes longer because they are going to properly implement Tevinter cities, in particular Minrathous, then I'll stop complaining about the delay.

I must admit to being profoundly disappointed by Val Royeaux. It is meant to be the second biggest city in Thedas after Minrathous and the Grand Cathedral is meant to be one of the architectural marvels of the world that we had been told about since DAO, yet all we saw was a rather bland backwater of a market/meeting place. It was a bit like visiting London and getting no nearer than Hampstead; its all part of Greater London but people go there to see Buckingham Palace, St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster. I think the Devs got the wrong idea when people complained about Kirkwall in DA2. It wasn't that we were in a city but we hardly went anywhere else and in the city itself there were so many instances of the same basic map repeated with us just entering from a different side.

Thinking back to the Baldurs Gate series, that really showed how it should be done. Not only did we have the major city locations, with multiple districts within them, each with its own unique buildings, but we had the smaller settlements as well and then other places like the fair outside of Nashkel or the theatre under the inn in the bridge district of Athkatla that added to the feel of it, not to mention the people. Those places really felt inhabited.

Another thing I liked in Baldurs Gate was the twenty four hour clock with the change from day to night and back again, with increased risk if you are out after dark. We got something approaching this in DA2 by being able to select on the map if you were going there by day or night but then reverted in DAI to being given whatever was appropriate to the current plotline and the rest fixed. Why were the Hissing Wastes in perpetual darkness and the rest of the world perpetual day?

Yup - one of the not-so-good aspects of the game - no towns, no children, no feeling of life, movement, action. I do think making the multiplayer and multiple race options took away from creating more of a world. I personally only play as human or Elf and dont play multiplayer so my preferences for resources are clear....

On the other hand overall - great game

I got over it.

Its literally like the reverse of DA2 were it was to much city DA:I was to much wilderness and not enough city especially since we were in one of if not the most cultural country in Thedas. I hope DA4 can find a balance between the two. So far Origins was the most balanced as far as setting diversity is concerned, Inquisition did provide good diversity in areas in the wild like jungle dessert snow and forrest regions but Origins had wilderness, cities, underground cities, towns, deep roads, ruins and castles not to mention the occasional battefield. Since DA4 is going to be in the north we need to go back to something like that to get a fair idea how everything is. If DA4 can balance out open wilderness areas with cities and towns that feel alive then it would have the best setting in the series.

It's because Bioware interpreted the complaint about 'recycled areas' in DA2 to mean 'let's create a massive expanse of outdoor areas with almost no meaningful content to prove that we can'. Then ignored much of what made the series great in the first place (like towns and cities!).

Sorry, I love Bioware but they really take everything to the extreme. I still am trying to understand what exactly about DAO was broken and thus why they felt they needed to fix it. *shrugs*

I will never understand why this 'open world' fad is so big. In a story  based game, the environments should serve the story and be no larger than is required to do that imo. In DAI, the story is struggling constantly to even exist in the oversized environments, its just backwards to me.

Cynical day for me today it seems...

Personally, I loved the large, open regions. I'm a huge fan of exploration and having enough space to really get a sense of the environment you're in. The last thing I want is to be in an "open" region so small that it feels like I'm exploring a proverbial closet. I want room to breathe!  I've never had an issue with the story conflicting with the size of the regions. Not everything in the world has to directly tie back into the main quest. Regions can (and IMO should) have other hooks for the PC.

Now, that's not to say I don't wish the side quests were more meaningful and fleshed out as well as fewer fetch quests. Essentially, give you more interesting things to do there. There's room to improve there IMO, as well as having some urban areas to explore.

^^^^^

Haha immersed in shrubbery.

---

I don't miss towns I can't go in he buildings of. Lothering let me go into a bar and a Church and the buildings were fugly.

Denerim proper was better. Denerim Town Square was only okay. Still fugly. And the other places you could go into in Denerim made up for it, made it almost feel like a real video game city.

There is a city in Legend of Dragoon that was drawn pretty but couldn't actually be explored that much. But unlike most Bioware cities, one of my companions had a house there were his mother lived and she made us pie and talked about him as a kid. Cliché as that may be, it put that city on a different level. Oh yeah, and where Cloud and Tifa grew up. I remember that town too. Less so where Barret lived, but I remember his dive bar.

Our characters are FROM the countries we quest in but we never get to see where they grew up. I just realized that. Alistair slept in a barn outside of Arl Eamon's estate but we never see it. I guess we did see Morrigan hut, hut she wanted her mother dead so not exactly heart warming.

As much as people supposedly complained? Of Kirkwall being too much city...what it actually was to me was too much alleyway with buildings you couldn't enter. ALL THE SHOPS are in the alleys. Come on.

But my companions actually had a place to sleep at night, so tere is that.

Totally agree, different strokes...

One reason why I'm so strongly in favor of the DAI style, is that they did such a great job with the design of the regions. The sheer variety of (gorgeous) environments, colour palettes, light, sounds, weather, wildlife... I can't think of an RPG that's done it better (other than W3's cities).

But I love my story too. And I think that the time between banter in the wild and time spent away from Skyhold did affect the closeness we had with our companions. But I don't think that's an insurmountable problem. One of things I'm hoping they do in the future is have more moments throughout the game where we bring all (or even larger groups) the companions together (like our Wicked Grace night). It be fantastic if we had a reason to all get together in each region. And that way we could bond as a team on a regular basis.

Back on the topic of cities... now that they don't have to support older consoles, I hope we get a chance to at least dabble in some urban adventures. But ideally I'd also like to see a smaller town and village(s) to see how Tevinter contrasts from urban to rural.

Perhaps, but I think that would only be a problem in game development if you can't split development resources (in other words, you can set your staff to either develop the open world, or the NPC's in the city etc). I don't know that is the case, I think they have plenty of resources in all departments.

I ultimately think the reason is that this is what was intended. I remember Mike Laidlaw in a tweet saying Mark Darrah came to him early on and basically pointed the direction for Dragon Age Inquisition, and said to Mike 'build me a big open world' or something. An obvious reaction to the DA2 backlash. I think it was all just intended to be this way as they were disappointed in the reaction to DA2, so they overcompensated for it. But, who knows?

I DA4, I REALLY want to see a game with a city like Kirkwall, but surrounded by locations like in DA:I, and with story depth like DA:O.

That would be PERFECT!