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Dragon Age: Inquisition Reviewed and Benchmarked

Posted by samzenpus on from the to-play-or-not-to-play dept.

MojoKid writes To say that BioWare has something to prove with Dragon Age: Inquisition is an understatement. The first Dragon Age: Origins was a colossal, sprawling, unabashed throwback to classic RPGs. Conversely, Dragon Age: Inquisition doesn't just tell an epic story, it evolves in a way that leaves you, as the Inquisitor, leading an army. Creating that sense of scope required a fundamentally different approach to gameplay. Neither Dragon Origins or Dragon Age 2 had a true "open" world in the sense that Skyrim is an open world. Instead, players clicked on a location and auto-traveled across the map from Point A to Point B. Thus, a village might be contained within a single map, while a major city might have 10-12 different locations to explore. Inquisition keeps the concept of maps as opposed to a completely open world, but it blows those maps up to gargantuan sizes. Instead of simply consisting of a single town or a bit of wilderness, the new maps in Dragon Age: Inquisition are chock-full of areas to explore, side quests, crafting materials to gather, and caves, dungeons, mountain peaks, flowing rivers, and roving bands of monsters. And Inquisition doesn't forget the small stuff — the companion quests, the fleshed-out NPCs, or the rich storytelling — it just seeks to put those events in a much larger context across a broad geographical area. Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of the best RPGs to come along in a long time. Never has a game tried to straddle both the large-scale, 10,000-foot master plan and the small-scale, intimate adventure and hit both so well. In terms of graphics performance, you might be surprised to learn that a Radeon R9 290X has better frame delivery than a GeForce GTX 980, despite the similarity in the overall frame rate. The worst frame time for an Radeon R9 290X is just 38.5ms or 26 FPS while a GeForce GTX 980 is at 46.7ms or 21 FPS. AMD takes home an overall win in Dragon Age: Inquisition currently, though Mantle support isn't really ready for prime time. In related news, hypnosec sends word that Chinese hackers claim to have cracked Denuvo DRM, the anti-piracy solution for Dragon Age: Inquisition. A Chinese hacker group has claimed that they have managed to crack Denuvo DRM — the latest anti-piracy measure to protect PC games from piracy. Introduced for the first time in FIFA 15 for PC, the Denuvo anti-piracy solution managed to keep the FIFA 15 uncracked for 2 months and Dragon Age Inquisition for a month. However, Chinese hackers claim that they have managed to rip open the DRM after fifteen days of work. The hackers have uploaded a video to prove their accomplishment. A couple of things need to be pointed out here. First,the Chinese team has merely cracked the DRM and this doesn't necessarily mean that there are working cracks out there. Also, the crack only works with Windows 7 64-bit systems and won't work on Windows 8 or Windows 7 32-bit systems for now. The team is currently working to collect hardware data on processor identification codes.

10 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Support the developers! by teranine · · Score: 5, Funny

    In regards to the Chinese cracking the DRM for Dragon Age: Inquisition, how about we support the developers of these games instead of supporting piracy. If this title is supposedly the best RPG in a decade, shouldn't the developers and everyone involved be rewarded for their hard work?

    1. Re:Support the developers! by Sowelu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the party line is that DRM is onerous and hurts paying customers, and that sometimes a legitimate owner of the game will also need to crack the DRM to make it work on their own weird computer. I don't pirate things, but I also don't buy things with nasty DRM, especially the always-online checkers, and I think many people here are the same.

    2. Re:Support the developers! by nine-times · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To turn things around, I'll support the developers when they get rid of the DRM. I've had reasonably good experience with Steam and their DRM, but every other DRM I've run into recently has created some kind of problem resulting in the game being unplayable. I'm not familiar with Origin, but I've read bad things.

      I actually went looking to buy Dragon Age last week, but when it wasn't available either DRM-free or on Steam, I decided not to bother.

    3. Re:Support the developers! by khellendros1984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      DRM is a source of bugs. Removing it can have significant benefits beyond piracy. When games usually came on CD/DVD, it was my standard practice to download a No-CD crack after I bought the game, so that I could be lazy, and avoid digging through the CD pile to switch games.

      The equivalent today is perhaps playing a game without an available internet connection. I'm not in that situation often, but a few times a year, I am. Then again, that usually means I'll just switch to the cellphone instead.

      --
      It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
    4. Re:Support the developers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Deciding not to buy and play a game, for whatever reason, is quite different than deciding that one should be allowed to play the game without paying for it...

    5. Re:Support the developers! by war4peace · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Exactly what happened to me when I tried installing Sacred on my PC years after it was released. I had bought the original CDs and errors galore. Turns out the DRM was unable to work on the newer OSs, so I had to slam a crack in it. After mentioning that on their official forums, a moderator there sent me a PM saying "yes, we know about the issue, no, we can't help you but yes, we're okay with you using the crack as long as you bought the original game".

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    6. Re:Support the developers! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't pirate things, but I also don't buy things with nasty DRM, especially the always-online checkers, and I think many people here are the same.

      At least one of us is. I basically gave up on AAA games after (a) DRM stuff got silly, and (b) several titles in a row had such serious bugs that they just weren't enjoyable to play, and often they were never fixed.

      If the developers want to spend a fortune on these titles and fight the good fight against the evil pirates, be my guest, but personally I'll reserve my support for those who build games that I will enjoy and that don't compromise the integrity of my PC. Right now, that usually means the little guy (or at least, start-as-little-guy) who makes something innovative or even just a good puzzle game to pass a few minutes. I also have high hopes for a few of the much more ambitious crowd-funded titles, if they ever manage to ship.

      --
      If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  2. Slashvertisment by khchung · · Score: 3, Informative

    It certainly reads like one.

    I got the game and played it for some 30-40 hours now, certainly did see any "fundamentally different approach" in the gameplay so far, compared to, say Kingdoms of Amalur, or Farcry 3, or the Fallout series, etc.

    Not the say the game isn't fun, but not really groundbreaking either.

    --
    Oliver.
  3. LOTRO clone, but with more bugs by petergriffinismyhero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's interface is a mess on the PC with KB/mouse. It is visually good, but nothing groundbreaking. The game really feels like a LOTRO rip-off though, except with a lot more interface and design bugs. Best RPG in decades? It may not even be the best RPG out right now. It's certainly not the best Dragon Age. I like the game so far, but I am not in love with it, the design flaws make it hard to love.

  4. Slashvertisement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Looks like EA / BioWare are really on an all-out bribe offensive with this one.

    Either that or a lot of "independent reviewers" magically came up with exactly the same sentences about the game...

    It has a nice-looking world, but is a horrible console port with clunky controls, a bad combat system, and pretty awkward cutscenes (I mean badly animated, not just awkward in terms of story and lack of real options).