DAI had a tactical mode where you literally control the flow of combat and could move time at your own speed. On PS4 you would get it by pushing that big giant button in the middle of the controller.
DAI had a tactical mode where you literally control the flow of combat and could move time at your own speed. On PS4 you would get it by pushing that big giant button in the middle of the controller.
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Been watching some streams of it. My impressions are from only a few hours of footage, and only select scenes, but I have to say some of the criticisms seem fairly valid.
One cutscene in particular has pretty awkward dialogue that seems to lack cohesion. Each line feels kind of independent from the next. The animations are also janky, with a fair amount of pop-in. Gameplay looks fun and actually pretty engaging, similar to Mass Effect 3.
I think the official reviews will shed some more light on how the dialogue and story actually hold up for the rest of the game. If it's just that one scene in particular, I don't think there's a reason to worry. But if reviewers are critical of the game because these are issues throughout the entire playthrough, then I'm going to be a lot more worried about it.
EDIT: Seen a few more animations from other scenes. It seems like the animation issues are going to be a constant problem throughout the game. Character don't react properly to what other people are saying. Eye animations seem fairly limited (or nonexistent?), lip animations seem fairly bad too. It seems really disappointing that these are such glaring issues considering they've had 5 years to make this game. Giant Bomb stated something along the lines of that they would 'take all the bad animations in the world if they were more interested in what the character's were actually saying.'
EDIT 2: Check this out to see some of what I mean: https://twitter.com/truongasm/status/842138336764416000
Last edited by Scruffington; 03-16-2017 at 12:39 AM.
Pull my Devil Trigger!
With regard to animation, if I'm being honest, Bioware has always been pretty trout at that. Hell, most triple A devs are terrible at it. Not excusing it of course so hopefully the really bad stuff is the exception rather than the rule.
I watched that video in the guy's review of the bad AI and yeah it was bad but... it was freakin' hilarious! If I'm playing Mass Effect, investigating some derelict spacecraft and I turn round to see my two squad mates jumping up and down on a nearby bed... I'd just laugh! As long as they shoot stuff properly when we're in a fight then I'm good
Reports of bad dialogue and delivery is slightly worrying because I thought it was at a high standard over all three of the original games. If not they can just bring in the cast of The Last of Us to re-record everyone's lines. Hell, just bring in Nolan North and Troy Baker to do everyone.
I'm assuming Bioware are looking at this as another potential trilogy? If that's the case then I'm not even slightly worried. Look how clunky ME1 was? Glitches everywhere, poor mechanics, recycled environments, repetitive gameplay... and I absolutely loved it.
I'm with Psy. It's been on pre-order for a while. Bioware have justified that with their first three games in the series.
Isn't there a (sigh) Day One patch as well? Maybe they'll fix those animation issues?
Patches are very unlikely to fix underlying animations. If there's a bug with it like a characters jaw flapping about so hard it falls off, then sure. But just low quality animations will most likely stick around. The data for things like that is fairly large and it's difficult to get tech to generate what you need automatically to a good standard. I think when you're actually in the game it won't be too much of a concern; this is something that the original ME trilogy, Deus Ex and other games (especially RPGS) have had and for the most part players are able to quickly adjust and tune it out.Originally Posted by Formalhaut
So, ermmm...
I played for a couple of hours and I can't really say I'm feeling it at the moment.
Aside from the uncanny valley dialogue animations (which don't actually bother me that much) and the teenage level dialogue itself as RPS pointed out... the game just handles weirdly.
The cover system feels janky as smurf, sometimes you'll be in a place where you should go into cover but Ryder just stands there like a plank. There's no easy way to switch direction when aiming from cover, and you just sort of glide along the terrain. If you run and gun and jet pack in the air like all the combat footage so far has suggested doing, you just get destroyed in a few seconds. Maybe it's just a symptom of only being level 2, but the combat just honestly hasn't felt all the great at the moment. It seems to lack any sort of feedback, you can unload an entire assault rifle clip into the head of one of the alien dudes and they don't even flinch, just feels like shooting into a bullet sponge.
I'll try it a bit more after work tomorrow, but right now my current experiences haven't converted me from "let's pay €4 for a month of Origin Access to try it" into "okay I'm buying this." If anything I feel like I've saved myself €50 of disappointment at the moment.
(Oh and yeah, the PC menu UI is just the console UI - so even though you have a mouse and keyboard at your disposal, the menus etc aren't optimised to take advantage of it at all... I feel like this is becoming a cardinal sin in PC gaming these days.)
EDIT: I also had to uninstall the software for my mechanical keyboard and mouse just to be able to launch the game as well. :/ It'd just get stuck on a black screen with the software running.
Last edited by Aulayna; 03-16-2017 at 02:39 AM.
Console UI in a PC game? smurf off BioWare. It'd take all of a day for one guy to make a PC optimized menu system and UI.
Yes, but the nature of the combat is extremely important to whether/how well such a system works. In Origins it works great because you have a vast array of possible skills, there are often environmental factors in play, and thanks to a good combination of enemy types who have different abilities themselves, you're encouraged to switch up what you're doing. A fight against an Ogre is very different to a fight against half a dozen bandits, which is very different again from a fight against a couple of mages and whatever demons they've called forth.
DA2 doesn't succeed to the same extent but it still has enough variety in skills and enemies, combined with abilities that are just plain fun to use, that it more-or-less pulls off the same thing. It's a bit weaker, but not devastatingly so, though personally I only very rarely pause combat in that game outside of aiming my spells.
Inquisition's problem is that you have fewer skills, but more importantly, you have vastly fewer combat situations to actually use them in. Fights hinge entirely on the fact enemies have a lot of HP; beyond that there are very few which are actually different from each other. Fighting a mage isn't different from an archer, fighting bandits isn't different from fighting darkspawn, fighting demons isn't different from fighting wildlife. Everything is fought in essentially the same exact way; keep shields/barriers up, wear down health until the thing finally dies. Level 4 in the Hinterlands or level 25 in Descent, it's the same trout throughout. It gets a little better with the modifiers but not by much, not nearly enough. The absence of pausing in combat isn't because the game lacks it, it's that the game doesn't give you a reason to actually need or want to do it. You don't need to give a trout about which spells to use because fights last so long, and spell cooldowns are so long, that you're better off throwing everything at enemies rather than worrying about weaknesses and strengths. You can't worry about positioning because most of the fights take place in areas so large that positioning is not a realistic factor; you either close the gap or hit from range, that's all there is to it. There's no real element of cover, no ability to split large enemy groups up, no spell like Grease that will put a third of your enemies on their ass while you deal with the rest, etc. etc..
I obviously can't speak for Pike but for me, the only thing slowing/pausing combat in Inquisition does is make a long-ass fight take even longer. In the other two you could take on things well above your pay grade if you know what you're doing and use skills and spells and items well. In DAI, you can either beat something or you can't; you'll outdamage them or they'll outdamage you. I can't remember any fights at all which hinged on preparation, planning, or using abilities in clever ways, only a DPS race. (Maybe throwing bee jars to weaken armor.) The only thing you learn is how to judge from the first few seconds of a fight which will prove true. There is no element whatsoever of mastery in the game, no sense of growing power (barring a couple of OP specs like Knight-Enchanter that do mix things up a bit), no sense of mastery either as a character or a player, no fundamental difference in what you're doing or the tools you're doing it with between the first hour you spend with the game and reaching the end of a 100% playthrough.
While I don't disagree that PC requires a platform appropriate UI, it would be a fairly substantial time investment (which they should totally do). I assume Bioware's UI tech is better than ours but ours takes weeks to implement simple stuff! Hence why we don't even have mouse driven menus. Grrrrr
Oh dear, I loathe the lazy bullet sponge artificial difficulty trick that many games pull. If I pull off a sick headshot I want that head to explode, not take off a quarter of the enemy's life. Welp, looks like I'm playing this on Easy or even Narrative 'cause I ain't got the time or motivation for that trout.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that it felt like there was no real need for it though. When I first started playing DAI I used pause a lot because I figured, that's what you do in the first two DAs and in BG and similar games. You pause a lot. Then I realized you don't have to, you can pretty much just hold your button down and coast to victory (with a few exceptions, i.e. the Descent which is why that was a GREAT DLC). It felt really weird to me and took away a lot of what I liked about prior games in the series/genre.
Also a lot of what Mister Adequate says is very true. I LOVED playing mage in the first two games because you would get all these ridiculous spells and every time I leveled up I was super excited to get a new spell. Even at the end of the game I was learning neat new spells that would change my battle tactics.
With DAI, playing a mage throughout the entire game was just keep barrier up, press a button to win. None of the spells you got as the game progressed really felt any different to me. Oh maybe the spell you cast is a different color this time?
I know hardly anyone here agrees with me so I should really just stop talking. And again, it's not like I'm trying to say it was a bad game. But for me personally, it removed so much of what I liked about prior games in the series, as well as the genre of squad-based RPG combat as a whole, that I really, really had a difficult time enjoying it.
(the whole thing might have been salvaged for me if the characters had been engrossing, but I found them to be the weakest in the series overall, so... that didn't help either)
Completely unrelated to the ongoing discussion, but this is my Ryder I made.
She looks a bit like Emily Blunt
Master of the Fork
Cid's Knight
Not surprised about the animation clunks. The bioware games tend to get that bad a lot. Very clunky. Really with their female counterparts, they don't even bother making more female animations and give them the male animations. It gets awkward.
I noticed the facial animation is different than the past games. I think they're going for a style this time idk.
Curious about the combat though. I'll be interested to hear more about it.
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