Emptieness, DA:I, and DA4

everyone likes something different and that's okay as long as you aren't forced to do what others like.
I am a huge fan of story and replayability.
i don't like to create armor and things like that. But as long as i don't have to do it, why shouldn't it be in the game?
I am not a fan of open world, because i haven't seen an open world game which is playable for me. I don't know why.

So the problem I see with DA:

DAO was amazing, best areas and origins for replayabiity.
The different areas make sure that you don't get bored and you feel the love that was put into this game.
Best 3 areas: Cousland estate, redcliff, Lothering.
decisions and consequences ensure that you really have to be careful what you do and the beautyful story won't let you go .

DA2 was for me the hell. I loved the story concept, but it feels like someone has lovelessly thrown the ideas together and roughly linked them with each other. I can't explain it better. (i think the short time was the reason her)
After DAO i feel like i am running in a circle, everythink look the same. the only think i see connected with the area is Sebastian (and he is not really good worked out).
Hawk is the worst Protagonist i ever played, because i can't make him my own. [to few decisions] (my opinon)
if i'm honest, all characters are poorly crafted.
exceptions : Varric, aveline and Hawks uncle (doesn't know his name).
The combat system isn't playbale for me, because my reaction time and motor skills aren't good.
I had to force myself through a let's play for the story and the keep.

So i was really happy when DAI came out and really excited too. At the end it was better than DA2, but not as good as DAO. pretty okay.
Problem I have while playing it through once:
while DA2 has fix the protagonist to tight, he is too loosely in DAI. The questions in the middle of the game about family, what i experienced or how i felt about the circle, were extremely annoying. I don't want to decied the past.
In the hinterlands i have a time were i wanted to stop playing.
For me the hinterlands are 3 areas put together, to have a reason for the horse to be there.
I don't like the horse riding in DAI, so i have to run. annoying. if there had been anything between Mother Giselle and Master Dennet the run would have been shorter and okay. there are only few side quest i like in DAI, because they mean something.
I love the whole story and the war table. "Sit in Judgment" was really tricky, but it felt real.

i use the word empty because i have to run a long way without anything worth stopping for. i love beautyful landscapes, but DAI has none that I would admire.

I know i'm too critical. (the reason why i haven't much games to play)
And i am sorry for the long text, but that's the only way I can explain it.

Yeah I agre I wouldn't as yDAI was empty  either moer tha tthe open worlds was perhaps a little too open. They could have gotten awa ywith either smaller maps or at least fewer of them. Strange to say this I know but for me this is one thing that for me MEA did better than DAI because the maps were smaller and definitely easier t omanage by comparison. In many ways I think Biowaer need to look more at games like Horizon Zero Dawn for designing their open worlds if that's the way they want to go because that game was both manageable and kept interesting all the way through every quest right to the end at least imo. I refer to HZD mainly becaus eof the type of game it is in that the map is big in that it does require a reasonable eamount of exploration but that exploration doesn' t require too much straying off the main path because the story and quests that you find on the main path require you to go to most of the places anyway. There are still one or 2 areas it doesn't take you to but it's up to you  whether you want to go to those places or not but still with HZD most of the map does serve a purpose in one way or another.

You don't have to extend all these olive branches or wrap things so carefully for my benefit. I respect that you want to maintain a civil tone in your threads, but it feels like I'm talking to someone who's terrified that I'm about to either hit them or shoot myself. We're just talking about our own experiences of the games and what we conclude from them, I'm sure everybody is clear on that.

Would you describe yourself as a particularly completionist gamer? I am. When I play a game I want to feel like I'm getting everything I possibly can for my money. In RPGs that means doing every quest that isn't utterly and completely flavorless or goes against the nature of the character I'm playing, provided that the game's writing has earned that level of investment from me. Otherwise I just don't play it.

In DA:O and older games like it that means conveniently going from one activity to the other in a relatively confined space until I've cleared it for worthwhile content - unless I know I'm coming back to clean up later - so that when I finish the game I feel like my character has touched every part of the world and the entire game reflects the overall story I wanted to tell about them as much as possible. Same in DAII.

In DAI, however, following that same process means hours upon hours upon hours of moving through the empty wilds to shuffle between quests that are so much thinner and less interactive, with little if any real writing outside the main story. A completionist playthrough of Inquisition can be twice as long as the other two games combined, and most of it is just walking through empty woods and empty desert to get to symbols on a map where something might actually happen. That's simply a garbage deal in comparison.


Neverwinter Nights is better than Inquisition, no question. Port Llast maybe beats out the Hinterlands, I'd have to play both games through again to call it. You can agree to disagree all you want.



I tend to pay more attention to the presentation than to the specific shapes of the statues. As I said, the area composition, lighting and color and contrast usage and lighting. A lot of theoretically more stylized and grand settings in Inquisition look gaudy and ugly and boring because not enough attention was paid to actually making them pleasant to look at. Whereas every area in Origins has a clear theme and tone and everything is placed very meticulously to make sure they come across no matter where you're looking and what angle you're looking at it from. And I generally just find the watercolor painting style in Origins way more powerful and evocative.

Areas that work for me tend to be the ones where the game breaks away from the open world to do something specific in a specific location instead. The Dragon Nest in the Hinterlands, for example, where the gameplay narrows down to a small valley with a more linear progression - while still having plenty of nooks and crannies and opportunities for treasure hunting. Stepping into that valley from the Hinterlands proper, you can instantly tell that the artists realized that they were actually going to have to tell a story with this area, and made an effort to make it look especially gorgeous and unique to having housed a dragon.

Although they still insisted on putting those weird, way too angular rock formations in there. I've never figured out what those are about. But they sure don't improve the aesthetic.

Well all we ca ndo is hope the ylearned from it I'd  say based on MEA and how that plays they did.

Oh, I'm guessing someone on the dev team saw or visited the Giant's Causeway and told the art team to make assets along those lines, perhaps for the Storm Coast specifically, then they figured they'd make the most of them and use them everywhere. Unless you mean something else?

There certainly are pitfalls to that design, but I'm not playing fair by just using a reference. I am working on a more complete description of the idea and how it might work in an (imaginary) DA4 for a separate topic. I'll be glad to get your response to the full idea then.


Luskan shared some themes with Charwood, but the Captains were a bit more cartoonishly evil for my own taste. We could all use Bioware reaching back into the past for some good inspirations like that.



I just happen to have a sword-and-board Cousland just outside the door to the Tower of Ishal. I'll check other characters and see if I can go just for the experience in more direct parallel.



That was poor wording on my part. The intent was to say that the completionist content (the bottles, the shards, tiles, filling in a certain number of areas, etc.) didn't appeal to me. Further, it didn't appear they were meant to BE done in a normal course of the game for me so I quickly learned just to let it be. Sorry for being sloppy on that. There definitely was completionist content in Inquisition. Thanks again and I'll see you around.

Inquisition is my issue with open world genres in a nutshell. They are unbelievably pretty, but I don't need a giant pretty empty world to play in. In fact, looking at the strengths of BioWARE, in Inquisition and otherwise, it was always missions on rails that worked well for me.

In its simplest form... I believe Dragon Age should have sufficient environment to serve the story that has been created, and all the side-stories.

No more than that, then it won’t feel empty. Story first, then create the environment.

There’s nothing wrong with big open ‘empty’ worlds, but we have so many of those now. Dragon Age is the one game I just want to see story take centre stage, with the environment existing only to serve that (like DAO and DA2).

I actually don't mind traveling through truly empty areas. Racing across an area for a minute or 2 on my trusty mount can give a sense of scale, and drive home the idea that it takes days, possibly weeks to traverse those areas. That can add to immersion.

What's not so much fun is being constantly stopped by respawning hostile wildlife or something equally uninspired. I would have enjoyed the mounts a lot more if they allowed me to pass those unwanted interruptions, but alas - 'twas not to be.

Of course, it would be better yet if followers also had mounts and could continue banter while riding. Mounted combat, being able to run down enemies, that sort of thing could make large maps a lot more interesting.

This was what I loved so much about Horizon Zero Dawn’s environments. There’s really picturesque environments that are largely peaceful, allowing me to take in the environment, scrounge for resources, and listen to the lovely ambient score made for wandering. If you use the right paths, you can walk from Meridian back to Mother’s Embrace without having to kill a single enemy. I think the exploration was served all the better for this. 

     Except there were actually three stories in the Hinterlands, but the fact that so many people didn't really see them says something damning about their implementation. As I saw them they were


1: The Rogue Mage-Templar conflict. This would have been so much better if it would have been tied to the actual Mages in Redcliffe/templars in Therenfal but for whatever reasons that was narratively downplayed.  Both sides wound up just being groups of antagonists with a base and boss battle. If your protagonist could have taken one side or the other (or against BOTH as being violent oppressors which was the only choice in the game) with consequences on which path you could take afterward and other consequences during the game, that could have been a better story I would think. Several of the minor quests that were very loosely tied into that conflict (like the Agrarian Apostate, the two brothers who were a Mage and templar, etc.) could have been more tightly tied to the idea of taking sides instead of finding and looting corpses as well.


2: Aiding the Refugees. I gather the five parts of the Corporal Vale quests here along with the quests that include the fort up in the hills populated with the Andrastaen splinter group and some others. This is basic 'white hat' stuff but could have been improved with some entanglements with the Mage-Templar conflict. How is life different for refugees if the Inquisition helps the Templars vanquish the Mages, for example? How does that change the way power groups (the Chantry, Orlais, Ferelden) see and interact with the Inquisition? We are unlikely to see the same kind of Power mechanic in DA4 that we saw in DA:I. How can Bioware better give visible story and feedback to quest lines like this one?


3: Valamarr and the Red Lyrium Smugglers. This was the second layer story that you just got hints of in the basic areas of the Hinterlands. It's also the clearest "story" of the three with a couple of fatal flaws in implementation. The steps, as I saw it were stamp out the East Road 'bandits', find the abandoned dwarven port, search out and conquer the mercenary fortress, use the key to access Valamarr and stop the Red Lyrium spigot. The biggest problem is that step two is probably harder than three and four combined since they put the one of the more cagey, aggressive dragons over the top of that. It took several playthroughs before I finally tried the Ferelden Frostback and knew anything about the closed port. Add to that the placement of said fort on the opposite side of the map and to a lesser extent how easy it is to stumble on the door to Valamarr. But wait! There's more! Valamarr is an important Companion quest as well that generally only triggers pretty late in the game. This story, in a nutshell, is why proper planning, placement, and opposition is even more critical in an open environment setting than the relatively closed ones of Origins. Bad placement shows up more quickly in testing where there is only one path and everything is closely strung together. 


    That being said, I don't want a complete return to Origins-style organization for several reasons but that's a topic for a different day. In general, there should be plenty of good stories that have little if anything to do with the Dread Wolf both to give the Player more choices and to give narrative relief. Thanks for the thoughts. 

Excellent points. I cannot recall the number of times I have ditched an old save of an unfinished game because, after starting it, I had absolutely no idea where I was, what was going on, or why. Easier to just start over, and when faced with that decision, probably just start something else.

My take from your post is that open-world and story-driven are actually conflicting goals and cannot really coexist harmoniously. This has been said many ways many times, but it crystallized for me this way just now.