Mood: Dragon Age Hell

So.

I initially wanted to do a sort of comparison post between Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2, you know, really get into the whole how rushing a game affects more than the pacing the story, but really? That's not going to happen. 

As I've posted before, the Dragon Age series is a series close to my heart (so close to it that if I breathe in wrong, I will suddenly be stabbed with FEELINGS) that I don't think I will ever stop finding reasons to love it. Or hate it. At this point, it's a rather well-mixed concoction of "I F*CKING LOVE YOU" and "I F*CKING HATE YOU." It's just one of those games that I'm so emotionally invested (also known as emotionally compromised) in that I'm more than happy to have people ask me "should I play Dragon Age?" and respond with a rather enthusiastic YES.

Behold all the chaos and glory

Now, I've finished my world-state in Origins and have pretty much finished Dragon Age 2, uploaded everything in the Keep, and have started on Inquisition. It took me an entire morning to figure out how and why my saves weren't loading into the keep, and once I figured it out, had to wait for it to sync properly together, and then double check if all my major choices were correct. I think we can already tell that my life has hit Dragon Age Hell long ago and I have no plans on leaving.

It has a great mix of things-that-I-look-for-in-RPGs: expansive lore that spans over the sequels/next generation, an immersive cast of NPCs, companions that makes you feel regardless if you love them or hate them, race-related answers and questions, choices made in previous games affecting certain situations in the next game, fun character customisation, different battle tactics that makes your team a killing machine, and story-telling that introduces you to an entirely new world.

And as much as I love this game, I can say that it has it's faults. Screwing up previously stated lore in the next game, linearity and repetition of the maps (I'm looking at you, Dragon Age 2), rushed story telling (side-eyes Act 3 of Dragon Age 2), inconsistent characterisations, introducing a great cast of characters and the overemphasise of only a handful, bad handling of races and lore, and glitches THAT WERE NEVER FIXED. My life will never be happy until that Zevran glitch in Dragon Age 2 is fixed HELLO ITS 2015 THE GAME CAME OUT IN 2011.

I still love them though.

Now, getting to Inquisition, it's a definite huge leap from how Origins and DA2 are configured. New battle tactics, an open world, and a storyline to tie up everything that has spanned the previous games. Unfortunately, this isn't the sort of game to get into if you have zero knowledge on the lore of Dragon Age. Though there are codex entries to get you updated on everything (which we all know not everyone reads), and the occasional fanatic, it's still rather difficult to get a good feel of the Templar VS Mages and Elves-being-treated-as-second-class-citizens issues that has prevailed since Origins. And I shit you not, there are things that you cannot jump into blindly. It's a freaking headache.

IRON BULL SMASH

The new battle tactics also tends to screw me other, since I'm used to pausing the game, shifting between characters, and then continuing the battle. Maybe it's because I'm using a console to play this game, so control is all that more condensed as opposed to PC play. I don't think I've yet to fully utilise this yet, but it's definitely a learning process. 

tl;dr: 80+ hours into Inquisition and I've literally only finished Here Lies the Abyss, pretty much in Dragon Age Hell, and my Inquisitor has a resting bitch face and it's the best thing ever.

My life is siphoned pretty much into Dragon Age Hell and Boy Idol Hell