Yes... I tried following the path of the Elves, but simply could not work it out - so in the end, I just jumped after Samson. Did I miss much?Tawmis wrote:Awesome! I keep thinking I get close to the end; but then it opens new things (and I am anal enough that I have to do EVERY War Table mission that appears...)
So at the moment, I am following Samson - and I am in the Elven Temple. I have decided to follow the path of the Elves rather than just jump in the hole to follow Samson.
And yes, watching the end does reveal quite a lot... but also raises new questions.
I agree about the hairstyles - they look godawful. Skyrim had better hairstyles, and it's a much larger game - but Skyrim hair looked like hair. The hairstyles in DAI look like someone took a shiny plastic mold and stuck it on their bare scalp.
It's a fairly minor thing, perhaps - but...Personally, I was much more annoyed by the incredibly huge number of side-quests, and the fact that it would take so! Long!! To!!! FINISH!!!! ARGH. ARGH. ARGH.
For instance, the temple in the desert - and the fact that it requires all those shards, after which your "reward" is a paltry +2% resistance to fire/frost. Finding enough of the blasted things takes ages, which is not helped by the fact that they are all situated in areas that are very hard to reach. The mini-map doesn't help any, either. You'd often reach the spot on the mini-map where you think the quest target is... and it's not there... and you search, and search, and turn this way and that way, and can't find anything and get frustrated, and then the camera changes view and you can't SEE anything and get even MORE frustrated, ad nauseum, until you finally think "Sod this! Am I playing a role-playing game or puzzle game or a hunt-the-pixel game? Where in the name of sanity are these tiny little THINGS that I'm supposed to find? Shards, books, puzzles - whatever!" 
I appreciate EA put a lot of effort into making the game more "believable" and "realistic", but there's a fine line between realism and obsessive pedantry. I did not and could not enjoy trying to find all those tiny little things. Having said that, I did enjoy finding new and more powerful items (rings, weapons, armour etc.), even though I knew that there would be others just around the corner.
The main story, the backstory, the challenging combat, and the detailed NPCs, are this game's strong suits. The side-quests - with a few exceptions (such as getting yourself a horse) - are not. Most of the side-quests, I found, were an utter waste of time. Again, Skyrim showed how to do side-quests: be brief. Most of the Skyrim side-quests are simple: speak to character A, find item B, bring item B to character A. Bang! Done. I hope I'm not coming across as impatient, but for just one side-quest - fully exploring the Forbidden Temple in the desert map - I had to find seventy-two shards (tiny items, often in nearly inaccessible locations), often while under attack and fighting for survival, with a flawed map and an often malfunctioning camera-view. No fun at all. And even once I found six of the blasted things, my "reward" was a paltry +2% to fire resistance or +2% to frost resistance. Whoop-de-doo.
All in all, DAI is still a major improvement on DA2, but miles and miles behind DAO. (And yes, Tawm, even considering DAO's Deep Roads - which I always thought was very fun, if extremely disturbing).
Comments?
I'm only asking because, when I tried to install it for the first time, it told me to install Origin, or else I couldn't play. (Huh. At least it didn't say the word "sucker"). 
