#also anders

YIKES, WHAT A QUESTION! Must I only choose one?!

Man, this is tough! Okay, fine...

Here it comes.

Wait for it.

Dragon Age 2.

~runs screaming into the hills, trying to escape the mob after her soul with torches and pitchforks~

Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy 

I never finished the main story of Inquisition and have to get up early for work, so here’s my super vague trash answer:

1. Art style, aesthetic, and UI designs of DAII and Inquisition.

   I’m really not a fan of the art direction of DAII and Inquisition. I think the use of exclusively sharp edges, stone-grays and silvers, and overworld sheen wash out the character of the universe. A more specific example is the UI of II, which, to me, was more akin to something like a Scifi game UI with its focus on monotones and solid shapes. I get that DAII was supposed to feel more confined, prison-like, and artificial, but I was ALWAYS aware that I was playing a game. Maybe the occasional bright colors - purple or green icons, for example - were trying to catch the wealth and class of Hightown, but I thought the execution just left me feel like I was running around a shiny, edgy barbie-dream-house for the entire game. 

2. Gamestyle

 Speaking of the entirety of DAII and Inquisition, they honestly felt more like fulfilling a giant grocery list than playing something immersive and interesting. This is for different reasons between the two games - I want to be cautious about sounding like an Origins purist - but maybe it was the combination of the UI, rushed primary plotline, and solid-block writing of the codex entries that left things feeling unfinished and insubstantial. This probably comes down to a larger point - one that Inquisition had improved upon - that the visuals of DAII didn’t feel appropriate. In a game where you’re being shown this binary between high-class and low-class, indifferent minimalism in design isn’t helpful. 

3. Release!! The!!! Racial binaries!!!

 Little did I know, the Qunari were hornless in DAO simply because of resource restrictions. The truth was, aside from the unfortunate face shaping that many people took issue with in the elves, I loved the idea that the different races still looked fairly similar to each other. You didn’t have to be purple-with-different-appendages or have entirely different proportions in order for racism to be a huge problem. It was just more realistic and convincing the way it was done - intentionally or not - in Origins (I recognize that I come from a place of privilege suggesting this, so please tell me if I’m taking any ideas for granted here!).

4. edgelord of the sith

 I really love the Sauron model used by the darkspawn in Origins. Having some otherwise ethereal Big Bad allows you to put greater detail and focus into the human elements of the game. I’d rather have the blank canvas of “nameless entity” and really well developed characters, towns, environments, and lore, than have a single interesting villain threatening to destroy things for goals x or y. So far, the former allows for a lot more interesting plot development simply because of resource management. I know I still need to finish Inquisition and should probably shut up about it, but I could not get remotely invested in the problems involving Corypheus, not just because I felt like it was the poorly-executed recycling of an expansion-based antagonist which was the poorly-executed recycling of the Architect, but because there wasn’t enough interesting (or intimidating) about him! But that leads into the last bullet-point…

5. Make me care!!! 

  If I had been more invested in Kirkwall, the people of Kirkwall, the people you’re exposed to Inquisition, and so on and so forth, I probably would have cared a lot more about defeating Corypheus. I know that some people would rather have a well-developed antagonist than a well-develop thing-that-is-threatened-by-the-antagonist, but I can’t help but feel like whichever route they tried to take in Inquisition was unsuccessful. Again, as a pompous asshole who knows nothing about game design, it probably just sounds really stupid of me to make it sound like game design is built on tropes and binaries. But I do want to try to acknowledge and respect that resources like time and money in game design are limited. I guess what I mean is, whatever DAII and Inquisition set out to do as games, they never accomplished for me. They just didn’t seem like successful games because whatever was done always seemed incomplete or poorly executed. 

This coming from a recent graduate who is still trying to finish a unity tutorial. 

Thank you for asking though!! Sorry it was such a wankfest.

tldr; this is mostly complaints and very little constructive criticism, gomen