Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread - Pt.1

Because dumb people said that wasn't fun.

 

I'm having FAR less trouble now when using Win 8.1, 344.80 and SLI 970. I know that you know this, based on my posts here and on DAI forum, but others may not.

In certain areas it still dips down to ~60 but overall I'm up at 70-90 generally. Gameplay is smooth generally and cutscenes are smooth as well, unlike playing on Win 7.
I don't use any AA though as I barely notice the difference playing at 1440p.

This is so annoying to me.. its like, you never NEEDED to use the tactics in DAO if you didn't want to.. but here we are with them removing it completely instead of leaving it in like past games for the people who DO wish to customize and use tactics in their encounters.

It pisses me off that so many of these redeeming and unique features that used to be included in PC games have been stripped away and games dumbed down in order to be more "approachable" to the casual gamers out there.. just sucks balls.

 

Did you guys read the "workaround" for banter? Apparently - if you delete all you saves, and just keep 2 maximum (manual saves) but without overwriting any, which means delete the older of the 2 saves every time you make a new one, so that they always stay at 2 when you make the save.. er, banter comes back!
I did it last night and I got in ~4 hours of play about as much as I'd gotten during the entire playthrough.

How or why that works is beyond me however.

 

because games have to be dumbed down for the console brigade these days.

 

There is no excuse for them cutting tactics out.

I am playing this game on gamepad but the functionality is not input specific, it is simply a tactical option and as said above it is entirely optional.

I don't have any high hopes of them patching it in though.

Also the gamepad snaps to closer targets as they get closer and you have the d-pad which is entirely unmapped which could be used to lock targets or something.

The game is solid and well thought out but there is a few baffling obvious things that are absent.

 

I have to comment on the loading times too, but first I have to say that the ONLY issue I have had so far was some slight lag/stutter during cutscenes, which was fixed using the command line to make cutscenes 60fps and not forced to 30.
My game takes FOREVER to load up at start, but I don't mind it. It reminds me of my Skyrim load times, where I was running 200+ mods. But I am on one of the fastest SSD's you can get, and the load times are still long.
The thing is though, this game is GORGEOUS. Unmodded, it looks almost as good as my Skyrim with all my texture mods, so that may be why the initial load time is so long.
I think a BIG part of why my game looks so amazing is that I am using Mantle and not DirectX 11.1. I have everything on ultra, HBAO full, fade-touched, and 4x MSAA, etc. I also forced 16xAF in the profile file (you have to use GstRender.AnisotropicFilter 4, and NOT 16. It is a multiple of 4, so 1 = 4x, 2 = 8x, etc), as well as some additional commands to up the looks of the game.

Here's a trick that may or may not help you. It works for me in a lot of games that have a lot of textures, especially HQ ones. In the game world, I found that when I first enter a zone and just stay there spinning the camera in a circle, alternating up and down as I go, that it loads pretty much all the textures into the cache, and so my FPS is always 60+fps. I also tweaked my profile file, and I also made a user.cfg file with some additional tweaks. Game has never crashed on me once.

ALSO..... something that I have started using is Razer Cortex. At first I thought it was just gimmicky, but it has actually improved my performance in a lot of games, sometimes significantly. It used to be called Game Booster or something. Basically, when you open the program and go to the 'Boost' tab, you can select any running processes, services, and other things (such as explorer.exe), and it will remember your settings (or you can roll the dice and just go with 'recommended'). Then when you click "BOOST" it will shut them all down, close them, and stop the services you selected. Then you click on the 'Games' tab, select your game, and push play. Once you are done, go back to the 'Boost' tab, and select 'RESTORE NOW' to enable everything you closed or stopped with the boost.

Some games that require some more system RAM as well as some extra CPU oomph will benefit GREATLY from doing that. Hope it helps someone else

 

Actually you push R3 to target, and you cycle targets while you are locked by moving the R stick. It doesn't automatically target the first thing you see.
Also, the Dpad is not unmapped. You use the dpad up and down to change to the other characters in your party.
And, if you want to be more tactical (this is almost a MUST if/when you are fighting any dragons) push the < button (back, select, whatever) and you get a tactical view of the field, and can tell each character what to do specifically, and then either proceed through time by holding the R% trigger, or simply go back to live action by pressing the < button again.
Lastly, you can give specific commands to your party members by using the context wheel or whatever it's called. Here is an example... I am a rogue/assassin, and so when I am sneaking, one of my tactics is to target the farthest enemy from my group, push the LB (left bumper/shoulder button) and select "Attack My Target". They all run to attack that guy, and while everyone else runs to intercept my party, I can come in behind them and just slaughter everyone extremely fast. You can do that in the tactical view as well, and you can also bring up the wheel, then dpad up or down and select a specific character, then give the commands(attack my target, stay here, etc), and ONLY that character will use that command.

I actually think the gamepad design is very well done, but I would like to be able to somehow map more abilities beyond the original 8.

 

Upgraded my videocard to the GTX 970 superclocked edition from HD 7850, what a freaking major difference! the game plays so smooth now with everything maxed out. i am an nvidia believer now lol.

 

If anything due to mantle it should run better on amd

 

It does look better in CFX with Mantle. No flashing textures, fog looks correct etc... DX11 with CFX/SLI has flashing textures and the fog is screwy.

 

> Memory: 32gb DDR3 1866mhz

Yeah... :eyes:

 

Can you get Sera's Armour style in game if you are a female or it it stylised for her only?

I went on youtube real quick to see if armour looks different on female elves ( like sera ) and it looks like it is identical to human female armour.

I hate the cloak that is on the sturdy prowler armour and sturdy battlemage armour, and the sturdy battlemaster armour looks like weak cloth for a tier 3 armour schematic.

I was hoping to find some better looking gear but obviously stats trump all else but for a role playing game the armour is very limited.

 

I cannot wait to bone sera

 

"Bone" is going to be difficult since companions now have their own preferences.

I don't know the full details on all of them but from what I know.

Cassandra prefers men of elven and human variety.
Josephine prefers men.
Cullen prefers women of human and elven variety.
Sera prefers women.
Bull has no special preferences.
Dorian prefers men.
Blackwall prefers women.
Varric
Vivian
Cole
Leliana none of these four can be romanced.
(You can flirt with them and a few other characters but it leads nowhere.)

Unsure about Solas, apparently there wasn't going to be in a romance but he now has something although not as detailed, same apparently goes for Josephine or if it was Cullen.

 

Not if you have the gender bug they don't.

I seemed to be able to romance everyone minus cullen and solas, everyone else thought I was female but cassandra thought I was male.

 

Lol. I love her voice acting, there's a nice mix throughout the game of British and European accents.

 

apart from the awful irish accent of the elf in Haven :3eyes:

 

Half man - half amazing

And the rare over the top american accent dwarf female bg voiceover that really really stands out.

 

lol.