I am planning to write a series of posts on Dragon Age Inquisition, a game I played for over 130 hours. I like the game, but that doesn’t mean I am impressed by the story(telling). The game is an enigma to me as it has good things and bad things, both in abundance.
Probably the most remarkable thing about the game is the mediocre story(telling). And when I write that, I have to give proof of such. And so I give you my first piece of evidence: the worst moment in the game, with an explanation why I consider the following the worst moment in Dragon Age Inquisition.
Flemeth in Dragon Age I.
In Dragon Age Origins(DA I), the first game, the hero is asked by Morrigan(that is the darkhaired woman in this movie clip) to kill her mother Flemeth(the older lady in the movieclip). Morrigan explains that Flemeth is an evil witch who rears children to use their bodies to perpetuate her own life. In other words, she is a truly evil being. It is never hinted at in DA I that Morrigan has it wrong and in fact the game goes as far as suggesting that Morrigan wants to do the same as her mother, which seems to be the reason why she asks you to kill Flemeth and then help her get her pregnant. In fact, if you do not help her in becoming pregnant she leaves your party. Which was basically a disaster to me as at that time I played the game on nightmare level and it was centered around my three magic users party. In other words I was forced in the game to support a dubious and potential evil being to retain her assistance. And I consider this a good piece of writing because it forced me to make a moral choice. If I had done the right thing I probably should have denied her request, thus losing a magic user.
When the hero in DA I confronts Flemeth with Morrigan’s accusations the hero has but two options. Either attack Flemeth or leave her be.There is no way to check that Morrigan is lying or has it wrong. You either attack Flemeth or not. It is up to you. In my opinion the writers at that point never considered Flemeth to be anything more than an part of the background of Morrigan and the choices you made had nothing to do with Flemeth, but with Morrigan and gave the hero an boss battle in the bargain as Flemeth turns into a dragon.
Flemeth in Dragon Age II
In Dragon Age II Flemeth appears at the start of the game for a brief span to rescue the hero, named Hawke, from the Darkspawn, explaining that she survived the killing in the first DA through some magical means. After that Flemeth has no role in the game except that she asks Hawke to do her a favor in return for saving Hawke’s life. However, considering how Flemeth turns out in DA II, even in the brief moments she appears, it might well be that the writers thought of making more of her. One can’t deny she has a certain interesting quality.
Flemeth in Dragon Age III
In Dragon Age Inquisition(DA III) Flemeth appears only in the below scene and her role is totally at odds to the first DA for now she seems to be the embodiment of the good Elven god of justice Mythal.
This sudden change of events makes no sense at all. It is never hinted at in DA I or II. It is not even hinted at in DA III until this scene gets inserted and it doesn’t follow from what is told before nor does it fit in the story line nor does it fit with the character of Flemeth. It is just too much awkward writing to tie up loose ends from the previous games and turn Flemeth from an evil witch who kills children into some kind of good celestial being and for all purposes even an Elven god.
Flemeth is also talking about justice and we have no clue what she is on about. We get some mystical claptrap to make all her confusing lines interesting and we end with a total nonsensical series of delivered lines.
(Note: This review is about the Early Access version and not about the full release. I have not had the opportunity to replay the full release game. )
Welcome to my review of the game Dead State, which is about to hit the market on the Fourth of December, according to their press release. I have to excuse myself for making a rather long post, but I have to because I initially made a review based on wrong assumptions and now, after playing, this game for about 70+ hours I feel that I can make a better judgement of the game.
First an introduction:
You are in restaurant. The waiter asks what you would like to eat and offers you the opportunity to select the ingredients yourself. In fact, you are invited to visit the kitchen and point out what you would like to have, to tell how much of it you think is sufficient and to describe how you like it to be prepared. After doing so you return to your table to await what must be a memorable eating experience. Some time later the waiter enters the room holding aloft three plates. He walks over to you, puts one plate in front of you and then tosses the ingredients of the other two on top of the first plate and then shuffles the heap of food. He leaves Then wishing you a most enjoyable meal.
This then, is the condition of Dead State at the end of early access: full of things that would make for a memorable gaming experience, but the overall result is a mess.
But first let’s get you an idea about what kind of game this is.
Dead State is an isometric role play game set in the zombie apocalypse where you take charge of a group of survivors holed up in a school in Texas. The game has two parts: one part is managing your group of survivors, the other part is heading a party of up to four characters to scavenge for supplies, do quests and deal with the various enemies.
Those who are familiar with fallout 1 and fallout 2 should be at home with the mechanics of this game.The game has two map modes that each come with a different way of movement. There is a strategic map that you use to travel from one location to another in which time progress as you move. This movement can be done in three ways: on foot, on horseback or with a car. Each mode has advantages and disadvantages: foot is slow, but cost nothing; travelling on horseback gets you there faster, but requires food for the horses and the car is the fastest of them all, but costs fuel; a resource that is scarce.
The strategic map…early game(left) and late game(right)
The other map is the local map. Local map movement occurs on a tactical map and is real time until combat is imminent. In combat mode you move turn based. As far as I can tell there is no progression of time on the local map.
Local map movement: real time(big picture) and turn based in combat mode(insert)
During combat mode actions cost action points. Walking cost one point for instance, fighting with a small weapon three, shooting a handgun perhaps four, up till complex attack movements which cost perhaps eight points. Therefore, the more action points you have, the more you can do in one turn and the more powerful you become, provided you have other good fighting statistics as well.
Characters have varied attributes and varied skills. Your main character can be customized at the start and can be developed further during the game. Other characters also develop, but you can’t control that directly. They grow over time on their own, although it seems as if you can steer this progress by assigning them to do jobs that require a certain skill which they will thus improve.
Character sheet
You can improve your base by building various upgrades like a wall, a watch tower, a science lab and a recreation room. These upgrades often enable other upgrades or give the ability to create new objects, like the science lab, which allows you to create such things as improved armor, antibiotics and ammunition for guns.
The job board where you assign jobs such as building upgrades for your shelter. To the right an overview of various upgrades you can build.
The game has a kind of flow.. At first even a single zombie is a challenge, but gradually as you and your companions get better equipment and advanced skills they become less of a threat and you deal with looters, gangs, rogue cops, militia and finally the military. This shift in enemies means also a shift in weaponry. At the start you deal with you enemies with melee weapons, later on you start to depend more on ranged weapons.
I would like to special mention is that the game has implemented that people killed by zombies become zombies themselves. Which is a great idea. In addition the game also makes zombies appear when you make a lot of sound and especially gunfire, most notably shotgun fire draws in zombies. This is also a nice aspect of the game.
One important aspect of the game is handling the community of survivors. You become the leader and thus you have to deal with various challenges, like recruiting more survivors, getting to know your fellow survivors, assigning them jobs, bolstering their spirits, handling conflicts, dealing with community politics and making decisions, including those concerning life and death. It is up to you to deal with the situation.
Now doesn’t this all sound great?
Well, here is the other side of the game…
The game is beset with many issues. Just a list of random examples: a character dies, but her avatar stays on the map the rest of the game; doors return to undamaged state when you reload a game and you haven’t bashed them open; the fresh food you gathered on the day is not preserved when you restart the game; some doors allow no entrance after being opened; locations are unfinished; you have to reassign jobs to your characters every day even if you just want them to prolong the job; your fishing rod is removed from your inventory and put in the storage every time you enter the shelter and thus has to retrieved again when you want to go fishing again; somehow the fourth party member is afflicted by bad pathing which could make him/her run the other way and right into enemies.
My four avatars facing off a group of zombies . There are plenty of zombies on this map, but nothing else. Note that one of my party members is Fiona.. We will have a special part about her further down.
A rather annoying aspect of the game is that there is no log of conversations so you can’t find out what you have heard the other day: you have to write it down yourself. Sometimes a character tips you on a location, this location might or might not appear. There is no check if a location has already been found nor does the location offer new things..
And more: you can build a chicken coop, but that requires a chicken, when you bring a chicken, it is slaughtered automatically because there is no chicken coop. There is quest where someone offers you to trade medicines for food, but you can’t bring food from the shelter as any food that you take to your shelter disappears into an inaccessible storage. Some quests are broken: like one where you are asked by Aggro to pick up her friend Alan at the Dublin bar: he never shows up. There is one where I got a tip to go to Eden next to the Wicked Lily. Whatever Eden is remains unclear and I could not find it.
The chicken and egg problem: to make a coop you need a chicken, to bring a chicken to the shelter you need a coop.
One of broken story line is the story of Fiona Parks. At some point during the game Davis, the wheelchair guy who is your sidekick, comes up and told me how sorry he is about what Fiona did. I was left to wonder what he was talking about, but I through she was killed or commited suicide. But whenever I checked Fiona, she was alright and could be assigned jobs and taken along with parties, just like all the other party members. From that moment onwards Davis kept telling me every morning the same thing: that he is sorry about what happened to Fiona or was she did.
Davis telling me about Fiona.. the same story every morning.
Then one time I am told she has killed someone. A trial is organized and after the trial I had her expelled, and just after the trial has finished, I am told another murder has occurred: Fiona had killed again!. After a second trial Fiona is expelled again!Then the next morning Davis approaches me yet again to tell me how sorry he is about what happened to Fiona or what she did, and the morning after that one and the morning thereafter:basically every morning I have this same conversation.
Oh… you did do what???Funny detail: Fiona is a supporter of Sandy, who votes to have her killed…
After a while it becomes clear that there is no progressing storyline and there seems to be no finish to the game. There is a conflict brewing between the militia and the military, but you can’t do anything with it.. They even have accessible headquarters, but I never get the ability to talk to their leaders and even killing them outright doesn’t seem to do much. It for instance doesn’t even make the rest of the militia angry when you shoot their fellows at the militia hq. It seems like this part still needs to be worked upon.Just like for instance the suggestive skill of Karen. She can fly a helicopter and at one point this is brought up in a conversation, which seems to imply that it is something important. but what it is, has still to be revealed.
Now all of this and much more needs to be looked at(just another bone: the dogs in the game can only be attacked from the front and the back) and fixed, but we are to believe that game has entered Beta in Augustus and should be in state that will allow it to be released to market on the 4th of december. It could be that all these issues will be solved around that time, but it is strange that they haven’t been solved in the current version and I have my doubts if all these issues can be fixed in that time.
The final straw that makes me give this game the thumb down is simply the price. The developers asked to be funded via kickstarter and got more than double the money they asked for. In addition they ask a whopping 27 euro for an early access indie game(compare that to state of decay: 18 euro’s). Yet the game is not finished and I wonder in what state the game will be released. There is a lot of fixing to do and we have to believe that all this fixing is done at the time of the official launch.
Some random things that need to be looked at:
Some errors: at Coleman(left side) you can walk right through this barricade. Items still need icons(top middle). The interior of that shop is on the move(top right). And sometimes you are blessed with a random 5th party member(lower right). The door is no obstacle for this soldier(bottom middle)The ghost that haunts the shelter: Elaine killed herself early in the game, but her presence lingers on. Even the sun won’t chase her away.
