3) Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

Originally conceived as the follow-up to Origins, the team sought to correct many of the perceived wrongs of both the franchise and of Bioware as a whole. Where the team felt that their games had been getting smaller, Inquisition sets out to have huge, sprawling open areas. And where Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 3 saw a minimization of player choice and agency, Inquisition uses choice as one of its primary tent poles for the experience. The team set out to create a game that could generate between 20 and 200 hours of gameplay, and whew boy, did they succeed.

I've had a bit of an odd personal history with this game. I held off on picking it up when it first released, primarily due to feeling burned by both Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 3. I was also a bit hesitant once they game received critical acclaim and started racking up game of the year awards. The critics had steered me wrong before, so I was cautious. Once I finally did pick up the game, I bounced off of it. HARD. Everything about it just seemed... Off. It probably didn't help that, among the first handful of companions you get is Varric, the Dwarven rogue from the previous title. I don't know why, but having him introduced so early without the context of the previous game just seemed weird. Over the years, I'd try time and again to get into this game, each time with no success.

This time, however, with my self-imposed challenge, I was more determined than ever. And, with a little help from creating just the right character, I found my in. Set not long after the events of the previous game, the story kicks off with mages and Templars, who have been at odds due the actions of a certain downer mage, meeting in one place to discuss peace. Since this is an optimistic yet terrible idea, there is, of course, a giant magical explosion that, among the numerous casualties, kills The Divine, the leader of the Chantry. As luck would have it, there is a sole survivor of this explosion, which is obviously the player. This launches us into the character creator, which allows us to choose our race and gender, adding Qunari to the mix of playable races this go around. After much deliberation, I decided on a Qunari mage, thanks in large part to the ability to have a cop style mustache. This, along with his larger physique and one of the male voice options sounding similar enough to J. K. Simmons, allowed me to fully invest.

It turns out, surviving the explosion through mysterious means left a mark on the player's hand which, coincidentally, allows them to close various rifts that have started to open allowing demons to pour through. This, combined with a blurry vision of the Divine, is all it takes to label us the Herald of Andraste, which pisses off the Chantry quite a bit. This is where character creation pays off, as the world reacts differently depending on your race and even your class. Me, being a Qunari mage, does not go over well, splintering the Chantry that much further.

This is as good a time as any to mention how bizarrely the choices of the previous games have been implemented here. In the previous game, all you did was choose a save file from the original game that you had saved to your system, and the game used that to fill in the blanks. For Inquisition, Bioware launched a website, called Dragon Age Keep, which allows the player to create their own world save state by going through and clicking on all of the various options. The biggest benefit of this is that allows you to easily make whatever choices you want, meaning you don't have to play through over 50 hours of two other games just to start a new save. The downside, as I see it, is that it spoils the shit out of the first two games if you haven't played them, allowing you to see every possible option that they track. It also shows that certain choices matter here, while others, by way of omission, are shown to have no bearing. I can't really say whether or not this is the best solution to a unique problem, but it's certainly not the worst.

The story plays out with you becoming the leader of the titular Inquisition, and your first major choice is whether to side with the mages, who are tired of being oppressed, or the Templars who are resistant to change and fearful of the power mages wield. Whichever side you don't choose falls under the command of Corypheus, a returning antagonist from Dragon Age II's DLC. He's a powerful mage said to have been one of the original magisters who caused the Blights and was locked away for a very long time by the Grey Wardens. Turns out he's alive, he's free, and he's PISSED.

In contrast to the small setting of the previous game, Inquisition sees us travelling far and wide to build up our forces, recruit allies, and find a butt load of collectibles in large open world areas. Exploration is fun, if a little tedious, and combat feels like an extension of the more action oriented approach of its predecessor. I will say that in my playthrough, possibly because I played a mage, combat often felt repetitive and tedious. Having played the other games as a mage and feeling more freedom than when playing a rogue or warrior, this felt odd, but it didn't really hamper the experience.

The story, overall, is pretty good and engaging. I never felt as though characters were making stupid choices without a good reason, and most of the companions you recruit are written well enough that their motivations make sense. There's even a fun twist or two that, while spoiled by my ten year gap between release and finally playing the game, are executed well, and even have substantial foreshadowing. There's a point in the story where Hawke, our character from the last game, comes to offer advice and assistance, mentioning the choices we made previously. While this is incredible and awesome, the fact that they couldn't import the character directly from our save file means we have to go back to the character creation menu, partway through the game, and make a character that looks as close to what we had as we can. The downside here is that, bizarrely, not all of the character creation options from the previous game return. This was awkward as my version of Hawke had a facial tattoo that they seemed to have lost. Oh well, magic. A wizard did it. Moving on.

Among the many choices from previous games, the most satisfying to me was a mission where you team up with a Grey Warden who's gone into seclusion. There are three possible options as to who this Warden is, and to my great joy, my playthrough saw the return of Loghain. It was such an unexpected and wonderful treat (that I have now ruined for anyone reading this), that it brought a genuine smile and warmth to my cold, dead heart. The other options, I feel, would have been less exciting. The fact that this is an option, considering the possible fates that could have befallen him, really has me curious just how many people experienced this outcome. I'm a huge fan of content that's included with the knowledge that the majority of players will never see it, so this moment absolutely won me over.

Speaking of characters, the longer runtime of this game means that we spend a LOT of time with our companions. As such, the writing and acting has some heavy lifting to do, and luckily, they succeed. There are, I would say, two companions that I found to be rather forgettable overall. The rest, however, more than make up for it. Dorian may just be my favorite character in the franchise, if not gaming as a whole. He's wonderfully written and voiced masterfully by Ramon Tikaram. Also of note are Sera, who I feel has the most realistic view of magic I've seen in fiction, Cole by virtue of the concept behind his character alone, and returning character Cullen. Cullen's voice actor, Greg Ellis, deserves praise for his exceptional range as Cullen's struggle with Lyrium withdrawal only works because of how well it's performed. There's also my favorite scene in the game, which is simply the characters kicking back and playing cards, that I think sets a gold standard that every RPG should strive for. It's low stakes, it's silly, but it really shows the camaraderie these characters share in such a deep, personal way.

At the end of the day, I look back on my time with this game, well over 100 hours, with a fondness I didn't expect when I started. The only real problem I have is that the idea of replaying it is daunting. If ever there were a case for Bioware's penchant for having choices in previous games affect a future title, this is it. Having played through the previous titles directly before this one, I can attest to how personal it made the experience. Surely the next installment of the franchise, with over a decade of development time, will only further this concept and see the series continue in a deeply satisfying way.