GB Feature: Dragon Age: Inquisition + Jaws of Hakkon DLC Review
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It took us longer than anticipated to crank out a review of BioWare's Dragon Age: Inquisition, so we sweetened the deal a bit by combining it with our critique for the first major set of DLC, Jaws of Hakkon. Here's a little something to whet your appetite from the six-page piece:
Speaking of consequences, the way Dragon Age: Inquisition handles choices is interesting. Almost every big story mission ends with a choice of some sort, and some of them are enormous in scope. It's possible to single-handedly replace the political leadership in Orlais, for example, but the choice falls flat because the player isn't offered valid reasons to care about Orlais. True, some of the zones in the game are part of Orlais, but the change in leadership is unlikely to affect the lives of the people there directly. In Dragon Age: Origins the ending slides made sense because they involved people and communities you had interacted with frequently during the game.
Dragon Age: Inquisition does that too at times, and that's when it works. Being asked to decide the fate of an old character works because there's history and weight behind the interaction, but also feels manipulative, because it takes into account the player rather than the character that is played. Which is why ultimately the game's best choices always involve the characters met while adventuring. Some of these choices are naturally implemented in quests (the companion quests are a highlight because of their story content and all end on a satisfying note), other play out as "Judgments", where the Inquisitor can get to decide the fate of a captured character.
