GhostofAnakin

Hmm. I probably should have changed the world state before starting my second play through. Would have been interesting to see just how much of the peripheral stuff changes depending on vastly different choices from the previous two games. I sided with the templars this time. Just finished that part, so I haven't seen the repercussions yet. But just solely talking about that section, I think I preferred the mage "story" better.

I was disappointed with Val Royeaux. I was hoping they'd make it a grand, epic city, similar in size to the Citadel from the Mass Effect series. At the very least, superior to Kirkwall. Instead, there wasn't really anything to do there and it had like two different small levels.

On my second play through of DA:I. I was going to wait until the patch comes out, hoping it will fix the dialogue issues. But I have nothing else to play right now, so I went ahead with it. This time I'm playing as an elf mage.

20,000? I fought a level 21 dragon that had well over 100,000 hit points. The fact they throw up their shields often also makes it difficult. You have to whittle down its health 5,000 to 10,000 at a time, then spend minutes taking its shields down, all while trying to keep from being squished.

Finally finished my first play through. That final boss fight was really easy, all things considered. Maybe I'd leveled up too far before tackling the final mission, but the end boss gave me zero trouble. It certainly drops a lot of hints about various possible DLC/expansion stories. The Warden thing could be interesting, though it might simply be BioWare dropping random bread crumbs that never actually result in anything. I was a little disappointed that the person I'd had a discussion with about supporting as the new Divine ended up not being the new Divine, and no mention of why not. Apparently my pull as Inquisitor only goes so far. I hope BioWare patches some of the dialogue issues I had before I try a second play through. The Stroud one during one of the main quest missions was the worst, as I seemed to miss out on some key dialogue about what was going on. I liked it better than both previous DA games, even though the main storyline wasn't all that interesting.

Maybe I'm misremembering Origins since it's been a while since I played it. The fine up-close detail is much nicer (ie. close ups of the characters' faces in cut scenes), but I don't see the massive leap forward that I'd expected from a next gen game. In any case, with regards to the character animations looking stilted/jerky, it's largely when the character is walking. They walk ... strange in cutscenes, like they're constantly walking into a strong wind -- arms bent and pumping, knees bent, body leaning forward, ass sticking out. I dunno. The overall scenery is spot on and beautiful, such as the mountains or trees in the background or the water crashing on the shore. I'm just not blown away by how the characters look/move during cutscenes/conversations.

Heh, oops. I guess that was part of a quest, not him just deciding he doesn't like me anymore.

Still playing through DA: I. I'm impressed by its length and scope. The areas you can visit and the sidequests associated with each new area just keep on going. On the downside, the longer I play the longer the character graphics start to leave me unimpressed. The detail of the game world is great, but the characters kind of look awkward and too similar to DA:O for my liking for a next-gen game. The characters also kind of move in a jerky, awkward way. One of my companions must have dropped below the threshold of like/dislike, because he's got a big 'X' through his name and cannot be selected when picking a party for quests. And this is after I had a cutscene where we shared a drink and he praised me for being the type of person this world needs. The hypocrite.

Is there a way to set up my companion's strategies in combat? I hate having to micromanage every party member the entire combat, and would rather take control of one character and let the other three "auto fight". But I've noticed that if I do that, the other three party members simply default to a regular attack -- they don't use their special abilities without me manually prompting it. It became very apparent how frustrating this was when I was fighting a high-dragon. I was using the mage to pepper it from afar, but noticed all my melee characters were doing was basic attacks, despite having full stamina and special abilities available to be used. The only thing I could see was very limited options, but only to do with who the party members attack (do they attack the same person as the controlled party member does) and when to use potions. Nothing about them using special abilities or in which order to use them when they're available.

*Sigh* I was hoping to pick up some games on sale/discount for Black Friday, but the only games that are on sale are ones I don't want. Far Cry 4 is full price, and Assassin's Creed is pretty close to full price (I believe about $9 off -- hardly a big savings). Shadows of Mordor is actually on sale for like $25 off, but I'm not really interested in it.

I don't think that's necessarily a bug. While they do sometimes banter more often, it's not at constant intervals or anything. 2 hours seems a bit long, but I've definitely gone for an hour without any banter. The amount of banter in general seems just right for me. On the topic of bugs, the biggest one I had was where everyone refused to speak any of their lines; I got the subtitles, and it wasn't a sound issue as everything else played alright _and_ their mouths didn't move. Had to re-install for that one. I'm running below min-specs though, so my experiences are probably not very valid. From what I've read online, it is a bug. Some people (who aren't experiencing it) are seeing a TONNE more banter than those of us who aren't.

Seems I've run into two of the major (maybe more annoying than major, I suppose) bugs so far. 1-Dialogue during cutscenes gets tied up, where nobody says a thing and I have to keep hitting "skip scene" to get the dialogue wheel to finally show up. I don't know how much of the actual dialogue I end up missing, because the game just pauses with the scene focused on one of the people I'm talking to with him/her not saying a word for around 15 seconds until I hit skip. 2-My companions don't banter all that much. I saw online that that's not supposed to be the case, that the companions have constant banter back and forth when in my party. But mine will talk maybe once every couple of hours, and only for a short time. Both seem to be relatively widespread issues, so hopefully they get fixed. I'd be more concerned if I got a rare bug that BioWare wouldn't feel necessary to patch since only a few people get it.

Can you provide screens? I know exactly what you are talking about up until the statues and light puzzle. I just went back to it and yeah it's past the light puzzle Edit: You can also get there just by taking the north passage that is east past the camp Yeah, I saw that second path today after attempting that map again. I don't know how I missed it the first time. This game is big. Every time I think it's nearing the end, another map with more quests opens up. Even the companions. They have dialogue after random stuff and if I don't check back with them, I miss it (almost missed out on Josephine's "personal sidequest" because I hadn't spoken to her since first moving to the shiny new place).

Nobody has reached the Exalted Plains and can answer my question?

I can't seem to find a path that will allow me to reach the North/Eastern part of the Exalted Plains. There's this massive wall of rock that seems to divide that part of the map from the rest of the Exalted Plains. I've managed to get the Inquisition engineers to open that blocked path, but it only seems to lead to that underground thing with the statue and light puzzle (which I can't seem to solve). Is that the only way through? By solving that puzzle?

Uh, what? My save game files say approx. 50+ hours for DA: O, but DA2's is around 30+ hours. It wasn't even close for me.

About 30 hours in to DA:I. At this rate, I'm looking at at least 50 hours or so, maybe more. Certainly seems closer to Origins' length than DA2's.

Cassandra walks like a centaur. I don't know what it is about her walking animations, but her ass sticks out so much and she walks with a bent over/knees bent appearance. She looks like she's Kim Kardassian.

Still moving along in DA:I. The companions don't seem to have much to say after the initial "so tell me about yourself" options you get when you first meet/recruit them. At least so far, they don't seem to have additional stuff to talk about. I still miss DA:O's companion interactions. They always had something to say, and as the game progressed, they always opened up and had even more to say. I also miss being able to chat with them any time I want.

Picked up Dragon Age: Inquisition. Very early in. The graphics look very crisp on the PS4. Combat feels a bit clunky, though. But that might just be me not being used to the various buttons yet.

I decided to prestige. You get to keep one thing, whether it be a gun, attachment, or perk. Whichever you want. But only the one. Everything else you lose. I chose my favorite gun, which would have been locked until something like Level 28 or there abouts.

That's a good question. If you do, I might end up going prestige as that's the one drawback I have about prestiging (losing my favorite gun and attachments).

I wonder what sort of criteria or ideology they use to determine which guns unlock at the various levels in CoD. It's certainly not a case of the cool guns unlocking the more you level up. The assault rifles, in particular, suck after the HBR (or whatever it's called). I don't know whether to prestige or not. I like my gun of choice and the attachments I've unlocked for it and don't want to lose them. But at the same time I'll get bored if there's no incentive to level up by gaining XP.

Yeah, no more silencer for my big games. Though I did already sort of start to get in a groove even with the silencer. I was going positive in K/D with it, but have been really good without it. Today wasn't a very good day with regards to lag. For whatever reason, I kept being put in lobbies with either Europeans or Mexicans. I'm pretty sure there's people playing closer to me than Mexico or countries in Europe that I could have been matched up with.

I don't know if I'm finally getting the hang of it and got in the zone, or whether I was just playing against crappy opponents, but I was able to get on a bit of a roll tonight in CoD. Joined a match late, but still lead the lobby with a 22-6 K/D and helped my team come from behind to win, then went on to finish top-3 in the next 5 games, averaging around 13-7 each game. One thing is I've got a pretty good idea of each map now, and have an understanding of where the opponents usually like to go and where the best spots are to pick them off. I'll tell you one thing. This game certainly doesn't allow for much domination, even by the best players in the lobby. My 22-6 was the best run I saw today in every single lobby I was in (leader usually goes 17 or 18 kills, 8 or 9 deaths), and the second best run I've seen my entire time playing (someone went 31-11 a couple of days back). I don't know if it's size of the maps, the million different paths through the map, or what. But it's very, very difficult to get a long kill streak even for the best players.