j4remi wrote:Inquisition's a bit of a completionist's nightmare because there are a lot of side missions with light payoffs. But since it was a new world for me, I remember being pretty engrossed in all of it. Bioware games always do that thing where you get back to your hub area and have to track down EVERY side character to make sure you haven't unlocked a new dialogue tree. I get caught up in it every time..
Yeah, see, that's the thing, when I tried playing Inquisition, it all just felt kinda, empty
Like, because I think Origins had such great worldbuilding and characters, Inquisition just felt kinda lacking in comparison, plus the map design is imo the worst example of 2010s "open world" maps, where you don't have a ton of freedom of movement, the maps are way too big, and there's not much in them. It feels like quantity over quality
Origins is clunky and old, but you go into it with that expectation, where Inquisition looks like a modern game but is one of those games that didn't understand how to make it work. Sort of like Skyrim in a way, but Skyrim at least was more or less the first of those types of games. I do know it has different maps and stuff, but I never got much into exploration. Like, I've been replaying Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor, and while they aren't the best examples, they do hit the right amount of excitement for finding a hidden area and (at least once you get all the upgrades in Fallen Order), it feels good to move around in them
I don't like big, empty worlds with nothing to do but look at the scenery (probably why I'm not a huge BotW or TotK guy), I would prefer smaller, denser maps that allow you to really sink your teeth into the universe of the game, where thought has been put into the interconnectivity of stuff. I know it's a high standard, but New Vegas is just the prime example of this, everything flows into everything else so you feel like it's all relevant and you don't even feel like you're doing side content
Actually, Baldur's Gate 3 might be the new prime example of that.