Retro Review: the Age of the Dragon

'Dragon Age: Inquisition' (DAI) is a fantasy game. That word -- fantasy -- suggests to us that this game has dragons, elves, and magic, similar to 'Game of Thrones' or 'The Lord of the Rings.' There will be knights, monsters, and probably an evil sorcerer.

The word "fantasy", however, means so much more than that. Though we all may have fantasies of our own from time to time, it’s a pretty safe bet that few (or any) of them have anything to do with epic battles between good and evil (unless you happen to be Donald Trump, who may actually think he's still hosting 'The Apprentice'). Our fantasies are our wishes and our dreams, yearnings that are too idealized to reasonably be called hopes. They let us imagine the world as we wish it could be, even when we know it will never actually be.

Like most people, I have had occasion(s) to wish I was different in this or that aspect, or that my life was somehow other than what it is. For example, I wish I were a naturally gifted writer, that I might have retained my hair for just a few more years, or that I might never have to worry about money again. Above all, I wish I had more time. More time to live, more time to learn how to relax, more time to spend with the people I care about; more time to learn, to practice, to grow and thus to perhaps become a better person.

For its part, 'DAI' does indeed have dragons, and elves, and magic. But it is also a fantasy in that other, more special way. 'Inquisition' ushers us into a vast world and sets that world revolving around us, patiently waiting on our every action.

It has time for us when the world of our actual existence has not.

Finally, the world will be what we want it to be. Finally, we'll have the time to get everything right. Or as right as we can help make it.

Created by BioWare, the storied Canadian studio behind the venerable ‘Baldur's Gate’ series and, more recently, the ‘Mass Effect’ and ‘The Old Republic’ games, 'Inquisition' is the third installment in their Dragon Age universe, following 2009's 'Dragon Age: Origins' and 2011's less-well-received 'Dragon Age 2.'

‘Dragon Age: Origins’ was a masterpiece, and one of the most substantial (story and character development-wise) fantasy role-playing video games ever made. While not perfect, it has stood time’s test well. ‘Dragon Age 2’, meanwhile was widely derided by fans of its predecessor as rushed, chokingly small in scope with a pedestrian story and simplistically repetitive level design.

Suffice it to say that if 'Dragon Age 2' was akin to having dinner at one of those overpriced “nouvelle cuisine” restaurants and being fed unsubstantial side dish after unsubstantial side dish while awaiting a main course that never quite arrives. By way of comparison, 'DAI' feels like visiting an all-you-can-eat buffet loaded with delicious food.

The story goes like this: the continent of Thedas is reeling in the aftermath of the dramatic events at the end of 'Dragon Age 2.' The Chantry (read: the game's metaphor for the Catholic Church) is in turmoil, and mages across the nations of Orlais and Ferelden are in open rebellion against the templar warriors who had previously been keeping them in varying states of incarceration.

In an effort to restore the peace, the Chantry's spiritual leader, a woman called the Divine (i.e. a female Pope), offers to broker peace talks. She convenes a conclave between the leaders of the church, the templars, and the mages. Everyone arrives at a sacred mountaintop temple, but before the talks can begin, a massive explosion levels the entire structure. The Divine is killed, along with all of the templar and mage leaders. Even worse, the explosion rends a gaping hole in the sky, through which countless demons and other destructive spirits are pouring into the world. Heaven and hell and now co-mingled. Apocalypse now.

Emerging from the ruins of it all is the explosion's sole survivor: You.

‘Inquisition’ is meant to be an epic adventure, and thanks to the game's at-times paralyzingly vast canvas (each of the game's many explorable areas is large enough to be a smaller game in their own right), it really feels like an epic. From exploring hidden dwarven ruins in the blazing desert to solving puzzles in a lush elven woodland to negotiating the settlement to a civil war, the player will also constantly be aware of how each event relates to other things. The average playthrough takes about 85-100 hours, and it’s possible to break 200 hours if one wants to explore every nook and cranny of this immense world.

The game mechanics has one start by designing a character from one of four possible races (Elf, Dwarf, Human, Qunari) and choose to play as one of three possible classes (rogue, warrior, or mage). You'll recruit a group of helpful companions, who you'll gradually befriend (or antagonize, depending on your actions and interactions) over the course of the story. And when you're not negotiating or socializing, there’s a variety of massive, beautifully generated, open-ended environments to explore, completing small and large quests and using your various skills to battle against a variety of human and monstrous foes.

'DAI' offers a further level of characterization in the form of a somewhat flexible character modeler, which allows you to create (or recreate) the facial features, hair and voice of your erstwhile protagonist. You can, in effect, make anyone (within reasonable scope). Be a character from ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ or in my case, Ben Kenobi and Jean-luc Picard (!). You can play and make decisions as those iconic characters would, or, most interestingly, you can play as yourself, while using your worldview and making decisions in accordance with your own moral inclinations. Look like yourself, act like yourself and see what kind of hero(?) you will be.

As for story and pacing, ‘Inquisition’ gets off to a somewhat sluggish start: for the first several hours I kept trying to shake off a feeling of disappointment. It seemed meanderingly average, a lot of “fetch” missions, without focus or narrative direction. And then, more than ten hours into the game, the plot hit a turning point, and the true scope of the game came into focus. What seemed like the main game is revealed to have been only a lengthy prologue, and without further ado, the real ‘Inquisition’ gets underway.

Once into the second act, ‘Inquisition’ conjures up a rare feeling of playing through a sprawling novel, except with greater detail, depth and sense of endlessness. At any given moment, there are so many different things to do, so many places to explore, it can be overwhelming. Most importantly, things rarely repeat, and most every location is unique. It's a welcome move away from the copy/paste dungeons of ‘Dragon Age 2,’ and most other so-called “adventure” games with overly linear narratives.

In ‘Inquisition,’ you'll spend a lot of time shifting between strategic and tactical aspects of the unfolding narrative, combining resource management, front-line combat, and character interaction.

You will spend time at the war table, looking down on a parchment map of Ferelden and Orlais, the two kingdoms where the game takes place. This represents a sort of metagame that ties the various side-questing and exploring into a comprehensive whole. The map is covered with small simulated wooden and metal pieces which represent operations you can undertake.

You have three options for any given operation, related to the personalities and performance of your three closest advisors -- Cullen, the ex-templar soldier who commands your soldiers; Leliana, your all-seeing spymaster; and Josephine, your ambassador. If you commit one of the three to a given mission, they'll be unavailable for a set amount of real-world time. Some missions only take a few minutes to complete, while others will take 16 or more hours. (Thankfully, time continues to pass even when you're not playing the game, which means you can assign a lengthy operation overnight and return next morning to find it completed.) Any crucial missions or new areas can be unlocked immediately, and the real-time operations are designed as scaffolding to fit in between the more substantive parts of the game.

You'll constantly return to the war room to oversee new operations, a pattern of activity that over time reinforces the feeling that you're not just some person leading a rag-tag group of others around the kingdom -- you're an actual leader. Like any other, your power eventually becomes an abstraction, just a piece on a map with a written report from whatever henchperson you dispatched to do your bidding.

The result of all of this interconnected design is that no matter how vast the world seems and how important the quest you are on may feel, there is always ample reminder of what you are fighting for on a very relatable, human scale. You may hear two people talking about a particular problem they're having, then see a notification that a new operation related to their issue has opened up on the war table. Complete that operation back at the war table, and the next time you see those people, they'll be talking about how the Inquisition helped them with their problem.

No matter what you choose to do at a given moment, the rest of your many tasks will simply sit in stasis, waiting for you to come and deal with them whenever you have time. It's one of the biggest disconnects between narrative and gameplay, one that has confronted role-playing games since time immemorial. For example, while supposedly in a race against time to save the world, this elderly villager asked you to put some flowers on his beloved wife's grave as he can no longer do so due to bandits in the area, so you should probably do that…

While that sort of disconnect can surreal as the game goes on and your protagonist becomes more influential, it's also, paradoxically, one of ‘Inquisition's’ most appealing aspects. This game is a fantasy, after all; it's a fantasy of a world where time has no meaning, and you can hit every single item on your to-do list in whatever order you please. It’s a paradox that a game reminds us of what we’ve lost to technology: our basic humanity as manifested in a thousand little kindnesses.

In what makes up my everyday “reality,” I'm never able to do all the things I want to do. I have to write about this thing and that thing, and talk to this person, and that person wants to see me about some project, and I haven't talked to my friends all week, and, and, and… The real world is not much like Dragon Age, where my friends patiently wait for me to catch up with them whenever I feel like it, and where the most crucial conflicts of my life will be resolved when I arrive, and no sooner.

Combat in Inquisition represents a balanced middle ground between the arguably over-complex battles of ‘Origins’ and the arguably under-complex battles of 'Dragon Age 2'. Each fight works more or less the same: You'll come across a new group of baddies out in the field. Your ranged characters (mages, archers) will begin to attack, while your melee characters (tanks, reavers) rush in and begin to take on whoever looks toughest.

If one can judge the quality of a BioWare game by the quality of the companion characters, ‘DAI’ does well. The game offers a whopping nine active companions: rogues and warriors and mages who you can take with you out into the field, along with several others who make up your inner circle but don't actively fight by your side. Any and all of them can be romanced by your lead character.

As for the actual overarching plot it’s pretty thin, really -- there's a big rift in the sky, there are demons to fight, there's a big bad guy with a big bad dragon who you have to defeat, and so on. But BioWare games have always lived in the smaller, personal stories of their supporting cast, and it is there where ‘Inquisition’ thrives.

It's absolutely worth taking the time to talk with each of them -- not all of the characters are winners, but this may be the best interesting/dull follower ratio the developer has yet managed. The more you interact with them, the more they'll have to say. Certain events in the story will cause them to open up further. Eventually, you'll be able to head out on special adventures to help them.

Often, a character who appears conventional on the surface will eventually reveal hidden depths in their backstory. Most every character in ‘DAI’ is a flawed individual, trying their best to overcome their shortcomings and do better. Many of them have emotional sharp edges, and it's a testament to the writing that by the game's conclusion, it felt as a group of strangers had become an unlikely family.

Every character -- including, crucially, the protagonist him or herself -- is fleshed out with considerable writing and sterling voiceover work. Notably, women and LGBT characters are given three-dimensional, subtle representation -- ‘DAI’ has more interesting women driving the plot than any game in recent memory. In addition to a number of gay and otherwise non-straight characters, ‘Inquisition’ is also one of the only mainstream games to include an explicitly transgender character, written with sensitivity. Happily, the cast's diversity feels less like deliberate progressive political correctness and more like an honest attempt to portray the diversity that one might expect from a society.

It would be all too easy for a protagonist to get lost among all these great supporting characters, but ‘DAI’ somehow manages to craft the main character into an anchor that holds everything else together. Over the course of the story, who you choose to play as has just as much of an effect on the experience as who you choose to play alongside.

It is also surprising how boldly ‘Inquisition's’ writers have tackled thorny notions of faith, doubt, and a higher power. Thanks to your hero's miraculous survival and subsequent ability to close demonic rifts, people in the world begin to call you "The Herald of Andraste." You can't even remember what happened that day, but they believe that you're a religious prophet who bears the will of The Maker himself. Through no real doing of your own, you're the second coming incarnate.

Or are you? Throughout the story, you're repeatedly asked what you make of your new status as spiritual leader. Do you embrace it? Do you express doubt? And regardless of what really happened on that mountain, who's to say what the hand of The Maker looks like, anyway? People would believe that you have been chosen regardless of what really happened. Is it better to let them go on believing?

There are so many fantasies on display here, and the majority of them transcend the dragons and magic that the "fantasy" label so often suggests. At its best moments, when you're deep in the thick of it, ‘Inquisition’ truly does feel like a dream with no beginning or end. You are free to explore, to travel, to discuss, to ruminate. The game may lack rigorous simulation and challenging logistical quandaries, but it doesn't really matter. It succeeds nonetheless, thanks to its joyful generosity of spirit.

For all its mythical trappings, at its heart, 'Dragon Age: Inquisition' presents us with the most intoxicating fantasy of all: That we will be loved, respected, and followed to the ends of the earth. That we will be able to make time and space for everything and everyone that matters to us. That even a world as flawed as our own can be saved, if we only work together and master ourselves.