Dragon Age: Inquisition - sulky, uncommunicative companions investigated

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Multiple outlets are reporting that, if Inquisition seemed to have a lot less banter and charm than past Bioware games, that's a bug, not a change in tone.

That bit where Solas winds Sera up about her unexplored innate magical ability because she messed with his things? Mad bants - the kind some people are missing out on in Dragon Age: Inquisition because of a bug.

Some people have ploughed hours upon hours into the fantasy adventure only to be frustrated at the lack of chat between party members as they explore. There are pages of reports - on the EA Answers HQ support forum - of people only encountering a handful of occasions of banter in upwards of 10, 15, 20 hours of play, and longer.

BioWare has acknowledged the problem and is asking for 60+ hour game-saves, in which the player experienced the problem, for research purposes.

The causes aren't known but there's a workaround of sorts that has met some success.​

Here's the partial workaround, courtesy of helpful user Maljester on the EA forums. Basically you mess with the audio settings until something resets. But it doesn't help in all areas -- Maljester reports that for him, Val Royeaux remains as bare of music and talk as ever.

Enchant_m3nt on the BSN Feedback thread had success with cycling/changing the audio settings to trigger banter and fix music/combat dialogue. I'd sadly had no luck with the mount/camp rest/teleport combo, and to my absolute astonishment - Houston, we have music and banter! (For those having trouble with the glitch, try the mount/dismount-rest, or trying the audio settings cycle to trigger banter/music.)

At first I ran around in the Hinterlands for awhile, trying out mount/rest. Dorian/Sera/Bull wouldn't talk, so I change from (Home Theatre - TV), get into combat, get combat noise, and 1min later, Dorian/Sera have a banter. Stumble into more combat with correct combat noise, 1 min later, get another banter between them. Run all the way to Redcliffe Village, Dorian makes an ambient comment (I have gotten ambient comments before, though), but then everyone stopped talking.

For those with the glitch, keep an ear out as you're playing for music and combat dialogue - if they're both working, there should be a higher probability you'll get banter to trigger, too.​