MadCap's Mad Ranting - "Dragon Age: Inquistion - Preview with Brand New Gameplay"

Okay, so...

I have mixed feelings on all of this. You already all know my thoughts on Dragon Age II - it was the first thing I ever reviewed way back in ye olde 2011. And while my thoughts on that have changed somewhat - I did enjoy having to have a more active role in combat, though combat became very samey and grindy in most areas that all looked very oddly similar, and pretty much anything else I could say that was good about the game now is just damning it with faint praise before the many, many problems it has. None of which even gets into the actual story of the game (why exactly did every mage in Kirkwall seem to turn to blood magic?)

Now, however, EA seems to have learned from the tremendous backlash they received and are setting things right back to how they were...in Origins.  And I should be elated about this. I loved Origins. In fact, I'd almost go so far to say I absolutely love it save for very minor problems that can be very easily batted away (note to self: retro review in the future). And Origins also had a diverse group of character races you could pick from instead of just being stuck as a regular human. II, of course, had you stuck as one of the six different varieties of Hawke and...well, it was just really rather depressing after the comparative variety we were given in Origins.

And on those two points alone, I really should be ecstatic about all this. And yet somehow, my enthusiasm about it is next to non-existent. My own stigmas about trusting trailers aside, I'm cautiously just waiting for the game itself. Maybe I'm a bit too hung up on how II could have been so much better and was done so wrong.  Maybe I've just become more acutely aware of how EA has a poor record with third parts of their intellectual properties.

But hey; the return of the tactical view to micromanage everyone in combat (which you generally won't do because you'll press 'attack' and watch as your characters wail on, shoot, or magically blast enemies until they die), limited environmental destruction, and dragons! And, as anyone who regularly reads my blog will know, dragons are effectively my Kryptonite for better or for worse, so I'm more than likely to break down and give Inquisition a go in spite of the trepidation I feel about it. Who knows? Maybe EA learned its lessons and really have fixed everything.

Maybe...