Dragon Age: The Veilguard is coming this fall, and fans and newcomers alike are going back to play the first three games before BioWare’s next fantasy RPG hits store shelves. However, Dragon Age: Inquisition is much more expansive than its predecessors, opting for the “open zone” format with a bunch of busy work and tiresome traversal. Thankfully, if you’re looking to go back to the 2014 RPG ahead of The Veilguard, there’s a mod list that will let you skip to all the good stuff and avoid a lot of the bloat.
Artist Corey Brickley has compiled a list of mods for what they call the Dragon Age: Inquisition “Story Mode,” which they describe as a means to “skip the boring grinding and get to the good stuff,” specifically the story and party member quests. I’ve always asserted that Inquisition has one of BioWare’s best stories and casts, but they’re buried under a lot of open-world nonsense and real-world time-gated mechanics that make it impossible to see everything in a timely manner. The “Story Mode” mods target several of the most time-consuming parts of Inquisition, from the War Table that requires you to wait in real-time (from a few minutes to several hours) to complete quests to the “Power” mechanic that gates the main story quests by making you do side quests to increase your influence.
I haven’t replayed Dragon Age: Inquisition in several years at this point, but playing it the first time, I knew its biggest weakness is how much all the superfluous live-service-esque nonsense gets in the way of enjoying its excellent critical path. Speedrunning that game is a needlessly complicated process, but these mods target a lot of pain points. So if you’re looking to go back before The Veilguard and are playing on PC, this is a great way to get through it in a reasonable amount of time.
If you’re playing Dragon Age: Inquisition for the first time, playing with these mods active will probably give you a much better experience. And if you’re new to the series, I’d recommend playing through the other games, too, and specific DLCs for each. For more on that, click here.
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