Dragon Age: Inquisition Has a Filler Problem

Over at Kotaku, Patricia Hernandez has penned a piece that argues that Dragon Age: Inquisition’s large amount of content may not be the strength it’s been touted as, and that many of its quests are actually filler-y fluff. Here’s a snippet:

It doesn’t matter if you’re in the Hinterlands. Dragon Age is full of stuff that isn’t very interesting to do. We get to travel all around lush, huge locations with the sort of variety that would make Dragon Age 2 weep, but to some degree all the game is doing is changing the scenery. The bulk of what these areas have you do is very similar. You know that, when you get somewhere, you’ll always have the same core types of missions waiting for you in Inquisition. Close the rifts, collect the shards, and so on.

I don’t want to make it sound as if the new Dragon Age is devoid of meaningful things to do. In addition to Stuffâ„¢, there are also many fantastic quests, major and sidequest alike, which give you insight into the rich, complex world of Thedas. Heck, that same area with the herb quest also hosts two important personal missions that the Inquisitor’s companions sent me on. Those are sidequests, too. They’re not all bad! If I sound annoyed, it’s because it worries me that Inquisition’s creators felt the need to populate such a big world with so much extraneous stuff that nobody is going to remember fondly if they spend dozens of hours playing through it.

Smart, little things are what I’ll cherish about this game. I might think about a conversation with a party member for days last night I was freaking out about meeting a son I fathered at the end of Origins. The conversation lasted maybe 15 seconds, and it’s going to stay with me forever. I’m also amused by clever missions such as the one where Dragon Age asks you to go to a masquerade ball to dance, charm the court of Orlais and uncover the secret plot surrounding empress Celene. It’s stuff like that that keeps me playing Dragon Age not the fact that, thanks to places like the Hinterlands, the back of the Dragon Age box might as well boast about how it has OVER 100 HOURS OF GAMEPLAY!

Based on my experience with the title so far, I’m inclined to agree. The side quest design seems to have taken a big step back from the previous games in favor of meaningless chores that wouldn’t feel out of place in Assassin’s Creed of Far Cry 3, and these tasks are often delivered in the least possible interesting ways too. It’s clear that BioWare wanted to avoid accusations of recycling and lack of content again, but I really wish they took another approach entirely.