Dragon Age: Inquisition very first impressions

[kalniel]

So the latest Dragon Age game is finally here. Lots of publications' reviews are out so check them out for full reviews but some quick technical impressions:

I'm running at 1920x1080 on an i7 950 OC'd to 3.8Ghz, 12GB RAM and a 2GB 7870 also OC'd + using the very latest AMD beta driver.

Graphically, I'm running a mix of high and ultra settings and gameplay is smooth for the most part, cutscenes are worse and show a fair bit of tearing but run fairly smoothly - turning off vsync was a must for the cutscenes though as when it's on they were very stuttery.

Using the Mantle API was quite a lot worse for me - I suspect VRAM usage goes over the limit, going back to DX11 was an easy choice.

Game-wise, the PC experience is not all that polished - it's a bit of a fight against controls sometimes and not all that well suited to keyboard and mouse. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

After only a couple of hours I've seen plenty of bugs too - characters speaking the male and female versions of lines simultaneously, missing mouse interaction for dialogues, and now it seems I'm going to have to start over as NPCs think my character is the opposite gender to what he actually is.

It's too early to judge the wider gameplay out of combat (which feels basically like DA2) at the moment it's hugely derivative of other games (ESO in particular) and I can see some gothic 3 mechanics down the line, but we'll see.

[Ttaskmaster]

Really?

Dammitt, Bioware...... You've turned into Ubisoft

[Splash]

I had a quick blast this morning (literally created a character and ran to the first big decision) and found that the "right click to interact" thing is a little choosy. A little annoying when trying to loot, a lot annoying when trying to select a ladder to descend/portal to close.

Other than that I'm looking forward to a proper session this evening. Is the beta driver required for Mantle? I only have DX11 as an option.

As a hardware comparison I'm running an i7-2700K, 32Gb RAM and a 3Gb HD7970 (all at stock) - not seen any performance issues, but I've left everything at recommended setting.

[kalniel]

Really?

Dammitt, Bioware...... You've turned into Ubisoft

It's not anything like Ubisoft in my experience. It's kind of as I expect for a cutting edge RPG which hasn't gone through a terribly long polish cycle (for PC at least).

I had a quick blast this morning (literally created a character and ran to the first big decision) and found that the "right click to interact" thing is a little choosy. A little annoying when trying to loot, a lot annoying when trying to select a ladder to descend/portal to close.

Using a button press (F by default) is a little better than right click.. but those things you need to keep interacting with above head height are very annoying. I pause before every interaction with them.

Other than that I'm looking forward to a proper session this evening. Is the beta driver required for Mantle? I only have DX11 as an option.

Yes.

As a hardware comparison I'm running an i7-2700K, 32Gb RAM and a 3Gb HD7970 (all at stock) - not seen any performance issues, but I've left everything at recommended setting.

I couldn't really tell what the default was - it said 'automatic' and changes I was making to individual settings weren't sticking.

[Splash]

Hmm... first demon battle and I found the keypress as a method to interact with the thing that I was supposed to interact with (sorry for vagueness, trying to avoid spoilers!) to be just a hit and miss. Seems much more reliable for looting and the like, but I struggled with the camera angle a little too much.

I'll persist, as I love the story (plus I spent nigh on £30 on it...) but it's an annoyance that I felt should be reported.

[kalniel]

And to assuage those worried about bugs - I started a new game and see none of the bugs that I saw the first time around - don't know if the first game happened to start before a patch or it was just bugged for some other reason. Lots of small things fixed now.

[Ttaskmaster]

It's not anything like Ubisoft in my experience.

Sounds very much like Assassin's Creed (III or IV, I can't remember which), where I had to 'un-optimise' my game settings in order to make it behave, because the game was "broken". Might even have been this site I got the advice. Controls were/are also kinda spongy... Typical Ubi release, based on my recent experiences with them.

Patched version sounds a bit more promising, though...

[Butcher]

Not had many bugs myself (about 20 hours into first playthrough), just the losing mouse dialogue interaction thing from time to time.

Running it on recommended which appears to be pretty much "ultra" and gameplay is smooth, cutscenes are stuttery; seems to be some weirdness with the way the cutscene playback works. i7-4790K, 8 GB RAM and GTX 970. I've noticed GPU load drops a lot during cutscenes, so it seems like the game is throttling itself for some reason.

[kalniel]

I think there's a 30fps cap in cutscenes.

If you lose mouse interaction in dialogues, try right clicking first then continuing - seems to sometimes bring it back for me.

I've had a few graphics driver crashes, and some very tidy dumping to desktop which hasn't been too much of an annoyance as there tends to be quite a lot of auto-saving.

Suppose I should mention something about the gameplay by now?

Well starting with character creation - this is handled in the fairly typical elderscroll clone manner of starting off the intro and then at a suitable point you get to create the character. Background/race/class -wise there's nothing like the range that Origins had, but it's an improvement on DA2. You have the simple choice between human, elf, dwarf and quanari. Male/female. And Warrier, Rogue or Mage (with some variation of fighting styles for the former - just setting up your first character points pretty much). While Origin's big thing was just how different the choices where in terms of story, in Inquisition the story/interaction elements are very subtle - at least they do reflect the choice (no comedy 'all mages must be killed!' - while talking to my obviously mage character, as seen in DA2), but there's not going to be much incentive from a story point of view to replay as a different class/race.

In terms of the combat the classes all form the typical roles and play out much more like DA2 than DA1 - there is no healing magic any more, healing now being performed by a limited supply of potions that get reset any time you visit a camp - it's a mechanism that strikes quite a good balance between allowing you to go all out in combat yet also remain wary of long trips between camp visits.. but it makes little sense in game lore and I miss the traditional potions/inventory management.

Compared to Origins, the class roles are very much restricted - no more interesting cross class combinations like heavy armour wearing mages.

Physically creating your hero is good fun though - the face generator is easy to use and gives a huge variety of viable faces to play with - the skin effects in particular are better than in any previous DA game. Sadly hair is the real let down, ranging in visual effect from lego figure to play-doh spaghetti. If you want a 'realistic' looking character there's only one option - go bald.

[Butcher]

I've heard of the 30 fops cap, but it doesn't feel like a solid 30 fps, more like the framerate is bouncing up and down.

Yes the hair is bad. Also turn down makeup and lip shine or your character will look like a clown.

[quentium]

Yes the hair is bad. Also turn down makeup and lip shine or your character will look like a clown.

I hope you're not saying there's something wrong with my dwarven clown

[Ravens Nest]

Im enjoying it, found it a little repetitive in places but overall its an enjoyable game.

Playing with an xbox 360 controller and also tried it with my PS4 controller it works very well like that, i think mouse and keyboard has took a back seat on this game.

I have an i7 920 6gb DDR2 1066mhz ram, R9 280 2GB ram, 2TB HDD, windows 7 64bit.

i also use gamefire to reduce resources used by windows.

I run it all ultra except no Antialiasing at all, vsync off and in "windows fullscreen" mode its runs well.

Mantle is very painful at the moment so sticking with DirectX 11 for now.

Also read that turning origin off helps with performance (Ive not tried it yet)

[Ravens Nest]

Just tried turning origin off in game, it has helped