As my outstretched palm glows green I pull it back towards
myself, making a fist. The air screams around me as the rift collapses with a
deafening wub. I wipe my daggers clean
on my already soiled digs, look to Cassandra, whose scarred face is unphased
and unflapped as always, and nod. We’re
done here, at last. Emprise du Lion is cleansed of Fade activity, Templars,
ancient mysteries, dragons, and giant snow-nugs. I bring up the World Map and fast travel back
to Skyhold. I’ve just finished mopping
up every quest line in an entire area, and I can’t wait to do it again, to get
back in the mix. I ponder checking in
with Cassandra, to make sure she’s okay and see if she’s ready to give intimacy
a try, but it feels too soon, and the Exalted Planes loom at the War Table.
I’ve cleared so many side quest areas, explored so much of the world. Pausing,
even for love, feels conspicuous, like a gesture towards wasted time.
Usually this is the point where I’d begin to feel sidequest
fatigue, where I’d want to get back on track and see what the “main story” has
in store for me. But Dragon Age:
Inquisition front loads so much into its least consequential areas, making
even the most chore-heavy, dead and unpeopled places into bastions of narrative
firmament.
Some credit is owed to the superlative writing, of which
there’s an absurd amount. Dragon Age:
Inquisition has thousands upon thousands of words, the bulk of them quite
good. For every line that Solas feeds me
that sounds like it’s ripped straight from a fantasy novel, there’s a bit of
banter between Sera and Cassandra or Varric and Dorian or whoever that just
sings of originality and life and humanity, living each and every day in a
truly fantastic world where things like magic and monsters are as normal as
traffic. Naturalistic dialogue that
builds character, dialogue that creates stakes out of nothing, the way good
dialogue does in any story, the way dialogue functions in life, is hard to come
by in video games, but Dragon Age:
Inquisition has it in spades. And I
haven’t even mentioned the Codex or discovered writing, the written part, where
Bioware often sees fit to dramatically retcon their properties, or
self-aggrandize over too many pages. Here there are certainly missives
dedicated to overt exposition, missives that make me want to scroll down and
click through every bit as much as the most servicey of terms, but those bits
of exposition are paired with clever turns of phrase and revealing historic
twists, hints at events within events, sometimes quite wittily conveyed. There
are also tiny bits of “found” writing – journals about what befell some of the
corpses that populate Thedas’ brutal firmament, segments and selections from
novels and plays and speeches that reveal the world I’m inhabiting in greater
detail, and journalistic considerations of terrible events that give
nigh-illiterate gravity to events that, as I come to see them, are often little
more than chaotic mashes populated by the same enemy, who I’m forced to murder
again, and again, and again. All this comes together to make an intense world,
one where I feel like I’m constantly a guest in someone else’s home, one I’m
always drawn back into visiting.
There’s also quite a bit to be said for the design of each
area. Dragon Age: Inquisition occurs inside a series of modules, each one
simultaneously interlocking with its cohorts and functioning
independently. Each of those modules is
distinct, in every way that Dragon Age 2’s
modules were not. Even areas that, on
their face, should be repetitive, like the many deserts of DA:I (I count three so far), each have their own sense of purpose,
their own history and personality. Each of these areas possesses their own
story, rich with twists and turns, betrayals and aspirations, love and loss. And each of those narratives ties into the
larger narrative of Dragon Age:
Inquisition itself. Sometimes it’s a
minor, tangential joining: the Tevinter Imperium is doing some Tevinty stuff in
some Dwarven ruins, and derailing them lets you acquire their spoils for your
own ends. There’s a larger faction that
these Tevinter are a part of, and you’re undermining them by fighting these
gents, but it’s no big in terms of the greater story when you look at it as part
of a bigger picture. Other areas have
far reaching consequences: by exploring one area, you begin the process of
systematically dismantling the leadership of one of the largest and most
dangerous factions in the game. I
imagine the impact on future interactions will be quite drastic, but I actually
have no idea how the plot would unfold if I didn’t explore the leads I’m
uncovering. They’re so engrossing, and the stakes of moving ahead seem so high,
that I don’t know if I could bring myself to let these zones pass me by.
And then there’s the art!
The design of each of these areas is flat out gorgeous, with twists and
turns that make them visually distinct, beyond the personality that terrain
doodads imply. Fauna and things like
hill formation and the paths that quests unfold along collaborate to bring
these areas to life, beyond their implied and specific narratives. It’s not just that DA:I’s art is beautiful; it’s that that beauty is all in the
service of building a world, a real place, or set of places, that feels
distinct. In previous Dragon Age
games, plants were little more than ground cover that glowed at opportune
moments. In DA:I, the plants I find tell me a lot about the world I’m moving
around in, and they all look and feel distinct.
As I move through the world, I’m taken in by how hardy Dragontorn looks,
how gnarly and cruel Felandris’ tendrils seem, and how ubiquitous Elfroot is.
It’s all so pretty, so unique, and so telling, that I don’t want it to stop.
Sidequest fatigue, then, has been replaced by progress
anxiety: I don’t want to push ahead and lose access to areas I haven’t finished
exploring yet. I just found out that
I’ve already done so, and I’m kicking myself for missing out on an area I
didn’t even know existed before I visited the “codex entries you missed” shop. Even that anxiety is quite tame: I’m not
anxious about the coming plot, I’m just invested. I’m invested in every experience I have in DA:I, despite gameplay that is pretty
cut and dry, if enjoyable. What keeps me coming back to this work of art are
the artiest parts, the parts that you can peel off, point to, and say: this is
art however you slice it. This is a
pretty image, this is a well crafted sentence, this is an artfully told
story. In light of this, it’s easy to
construe Dragon Age: Inquisition’s
overwhelmingly positive critical response as more than just recognition of a
well crafted product. Dragon Age: Inquisition is a game where
the least important part of the gaming experience is the game itself. DA:I’s success isn’t just success for
the franchise, or success for Bioware, or for RPGs as a genre. It’s success for
games that exist, first and foremost, as art surrounding a central
narrative. It’s a rallying beacon that
art has entered the mainstream, and it’s done so without attracting much attention
from any of the usual suspects who all too often weigh in on the matter.
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