Summary
- The Hissing Wastes are the epitome of Dragon Age: Inquisition's appalling open-world design.
- The camp-building quest in the area is pointless, and the only point of interest requires collecting unnecessary shards to progress.
- At least I'm not alone in finding Inquisition a tough game to get into.
I’m still trudging through 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Age: Inquisition. A few years ago I decided to fill the Dragon Age-shaped hole in my backlog with Origins, and fell in love. With the characters, the combat, the storytelling, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the choices. Then I played Dragon Age 2, which made good use of its few assets and continued the story of the first game impeccably, even taking my original choices into account. Then 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I bounced off Dragon Age: Inquisition. Twice.
Third time lucky, I guess? With 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Age: The Veilguard looming large🦩 on the horizon, I need to plough through this story so I’m well-equipped for the next instalment. It’s just a shame that the gameplay is dire and the narrative is stretched too🎃 thinly between repetitive open world segments that occasionally have style but never substance.
As determined as I am to persevere through this drivel, as buoyed as I was by Mother Gis𒉰elle’s beaut༺iful musical number, I’m struggling. The little snippets of character work and devastating choices the series is known for were already too few and far between. And then I was sent 🍒to the desert.
As open-world areas go, Dragon Age: Inquisition covers every biome. The Hinterlands is widel💧y dismissed as boring because of its green pastures, jutting mountains, and boring quests, but the Storm Coast is much more impressive. There’s a swamp, a castle, a fancy city in Orlais. And then there’s the deseꦍrt.
The Hissing Wastes might be the most boring area of the game (the most boring area of the game so far, I hear you say). They are barren, visually🀅 uninteresting and the only quest the꧃re is to establish a camp to boost your power points when it comes to the war table. Except, is it?
After destroying a couple of Fade Rifts and planting a few banners in the beige sand, I set ⛦up the camp💜. I spent ten minutes clicking ‘A’ and walking between the Requisitions Officer and the table next to them, further boosting those crucial and engaging power points that are needed to progress the story. That’s gaming, baby!
However, there was one interesting crumb mixed in with the unending desert sand: a temple. Notes left by miners long since dead spoke of 𝔉a place of great magical power, a place which may be cursed, or worse. The Elven ruins in the Forbidden Oasis are a mystery waiting to be solved, and to enter you must… pay six shards?
Shards are collectibles dotted around the maps of Dragon Age: Inquisition. They’re usually found in difficult to reach places, marked by staring through skull-shaped Ocularums. They’re dull collectibles like any other – Spider-Man’s pigeons or Batmaཧn’s Riddler trophies. And yet, in this🔥 area where everything points towards the central mystery of the Solasan temple, you are forced to collect these shards in order to progress.
The six to enter the main door was easy enough, I’d picked them up on my journey thus far. Once insi🀅de, three more doors demanded six more shards, each, in order to progress. I did as they bade, and collected nearly every shard in the Hissing Wastes. I fell onto ledges, I magicked bridges across fearsome drops, I tiptoed on ann🐬oying rocky outcrops, but I did it.
My reward? A minor buff and another door, this time requirin🌊g 12 shards. My stock now empty, I worked out that I needed another 48 shards to open every door and fully understand the mysteries of Solasan. Is this engaging gameplay? Or is it a futile attempt to add more conteಞnt into a game that’s already bereft of meaningful mechanics?
I turned to my friends and colleagues at TheGamer. We’ve got plenty of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Age stans writing for the site, so I wanted to be sure that my experience wasn’t unique. Was I playing this wrong, or am I experiencing the same awful game design as everyone else? There 🦹was good news an🔥d bad.
The good news was that I was not alone. The gameplay, pacing, and Hissing Wastes in particular are all universally disliked (although, to varying degrees). I was glad of the news – misery loves company – but I was then told that all of this was entirely optional and functionally pointless. What’s more, a quick Google told me that if I really wanted to solve the mystery of Solasan, I would need anothꦅer 54 shards on top of the 48 I hadn’t yet collected. To what end?
This is wherein lies my issue with Dragon Age: Inquisition. This game is so bloated, so filled with chaff and pointless missions that it’s often difficult to see t🌄he good. Don’t get me wrong, there is good buried deep within here; brilliant quests and that iconic BioWare dialogue. But it’s so hard to tell from the war table which mission will satiate my need for great fantasy roleplaying and which will result in hours of dullery.
The temple of Solasan is a pointless timesink, like so much of ꦦDragon Age: Inquisition. I can only hope that as I play further I grow more attuned to which missions seem vital (or narratively promising) and which seem needless. I can only hope that the narrative takes off and the need for more power, pointless power earned through monotonous side questing, tapers off. And most of all, I can only hope that I need to collect no more bloody shards in order to progress.
You Need To Play Dragon Age: The Veilguard🍷 A🦋s An Elf
There are four races to choose in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but only elves have close personal ties to the underlying ♚story.
