Some Wrap-up Thoughts on DA:I

We finished last night. Almost 100 hours, wuff. I think I'm going to keep this save around for wrapping up non-plot sidequests, because I never want to do the whole epic scale thing again. Just companion quests and enough extra levels and power points to wrap up the plot, thanks.

My general impression is that it was a little too long, a little too open world, a little overwhelming with all the sidequests and gigantic open areas. I did appreciate that many of the sidequests bore relationships to the main plotline, but it would have been nice to see the connections drawn more strongly, and more often have actual consequences reflected in the main plot. The main storyline, whenever we got around to getting on with it, was interesting enough, and a reasonable follow-on to what came before. Exactly what I would have done, with these characters and this world? Probably not, but I appreciate both what they were trying to do and the various ways in which they pulled it off.

My thoughts on the characters are similar to my feelings about ME2: too many characters, and the pacing in conversations, personal quests, and character development seemed off. In part, this is probably the fault of how T and I played the game -- because he doesn't have the patience to go through long dialogue trees with them repeatedly, we end up missing some conversations and consequently doing things out of order. Dorian's personal quest never fired, despite our having quite high approval with him; I gather this is a bug, and a disappointing one. Our LI was Blackwall, which had its high and low points (more behind the); I liked it well enough, but T found it underwritten, and I can't say I completely disagree with him.

( More thoughts, with spoilers. )