Dragon Age: Inquisition Catch-All

Download on PS4 is taking forever for some reason it won't download at full speed even after I put in a cable directly to the router.

If I go with rogue I guess I can try both archer and melee.

If I remember correctly going with the templars or mages influences if you meet Dorian or Cole first. Maybe it's harder to get into either of them when you went with the other choice. I guess you will miss out on some defining character stuff either way.

I also remember now that there was a bug that prevented members of the party talking - is that fixed? Or is there a workaround?

Makes me wonder if I should just go with the same party again just to hear the banter this time.

The expansions for DA:I are on sale in the Origin store. Only 33% off, but it's better than full price. However, I'll only be buying one this sale, and maybe one more during the winter sale. Are there any that are essential? Is there an order in which to play them? Are there any that are safe to skip? Am I a filthy skimmer?

Thanks!

Rallick wrote:

The expansions for DA:I are on sale in the Origin store. Only 33% off, but it's better than full price. However, I'll only be buying one this sale, and maybe one more during the winter sale. Are there any that are essential? Is there an order in which to play them? Are there any that are safe to skip? Am I a filthy skimmer?

Thanks!

Each fills out different "parts" of the story. The first gets into the history of the Inquisition and its initial incarnation, which was quite fascinating... but most of that comes in the last 15 minutes of it, the rest is preeeeeeetty skippable to my mind.

The second introduces what I suspect will be the secondary plot hook of the next game, does some dwarven stuff, does some lyrium stuff, and gets reaaaaaaaaaally weird, but it's totally interesting at the same time (and possibly explains just what the hell Leiliana is doing in the Inquisition if you killed her in Origins).

The third is the official "end game". I can't say much without spoilering the hell out of everything, but it's big and it will be important if you're a big story person, but less a lore person.

All three are pretty big from an overall lore perspective, the first less so than the other two, but it still has some interesting nuggets there about how the Inquisition became the Seekers and Templars and what may have gone wrong. The second is more "here's a new fact about the world that you probably weren't expecting, but this may be important soon... or not, hard to say". The third is "holy sh*t, everything you thought you knew just changed, lol".

But, the first's story is... weak. I mean, I get it, they can't all be world changing sh*t, especially in a game that's already about saving the whole damn world, but it feels decidedly low stakes even with the drama of the moment. That said, it also has my favorite moment between Ironbull and Lace, so there's that.

The second's story is also odd, and you don't quite understand what's going on until near the end... but there's a good hook of "look, we need to fix this other thing otherwise fixing the first probably won't matter much".

The third is a literal continuation of the main story. You can't start it until after you've finished the main story, but you also can't go back once you start it. So, if you want to finish the main story first and do the last DLC to get the "final" ending to the story of Inquisition, make sure you retain your save files from before you start it so you can do the other DLC later.

I just opened up Origin to check for a sale.

Rallick wrote:

The expansions for DA:I are on sale in the Origin store. Only 33% off, but it's better than full price. However, I'll only be buying one this sale, and maybe one more during the winter sale. Are there any that are essential? Is there an order in which to play them? Are there any that are safe to skip? Am I a filthy skimmer?

Thanks!

The Game of the Year edition is 63% off so it's only $15.00 and has everything. Why not just buy that? That's my plan.

You can move your regular save over to the Game of the Year edition correct?

Rallick wrote:

The expansions for DA:I are on sale in the Origin store. Only 33% off, but it's better than full price. However, I'll only be buying one this sale, and maybe one more during the winter sale. Are there any that are essential? Is there an order in which to play them? Are there any that are safe to skip? Am I a filthy skimmer?

Thanks!

I didn't play the deep roads one, but of the two I played, Jaws of Hakkon is the better one, while Trespasser (I know I'm drunk because fitting the s:es in their correct places was super hard) is the essential one.

Does that make sense?

To elaborate, Jaws of Hakkon engages the core gameplay loops of exploration and combat pretty darn well. It's basically another optional -- super pretty -- area for you to tool around in with your chums.

Trespasser on the other hand is the actual end, but it is basically a community theatre execution of something that should be great.

No, that is unfair to community theatres. Drama is drama, and even if the tools are low rent, it can still be effective. Trespasser is the cliff's notes version; it gives you a bunch of character fan-service (and I won't pretend I'm not a complete sucker for those moments) and then rushes from plot point to plot point to set up the next game without taking the care to build dramatic highs and lows, in the most conveniently contained environments possible.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I just opened up Origin to check for a sale.

Rallick wrote:

The expansions for DA:I are on sale in the Origin store. Only 33% off, but it's better than full price. However, I'll only be buying one this sale, and maybe one more during the winter sale. Are there any that are essential? Is there an order in which to play them? Are there any that are safe to skip? Am I a filthy skimmer?

Thanks!

The Game of the Year edition is 63% off so it's only $15.00 and has everything. Why not just buy that? That's my plan.

You can move your regular save over to the Game of the Year edition correct?

That will teach me to buy the digital deluxe edition at launch. Thanks, this will be the one that goes into my basked. It's ludicrous that it's cheaper to buy a new version of the game for the price of 1.5 DLCs... You'd think they would at least let you buy the DLC for the same price. Oh well.

Rallick wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I just opened up Origin to check for a sale.

Rallick wrote:

The expansions for DA:I are on sale in the Origin store. Only 33% off, but it's better than full price. However, I'll only be buying one this sale, and maybe one more during the winter sale. Are there any that are essential? Is there an order in which to play them? Are there any that are safe to skip? Am I a filthy skimmer?

Thanks!

The Game of the Year edition is 63% off so it's only $15.00 and has everything. Why not just buy that? That's my plan.

You can move your regular save over to the Game of the Year edition correct?

That will teach me to buy the digital deluxe edition at launch. Thanks, this will be the one that goes into my basked. It's ludicrous that it's cheaper to buy a new version of the game for the price of 1.5 DLCs... You'd think they would at least let you buy the DLC for the same price. Oh well.

Well, don't feel too bad. I did the same damn thing. I went ahead and bought the Game of the Year one. It's separate in my library for now, but we'll see if they consolidate at some point. I doubt there will be any issues using old saves given that it's mostly just a bunch of extra DLC download codes they give you with the Game of the Year version. Your Origin library may retain both titles which is fine.

The GotY version is just downloading to the same folder where I had the Deluxe version installed. Just make sure you select the same drive where you had the Deluxe version you installed, and it won't re-download the whole game.

Rallick wrote:

That will teach me to buy the digital deluxe edition at launch. Thanks, this will be the one that goes into my basked. It's ludicrous that it's cheaper to buy a new version of the game for the price of 1.5 DLCs... You'd think they would at least let you buy the DLC for the same price. Oh well.

Typical EA. Was just complaining about the same thing in the video game deals thread with their pricing on SW:Battlefront. Was cheaper to buy game + season pass than to buy the bundle with all season pass. They did it the other way there.

Not sure why math is so hard.

Dammit. I installed Dragon Age Inquisition to my HDD because I didn't want to deal with shuffling things around on one of my SSDs. The load times are just unbearable, though. So, I figured I'd move TW3 off since I'm pretty much done with that. Did that and stuck Dragon Age Inquisition on the SSD. Now I can't trigger Origin to "download" DA I and figure out that it's moved because there isn't double the space needed on the SSD since the files are already there. You can do this if you have enough space. It just starts trying to download and then just realizes all the files are there. Unfortunately, I can't make it past the space check. So, now I have to shuffle my Battlefield 1 installation off, do the DA Inquisition thing and then shuffle BF1 back on. Bleh.

Edit: It's super easy to do things like this with GOG because they have a scan drive for games feature that figures all of this stuff out automatically.

Edit: That worked. All-in-all, it took about 15-20 minutes. I suppose it's worth it not to have to wait a minute at a loading screen.

Do any of the DLCs offer any game play changes ? While I loved the DAI characters and the story was decent I found the combat too simplistic and lacking tactical control. I'm a big DAO fan so for me it felt like the streamlined the combat/skill trees side way too much.

Sadly no. The DLC offers some of the best areas/stories though, imo.

Well... Jaws of Hakkon includes a slew of new items and a few new crafting materials, as well as a new Inquisitor ability: Focused (successful abilities increase the focus of all party members) and Aegis of the Rift (a shield bubble that blocks projectiles, and can also reflect damage).

However, by the time you're high enough level to make it through Jaws of Hakkon, you don't have much time left to make good use of the abilities.

Trespasser also includes an Inquisitor ability, which is integral to Trespasser's story. Of course you can't use that new ability after Trespasser, because there's no going back when you finish it.

Neither of the abilities had much impact on combat for me, but the Anchor ability in Trespasser is fun.

Trespasser also includes a slew of new difficulty modifiers/game modifiers. Stuff like earning XP slower, enemies always scaling up to your level, more elites, tougher elites... bears always being bosses, weird sh*t like that thrown in for fun.

Demosthenes wrote:

Trespasser also includes a slew of new difficulty modifiers/game modifiers. Stuff like earning XP slower, enemies always scaling up to your level, more elites, tougher elites... bears always being bosses, weird sh*t like that thrown in for fun.

Ah yeah, forgot to mention that! That was something that really reinvigorated the early/mid game for me on several characters. Leveling more slowly means you get to do more stuff at a level-appropriate time, and throwing the occasional elite into the wandering enemy mix really keeps you on your toes. There are so many mid-level zones it's impossible to hit them all without being ridiculously overpowered for the end game.

Leveling more SLOWLY? Criminey, one of the least appealing things about this game is how slowly you level.

Depends on how you play. Completionists can easily outlevel the main story line. (Hence the common advice to "get the hell out of the Hinterlands")

I must have really played it wrong. I cleared every area as I unlocked it, and I was barely within the level range for each story segment as it became available. The glacial leveling and seeming requirement to do everything in every area really put me off the game.

Maybe you missed some side quests? Some of them trigger in very out-of-the-way locations. I remember one in the Hinterlands that starts if you go all the way to the back of a cave and happen to notice a non-obvious item on the ground. There are a lot of side quests you get only if you happen to run across them while exploring.

Hey Gwjers.
Bought DA:I, and it won't load from Origin. Tried repair. Tried the awful Origin support.
From the Origin window I hit launch, get a black screen with a cursor, then fails.
Anyone had this issue ?
Loath to re-install....
ta muchly ^^

Couple of things to try (in order of amount of effort required/likelihood of fixing the problem):

Try running the game in windowed mode. Hit Alt-Enter when the BioWare logo appears. Unfortunately, if it is black screening right away, this might not work.

Delete the directory Documents/BioWare/Dragon Age Inquisition - it's possible that the installer put some default preferences that don't work for you. Try running the game after deleting that directory, and it may create a new preferences file that will work for you.

Update video drivers.

This one is a reach, but if nothing else works, and you're on Windows 10, try a compatibility mode. Find the main executable (DragonAgeInquisition.exe), right-click and select Properties. Click the Compatibility tab and select a compatibility mode for an earlier version - maybe try Windows 7.

If none of that works, Origin has a refund policy that allows you to return any game within 24 hours of first launching it.

Thanks BadKen. I'd tried most of these except the document deletion.
Was on support calls with EA for four hours yesterday. End result "I don't know !"
They say they are going to advance it up to tech support and let me know. Frustrating.

Well, the Mass Effect: Andromeda debacle has had an interesting side effect. After the reviews and watching some play throughs I couldn't bring myself to buy the latest Mass Effect but I did find myself suddenly hankering for some Bioware RPG goodness. I bounced off Dragon Age because, I now suspect, my least favourite things in the earlier Dragon Ages were the Chantry and fighting Demons which were front and centre at the start of the game.

I wanted to have another go at getting back into the game (partly because I'd bought all the DLC and it was annoying me that I hadn't even touched it.) The new Mass Effect gave me that extra little nudge and now I'm in the meat of the game and building lots of interesting relationships all my problems with the early areas have gone. I could rush to finish the main mission but I want to keep exploring, crafting and killing dragons.

I smiled to myself when I recently unlocked the trophy entitled 'Pathfinder.'

Higgledy wrote:

Well, the Mass Effect: Andromeda debacle has had an interesting side effect. After the reviews and watching some play throughs I couldn't bring myself to buy the latest Mass Effect but I did find myself suddenly hankering for some Bioware RPG goodness. I bounced off Dragon Age because, I now suspect, my least favourite things in the earlier Dragon Ages were the Chantry and fighting Demons which were front and centre at the start of the game.

I wanted to have another go at getting back into the game (partly because I'd bought all the DLC and it was annoying me that I hadn't even touched it.) The new Mass Effect gave me that extra little nudge and now I'm in the meat of the game and building lots of interesting relationships all my problems with the early areas have gone. I could rush to finish the main mission but I want to keep exploring, crafting and killing dragons.

I smiled to myself when I recently unlocked the trophy entitled 'Pathfinder.'

I'm really tempted to come back - Corypheus and the Archon are equally dull but the companions in Dragon Age are terrific.

I finally played this during the first few months of the year.

I agree with not being as interested in the antagonist as in the characters and I liked my inquisitor as well (assassin rogue).

I was selective in the amount of side quests I did, mostly enough to advance.

Overall I had a good time. I had played Origins and II but didn't bother setting up a "world state" to import in Inquisition.

I went on to play the Tresspasser DLC only since it continues the story.

I'm looking forward to another game in this world. Hopefully it won't have the rough start of Andromeda whenever it shows up!

I paused my second playthrough right before the final mission to start ME:A, will definitely try and get back to it over the summer. I did not do nearly as many sidequests this time, which has me a bit underleveled, or I would have tried to tackle the DLC already.

Finished the game and all the DLC. I loved the themes that were coming in at the end of the game far more than the demon and chantry stuff. I have high hopes for the next game. I was even enjoying the combat by the end with all my parties abilities triggering in a colourful conflagration.

About Tresspasser:

Spoiler:

I was so impressed by Trespasser. It felt like something new and exciting with lots of spectacle and fun, tough fights. A high point was Iron Bull's betrayal. I didn't see that coming at all. Amazing. I tried to describe it to a friend but I don't think I got across the full impact of the story:

"In the game you have a group of fighters who come with you. I had a dwarf with a crossbow called Varric, a mage with a moustache and a big muscly man with horns called Iron Bull. He's a Qunari. I played through nearly the entire game with them. After the main game ended there was another story in which my party was chasing down some other evil Qunari who were using elven mirrors to travel around and plant bombs in strategic places. I chased then through lots of mirrors and finally confronted their leader, a Qunari woman. She set her guards on us then looked at Iron Bull and said, "Now is the time." He then turned to me and said, "Change of plan. Nothing personal," and attacked me. We had to kill him. I then chased the Qunari leader through lots more mirrors until she was finally turned to stone by an elf."

My friend was suitably unimpressed.

Did your friend ask you, "Higgledy, are you off your medications again?"

I think she thought it was par for the course. I must learn not to try explain game plots to none gaming people.

Bull's reaction can actually change depending on circumstances there. I actually only found out about that option through a voice file compilation on YouTube (Party Banter)... and even just hearing it floored me. I can't imagine it happening in game for me.

That last conversation with Solas though... that still blows my mind months later. Can't wait for Dragon Age: (Whatever 4 is called).