Game Dissection: Dragon Age Inquisition

One thing that I think would be a cool idea is to periodically dissect a game, to learn things about its design. I won't do this all the time, because I don't play games all the time. That said, I think it's a good excersize in critical thinking and game design, so I'm giving a shot.

The point of this dissection is to determine what mechanics comprise the game, then based on that, to discuss what aspects of the game work, or don't work, and as a result what best practices we can glean from them. So, like a Post Mortem, but not of our own work.

Oh, and this topic is about talking above everything that you observe in the game, so if you don't like spoilers, you may want to finish the game to your satisfaction first. Fair warning.

Game: Dragon Age Inquisition
Genre: Western RPG
Platforms: XBox360, XBox One, PC

Core Mechanics:

1. Conversation Choices - This is the primary mechanic of the game, that I found the most noticeable and enjoyable. Conversations create an incomplete information problem, where the player is faced with questions, and must decide on an answer based on their objectives, what other party members would think about it, and their own ideas on a given subject. Making these choices can alter what you do on a given quest, what rewards you get from a quest, can shift a number of party members' loyalties to or from you. There is no randomization involved - if you say something that favors magic when Cassandra is involved, for instance, she will always disapprove by the same amount every time.
2. Hidden Object Detection - There are various objects in the game world that are helpful to the player in some way; it is up to the player to find these objects to gain an edge in their adventure. To assist the player, BioWare added a search function, that radiates a bubble that, when it makes contact with a useful item, makes the item glow for a time and emits an audible ping to inform the player that their avatar is aware of something useful in the game world. There's another mechanic, called "Fadefire", which allows you to find a special class of item modification schematic that is well-hidden in the game world. This is probably the single most prevalent mechanic in the game, as hidden objects also convey the game's backstory, which is necessary to understand the implications of the wider plot.
3. Gathering - As the player plays the game, they will be able to find useful items lying out in the open, or loot helpful items from defeated enemies, or gain useful items from completing quests or events. Gathering enough items either directly improves the player's abilities, allows players to complete other quests, or in conjunction with the Crafting mechanic, create items that fulfill one of those two directives.
4. Crafting - A complement to Gathering. Not only are certain crafted items "keys" to do certain things in the game, other items provide helpful upgrades to your characters to make them better able to overcome challenges.
5. Level Up Gauges - This is a given, due to the genre. As players do certain things (defeat enemies, complete quests, complete certain world events), they gain some points that count towards a max amount. Upon reaching a certain amount of these points, the count resets and a level incremets. The max amount of the gauge grows larger. Different in-game elements are keyed a given gauge's level. In my playthrough of the game, I've found that level tends to be something of a gating mechanic early on, a regulatory mechanic in the "mid" game, but ultimately unimportant in the greater scheme of things.
6. Twitch Reactions - DAI is a Western RPG, and like many Western RPGs it heavily draws influence from other genres, chief among them being action/adventure games. A lot of the 'combat' component of the game involves either firing an ability at the right time, or moving such that you avoid a debilitating ability. The windows for these are typically reasonable, but are consistently tuned towards being 'close' to create suspense. Due to the low emphasis and simplicity of combat, though, twitch reaction to world events is less significant to the player's experience than other mechanics.
7. Rolling a stat - Also a given, due to the genre. When the player makes certain actions - nearly always battle actions, in fact - there is a vast chance of the ability working 'as intended', but there are smaller opportunities of a failure, or a 'critical' result. In DAI, due to the low emphasis on combat, rolling a stat is of nearly no importance to the player, save for exceptionally rare circumstances.

What Does Dragon Age Inquisition do right?

1. The story, and its presentation, are incredible. Of particular note is the "Dawn Will Come" scene after Corypheus' attack, midway through the game. A song sequence, of all things, drills home what has just happened...then turns it around, and leads a most satisfactory, and heroically-started, second half of the game. To me, the "Dawn Will Come" sequence justified the purchase of this game, despite the game's many, and grievous, flaws.
2. The game makes you feel like you're leading the Inquisition. Nearly every aspect of the game is tailored towards selling to the player that they're leading and cultivating a makeshift group of disparate backgrounds into a force to be reckoned with. This is enshrined in actual game mechanics via the "Power" counter, and the "Inquisition Level" that increases as Fade Rifts get sealed and quests get completed, as well as with the War Table, where you become the quest-giver to your subordinates.
3. The game world is lousy with secrets. There's sidequests buried within sidequests, lore entries in unexpected places, deposits of useful vegetables and minerals...if you're an explorer-type gamer like me, this game will scratch an itch, to say the least.

What Does Dragon Age Inquisition do poorly?

1. The combat is a joke. I played through the game on 'standard' difficulty, and found that there was little need for strategy at all, which runs counter to the reason players play RPGs; battles are supposed to be something of a puzzle where as the battle progresses, you 'find' the solution. DAI's combat involves randomly pressing buttons until things fall over. You may occasionally have to press the potion button if something hits your hard enough. The battle mechanics themselves are unclear, and feel as if they are a mere afterthought, which lends itself to the 'press whatever' strategy discussed above.
2. The game is overly drawn-out. Much of the game consists of MMO-style filler (walking long distances to quest objectives, repeatable quests, kill/fetch quests that take a significant amount of time to complete, sheer numbers of quests in general.) This is manifested well in the "You Have to Leave the Hinterlands" meme surrounding the game (Hint: You do have to leave the Hinterlands), but is pervasive in the design of the game. Shortly after reaching the "Dawn Will Come" scene noted above, I stopped playing because this is perhaps 80% of the game, right here.

What Did I Learn from Dragon Age Inquisition?

1. Make your combat system count - One of the core conceits/expectations of RPGs - Eastern or Western - is the combat. Between scenes of deep emotional turmoil, or coming home victorious from sealing that big wound in the sky, stuff is trying to kill you, or you're trying to beat up one dude so he doesn't do that to you. A combat system that can be summed up as 'randomly press buttons' is not how you do this - it fails to engage, and fails to make any sense. What's more, the game would be more 'dense' with good content and enjoyable without this 'Blind Monkey' combat system; the conversation choices alone are more than compelling enough to make the game work.
2. Speaking of, pay attention to your content density - like Skyrim before it, the game world is disconcerting because there's so much expanse where there's nothing to do, but little pockets of lots to do. While as a rule content density should generally not be homogenous across the dimensions of the game world, sharp 'pockets' of activity damage the game experience due to drastically increasing the players' iteration times on a given challenge. Game are at their most effective when iteration times are low for the player.
3. Similarly, more is not better - Another thing that is a good idea to avoid with games, is too much content in a given volume of game world. When a meme saying, "You Have To Leave [Area]" exists, that's a very bad sign, because that wiiticism exists because players are getting stuck in [Area] because they're bogged down with stuff to do. The reason players are bogged down with stuff to do is A) they have expectations of how the game is supposed to flow that are being violated, and B) they have so much stuff to do in spite of those expectations, that they feel compelled to stay in an area they shouldn't be, and eventually lose interest in the game.
4. On that note...find a natural tempo for your game and its story, if applicable - While the game aspect of DAI is horrible due to tempo abuse, the story is excellent, because if you ignore all the distractions - another sign of bad design, when that's valid advice to give - you find a very well-thought, intriguing story because the writers knew to introduce alternating periods of low and high tension, and in times and durations that follow a flow that 'feels right.'

Note: At some point in the future, I intend to add some more mathematical analyses of the trends I've noted, or if my mathematics disprove my trends, to draw attention to the fact and discuss it more in-depth. But enough about me...what are your thoughts on Dragon Age Inquisition?

 

Good read, the last two sections are definitely a good reminders for game developers.

 

I had a similar experience with DA:I. I got bored with it because the quests were boring and uninspired, and there was no strategy involved in the combat.
I was hoping for a game like DA:Origins and instead I got a watered down game made for console gamers.

 

AAA companies streamlining the crap out of everything and inadvertently violating conventions for the genre? What else is new

Button mashing is fun and all, but I definitely agree that it has no place outside of the idle clicker genre.

 

Wait, what? DAI had a combat mechanic system? I thought it was interactive index finger training.

 

If you feel a game is too easy, yet persist on playing on the same difficulty level, I have to feel like the issue is not with the game. Just a thought.

Edit: Just to further clarify this to make it seem less harsh, hopefully.

Claiming a game lacks a need for strategy in combat yet wanting the game to be easy are 2 counter-points. In order for a game to require strategy, it needs to be difficult.
Simply upping the difficulty level will require players to utilise all tools at their disposal, strategy comes naturally in a game with diverse options for combat.

With regards to this game in particular, changing the difficulty does indeed change this drastically.
Personally, I normally play games on the hardest difficulty I can manage, then drop it down if it's too hard, or I just want to finish a story-line. I would have imagined most players wanting a challenge from their games would do the same.

 

You misunderstand; the game's overwhelming ease on 'normal' difficulty is because it lacks strategy. I'm not wanting two different things; I'm drawing an association.

Playing on normal - the recommended difficulty for most players - should produce an appreciable increase in difficulty as the game goes on. In general, the difference between the difficulty settings should be A) the relative offset of difficulty (nerd-speak for, "how tough is it at the start?") and B) the overarching increase of difficulty (nerd-speak for, "how quickly does it get tougher?")

This is actually a metric I'm working on mapping out right now, by timing fights and measuring the party's post-fight HP, and plotting that on a graph as one data series; the other line will represent 'thrown fights', where I intentionally die, to measure how long it takes to defeat the party. The trend should eventually converge, beyond the mapped data-points. The reason is, the game should be weighted such that enemies lose in a fun, engaging way.

Finally, your last statement smacks of collossal arrogance - "The only way to really play is at max difficulty!" All I have to say: No. I ask you to take that attitude elsewhere, it has no place in scholarly discussion of a game.

 

Please note I said "personally", as in, this is how I play some games. I'm absolutely not suggesting it's the way everyone should play games, simply how I choose to, sometimes. It's certainly not intended as an arrogant statement, which if you knew me, would be most un-characteristic of me

As I feel my response may have been misinterpreted, as I feared, I'd like to just say that it was not an attack on you (it wasn't in fact, even directed at you), merely a suggestion of a different point of view, something key to any discussion.

While I understand the point of view that I think you are expressing (that the game should have an appreciable difficulty curve throughout the game), I think there isn't one single way of expressing difficulty in such modes and many games treat it differently.

Dragon Age Inquisition strikes me as very much a game about story, I would expect many people to play it purely for that aspect. I would expect such players to want to play through the game without concern for strategy (at least in any large detail). Note that Biowares' Mass Effect series has it's difficulty arranged in a way such that you can avoid all combat entirely and just play the story sections. I would imagine the decision to make the standard difficulty easier is likely a result of them understanding that their audience enjoys different aspects of the game.

I'd like to also mention that the higher difficulty levels very much require strategy, you have to take into account the elemental alignment of enemies, positioning, skill choice, equipment loadout and much more simply to survive many encounters. I'm not suggesting the game is perfect in this regard, but splitting the difficulties the way they did I feel was a good decision.

I think the way Bioware has structured it's difficulty modes very much respects the kinds of players their games attract, and that lessons could be learnt from identifying the target audience and designing with them in mind.