So I started playing 12:30 am EDT on release night (NVIDIA was giving me headaches; incidentally, my NVIDIA user handle is now 'I Hate Forced Opt-In Systems' if anyone wants to look me up) and then it was 3am and I decided to stop. Yesterday I started at around 6:30 pm EDT and looked up to discover it was 10:30, decided to finish off a plot and it was 3am again.
I was struck how it didn't go from set piece to room full of chest-high walls, its openness was a promise that DA:I made and delivered on, but the lack of claustrophobia was a mixed blessing. I love being able to get the high ground but I've only used it once. I probably should have used it twice because the enemy managed to flank my position. I was pretty impressed but then I'm not a twitch-game player, so a lot of this impressed.
What didn't impress was that there are ammo crates everywhere; apparently aliens in another galaxy use the same heat-sink system that we do, who knew!
Which segues into what has been bothering me the most; the writing. The characters are okay, if unoriginal, but all of them, even Ryder, act in ways that sound like this is normal. Especially Ryder. I've been playing a somewhat sarcastic but very people-focused Ryder and at one time they say something like, "I know, this place is terrible, right?" This is hard not to spoil, but it's said in a tone of someone who's been there more than two hours. I'm not buying it.
It's not just the new characters, either. There are some sound-bites of Liara lying around and this is where I realized why I don't like the writing: there is no subtlety or craft to it, it suffers from Tell Don't Show. If I had to hear another line about a "600 year nap", yes, we get it, it's the future now. There's even a place where you find a "secretly procured" image of the Normandy SR2.
Nnnnngh.
Now I don't mean to compare it to Mass Effect: The Shepherd Chronicles (ME:TSC), though the game certainly dances around the events of ME3. I do look at BioWare as a company known for their writers and it doesn't show.
I am enjoying the game. I gratefully welcome back the land roving, am glad that the open space is being used...kind of. "Oh no!" says the AI, "here's a pocket of enemies!" as the game reminds me how to leave the truck and I'm zooming right on by, waving to the very slight pocket of skirmish combat set up for my idle distraction. I've yet to find the kind of set-piece combat that was all over Mass Effect 1-3 which is fine; we've been playing that since Halo and before, but I'm looking at the aggro range and not for the encounter.
The level-up system doesn't feel clean, but in retrospect I had no idea what the hell I was doing in ME1, either. Having so many options is overwhelming in a way I don't think is good, but I didn't think this in Dragon Age: Origins and it was your Baldur's Gate-style RPG system where you don't know if something's going to be useful until after you've bought it.
Exploration is good, but doesn't have that pressure and threat that it did in ME:TSC. It feels, in fact, exactly like DA:I, though the pay-off of the main missions feel tangible. Your decisions are pretty limited on this front, but they have an effect with the key NPCs on the game, and this is where I think the writers got it right.
For instance, I've been playing my slightly cheeky people-oriented Ryder and there are a lot of places where without my input the character has been slightly cheeky but people-oriented. I imagine the number of lines of dialogue are massive compared to any BioWare game ever. It could be an illusion, but it's an illusion I'm enjoying.
So decent everything all around, a decent freshman effort from this BioWare group, and I look forward to DLCs for their tighter writing and focus.
Summary: Glad I bought it.