Holy crap does Dragon Age: Inquisition have a lot of content.

It's like Skyrim levels of crazy. And (neither seeking nor avoiding spoilers) I gather that I'm roughly at the end of act 1 of 3. SO MUCH GAME.

Okay, based on how much blank space there is left on Solas' walls, I'd guess I have two major story arcs left.

I did have one immersion-breaking moment which I find incredibly frustrating. (spoiler for elf inquisitor): I made the wrong choice on a War Table mission and my entire clan got wiped out. Which, okay, fine, I made a mistake and actions have consequences, but none of my companions or advisers actually acknowledge what happened outside of the little war table report. You'd think that someone would have a reaction of some sort.

I've been having some bad experiences with Dragon Age: Inquisition. 1) I can't even count how many times my audio has stopped when I approach NPCs. The NPCs will move around, but the subtitles and dialogue no longer play. 2) I lost 5 hours when my saves didn't actually save. No autosaves existed during that time either even though the save icon appeared often. That was so frustrating for me!

On the nitpickly front, it just feels too much like Skyrim. I don't feel like I'm playing a Dragon Age game.

But, I a took a break for a few weeks (for the wedding and Christmas), and I'll probably start playing again this week.

Thankfully the only bugs I've been experiencing have been lack of companion banter at times and companions not where they're supposed to be back at base. (But a quick save and reload typically fixes the latter.)

I do know that the experience has run the gamut for a lot of people, from a completely flawless performance to basically unplayable. Sometimes identical hardware has drastically different performance. Which is frustrating for the players, and I'm sure frustrating for Bioware, since it makes it harder to single out a cause. But losing 5 hours of gameplay would definitely be incredibly aggravating.

I've never actually played Skyrim or the like, so I can't really compare it. The open world bits took awhile to win me over but it still feels like Dragon Age to me. I'm really enjoying getting to know the various companions and I'm finding the storyline interesting. I just wish you could have more than 8 abilities assigned at one time. I miss my mage having the massive spell list from Origins.

BSG

It seems a shame to break back in with such prosaic concerns as the Battlestar while there is gaming conversation going on, but I have returned home (after holiday success!!) with the update. Apollo is once again cavalier with the fleet's supply of mince pies and plum pudding. Food drops to 5!

Next, the raiders activate, and we have 'splosions! That's more like it. The Bugatti has wandered into a raider pack's sights! It contained:

Civilian Ship B: 0 Population

Alas, these 'splosions were full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But you can't really hear any sound in space. And the raiders typically aren't that emotional. So they were full of nothing, signifying nothing. Ok, so that was pretty honest really.

But never mind that, because in other news, we reach the end of the jump track. The fleet jumps! Travel brochures are going out to the Admiral. Admiral Hoshi, when you're ready, please post your choice of destination.

BSG (Admiral Hoshi)

Ladies & Gentlemen of the fleet, this is your Admiral. We have bad news and good news. The bad news is, we lost a ship. Thankfully, it was a decoy, set up to distract the Cylons. We will miss it's spare parts. But we are thankful that no humans were hurt in the battle.

And on to the good news. We managed to spin up the FTL computers, and got a great jump! We have found ourselves at a Barren Planet . Sadly, it looks as if there are no resources for us to harvest. But, there are also no Cylons here either! It was a double jump ! Hopefully, that will delay our pursuers for awhile.

Lick any wounds now. Check your ships for damage. Perform any needed maintenance. Now is the time, while the skies are clear.

Galactica Actual, out.

DA:I

I remembered a couple other bugs I have: One is ever since fighting my first dragon I get random, Matrix-esque super slo-mo in combat sometimes. It's a little weird, but not game-breaking (since I'm hitting the pause button a lot myself) so I don't think about it much.

The other is sometimes the tavern bard will either be singing acappella or else playing music without singing (though the subtitles will still show the words.) Obviously, this is only a minor annoyance.

If you're running on a PC, Rayne, there are a few tweaks to try to make things go smoother:

• Disable Origin In-Game. Apparently this is sucks up performance and performs no real function beyond annoying pop-ups.
• Run Origin in Off-line mode unless you're starting a new character.
• Try the different in-game audio modes to find the one that works best for your setup. Some people are finding having it set to Home Theater without a surround sound system results in the game trying to output audio to non-existent speakers.
• From your computer Device Manager disable any audio devices you're not using.

I've been doing all of the above and it seems to make a difference.

Thanks, Kalshane. I'm on an XBox One though. I'm hopping there have been some patches since I last played that will take care of some of these issues.

Okay. There was a patch a couple weeks ago, but I don't know how it worked out for the XBone side as I don't frequent those forums. I know on the PC-side it solved a lot of people's problems, but also caused problems for people who were working fine before.

BSG (Helo)

well jumped, Admiral.