Dragon Age Inquisition [PS4 Review]

I've had this game for a week, and put almost ten hours into it.
I think I'm ready to write a review, despite the fact that I've kept on playing both Civ Beyond Earth and Destiny. And that is just for video games... someday I'll have to post up a paint blog about some of the minis games I play aside from X-Wing as those need no paint.

As of this writing, I have no idea if she is a playable character.

Cassandra is a party member. I kind of like her character.

I'll start off by coming clean. I had no idea how this game was gonna play out. Between Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2, how would Inquisition work out?

4.5 out of 5 stars

Ok, that is a lie. I've been following the game closely for a while. I knew they were planning something BIG. Could they deliver?
I'll get to that determination later.

Varric is back! He's just as cool as before.

As with all Dragon Age games, you begin by creating your character. I took a very long time on this. There are so many details you can adjust. It is like crafting a character in the Sims 4. You adjust cheeks and noses and eye tilt...

There are also voice selections! Two male and probably two female. I do not know yet, I'm only on my first game.

In DA:I you play as the Herald.

I'm also waiting to see how extensive my choices taken in the Tapestry affect the game. The Tapestry essentially allows you to create the shape of the world. Bioware did this, I am guessing, because it would have been very difficult to import game states from last generation consoles. This works out well enough since I can actually remember most all of the details from my many games.

The menu interface.

Then after hours of character creation, you are thrust right into the action. Excellent way to use in medias res, well actually 'the correct way' would be more accurate. This is all provided that we get the
Act I (as Extra Credits clearly lays out) information we need. I assume that we will, I could be wrong, but I hope not. I hope that they are not merely relying on DA:O and DA2 to be that Act I.

It is a big old world out there... go get lost in it.

But lets move on to the whole Big Open World deal in DA:I. It is a full on BOW. The world is so huge I've really only partially explored two regions and have for the most part ignored the main story. The world may actually be too open. I just wander around from minor quest to minor quest. I've tried all sorts of craziness too from falling off of cliffs to battling dragons at level three, to swimming in the ocean. (By the way, each of those resulted in death, or near death).

I've also spent far too long collecting crafting items. They are everywhere... I suppose they were like that in prior DA games, but they just litter the world now. Tons of varieties, hundreds of instances. 

I've only used the war room a little bit, and experimented there a tiny bit. That will probably be amazingly large too. I've not even touched Multiplayer. I'll get to that soon enough...

I wonder how long this game will take me. I can see it easily eating up 70+ hours. Maybe more. Will it actually beat the longest game I've ever played? Will it beat Xenogears (PS1) for length? Maybe. I'll just have to keep playing it to see.

For now, I have to go wander around the Hinterlands some more... I've yet to complete a whole bunch of side quests... maybe someday I'll move the main story along.

This person has explored very little of the Hinterlands.