For those who liked and didn't like MEA, do you think DAI was better?

It's certainly not the worst part of Inquisition, just one of the things I've disliked about it. 

I've started Descent this morning, so, yes, trying to give it another shot. And, of course, all the things I do not like about the game surfaced right away. But, yeah, trying to put a cork in ranting, as plenty of people live it for what it is.

Many things look different in retrospect because we get a different perspective.

When DAI came out it was almost the first open world game I played and I thought Bioware did a pretty good job. For a while I thought maybe DAI was the best in the series. I never wanted to go back to linear corridor games.

Then shortly afterwards I played Skyrim for the first time five years too late, W3 and Fallout NV followed, and good grief does Bioware's attempt at open world SUCK in comparison!
What a difference this makes in how I received DAI and how I looked at MEA in terms of their map and quest design.

And I also replayed DA2 and appreciated it more than ever. It's now my favorite in the series. It's an amazing game for a rush job with the best story and best protagonist by far in the franchise in my book.

DAI is still a good game but its flaws have become more obvious because I have seen what the competition can do. DAI's gameplay becomes worse and worse in retrospect the more other RPGs I play. Both older and newer.

It's all subjective of course and dependant what matters to the individual. My love for the trilogy is as strong as ever. Even more so after MEA. These games may look dated now but at least ME2 and ME3's gameplay are still solid and fun. Was playing the MP on and off until last year. And the narrative remains amazing even with the ending.

Perspective works both ways. Some things gain new appreciation, others look worse in comparison.
Imo both DAI and MEA will continue to look worse and worse in terms of open world and quest design against the competition.
If they figure out how to drastically revamp their approach to open world and make it actually fun and beneficial to their narrative, I'll file DAI and MEA away as an unfortunate trial and error phase. If this is the best they can do, however, please ditch the open world ambition asap.

What's wrong with repeatable Requisition quests?

As for the general point, I'd personally like it fine if Bio really did conclude that they're not very good at OW and should stop. I've got other devs for that, and I'm not a huge fan of the style anyway. Having said that, I think you're right that it's full steam ahead with Anthem

The server ate my response so I might be a little more short this time.



If you discount Shadow of Mordor and Alien: Isolation, I don't see how you can even include Assassin's Creed: Black Flag for its only good point was the sailing the rest of the game was the same problematic formulaic content they have always released. I don't own Nintendo consoles anymore so I don't have experience with those games, but I find Nintendo gets a lot of free passes for making stupid mistakes. Using your logic for Shadow of Mordor I would also think Tomb Raider doesn't count either since they have Rise of the Tomb Raider, for plenty of people wanted to see how Lara grew from the first game.
Gone Home is a strange one, for plenty of people got really upset that it was nominated for GTOY awards, so I think if it would have won it definitely would have gotten the same treatment as Inquisition of "not a lot of good games that year".



At the end no matter what you try and say about "test of time" still doesn't address my original point of that there are not a lot of games each year that are GOTY contenders so Inquisition didn't have an easy time.