Dragon Age: Inquisition - Far Cry Syndrome vs. World-building
At this point, to the open world realm stricken with Far Cry syndrome, enter BioWare and Dragon Age: Inquisition. What do you do for a sequel to a game that is hated for repetitive maps and lack of depth? Going open world seemed like an evident choice, but in case of BioWare, people were worried. Other than a lot of fans hastily believing that its parent company Electronic Arts is ruining their favorite game developer for no reason whatsoever, BioWare was never known for making a huge world. A counterpoint to the massive world-making of Bethesda Game Studios, BioWare’s best moments had come from closed quarters and character development. Going open world meant going directly against what BioWare has been for years. They were definitely not experienced with a big world like this, and the last time they did it, it ended up in a barren and extremely repetitive planet landings of the first Mass Effect – which I personally deem as BioWare’s worst so far. All of this meant they had to benchmark from somewhere, and just like others, they would be affected by Ubisoft games, one way or another.
- A game with two identities
Unlike Shadow of Mordor which successfully tied side quests into a main quest, Inquisition is sharply divided into two. Fortunately, in the whole context, everything kind of makes sense. The world is going down, you (and your institution) are the only thing that stands between people and the end of the world, and you do things to take things under control and save the world. But you achieve this goal a little differently in your side quests compared to the main quest. In the main narrative, you save the world by killing the main villain, and to kill that villain, you have to make allies. In the side quests, however, the goal is to stabilize each area of the game, and you do repetitive activities to achieve this goal. These quests give you power points, which is necessary to move forward with the main quest, but that is just one of the two things that connects the two part of the game together. Like many players pointed out, it is easy to get tired of collecting power points.
A big, big world - Prone to be disconnected from the core of the game.
However, keep in mind that the game is divided into two parts: The side quests are surprisingly well connected between each other, culminating on its own apart from the main quest. Though the attempt at developing a narrative in each area is much more low-key and in a passive manner compared to previous BioWare games, each area has its own share of problems, sometimes partly crossing its ways with the main quest. Other than the collectible quests like astariums and shards, you know what you are doing with each quests, and the more you finish these quests, the game sends less enemies (or other types of enemies) to you, making sure what you are doing is helping the area. Even the collectible quests are generally in the way of doing other quests, making them not as difficult as some other games do.
Moreover, the game does not scale enemies all the way to your level. While this makes end-game overly easy and repetitive on one hand, leveling up, fighting these high-level enemies, and fulfilling the power fantasy acts as a stimulant for the players at least until around 50 to 60 hours into the game. This aspect also makes side activities lead to one conclusion: Dragon hunting. Even early in the game you can see the glimpse of their power in Storm Coast, and their presence makes you feel that you and others are not safe with them flying around. Once you defeat dragons, you get a proof of your skill and power as a player, and the region is finally free of all perils. Dragons act as an ultimate purpose of all the enemy-killing and rift-closing, preventing early burnout.
- A story and world that you care
But all of this, in the end, depends on one thing. You kill dragons, close rifts, occupy keeps, and finish myriads of quests, to save the world. For all of these to be meaningful, the world itself needs to be worth saving. It is where FC3 and many others falter as well – You do not devote your time and effort to save a playground. But writers of BioWare make it absolutely sure that you are attached to the world in the game all the time, and this is where Inquisition truly differs from many other contemporary open world games.
Thedas – an acronym for THE Dragon Age Settings – started as yet another copy of Tolkien and R. R. Martin back in Origins, but then Awakening, DA2 and Inquisition kept shaking up what fans of Origins knew about Thedas. What we have by now is actually not a fantasy world of its own but a caricature of a contemporary real world in the guise of fantasy tropes. Racial issues based on religious concern, legitimacy of a mainstream religion that resembles a lot of Christianity, a mysterious rival religion-race-country threating the known world, rivaling countries with strong Cockney accent on one hand and French accent on the other – Sound familiar? Without over-reading anything, a huge portion of Thedas is instantly relatable to real world concerns.
Recurring and new casts alike, your party members and advisors pose various concerns surrounding Thedas. And when the world is so relatable to the real world, their concerns are quickly connected to concerns you are facing on a daily basis. Therefore, whenever you make a choice about something, you are not just going ahead with the narrative, but are actually saying something you think about the world you live in. Will you discriminate mages just because they have the possibility of turning into demons? Is it possible to justify selling a quarry full of red lyrium to Red Templars to save the dying village? Is it worthwhile to stop taking lyrium altogether, risking one to step down from a very important position? What is more important for a religion, tradition or innovation? With Dragon Age series, BioWare has never given us a clear answer to these questions, making us ponder what the right thing is.
These questions feel real because, of course, the characters feel real. While Inquisition seem to have fewer cutscenes and dialogues than BioWare’s games from last generation, all 12 main casts are evenly developed to feel like a real person. With the world so big and relatable, all characters cover different aspects about the world you live in, and their characteristics, actions, and concerns feel real and all-rounded. The secret weapon here is a party banter. It existed before, but with bigger maps and more time in the game world, there are more banter to hear. Every time you go out with your party members, time to time they will talk to each other, and these develop what you have gathered from individual dialogue back in Skyhold. They react to recent events and each other in their own way, and while they do not lead to something crucial to the main game, they just give more insight to what kind of persons you are saving the world with. This makes you want to stop and listen when these digital characters are talking to each other. In a videogame, you do not always do that. Frankly, I rarely do that. I never did that with audio files in Bioshock Infinite, for one thing.
This also gives an idea on the world you are saving as well. Your party members talk about a lot of things, and what they tell you is that Thedas is not a doom-and-gloom apocalypse world that modern audiences come to expect. In contrast to games like Sunset Overdrive or Saints Row 4 which subvert and parody such world, Inquisition just depicts a different version of an apocalypse by introducing plot elements that have nothing to do with apocalypse. Paying respect to a dead wife’s grave instead of her husband, letting a father reunite with his estranged son, taking a sneak peek into ever-so-sulky Cassandra’s romantic side, chuckling at Leliana’s fetish of boots completely intact from Origins, risking a duel to death to win a love of a woman – The game draws a colorful and diverse world, and then tells you, “this is why you want to save this world”.
Friends that shall not be forgotten.
This whole caring angle is where Inquisition distances itself from Far Cry syndrome. Rather than just giving you a digital playground to play with, Inquisition establishes a connection between the player and the digital world and gives players reasons to care about it. When you do something in Inquisition, you are not doing it just for the sake of proceeding with the game, but for things that exist in the game. This is something that few contemporary open world games achieve, maybe with the exception of Fallout games and Batman: Arkham City. Only an ambitious writing and a huge focus on storytelling can achieve it, and Inquisition hits the spot on that one.
- An open world game that lasts until (and beyond) the end
Inquisition’s main quest does not always avoid the Far Cry syndrome. The final boss battle, for one thing, is an inferior experience to late-game battles with dragons. The quality of cutscenes, especially in PC version, is also inferior to Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 3. It could be because of the ram capacity cap in 360/PS3, or Frostbite engine’s immature cutscene editing tool, but either way, I cannot deny that the main quest itself is less polished compared to last-gen BioWare games.
Still, the main quest do right things to keep the game going until the very end. The set pieces are great to watch, and the characters still remain strong maybe except for the main villain. Many times, the main quest gives you new locales, gameplay elements and challenges to deal with, and the big choices are exclusive unlike BioWare’s previous games that almost always offered the ‘best’ option. Giving players a new challenge that is drastically different from side quests is another highlight of Inquisition’s main quest, especially in Winter Palace where the game suddenly takes a turn from a fantasy adventure into an espionage thriller in the vein of Telltale adventure games. When the side activities can get boring, players can proceed with the main quest for the change of tempo.
In the end, with the somewhat unsatisfying climax and the massive attachment to the world of Thedas, players are left wanting even after 100 hours of gaming. Thedas in Inquisition is fundamentally different from tropical island of Far Cry 3 or exotic locales of Assassin’s Creed series, in that it is not a digital playground, but a virtual world to emotionally engage in. Therefore, while FC3 needed a new, somewhat self-reflective playground in the name of Blood Dragon, Inquisition needs an extension to the existing world instead. It is a world that lasts even after the endgame, and the players are left wanting not just more fun, but more of the world itself.
Gaming In the World We Care
Far Cry syndrome and Dragon Age: Inquisition signify one thing: Even though many developers try to make an open world games, few are building the world that players can attach themselves to. Many gamers jeer at the self-serious tone of contemporary open world games, and that made them court the comedic angle of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Saints Row 4, and Sunset Overdrive as an antithesis.But deeper issues are at works. The serious tone does not befit many open world games because players feel nothing about the world and characters that the protagonist of the game should protect. To make players care about that, a visual and aural fidelity is not enough. A good storytelling is necessary in building a world, and it can be achieved only by a good writing and its effective exposition. In that sense, the real antithesis to self-serious and inconsistent open world games is Dragon Age: Inquisition. When the game puts us in the world we care about, the game does not last until the fun wears out, but as long as you are engaged in the world – even after the game ends.
At this point, to the open world realm stricken with Far Cry syndrome, enter BioWare and Dragon Age: Inquisition. What do you do for a sequel to a game that is hated for repetitive maps and lack of depth? Going open world seemed like an evident choice, but in case of BioWare, people were worried. Other than a lot of fans hastily believing that its parent company Electronic Arts is ruining their favorite game developer for no reason whatsoever, BioWare was never known for making a huge world. A counterpoint to the massive world-making of Bethesda Game Studios, BioWare’s best moments had come from closed quarters and character development. Going open world meant going directly against what BioWare has been for years. They were definitely not experienced with a big world like this, and the last time they did it, it ended up in a barren and extremely repetitive planet landings of the first Mass Effect – which I personally deem as BioWare’s worst so far. All of this meant they had to benchmark from somewhere, and just like others, they would be affected by Ubisoft games, one way or another.
- A game with two identities
Unlike Shadow of Mordor which successfully tied side quests into a main quest, Inquisition is sharply divided into two. Fortunately, in the whole context, everything kind of makes sense. The world is going down, you (and your institution) are the only thing that stands between people and the end of the world, and you do things to take things under control and save the world. But you achieve this goal a little differently in your side quests compared to the main quest. In the main narrative, you save the world by killing the main villain, and to kill that villain, you have to make allies. In the side quests, however, the goal is to stabilize each area of the game, and you do repetitive activities to achieve this goal. These quests give you power points, which is necessary to move forward with the main quest, but that is just one of the two things that connects the two part of the game together. Like many players pointed out, it is easy to get tired of collecting power points.
A big, big world - Prone to be disconnected from the core of the game.
However, keep in mind that the game is divided into two parts: The side quests are surprisingly well connected between each other, culminating on its own apart from the main quest. Though the attempt at developing a narrative in each area is much more low-key and in a passive manner compared to previous BioWare games, each area has its own share of problems, sometimes partly crossing its ways with the main quest. Other than the collectible quests like astariums and shards, you know what you are doing with each quests, and the more you finish these quests, the game sends less enemies (or other types of enemies) to you, making sure what you are doing is helping the area. Even the collectible quests are generally in the way of doing other quests, making them not as difficult as some other games do.
Moreover, the game does not scale enemies all the way to your level. While this makes end-game overly easy and repetitive on one hand, leveling up, fighting these high-level enemies, and fulfilling the power fantasy acts as a stimulant for the players at least until around 50 to 60 hours into the game. This aspect also makes side activities lead to one conclusion: Dragon hunting. Even early in the game you can see the glimpse of their power in Storm Coast, and their presence makes you feel that you and others are not safe with them flying around. Once you defeat dragons, you get a proof of your skill and power as a player, and the region is finally free of all perils. Dragons act as an ultimate purpose of all the enemy-killing and rift-closing, preventing early burnout.
- A story and world that you care
But all of this, in the end, depends on one thing. You kill dragons, close rifts, occupy keeps, and finish myriads of quests, to save the world. For all of these to be meaningful, the world itself needs to be worth saving. It is where FC3 and many others falter as well – You do not devote your time and effort to save a playground. But writers of BioWare make it absolutely sure that you are attached to the world in the game all the time, and this is where Inquisition truly differs from many other contemporary open world games.
Thedas – an acronym for THE Dragon Age Settings – started as yet another copy of Tolkien and R. R. Martin back in Origins, but then Awakening, DA2 and Inquisition kept shaking up what fans of Origins knew about Thedas. What we have by now is actually not a fantasy world of its own but a caricature of a contemporary real world in the guise of fantasy tropes. Racial issues based on religious concern, legitimacy of a mainstream religion that resembles a lot of Christianity, a mysterious rival religion-race-country threating the known world, rivaling countries with strong Cockney accent on one hand and French accent on the other – Sound familiar? Without over-reading anything, a huge portion of Thedas is instantly relatable to real world concerns.
Recurring and new casts alike, your party members and advisors pose various concerns surrounding Thedas. And when the world is so relatable to the real world, their concerns are quickly connected to concerns you are facing on a daily basis. Therefore, whenever you make a choice about something, you are not just going ahead with the narrative, but are actually saying something you think about the world you live in. Will you discriminate mages just because they have the possibility of turning into demons? Is it possible to justify selling a quarry full of red lyrium to Red Templars to save the dying village? Is it worthwhile to stop taking lyrium altogether, risking one to step down from a very important position? What is more important for a religion, tradition or innovation? With Dragon Age series, BioWare has never given us a clear answer to these questions, making us ponder what the right thing is.
These questions feel real because, of course, the characters feel real. While Inquisition seem to have fewer cutscenes and dialogues than BioWare’s games from last generation, all 12 main casts are evenly developed to feel like a real person. With the world so big and relatable, all characters cover different aspects about the world you live in, and their characteristics, actions, and concerns feel real and all-rounded. The secret weapon here is a party banter. It existed before, but with bigger maps and more time in the game world, there are more banter to hear. Every time you go out with your party members, time to time they will talk to each other, and these develop what you have gathered from individual dialogue back in Skyhold. They react to recent events and each other in their own way, and while they do not lead to something crucial to the main game, they just give more insight to what kind of persons you are saving the world with. This makes you want to stop and listen when these digital characters are talking to each other. In a videogame, you do not always do that. Frankly, I rarely do that. I never did that with audio files in Bioshock Infinite, for one thing.
This also gives an idea on the world you are saving as well. Your party members talk about a lot of things, and what they tell you is that Thedas is not a doom-and-gloom apocalypse world that modern audiences come to expect. In contrast to games like Sunset Overdrive or Saints Row 4 which subvert and parody such world, Inquisition just depicts a different version of an apocalypse by introducing plot elements that have nothing to do with apocalypse. Paying respect to a dead wife’s grave instead of her husband, letting a father reunite with his estranged son, taking a sneak peek into ever-so-sulky Cassandra’s romantic side, chuckling at Leliana’s fetish of boots completely intact from Origins, risking a duel to death to win a love of a woman – The game draws a colorful and diverse world, and then tells you, “this is why you want to save this world”.
Friends that shall not be forgotten.
This whole caring angle is where Inquisition distances itself from Far Cry syndrome. Rather than just giving you a digital playground to play with, Inquisition establishes a connection between the player and the digital world and gives players reasons to care about it. When you do something in Inquisition, you are not doing it just for the sake of proceeding with the game, but for things that exist in the game. This is something that few contemporary open world games achieve, maybe with the exception of Fallout games and Batman: Arkham City. Only an ambitious writing and a huge focus on storytelling can achieve it, and Inquisition hits the spot on that one.
- An open world game that lasts until (and beyond) the end
Inquisition’s main quest does not always avoid the Far Cry syndrome. The final boss battle, for one thing, is an inferior experience to late-game battles with dragons. The quality of cutscenes, especially in PC version, is also inferior to Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 3. It could be because of the ram capacity cap in 360/PS3, or Frostbite engine’s immature cutscene editing tool, but either way, I cannot deny that the main quest itself is less polished compared to last-gen BioWare games.
Still, the main quest do right things to keep the game going until the very end. The set pieces are great to watch, and the characters still remain strong maybe except for the main villain. Many times, the main quest gives you new locales, gameplay elements and challenges to deal with, and the big choices are exclusive unlike BioWare’s previous games that almost always offered the ‘best’ option. Giving players a new challenge that is drastically different from side quests is another highlight of Inquisition’s main quest, especially in Winter Palace where the game suddenly takes a turn from a fantasy adventure into an espionage thriller in the vein of Telltale adventure games. When the side activities can get boring, players can proceed with the main quest for the change of tempo.
In the end, with the somewhat unsatisfying climax and the massive attachment to the world of Thedas, players are left wanting even after 100 hours of gaming. Thedas in Inquisition is fundamentally different from tropical island of Far Cry 3 or exotic locales of Assassin’s Creed series, in that it is not a digital playground, but a virtual world to emotionally engage in. Therefore, while FC3 needed a new, somewhat self-reflective playground in the name of Blood Dragon, Inquisition needs an extension to the existing world instead. It is a world that lasts even after the endgame, and the players are left wanting not just more fun, but more of the world itself.
Gaming In the World We Care
Far Cry syndrome and Dragon Age: Inquisition signify one thing: Even though many developers try to make an open world games, few are building the world that players can attach themselves to. Many gamers jeer at the self-serious tone of contemporary open world games, and that made them court the comedic angle of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Saints Row 4, and Sunset Overdrive as an antithesis.But deeper issues are at works. The serious tone does not befit many open world games because players feel nothing about the world and characters that the protagonist of the game should protect. To make players care about that, a visual and aural fidelity is not enough. A good storytelling is necessary in building a world, and it can be achieved only by a good writing and its effective exposition. In that sense, the real antithesis to self-serious and inconsistent open world games is Dragon Age: Inquisition. When the game puts us in the world we care about, the game does not last until the fun wears out, but as long as you are engaged in the world – even after the game ends.
