Dragon Age: Inquisition... ownd, pwnd, and bwnd by XBone.

Thanks, thad. I'll tell my friend.

Edit:

I just looked up the patch notes for XBone Patch 2. They were back from December 9, 2014. The notes say nothing regarding cloud save function. I know my friend has had problems since then.

On the plus side, it appears the PS versions are good to go for Brian on Christmas Morn... sorry, for Brian's wife on Christmas Morning!

I'm kind of bummed that I won't be able to port my data over to Xbox, since I played part 2 on PS3. They should have like a questionnaire, asking stuff like: Male or Female Hawke, did Bethany (or that other guy I don't know because he died at the beginning) make it out of the Deeproads, sided with mages or templars, etc.

You can, if you use the Dragon Age Keep. You can fill it out online (doesn't have to be via your Xbox), then import your saved world state [NB after clicking the option to export it] to your console.

I strongly advise doing this if you have the option. Some of the decisions can have fairly significant ramifications for the story (I don't think areas are opened up or closed off based on decisions made, but the changes are still substantial).

Ah, thanks Thad! I actually saw this last night when I fired up the game.

Hey Boaz and Thad. I'm getting the sense that the war room objectives are similar to Mass Effect 2 ship upgrades. In that, if you don't upgrade your ship before going through that final relay, you get jacked up. Is that true? Also, is there any rhyme or reason as to who you send on these missions? And if you should focus on the Fereldan side or the other side?

Who you send can get you different rewards (as well as taking more or less time).

I wouldn't worry about focusing on one side or the other. Certain missions can get you throne accessories (basically, a slightly swankier version of a given throne). Thrones can only be upgraded twice, incidentally.

The war table, beyond critical missions, is basically optional. However, some of the stuff you get can be pretty good (schematics or amulets that give certain characters an extra skill point to spend). The missions can also garner approval from companions.

Thanks Thad! I'm also noticing that I'm not playing as tactfully as DA2. In the previous one, there were a lot of closed spaces, so I'd set my tank in a doorway while range guys stood on the opposite side, and me as a rogue would run around and DPS. Here, there's a lot more open space, so I usually just let my tank run on in and ranged attackers hang back. When closing a rift, I order my team to protect the main char. I don't find myself pausing too much.

With DA2 I was constantly pausing and ordering around. Not so much here. Also, tactics seem to have been simplified a lot.

Yeah, tactics, sadly, have been simplified a lot. However, on Hard (playing on that now) and in certain situations (notably forts) the zoomed out tactical approach becomes more useful and sometimes necessary.

Oh, and you can only get the jar of bees via a war table mission.

I really want to play this but I just can't justify the expenditure. I just purchased the Skyrim legendary edition and that takes up my spending money.

This thread seems to mostly be about bugs. How are the characters and story?

You will get huge bang for your buck with Skyrim.

The story moves too slowly at the start. There's a key turning point and then it really kicks off (you'll know it when it happens). After that, it's much better. The Inquisition as an organisation feels real/important, you do make critical decisions and judging people feels like it has weight (and can be surprisingly tricky).

With 9 companions some are, obviously, better than others. My current playthrough (and first male character, earmarked for frisky time with Cassandra) very nearly ended up sleeping with Dorian. Some very good voice-acting going on there. I also really like the 3 advisers. I played both prior games, and it's pretty cool having Cullen as commander of the military, after all the stuff he's been through. It's also interesting to see the substantial change Leliana has gone through, from Origins to Inquisition.

I'm not sure there's quite the dominant Alistair-Morrigan companion pairing there was in Origins, although I like the needle between Cassandra and Varric. For a time I had Sera and Iron Bull in the same party [for those after rather lustier banter, this may be a good combination]. Incidentally, having a certain companion can sometimes almost be like having a perk for certain quests (Blackwall with Grey Warden business being the most obvious).

Update:

My friend put DA:I back in yesterday... and there was an update/patch.... and the game seems to be running perfectly! Six and a half weeks after release, the game is now playable.

It looks fantastic. It sounds fantastic. There are connections (overt and subtle) to the previous games and other media (books and video).

I'll update more... especially if I find time to start playing.

Good to hear.

If you do, I'd reiterate that it's a very good idea to use the Keep first (there's nothing wrong with Default World but, especially if you played Origins, it probably won't be quite the one you remember).

You may also want to try playing on Hard. I don't think I altered the difficulty on either previous game, but found Normal a bit too easy. Hard seems a nice challenge (I may start a Nightmare playthrough, just to see what it's like).

My friend is completely immersed. He's played between four to eight hours a day for the last four days. I can't keep up with his progress. He loves it.

Looks like I will have to clear some time this year to play.

Who are his companions?

He has Cassandra, Varric, So Lost (as my friend calls him, because his pathfinding seems atrocious), a male warden, Iron Bull, a female elven rogue, and Vivienne. His main is a female Qunari rogue archer... so he's still experimenting, but I think he's going to go with his archer (dps), Vivienne (dps, ice control), Iron Bull (dps and off tank), and Cassandra (main tank).

Update:

Bwned! by Xbone!

I watched my friend level up to 12 and found out what thaddeus6th meant when he posted...

thaddeus6th said:

There's a key turning point and then it really kicks off (you'll know it when it happens).

Click to expand...

And the game refused to save... It read "Game Saved", but it lied. He lost all saves prior to Sunday evening. That's four days (about twenty hours of real time spent playing).

From what my friend has told me and from what I've seen, DA:I is epic in scope, deep in story, and rich in character details (both personality and animation). Iron Bull took the Herald to get the common soldiers' opinions. Cullen and others actually look up (physically, in the animation) to his Qunari Herald. The ocean has big waves. Leliana is still alive.

The theological dilemmas that the Herald faces are extremely profound. Can the Herald claim to be a prophet? Would that help the people? Is it true? Does it matter if it's true? Or should the player just take it on faith? Why can't the Herald continue if it's all a lie?

But that's all gone. Lost in the ether.

Some of you know I paint miniature soldiers. I don't care that it's not cool. But I do care that the miniatures don't unpaint themselves overnight.

What if your bank said your last deposit did not get saved?

What if you went down on Christmas morning and all of the presents you bought for your family had disappeared?

Could your car be repossessed even if you'd made all of your payments?

Let me say that if the save function for an RTS (Total Annihilation, Starcraft) does not work.... who would care? RTS games take less than an hour, I don't need to save them.

But the purpose of Dragon Rage: Imposition is that it's a story... something to reveal itself over time. It's got to be at least twenty-eight hours even for a maniacally obsessive Korean gamer with acute insomnia... and more like fifty for the rest of us. A story. An epic story. Nobody reads The Lord of the Rings in one sitting... you have to have a bookmark. A save point.

And a RPG of this day and age, played through a console or computer, has the ability to be different for each player and for each class, race, and gender of the player's character. The PC interacts with many factions (races, guilds, political parties, nations, social groups, military organizations, party NPCs, etc.) and the worlds can be explored in different orders... so the story is never... I repeat, NEVER the same. Losing save points or whole characters means losing the story... not just the place in the story, but the entire story. Every time you have to revert to a save point, the story changes... I repeat, the story changes.

What Microsoft, EA Games, and Bioware are doing with Dragon Rage: Imposition is stealing money and wasting time. It's now fifty-one days since the XBone release in the U.S. Fifty-one days... and it's unplayable. Since all other platforms have been fixed, I tend to think this problem lies exclusively with Microsoft. There is no regard for product quality or customer satisfaction. I'd love to see EA and/or Bioware come out and say, "We advise all prospective players to buy this game for any platform other than XBone. Currently, there is an issue with the save feature that has not been ironed out. We are working tirelessly with Microsoft to provide a game of the highest quality... and until that time, we heartily encourage you to enjoy our game through other means." Actually, I'd love to see Microsoft pull the product voluntarily and offer refunds.

So my friend has over thirty hours invested in DR: Imposition. To show for it, he has a level 7 character. He's now installed the game four times. Four! He's lost two characters completely and five levels of choices for foundational plot developments and intense character building for his current character... including the aforementioned "key turning point"... not to mention all of the side quests, gathering of resources, and crafting.

My friend confessed that even after uninstalling and reloading (the level 12 saves were gone and only level 7 remains), he does not now have the will to continue. He's been a glutton for punishment... I guess he'll go back to Dark Souls II on the PS.

That's really unacceptable, compounded by the fact that it was unworkable for weeks after release.

With a game of its size some bugs are going to happen, but ones that destroy saves are ones that should've delayed release. [Reminds me of Skyrim, without a patch. That froze all the damned time]. I hope the games industry improves, but the only way to help achieve that is to stop pre-ordering and, if necessary, buying certain games at all.

I've occasionally lost saves due to freezing during saving taking place, but I've always had an autosave or earlier manual save so have never lost a huge amount. I can see why your friend would simply stop playing if he's lost 30 odd hours.

thad, by the way, thanks for your info. He was instinctively doing some of the things you mentioned... eg. taking certain characters on certain missions not for their benefit to the party, but because of their propensity to develop the story.

Also, my friend always plays on a difficult setting above normal. But he played Dragon Rage: Imposition on easy... and his rationale was that he was not optimizing the party for dps, but for the story; he was not optimizing gear for pwning, but for the story (Vivienne wore a horned helm and some winged shoulder thingy, his main wore a white patent nug skin jerkin to look the part of the Herald)...

Np. Just a shame his Xbox/game decided to eat his save data.

At my first experience at the war table, i decided that the priority was to embark to the Fallow Mire to rescue some of our kidnapped soldiers; one, to bolster the forces, but mainly to forge the loyalty of the rest of my forces in stone.

The scouts did not tell me that the undead are immune to cold damage, and that Solas' newly upgraded Ice staff would be akin to no more than a depth plodder in the gloopy swamp. It would also have been nice if, being at level 5, the scouts could have siad 'erm, sir- we think you are not yet ready for this expedition'.

Alas, we ventured forth, and forged ahead as far as we could muster. But in the middle of the marshes, set upon by two creepy tree-like demons at once, it was by the skin of our teeth that we escaped. With tails between legs, we retreated to the much friendlier Hitnerlands, to stick to mining metals and picking herbs until we are feeling a little more courageous.