I have noticed that my companion only banter about once in every area. I've heard from others that they banter far more often, approximately every 10 minutes.I tried to vary where I take my companions, roads, through the wilderness, a bit of both -as banter in DAO and DA2 was dependend on location triggers. Did not change anything.Could they be bugged or is the banter rate down?

Hi, littlebrightp. This appears to be a far more widespread problem than it may originally have appeared. People on the official forums are oftentimes not reporting it because they're making the assumption, given what they've experienced after (in some cases) completing the entire game, that there simply is not practically any "banter" in Dragon Age: Inquisition at all. This is (thankfully) quite erroneous, as I have discovered via written accounts of copious volumes of companion banter whilst other players have explored the field, as well as user-uploaded gameplay videos expressly detailing all those myriad encounters which many fans such as myself are missing out on entirely.This is the thread I started on BioWare's forums this morning:http://forum.bioware.com/topic/525267-as-suggested-posting-this-topic-here-many-players-are-reporting-a-bug-in-which-party-banter-is-incredibly-rare-no-matter-who-we-bring-along/Note the number of people not only to have confirmed they're having this issue but also to have stated that they didn't know what they were missing out on and were prepared to deem the lack of banter a flaw of the game as opposed to its misfired coding. Ultimately I am certainly glad to hear that some players are wandering around with chatty companions, but nothing on my end has changed the fact that in 51 hours, spanning all party members across at least six regions of the game's world, I've had perhaps six or seven instances of party members conversing with one-another. The same can be said for many other players, although some have reported the scripting error "seemingly fixing itself" eventually. None such luck here. The bug appears to span multiple platforms.A quick recap for BioWare employees: "party banter" -- AKA companions conversing with one-another in the field -- is exceptionally rare for an apparently-considerable number of players across all platforms, regardless of where we are, what we're doing, how far into the game we are, who we're with, or any other quickly discernible variable. This is confirmed not to be our personal objective opinions on how much is "a lot" because we have seen videos of other players whose levels of party interaction have been magnitudes far, far greater than what we've experienced. I have decided to halt my progress on what is otherwise a fantastic game because this element of the Dragon Age series is a personal favorite of mine. I play BioWare's games (and indeed, most games I dabble in at large) for the rich storytelling that is made possible by talented authors coming together to weave exceptional stories into terrific characters. This bug disallows me from hearing much of that content and is essentially a game-breaker for me until it's resolved.Thanks for your consideration and congratulations on a stellar Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Apologies for the copy-paste formatting, and for the incredibly, incredibly long post. 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. It'd be interesting to see what works for people, if it hopefully works at all.) At first I ran around in the Hinterlands for awhile, trying out mount/rest. Dorian/Sera/Bull wouldn't talk, so I changed 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. I teleport to the Lake Luthias camp, no banter, BUT there is music playing at the camp. Run around for a bit, banter has stopped, I changed the settings from TV - Night. About a minute later I can hear Dorian saying something in the background - it has to be him, as there's no one else around, and the voice is deep/British. The combat/voice icon bizarrely doesn't trigger though, and his voice is extremely muffled. Get into combat, once again get combat dialogue, a moment later Sera/Bull have a banter. There's also accompanying music. The banter stops again, and Dorian repeats his ambient banter from earlier (complaining about the cold). I've never had ambient banter repeat before, but it may be intentional since he's talking about the weather. I've spent 6hrs in the Storm Coast (predominantly with Blackwall/Viv/Varric) in my 32hrs, for both longer periods of time/shorter periods of time. I've never gotten any banter from any party members, let alone with those three in any other area. I took them again, spent about 15 minutes in silence, and in desperation changed the sound settings again. I fought some baby dragons, and voila, for the first time in my entire bloody game, Blackwall/Viv have banter. About a minute later Varric/Blackwall have banter. Four minutes later, Blackwall/Varric banter again. I heard some new music I've never heard from the Storm Coast. (There's a definite increase in musical cues too, I don't think I've noticed so many in a short period of time.) They stopped talking again after awhile, I became impatient again, changed the settings - 2 mins later, another Varric/Blackwall. All the while, I'm hearing combat dialogue from them, which I've heard very little of before. Whatever is wrong with Val Royeux and Forbidden Oasis in my game is completely blocking all banter - no matter what I try, no matter what party combinations/settings, nothing will trigger. Playing with the sound settings in Forbidden Oasis at least made the music/combat dialogue consistent, which was something I've never had before. (Val Royeux now plays music on loading/entry, which it didn't used to do. Didn't realise Val Royeux had music until recently!) Before changing the sound settings/menu, I'd previously have 30 mins/1hr before I'd hear a musical cue - they now seem to happen every one to two minutes. (I had three cues trigger in about a minute and a half.) It makes such an impressive difference to the Hinterlands and the Storm Coast, wow. Far more alive. I'm baffled at what exactly is resetting the banter/music issue - going into the menu would make sense, but I always spend a lot of time in the menu during game play. Even though Val Royeux/Forbidden Oasis are still not working correctly, by changing the sound settings, I've gotten seven instances of banter overall in about 50 mins - that's an incredible (and fairly consistent) amount in comparison to what I'd been getting before. I've never had anything like it. Banter seems much more likely to trigger after combat, too, so as Efvie mentioned over on the Feedback thread, combat could definitely be involved in the issue. I was really surprised that this worked at all! Vivienne and Blackwall talked! Blackwall and Varric had multiple conversations! I never thought I'd see the day. 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.

I just finished an 80+ hour playthrough. While I did hear some banter, it was VERY rare. I certainly noticed that my companions were dead silent for hours on end. When they did decide to banter, it was like a christmas present. I literally would stop what I was doing so that I could listen to it as it was as rare as finding the Loch Ness monster.I figured that was "just the way it was". Now I am beginning to think that there is a problem with triggering. I wonder how often the companions are supposed to banter. For me it was probably once every few hours of gameplay. I also thought it had to do with the companions I ran with, so I tried switching things up but banter frequency was still very rare. Such a shame since a lot of work was done in writing and voice acting these things that some of us will not see/hear.

I am jealous rlacorne. It's sad because I feel like, outside of my Skyhold talks, I really didn't get to know my companions very well as they were all too shy during the gameplay to talk to each other.It makes the game feel very sterile and dereft of personality. I might as well have been playing Skyrim solo.

Thanks Mordecai, it's helpful for those of us with the bug to know what we should be experiencing. 🙂 Sadly that's a far, far cry from what we're getting!

Companions aren't bantering? | EA Forums

387 Replies

Natashina01
11 years ago
Okay, I decided to experiment after I got to Skyhold. I went to the Hinterlands, with a party that had never traveled before together as this group: Wall/Bull/Dorian. Blackwall and Dorian had never interacted before, despite Dorian being in my party for since recruitment and Blackwall being my primary tank since his recruitment.
I started at 9:56pm my time (it's 10:43pm now,) and started at the Upper Lake Camp. I proceeded on foot until 10:05pm, when Dorian and Blackwall had their first banter together. I used the quick travel a total of 5 times from 10:07pm to 10:14pm.
At 10:15pm, I started at Redcliffe Village and proceeded to run all the way south to the Forest Camp, on foot. This took until 10:35pm to do, since I was also gathering metals and herbs along the way. Killing the occasional Red Templar as well. Zero banter from anyone.
So, in about 40 minutes, Dorian and Blackwall was the only banter I had. I think it's bugged. I haven't tested other zones yet, because seeing that was just too disheartening.
alloyilix
11 years ago
This really bumms me out. I had lots of banter until I hit Redcliff, then... I got this odd glitch, none of the interactable agents or "quest givers" had any acessable diolouge. I went into the chantry, came out and that was fixed..... the banter was gone!
Anonymous
11 years ago
I've played for 30 hours and I've had so much trouble with bugs but apart from freezing dialogues that make it impossible to progress, this is the bug that affects the game the most. Party banter is one of my favourite aspects of the DA series.
UntI'm my 25th hour of gameplay, I had in total three banters. When I went to a specific area, Iron Bull's banter with Sera triggered but only one way around and no other companions were involved. After that, dead silence again.
After finding out that I am actually missing out, I have decided to put DAI away until it's been subjected to serious patching.
At least I can play AC Unity with so few bugs that I can enjoy and finish the game.
Natashina01
11 years ago
Sadly, I've tried repairing earlier tonight after reading this thread. No go. On my brand new character, I also just tried sitting in a camp being idle. I went straight from getting dropped to Haven, talked to no one at Haven (just to eliminate the possibility of a companion dialogue option bugging things out,) to talking with the council, to the Crossroads, didn't talk to anyone there either except for Corporate Vale, did the relic quest for the Dalish NPC, then and to Dusklight Camp. No banter, but I did get into some fighting on the way, so no biggie.
I had a sinking feeling though, so I tried an experiment. For five minutes, at Dusklight, I did absolutely nothing at all. Then I jogged a few feet, while still in camp and grabbed an herb. Waited another 6 minutes, and still nothing but silence. I did notice that on the PC that the game autosaves once a minute, and that the music loops in 5 minutes. After Allan mentioned that he gets banter after about 5 minutes of being idle. I'm just about at my wits end, but I'll try another repair I suppose.
If I get banter afterward, I'll let you guys know. I'm honestly beginning to wonder about that armor and weapon, but I don't think everyone in this thread met the reqs to get that.
Edit: I have not ridden on any mount, but I did equip the Dragon armor and weapon before I was named Inquisitor, and I noticed it was replaced by a generic default one after the scene. I'll load the earlier saves before I got the weapon and armor, and see if anything changes.
Anonymous
11 years ago
I found that if I have companions with opposite personalities/views, then they banter much more often. Try a combo like Cassandra & Sera, or Solas & Iron Bull...I get endless bantering with both those combos.
Natashina01
11 years ago
After talking to a lot of folks on the BSN, party combition matters little. Folks have put Sera and Cole in their party together, along with Vivienne and have gotten either maybe one banter in their 40+ hours of game, or none at all.
I spent most of the night testing to try to get the banter to work. The only things I haven't tried now is reinstalling the game, and rebooting my computer. I'll try the latter next, but otherwise I'm running out of ideas.
This is what I have and haven't done on this latest test dummy, another dwarven rogue archer. This was after yet another repair attempt:
1) Deleted and recreated a new world state, using the same options
2) Barely looted anything during the very beginning, except for the nice hat right before the end of the Temple sequence at the beginning.
3) Choose a couple of different answers than last time.
4) Acquired, but did not equip the dragon weapon and armor set.
5) Immediately turned around after the first Haven cutscene to talk to the War Council.
6) Immediately went to the Hinterlands and to Harding's camp.
7) Did not go to the Crossroads, or talk to anyone else.
8) Waited about 20 minutes at that first camp.
The result? Varric made a single comment about 2 minutes after the end of the conversation with Harding. He made a comment about the refugees reminding him of Kirkwall during the riot. Otherwise, there was only complete silence save ambient sounds and music. I'm feeling really disheartened right now. I've got some more ideas I'm going to try, but not for tonight. Tonight, I'm just saying "screw it" and getting ready to go to bed.
Anonymous
11 years ago
@ Rydiana
Oh man, maybe that is a bug then. Whenever I put Cassandra + Sera together its almost endless bantering, lol. Sometimes I want to tell them enough is enough 😕mileyvery-happy:
Anonymous
11 years ago
Yeah, seems it's definitely a bug. And unfortunately a rather larger-scale one than I had originally surmised, if thread activity on BioWare's forums and users claiming sites such as tumblr and reddit are reporting it in droves as well show for anything.
Anonymous
11 years ago
I think I've noticed this too. Rather, at least compared to Origins and DA2, I'm not noticing as much banter while out and about exploring on foot. Its not like I'm not getting any banter but its pretty sporatic and far between at times. I've even noticed some repeat banter between Solas and Cassandra. Then after a couple hours going around the Hinterlands and Storm Coast without any banter, I had two banters between Cassandra and Vivienne fire back to back with no break between them at all.
I don't know if its something wrong with the game or if maybe there just isn't that much banter compared to Origins or DA2 given the open world structure.
Ticarro
11 years ago
I also have this issue.. just thought it was a horrible design change until I saw this thread.
Bummer that I dont find anything official regarding this (i.e. a fix)
@littlebrightp wrote:
I have noticed that my companion only banter about once in every area. I've heard from others that they banter far more often, approximately every 10 minutes.
I tried to vary where I take my companions, roads, through the wilderness, a bit of both -as banter in DAO and DA2 was dependend on location triggers. Did not change anything.
Could they be bugged or is the banter rate down?

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Companions aren't bantering?

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