Author Topic: Dragon Age: Inquisition  (Read 16160 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Those screenshots are really unimpressive as a display of either technical graphics or visual design.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Those screenshots are really unimpressive as a display of either technical graphics or visual design.

Yes, they seem sketched, at best. Looks like a lot of "detail bushes" were probably cut for performance issues. Bioware needs to learn how to do these open world games.

 

Offline Mr. Vega

  • Your Node Is Mine
  • 28
  • The ticket to the future is always blank
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Those screenshots are really unimpressive as a display of either technical graphics or visual design.
Before I place any value on your opinions on graphical design, what did you think of Dishonored's visuals?
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
-John Maynard Keynes

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
There goes Vega trying to get into a fight.

 

Offline Aesaar

  • 210
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
I'm enjoying this game a lot more than I enjoyed Origins.  But then again, I enjoyed DA2 a lot more than I enjoyed Origins, so that's faint praise.

What I'm saying is that I'm finding it fun so far.  Not far enough along on the story to say how good it is on that end.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

  • I reject your reality and substitute my own
  • 213
  • Syndral Active. 0410.
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Before I place any value on your opinions on graphical design, what did you think of Dishonored's visuals?

Dishonored had good visuals? It had a coherent aesthetic that gave it atmosphere, sure, but that was all it had. No individual moment from the game is memorable because of the visuals; they are contingent on but not essential to the story at any point.

If you want good graphical design, the moment you exit the vault in Fallout 3 is how to tell a story in a single image; welcome to the desert of the real. Good graphical design is HR Giger's xenomorph design; this is alien and wrong. (Yes that's gaming, and topical; Alien Isolation.)

The thing those screenshots most remind me of, ironically, is the graphics from Total War: Shogun 2. Which is perhaps not surprising considering when I look back for moments of raw impact conveyed through graphics in Bioware games and I've got...

...Legion's intro in ME2's it I think. Might be something in KOTOR I'm forgetting...
"Load sabot. Target Zaku, direct front!"

A Feddie Story

 

Offline Scotty

  • 1.21 gigawatts!
  • Moderator
  • 211
  • Guns, guns, guns.
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Malak's cruiser leveling Taris was pretty visually impressive in terms of firepower displayed.  That wasn't really the graphics though.

 

Offline Mr. Vega

  • Your Node Is Mine
  • 28
  • The ticket to the future is always blank
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Before I place any value on your opinions on graphical design, what did you think of Dishonored's visuals?

Dishonored had good visuals? It had a coherent aesthetic that gave it atmosphere, sure, but that was all it had. No individual moment from the game is memorable because of the visuals; they are contingent on but not essential to the story at any point.

If you want good graphical design, the moment you exit the vault in Fallout 3 is how to tell a story in a single image; welcome to the desert of the real. Good graphical design is HR Giger's xenomorph design; this is alien and wrong. (Yes that's gaming, and topical; Alien Isolation.)

The thing those screenshots most remind me of, ironically, is the graphics from Total War: Shogun 2. Which is perhaps not surprising considering when I look back for moments of raw impact conveyed through graphics in Bioware games and I've got...

...Legion's intro in ME2's it I think. Might be something in KOTOR I'm forgetting...
There were idiots who criticized Dishonored's textures for being low quality. They were low quality, intentionally so as part of the game's painterly look.
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
-John Maynard Keynes

 

Offline Scotty

  • 1.21 gigawatts!
  • Moderator
  • 211
  • Guns, guns, guns.
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Before I place any value on your opinions on graphical design, what did you think of Dishonored's visuals?

Dishonored had good visuals? It had a coherent aesthetic that gave it atmosphere, sure, but that was all it had. No individual moment from the game is memorable because of the visuals; they are contingent on but not essential to the story at any point.

If you want good graphical design, the moment you exit the vault in Fallout 3 is how to tell a story in a single image; welcome to the desert of the real. Good graphical design is HR Giger's xenomorph design; this is alien and wrong. (Yes that's gaming, and topical; Alien Isolation.)

The thing those screenshots most remind me of, ironically, is the graphics from Total War: Shogun 2. Which is perhaps not surprising considering when I look back for moments of raw impact conveyed through graphics in Bioware games and I've got...

...Legion's intro in ME2's it I think. Might be something in KOTOR I'm forgetting...
There were idiots who criticized Dishonored's textures for being low quality. They were low quality, intentionally so as part of the game's painterly look.

Uh, lack of groundbreaking visuals is still lack of groundbreaking visuals, reasoning be damned.  Please don't try to shift the goalposts.

EDIT: To be more clear, I'm saying that visual fidelity != artistic direction, and conflating the two is not a good direction to approach from.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2014, 10:48:02 pm by Scotty »

  
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
There were idiots who criticized Dishonored's textures for being low quality. They were low quality, intentionally so as part of the game's painterly look.

I think I remember that thread, and to be fair I think those people were complaining that the low-res textures and models were getting in the way of the art style. That's only partially relevant though — while those screenshots are completely unimpressive on a technical level, it's the bland and stunted scenery they display that really condemns them as a demonstration of the scope of DAI's world.

e: I mean here's a completely random screenshot from Skyrim I picked from Google images, that's not even trying to show off the scenery. It still completely blows Fury's shots out of the water.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2014, 05:53:41 am by Phantom Hoover »
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
I always found Skyrim's obsession with the color grey and all its small innuendos with the tiniest green here and blue here and some red there absolutely off-putting to be honest. Dragon Age seems at least able to use the full spectrum of hues and saturations which is a ****ing relief.

 

Offline The E

  • He's Ebeneezer Goode
  • 213
  • Nothing personal, just tech support.
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
For me, DA:I is a pretty good-looking game. The environments feel large enough to convey scale, the castles you can explore do feel more like real places than they ever did in any of the DA games, and once you get some of the cooler environment events (like a Dragon flying overhead, landing and starting to battle a Giant, off in the distance) the atmosphere had me hooked.

That doesn't mean it's free from criticism though. Animations are still a sore spot for Bioware, with certain animations being reused from DA:Origins and earlier BW games, and they never seem to work quite right. I don't know if they look more natural on the human male than they do on the human female, but in almost every cutscene that features my character, I can't shake the feeling that humans do not work that way. Hell, the default stance and walk/run cycle for the human female character (which was copied from female Hawke's animation set from DA2) is still ridiculously overfeminized, with exaggerated hip swings everywhere (which could work for Mage or Rogue characters, but look a bit weird for Warriors in heavy armor).

Another point of criticism is that the main storyline tells you a lot about how bad the antagonist and his forces are, but only rarely shows it in any effective way. There is a certain quest early in the game that does a very good job at showing you the consequences of failure, but following that, I kinda lost a good sense for what the big bad is doing from moment to moment.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
I always found Skyrim's obsession with the color grey and all its small innuendos with the tiniest green here and blue here and some red there absolutely off-putting to be honest. Dragon Age seems at least able to use the full spectrum of hues and saturations which is a ****ing relief.

I guess I agree with you about the colour palette but just look at the actual scope of those DAI screenshots. Two boxed-in valleys with no accessible open areas in sight. It's a far cry from the open-world rubric that "you see that mountain? You can climb that mountain!"
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

  • I reject your reality and substitute my own
  • 213
  • Syndral Active. 0410.
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
There were idiots who criticized Dishonored's textures for being low quality. They were low quality, intentionally so as part of the game's painterly look.

And that low-quality genuinely hurt the game's desired effect in several instances because it made things that should have been pretty gothic appear cartoonish. The brothel comes to mind; here we have a place where they basically get girls drunk and rape them until their obvious trauma becomes too unsettling even to the clientele here. And what should have been horrific lost impact via the visual execution of the game's world.
"Load sabot. Target Zaku, direct front!"

A Feddie Story

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
I always found Skyrim's obsession with the color grey and all its small innuendos with the tiniest green here and blue here and some red there absolutely off-putting to be honest. Dragon Age seems at least able to use the full spectrum of hues and saturations which is a ****ing relief.

I guess I agree with you about the colour palette but just look at the actual scope of those DAI screenshots. Two boxed-in valleys with no accessible open areas in sight. It's a far cry from the open-world rubric that "you see that mountain? You can climb that mountain!"

Can't comment on the playability, since I haven't played it yet. From what I've been hearing personally, the world is really big and very very open, but "how" open does it feel, I can't tell. Anyways, the discussion revolved around graphics, not openworldness, and to be frank, having Skyrim as a "minimal standard" for open worldness is really really really hardcore.

(For instance, that idea "you see that mounteain? You can climb that mountain!" is a staple of something like No Man's Sky, but that's a completely different game, game mechanics and setpieces, etc., so is it really fair to compare them in that vein? I never minded skyboxes in games, just as long as the ingame breathing world was rich and interesting)

 

Offline Aesaar

  • 210
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Played more today, and this is easily my favorite DA game in terms of gameplay.  It's just fun.  Combat has a few issues, like the absolutely useless tactical camera (badly needs to zoom out more), but the amount of exploration you can do easily excuses it for me.  I'm spending hours just running around areas finding landmarks and reading things.

I always found Skyrim's obsession with the color grey and all its small innuendos with the tiniest green here and blue here and some red there absolutely off-putting to be honest. Dragon Age seems at least able to use the full spectrum of hues and saturations which is a ****ing relief.

I guess I agree with you about the colour palette but just look at the actual scope of those DAI screenshots. Two boxed-in valleys with no accessible open areas in sight. It's a far cry from the open-world rubric that "you see that mountain? You can climb that mountain!"
That's not the kind of open-world thing DAI is going for.  The world is still divided into specific, closed-in areas.  Those areas are just really big and not linear.

And I'll be honest, Skyrim does have amazing-looking landscapes, but that's Bethesda's biggest strength, and I think Bioware does it better than Bethesda does character writing, which is Bioware's biggest strength. 

Seriously, this is Bioware's first real outing at more open-world stuff, and the first time they've had access to an engine that could render landscapes well.  I don't think it's fair to compare it to the latest game from a company that's been making that kind of stuff for a decade. There are actually some pretty damn good looking views in this game.  Forests just aren't terribly impressive.  And Skyrim has really, really strong art direction in general.  This game's landscapes may not look as good as those in Skyrim, but they're a lot more visually interesting than those in Oblivion.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2014, 05:45:24 pm by Aesaar »

 

Offline Veers

  • 29
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
DA:I certainly has grown on me, now that I've
Spoiler:
finished/left Haven
I am starting to enjoy it more.

Graphics are quite nice, the combat system needs a little more work with the tactical camera. I still prefer Origins overall, more RPG based. But Inquisiiton is now a much much closer second. And DA2 is somewhere down the ladder.

I enjoyed DA2 as much as I suffered in it, but very little replay value in it for me.
Current Activities/Projects: Ideas and some storyline completed.

ArmA 2&3 Mission Designer and player.


WoD - I like Crystal. <3

 

Offline Fury

  • The Curmudgeon
  • 213
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
You folks can belittle DAI's graphics all you want, but they are really beautiful as far as I am concerned. But more importantly, I've had a blast playing this game's single player. :) I have yet to try multiplayer, but will do so once I've completed single player.



How stupid of me. Hadn't realized DAI saves screenshots to file using prnt scrn, no need to use console except to hide UI.


« Last Edit: November 29, 2014, 04:03:04 am by Fury »

 

Offline MP-Ryan

  • Makes General Discussion Make Sense.
  • Global Moderator
  • 210
  • Keyboard > Pen > Sword
    • Twitter
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Whelp, was hoping for a Black Friday sale on this but no dice.  Will wait until Christmas/Boxing Day I guess.
"In the beginning, the Universe was created.  This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move."  [Douglas Adams]

 

Offline Fury

  • The Curmudgeon
  • 213
Re: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Big bad dude doesn't stand a chance.


Cool people always walk away from explosions.


This is what I call flanking.


This dragon looks pissed.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2014, 12:09:25 pm by Fury »