Just started playing this properly having never got out of the Hinterlands when it came out. Upgraded my PC and now have the perfect setup. PC is in another room so as not to ruin lounge aesthetics but near enough so that mouse, keyboard and wireless 360 controller still work. I've run a 5m HDMI cable through so it hooks up to my fancy 50" telly and is playing via the 5.1 home cinema system. The nice thing about a PC/telly combo is that you're limited to 1080p and so a GTX 970 (i5 4690k, 8GB, SSD) is all the card you'll ever need. It looks beautiful - and so much better than on my upstairs gaming PC even at the same res on a much smaller monitor. That's mostly because the monitor is shit, tbf. The PC is fine (i5 2500k, 8GB, GTX 770, SSD). Why do I need two PCs? One is for working from home and for escaping to when my wife is watching telly, the major limitation of a lounge gaming setup.
Anyway, self-congratulatory waffle about my perfect setup aside, DA:I might just be the first game I truly get into since FFVII. I've clocked up the hours on Skyrim, Fallout, etc, and I've completed Tomb Raiders, Half-Lifes and Far Crys, but this is giving me a similar feeling to getting stuck into a new series of novels. I'm only 9 hours in but the game is just opening up and I'm seriously impressed.
FWIW, I've tried mouse and keyboard upstairs and it's awful. Feels almost unplayable vs gamepad. I haven't used tactical cam once using gamepad - having too much fun hacking and slashing.
I'm in the process of getting a new PC, and I was going to have a similar set-up to you, except my TV is shit so I was going to get a new monitor that I could move out of the way when it wasn't being used. But the tower case is quite deep and my living room is narrow and cramped, so there's little room to put it where it isn't in danger of being knocked. So I've decided to make the move upstairs, and am sorting out the back bedroom into more of an office set-up, but with a comfy chair so I don't derp my arms and hands more than they are already derped.
I was going to go 1080p for the monitor but I'm getting a
really nice gpu so I thought fuck it, and am getting a 25" 1440p display instead.
I started playing DAI with m&kb but after a while decided to try a gamepad. I hate it. I pause a lot, I like to be able to click on enemies to target them, and the gamepad is really, really shit for that. I gave it a good go, I used it exclusively for a week, but it's just awful for the way I play. I loved using the gamepad just for running around, and the gamepad is absolutely excellent for the screenshot tools I use, but combat unpauses all the freaking time with a gamepad, it's really difficult to target people quickly, you can't target a specific enemy (and bring their info up on screen) while you're paused, giving a command to any of your companions while paused immediately brings you out of pause... it's just a hot mess. Fine if you do just want to hack and slash, but I don't. I'm playing on nightmare at the moment, and while it's easy enough I cherish the ability to pause, look around, click an enemy, change my mind, click another enemy to select it, cycle through my team assigning commands, then unpause and have them all do what I said at the same time. I tried to like it, I really did... I just can't.
Still, the screenshot tools let you use either gamepad or keyboard for controlling the camera regardless of what you have selected in game, so I get the best of both worlds. The only problem I face using kb&m is that some menus seem a little more unstable. The equip potions menu, for example, is a completely different design and I can crash in it sometimes when using kb&m, but I didn't crash once in it when using the gamepad. Still, it's a minor niggle, and I make sure I save before I go into menus of any kind anyway.
Glad you're enjoying the game. It's absolutely beautiful, the environments are gorgeous, the writing is for the most part good, the pacing is shot to hell and the end of the game is actually only good if you have the Trespasser dlc and treat that as the end of the game, but all in all it's a solid, fun game with a lot of positives. And my god, THE LORE. <3
and they ended up massacring some of my people...
DA:4 ....
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