Inquisitor [2009 (Original Release) 2012 (English version) -- Cinemax]

[Starfox]

Original Publication: 07/18/2013

One thing can be said about Inquisitor is that it completely nails the "old school RPG" part. Unfortunately it nails both the good and the very bad parts. Maybe it's because the title was in development for more than 10 years before being released and as a matter of fact began its development cycle when Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale were still pretty popular titles among the general public (now they're still popular but just among the nostalgic fans).

So a few things that one should be aware of (regarding the "old school" nature of the game). First, don't expect any help of any kind whatsoever, not even a tutorial to get you started. You'll have to get your hands dirty just learning how the thing work (and by many aspects it's far to be completely user-friendly expecially regarding the interface) Second, don't expect help finding or tracking your quests. It's definitely not Skyrim and even though a lot of people complain about Skyrim being "too" directive practically leading the player by the hand, Inquisitor reminds you that once upon a time there was not even a tiny pointer to give an approximate direction to follow. You'll get lost, a lot. You'll spend time (a lot too) just trying to figure out what to do next and in some cases you'll find the solution far to be logical. Like for example you really have to interrogate then burn "that" person at the stake to progress further, even if you don't like to burn people. Problem is, nothing in the game states that it's a mandatory process (it is, at least in one case) and you may run around without a clue as to why the story doesn't progress further indefinitely while you appear to have all the requirement fulfilled. Your journal won't help you either because even though it is much more complete than the one of recent RPGs, it sometime lacks the "important" bits of info or the important bits are buried under mountains of trivial info. There's just things that the game expects you to do in the correct order and it's your quest to find what those things are and what the correct order is.

Third, there is the combat system, typically old-school, meaning very hard up to damn right impossible in some areas. Difficulty aside, it's also one of the worst aspects of the game technically speaking like for example the quick bar located on the right of the screen on which you can place your preferred spells/abilities. One could think that one can use the mouse to click on icons to select a desired spell ability (after all the game is an isometric one)... Well, no. One has to use the numbered keys; using the mouse was simply not planned at all except for moving the icons in or out of the quickbar. One doesn't get to remap keys either (that part is not old school by the way, it's just stupid -- that applies to all current games that do not give the mean to players to remap the keys). Only thing you get in the options is a controls "page" that allows you to see what keys to use but don't even bother trying to remap them (confronted to gamers protests the devs came with a way to modify the keys... by manually editing a text file with notepad; so good to see the technology at your fingertips, just to say that editing text files is something that users have been doing since the dawn of computer games but that doesn't mean it's OK for developers to establish that as some sort of standard especially now with all the computer power floating around).

Then there is the sometime weird design choices. For example, in combat your character can get "confused", that's when the fun start because developers chose to represent confusion not by merely altering numerical values in combat to reduce the efficiency of your character but by really messing up with the game, in this case, inverting the mouse axes. Problem is that the only way to know what the hell happens when you get "confused" for the first time is to read the loading screens because the thing is only explained in one of the tips there and can be easily missed altogether. When you don't know, the behavior of the mouse really resembles a bug and that's exactly what people -- myself included -- assume it to be and they consequently try to correct it (one wouldn't believe the number of "Why the F... is my mouse inverted?" on forums). The fact that the stereo channels are also messed up (get used to parry on the right when you hear a threat coming from the left -- which that time is clearly a bug because it happens all the time) doesn't help. And why the thief must gain more than a dozen levels before being able to use a mere short sword is kind of a mystery -- not a bug but still... even in hardcore RPGs like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Night, the short sword is kind of the standard issue for thieves.

Being a RPG, there are classes to choose from at the beginning of the game. One can choose to play as a paladin, as a thief or as a priest. Unfortunately, the lack of tutorial hurts this process too. You never fully understand what you're choosing exactly until after you have time to play with it in the game. Sure, one has a basic description for each class but that part can be figured out easily (the paladin is combat oriented, the thief is the only class able to disarm traps but other than that has no real benefits and the priest is all about magic) I guess that's what really counts. Note that all classes can progress in both combat and magic area, however achieving mastery will either require a paladin for combat or a priest for magic. Personally, I went as a priest just because it made the most sense. As a priest you "belong" to the Inquisition (after all the game is all about that) and you can even climb the ranks. At the beginning of the game, the priest must request authorization from his superiors to arrest and interrogate (or torture) someone. Later with one more rank, the priest have full authority to arrest and interrogate suspects but still must request permission to prosecute them. One rank even higher, the priest can practically do everything without asking for a permission. The other classes on the other hand act as "guns for hire" for the Inquisition and even though they get to gain rank in the "paladinhood" or in the nobility (for the thief curiously) they'll still have to request inquisitorial permission for pretty much everything regarding arrest, interrogation/torture, prosecution and eventually execution.

Graphics are not at their top but it comes with being an "over 10 years of development" title. The same way, one can run the game in widescreen at the maximum resolution of your monitor but it's very much not advised because unless you have a perfect set of eyes you'll have real problems reading anything at 1920x1080 (for example) practically everything included the text being fixed size as opposed to scaled with the resolution. In my experience, not straining your eyes too much will require you to run the game at a maximum of 1280x1024.

And reading you will. Story is about the only good part of this game and unfortunately it also suffer its own problem like (I can't believe I'm saying that because I usually love a game with a lot to read) TOO MUCH to read. It's walls after walls after walls of text whenever you get into a serious conversation with someone and of course there's no voice-over. It wouldn't be bad if the little pieces of vital info were not sometime buried among hundreds of lines which may be interesting in a "universe description" way but have nothing to do with the quests themselves. Sometimes after a conversation you even manage to completely forget what it was all about with so much info being poured into your brain. A tip to the developers, reserve the descriptions of the game universe and characters to books that the player can have in their inventory and read at leisure and (especially when you don't have any voice over) keep the conversation stuff focused on the tasks at hand in order to minimize the confusion. One could argue that Morrowind had a lot to read too, with no voice-over... believe me Inquisitor is far far worse... At least the Morrowind way to handle discussions was "organized" with all the available subjects clearly shown on the right.

It grieves me to have to say bad things about a game arduously developed over 10 years by a small team of dedicated persons but if I said that Inquisitor is anything else than below average, I would be lying. It may have had some kind of appeal... 10 years ago. But that's probably what the developers intended. Now to me it's just a reminder of the fact that a certain kind of "old school" should really remain "old". And that comes from a guy that occasionally like to fire up Baldur's Gate or the like of Icewind Dale or Morrowind for the sake of nostalgia. However gaming has come a long way in 10 years and the "old-school" oddities that I can take from BG or Morrowind because they ARE old titles, I find them hard to swallow in a new title that assume proudly is "old-school" label even when it includes things that weren't too clever or thought through back then and seem even worse right now.

That said, if your personal gaming clock remained stuck 10 years ago up to the point that the mere evocation of Skyrim makes you vomit, you might like this game, who knows?