Summary
- Dragon Age: Inquisition's open-world design and dull combat are a struggle.
- However, the narrative, lore, and character interactions provide a silver lining.
- Poignant moments like The Dawn Will Come offer emotional depth and give me motivation to continue playing.
I’m struggling through 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Age: Inquisition. Again. I’m desperate to learn more about the Inquisitor, Solas, and the fate of Thedas before 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Veilguard launches latღer this year, but Inquisition is making it difficult. I bounced off its open-world design a couple of years ago, and I’m already threatening to do the same again.
“Get out of the Hinterlands,” I was told. So I did. I went to the Storm Coast, whꦬich looked beautiful but ultimately had the same open world design philosophy as the Hinterlands. There’s a swamp that feels the same. A desert that feels even worse. The areas are visually distinct, mostly look great (desert notwithstanding), but none play well. Then the cast sang a little song, and I was reminded of why I love this series.
After a particularly infuriating quest in the desert of the Hissing Wastes, I forced myself onwards through the main story. I was slightly underleveled for the Battle of Haven, but I emerged victorious nonetheless. Thankfully, Corypheus’ army decided to approach me in groups of five to ten, so they were very easy to deal with. Firing trebuchets at mou༺ntains to create devastating avalanchesꦛ helped, too.
This section of the game was fine. It wasn’t particularly invigorating, but at least I had clear direction. Much like the exploration, the combat in Drago♊n Age: Inquisition is dull, 🥃and no amount of experimenting with my party composition has helped that yet.
I’m keeping Solas as a permanent party member due to the important role I know he has in the story. However, he’s bugged on the Xbox version of the game (or at least my Xbox version of the game) and therefore does not participate in fights. He just stands there, watching his colleagues flail against the hordes o⛎f evil. Thanks, Solas.
After this slog of a battle in which Haven, a city I didn’t care abo🔯ut, was destroyed by a dragon that might be an Archdemon, I was treated to a snippet of exposition. Corypheus gave me a good ol’ lore dump about his backgroun🍷d, his hatred for the Herald, and tried to take the Mark from our arm. This is the part of Dragon Age: Inquisition I do like, the narrative, lore, and messed-up monster designs. Unfortunately, it’s followed by the worst level of the game yet.
You make your escape from the now-destroyed Haven by trudging through blizzard and snow for what seems like hours. Your movement is lethargic, progress infuriatingly slow. Occasionally you teleport forwards, as 🅰if the game itself understands that it’s presenting you with a pointless task for no good reason. When I finally emerged from the storm, I did not see a goldenꦛ sky but my allies in a makeshift camp.
The camp was tingꦅed with sadness. Many had fallen in the battle. The Inquisition was now faced with a Darkspawn Magister and an Archdemon. Hope seemed lost. Even our protagonist was bereft of positive dialogue choices. Then Mother Giselle started singing.
“Shadows fall and hope has fled
Steel your heart, the dawn will come
The night is long, and the path is dark
Look to the sky, for one day soon
The dawn will come.”
The opening verse is sung by Mother Giselle alone. Leliana joins for the second, then Cullen adds his voice. Before too long, everyone in the camp is singing along. It sounds cheesy, it is chees𒁃y, but it’s beautiful and mov꧟ing. It’s the best of Dragon Age, it’s the best of fantasy RPGs.
I’m waxing lyrical here, but there’s good reason. I, too, was losing hope. I didn’t want to keep trudging through the snow piles of this game. The design philosophies feel outdated even for 201🐼4. It’s slow going, the exploration is tedious and the com𝓀bat simplistic. The only silver linings are the story moments, the excellent writing, and the choices you have to make, for which you’re already seeing the repercussions. This silver lining shone bright in a moment when the gameplay was despairingly bleak.
It helps, of course, that the song is heavily inspired by Pippin’s rendition of Edge of Night in Peter Jackson’s seminal fantasy epic The Return of the King. The first line alone has similar intonation to Billy Boyd’s eerie solo performance. Boyd’s beautiful, haunting voice floats over a montage of Faramir’s suicidal charge on the Orcs of Osgiliath and his father’s careless demolition of a plate of tomatoes, the best addition Peter Jackson made to Tolkien’🥀s work, despite the character assassinations of both men involved.
As such, a group of fantasy protagonists bloodied by battle taking a moment to sing about hope and home will always hit me hard. The Dawn Will Come was a little cheesy, but it was exactly what I needed to persevere with this game, coming at exactly the right time. It was followed by plenty more narrative and lore☂-driven conversations with your well-written allies, which is where Inquisition shines brightest. In this moment, I remembered why I fell in love with Dragon Age as far back as Origins.
I never expected to be writing this sentence, but I hope Dragon Age: Inquisition gives🌞 me 🅰more musical numbers as the story progresses. As it stands, they’re the best things about the game so far.
