I really wish they'd move away from the 'sit there for half an hour and ask questions' style out character development and move to a more natural, subtle one.

Conversations happening while running around the world (of which there's a fuck load of, there's been hours of silence while playing this game, my biggest gripe), allowing you to listen silently, or have a measured, specific input should you desire to interject or offer an opinion (a 2 second window to swipe on the touchpad - up for positive, down for negative, right for humorous, left for annoyance etc) would be fucking awesome imo.

 

I like most of the characters and only dislike Sera, and to a lesser degree Blackwall, since one of them is a nonsensical rebel and the other to good to be true. Both also seem to lack depth.. but maybe that will change.

My favourites are probably Cassandra and Varric, mostly because their interaction is quite entertaining.

 

After numerous false starts I've decided on a male elf rogue. It was a toss-up between rogue and mage. Might still do a mage for a second play-through.

Archery's fun in this game. Well, I thought it was fun in DAII as well -- both are massively better than Origins' archery at least.

EDIT: I really, really want a Magic Archer specialization, like Dragon's Dogma. Best of both worlds. And you'd think something like that that'd be right up a Dalish elf's alley.

As far as companions go, I'm barely into the Hinterlands yet but I'm liking Solas. Not exactly looking forward to Pigelf. Maybe her character's better than her face.

 

Vivienne... Ugh. Can't wait for Dorian... I'm rolling ArcherInq, SolasSpiFrost, DorianFireElec and Cass.

Might be too squishy though, we'll see.

 

So. Just lost a 45 minute fight with the dragon in the Hinterlands. It's goddamn health bar was basically already gone, it had one of it's legs crippled and was hiding like a bitch, but it seems just barely alive is more than enough, because one by one the party fell, until Cassandra was all that was left and, while valiant, did not prove enough.

Fuck.

 

I feel you. I stealth scummed the shit out of the Avvar chieftain in the Fallow Marsh.

It should be illegal how well the Gift of the Mountain Father works on Iron Bull, though.

 

So, I went with Knight Enchanter, because it's badass, but I'm tempted to make my next Playthrough another mage, to be a Rift Mage.

Your Trainer is very persuading.

 

So, as far as you guys can tell, do all the big decisions from past games actually affect the Inquisition? My main interest is in the Sacred Ashes, because Orlais is super chummy with the Chantry. Does the most important relic of the Andrastean religion have any impact (if the Warden let Genitivi live, that is)?

 

Well...not too too much, but the game starts at Haven (Town where you find Genitivi)...

The events from Dragon Age 2 play a big part. I just bumped into Anora a few levels ago. It's subtle things.

Honestly, the game is awesome from a "Religious Hero" standpoint. The dealing with doubts and faith your character can have is legit.

Cass is awesome. Love her "hidden side." Varric obviously writes better stories than twilight...

Also...finally beat the Hinterlands Dragon as a Knight Enchanter. Damn that class is so much fun...

 

If it's the same dragon as the one I encountered a few hours ago, yeah, that was an unwelcome surprise. Fucking napalm breath out of nowhere -_-

 

So, best part of this game so far?

Spoiler

Seeing Morrigan and the (Possible) God Baby

 

Every time I see Josephine round the table when I go to the war room.

Dunno, there's something really sexy about her gait.

 

Not many appealing choices for romances in this one. Disregarding the gay options, because no, I'll probably go with Josephine over Cassandra. If I were playing a female I might consider Solas, though I haven't met Blackwall yet -- Sera seems like one of those "lolsorandum" types and I'd rather avoid that.

Considering my guy's Dalish though I'm disappointed there isn't an elf option for men, since elf-human relations only produce human children in this setting.

I don't suppose they'd consider going back to the days of KotOR and just give us one option for men and one for women again, would they? I liked the Bastila/Revan thing.

 

Facing really though decision. Buy DAI and have to buy the other two games? My DAO and DA II are PS3, and I really don't think it's worth playing there... So I pirated both because I refuse to pay twice for the same game, I don't want to simply pirate DAI (or wait), but I'm pretty sure my pirate memories won't work with DA Keep.

All 3 games cost U$ 70,00 (around R$ 170,00; but comparing purchasing power, it's like it costs U$ 170,00 to me so, yeah, pricy).

 

There are threads and threads of this opinion on the BSN. Usually it devolves into name calling (SJW, Misogynist) and the thread gets locked.

I don't really care that the straight male options are fewer than female...My only complaint is that there is little variety for such. Both Cassandra and Josephine come from the same Andrastian World View. It's annoying.

That said...both are interesting characters in their own right. Both have an attractive side to them. I'm flip flopping between my mage who is romancing Cassandra and my rogue who is romancing Josie because there are so many adorable moments...

 

Forty hours in so far, I love this game.

Points of interest:

KB+M controls suck. Using a controller is just way more fluid. If I gave a fuck about this sort of thing this might be a negative, but I prefer a controller anyway because I am a scrub.

Visually gorgeous. Even wit graphics down on medium it's an extremely pretty game and the level of detail is very impressive.

Interesting exploration/compelling quests. When I started, I just wandered off in a random direction and got immersed in sidequests for a few hours. Very fun, would recommend. The terrain is overall quite pretty and different places have different feels to them. Clearly a lot of work went into the design of these locations.

Cassandra is adorable.

Combat is eh for me. I don't really like the feel of it, primarily because I've been playing too much Dark Souls lately and have overly high expectations. I honestly don't have a lot of interest in the tactical combat either, so that informs my opinion as well. Still, it's not terrible, just doesn't really feel as exciting as maybe it could.

Storyline/characters are awesome. I'm completely into it, and all of the characters feel really interesting and unique. There are also some awesomely quotable lines. I think the writing for this game has been pretty high-caliber so far, in my opinion.

Character creator is actually really excellent, only took about seven rerolls before I had a character who looked great. The biggest weakness of the CC is in the hairstyles; for some reason there are like ten varieties of quarter inch hair and not nearly enough long-haired female styles. Here's how my male human mage turned out.

I've also noticed that for me, at least, there's a lot of replay value already because there are decisions with actual weight that result in branching questlines. Super pumped for my next playthrough, will probably be a female two-hander of some sort or other.

Guess that's about all I have to say so far. Definitely a great successor to the DA series!

 

I'm looking forward to see if romancing Cass is still doable despite reiterating over and over that I'm no fan of religion.

Hope so. I'd like that to be the case.

 

There is like a bunch of shit that I could say saying how much I love this damn game but quite frankly I'm still replaying the moment catching Cassandra reading Varric's books and fangirling over them. So far that has been the funniest and cutest damn thing I've seen in a long fuckin' while. While I'll give Josephine a go in some other playthrough it's Cassandra all the way in this one.

 

Cassandra's fangirling is epic.

Also...I died when the Avvar "besieged" skyhold. Very Monty Python feel.

 

Oh god. My completionist tendencies that tell me to collect everything got to me. I bought the Mystery Box.

Totally worth the 10k Gold.

EDIT: Also, Battle Mage Robes are ugly as fuck.