Dragon Age Inquisition - Trespasser : I feel bad for the people that paid for this

Dragon Age Inquisition is not a new game. It was released originally in 2014 and I have been talking about it so much because I only recently started to play (and finish) it. I acquired the base game and all the DLC for less than $10 (and you can too now, which I highly recommend.) The people who were gung-ho about this game years ago paid a lot more than I did and believe it or not, this DLC called Trespasser was sold for $15 on its own.

source

While the add on itself is really nice looking, and includes a story that is completely separate from the original base game I can't help but feel as though the people that shelled out the $15 would be a bit disappointed for a couple of reasons.

It is quite short

I think that maybe this add on contained about an hour of gameplay total. You spend a vast majority of the Trespasser quest in another realm that is accessed via these giant mirrors that serve as portals that instantly teleport you to another place (sorry, i don't remember what they are called)

source

Unfortunately, these mirrors don't really offer much in the way of any sort of compelling puzzle since in most instances you don't have access to more than one of them at a time. So there is no real "which one of these do I take?" sorta thing going on. I suppose this is fortunate for me because I have a very low tolerance threshold for load times and every time you use one of these portals the system must load the new area.

Anyway, for $15 I think the game should have included significantly more content as it only gives one new map. Therefore I think it is a bit of a ripoff. Of course I paid almost nothing for it so the price was right for me.

Characters are taken away from you

If you are like me, you spent a lot of time in the base game building up the attributes and equipment of certain characters that are in your pool of people to choose from. Yet in Trespasser, you have several of these people taken away from you completely. I am sure there is some sort of reasoning behind this in the masses of readable literature that you encounter during the story - but since I read very little of that I don't know why they all of a sudden are not an option anymore. It was frustrating to me because I lost my main mage and rogue (who, combined, were doing most of my damage) and had to spend quite some time crafting new armor for them.

source
Cole is IMO the best character in the game, and you can't use him in this expansion... what a sham!

The open world is taken away

This is probably the biggest gripe I have with this DLC. A massive part of the allure of Dragon age is the fact that at any given point in time you are able to go to a wide array of zones in order to attempt to achieve 100% completion. These zones vary in difficulty, have their own micro-stories, and there is plenty to do and see. Once you enter the Trespasser DLC story, ALL OF THIS is permanently taken away from you.

As far as the story is concerned, this happens because the events of Trespasser are meant to take place 2 years after the main story - so it is very conceivable while you wouldn't be able to simply run back and forth in time (despite the fact that in at least one other point in the game you do in fact, travel through time.)

But not only do you not have the ability to go back and forth in time (understandable) but one you make the choice to enter the Trespasser story, your ability to go back is completely gone. They put a dialogue box on the screen warning you about this but in the past the "point of no return" simply meant that if you left the quest story, you had to repeat it all from the start..... in Trespasser, there is no choice to leave it at all.

This really made me mad because all of my progress is not inaccessible. They should have at least made a save point just before you enter Trespasser, but unless you thought to do this manually, entering the last DLC is truly a one way street. The only way to return to the open world that you have spent (well in my case) 100+ hours unlocking, is forever lost. This is an absolutely massive flaw in the design and now I am extremely unlikely to ever play this game again.

The DLC is still good and new abilities are introduced that are actually really cool. I think that most of what i griped about here is forgivable and maybe even appreciated by some fans, but taking away the ability to return to your previous progress is a bunch of bullhicky!