One of the things that I have learned about myself is that I have to be in the right mood at the right time in order to get engaged with a game. This has caused a bunch of problems in the past when I felt like I needed to play something, but for whatever reason kept bouncing from it. I think it is almost like I take this as a challenge, especially if I don’t fully understand why I bounced in the first place. For example I have spent so much time trying to like Guild Wars 2 and Warframe, because on paper they are games that I should like. However thus far no matter how many times I keep trying them, I fail to grasp the thing that my friends who are into them are so engaged with.
I wrote about this the other day in a post called Changing Perspective, as I chronicled my feelings about the Dragon Age series. Currently I show that I have 101 hours played in Steam, but originally I was attempting to play the game through Origin where I show 125 hours and I also own it on PlayStation where I attempted to play for an unknown amount of time. I kept thinking that maybe it was the platform or the way in which I was playing the game that lead me to struggle with it. The last thing I wanted to admit was that there was a game in the Dragon Age series that I just didn’t like at all. Thankfully I stuck with it and kept trying it every so often, with this fifth attempt at playing through the game seeming to finally be successful.
I can’t tell you with any certainty what is different this time around. However I have reached a point where Dragon Age Inquisition was my least favorite of the Dragon Age series, to where it may just be my favorite now. The game goes through a lot of changes and I’ve learned to love characters that I was absolutely diametrically opposed to going into the game. Cassandra for example I viewed as the enemy of the second game, but over time I have reached a point where I think she is absolutely one of the better written characters. Similarly my first time encountering Dorian I was annoyed by him, but now I have come to love his braggadocio.
I’m at a point in the story where I am effectively two quests away from the end of the game. As a result I am going back and wrapping up content that I had not had time to do yet. Yesterday I played through the entire Jaws of Hakkon DLC and then last night I started the Deep roads based one called The Descent. Once I wrap that up it will ultimately be time to face down the big baddy of the game and see the credits roll. I’m doing what I ultimately do every time I reach this point in a game and delaying the inevitable. I have come to love the characters that I am on this journey with and I don’t want it to end. So I will keep finding one more thing to do rather than committing and ultimately closing this chapter in gaming.
Sure I have a stack of games waiting to be played, but for now I am fully engaged with this one and that feels like a special time that I don’t want to end. I am sure I will revisit this game at some point in the future, but that will be then and a different sequence of choices will ultimately lead to a different experience. For now I am trying to savor the last drops of goodness in this experience before I ultimately dive into another. Dragon Age Inquisition is a game that does more for the larger world building of the setting than any of the previous games. The other two games were focused on a very narrow scope and this is more centered around wider themes of existence.
It makes me extremely interested to see where things go from here. I feel like we are going to the Tevinter Imperium, Nevarra and Antiva given that those are settings we have heard so much about in past games but never actually visited. I expect more information to unfurl about the core arc of the which centers around the events of when humans first set foot into the fade thousands of years ago. I mean effectively everything we have done to this point have been dealing with the ramifications of those events. Knowing what I know now… the teaser footage so far makes a lot more sense.
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