Mass Effect 4: 10 Things It Must Learn From Dragon Age: Inquisition

9. Inventory Management Is Still Annoying

Dragon Age: Inquisition may be a fantastic game, but it isn€™t without its flaws. One minor quibble with the game is its inventory system. While it works fine enough, it simply isn€™t much fun. Many RPGs suffer the same issue. The game only allows you to carry a limited amount of things, and when combined with the pack rat mentality all gamers share, this leads to too much wasted time fretting over which items are worth destroying or discarding in order to make space. Frankly, it€™s a chore navigating the inventory menu in an attempt to keep track of which characters carry which items. So while Mass Effect 4 should follow Inquisition€™s lead in most aspects of design, this isn€™t one of them. This doesn€™t mean an inventory system ought to be thrown out altogether, as resource management is often a major aspect of the open world RPG genre. If anything Bioware should increase the amount of resource management from Mass Effect 3, but the management system itself should be streamlined so as to be as simple and intuitive as possible. The less amount of time a player spends in a menu system the better. Menu screens aren€™t immersive; they break immersion. It€™s not a huge issue; if it was Inquisition wouldn€™t be as enjoyable as it is. And even if Mass Effect 4 did copy Inquisition to the point where it did contain the exact design it would still be a great game. That€™s a testament to how good the whole of Inquisition is. But there are still areas to improve upon, and with Mass Effect 4 Bioware has the chance to do so.