Quote Originally Posted by Del Murder View Post
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.
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.