One thing that I don't like though, and most people will disagree with me on this, is the dialogue choice wheel. I never minded reading what my character was actually going to say, in fact, I prefer it. Whenever I choose an option, I often think that was not the tone I meant at all. And what is shown as an option is a distilled, usually not accurate version of whatever you're going to say. One particularly annoying option was a Cullen romance dialogue option. At this point, we had played a game of chess and talked all of 30 seconds. Next time I see the dude, the romantical dialogue option was "I want to talk about us." What? The correct response to that from a normal human would be that there is no "us". What you actually say when choosing this option sounds less like future psycho ex-girlfriend speak, but still...if you'd let me read what homegirl was going to say, there wouldn't be that confusion.
Speaking of romancey junk, it seems like Inquisition requires you to be pushy as fuck to start down that road. It feels very awkward, and I think it's because you have to initiate everything. In Origins, I would just be talking to a character like people do, but after a while, there'd be little flirty banter that either led to you saying, dawg, I like you, or the NPC admitting such things to you. This change to Inquisition may have come as a result of some bitching I heard online where people didn't like everybody hitting on them, mainly dudes uncomfortable with being hit on by dudes. However, making the Inquisitor have to be Sgt. Sexual Harassment isn't exactly the way to solve that either. The game world should reflect the real world. Some people are flirts. Some people will wait for you to make the first move. There should be a mixture. As it stands, the only shameless flirt is a gay guy that has no interest in your lady bits.
Some good things are that I'm still enamored by the look of the game. Sun rays were my last ooooh and aaaah. The latest holy shit visual coolness is shadows. At one point, I was standing on a scaffolding while the sun shone behind me. As I looked down to the ground, I could see the shadows of my entire party. They were accurate and you could tell whose was whose and moving and jumping around made the shadows do the same. This may seem like a little thing to be so enthralled with, but after playing games for years in which shadows look like donkey butt, it's a neat thing. Of similar consequence, meaning none, but still neat, when you run on snow or sand, your feet prints are left behind. It's the little things in life, people.
This game, of course, isn't without its annoyances. Prior to realizing that shadows were amazing, I had climbed atop that scaffolding to get the jump on some enemies below. My plan was to get the high ground, and rain death from above from my archer and mage. Nope. Can't do that. In Tactical Mode, it wouldn't let me off the platform to select the enemies that were on a lower plane. The general rule in Tactical Mode is if you can't run to it, you can't select it. I don't need to walk there. I can shoot it in the face from where I stand, but you won't let me. Now I have to go stab it in its squishy parts like some sort of peasant. I thought I was being clever.
I complained about conversations a little in the previous post, regarding dead fish arms and weird camera angles. I have another to add to that pile. Conversations need to be mixed louder. If you're standing in an area that is loud, like where soldiers are sparring nearby, the sound of the conversation is often drowned out by the din of the surroundings. Pump that shit up.
And finally, the biggest OH HELL TO THE NO I've yet encountered involves characters of past games. Whenever you encounter a person you know from Origins or Dragon Age 2, they don't really look like who they're supposed to look like. When you meet Hawke, you have the option to customize her look or use the default Hawke. I didn't change my Hawke from default in Dragon Age 2 because I was pissed at not being able to play as an elf. #fueledbyspite As a result, when given this option in Inquisition, I chose what was supposed to be default Hawke, but I didn't recognize this bitch. I didn't really like the second Dragon Age that much, so it wasn't terrible, but come on, artists... You can do better. However, the absolutely unacceptable cameo character model for me was Alistair. You go on a quest to meet up with him, and he looks NOTHING like Alistair. He looks like Generic Dude #3.
This has always seemed to be a problem for this franchise even within the same game. In Origins, the character models in-game didn't really look like their counterparts in the cinematic that would play when you dallied on the menu too long. Weird but tolerable differences there. This though...
I may be biased because Alistair was my favorite, but sweet Jesus did you mess up his face.
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