BioWare provide Dragon Age: Inquisition PC graphics bug workaround

This workaround should have everything looking pretty again.

The BioWare team has acted fairly swiftly in response to the Dragon Age: Inquisition graphics issues reported on PC after application of the latest patch. Patch 2 was released for the game earlier today, but had various unforeseen consequences for PC players.

If your version of Dragon Age: Inquisition has already patched itself on Origin and you fancy getting your graphics settings back the way they were, this BioWare-provided workaround should do the trick. It was posted by Conal Pierse over on the BioWare forums, and reposted (to give it greater visibility) in a separate thread.

It mentions that a hotfix for this issue is being worked on. In the mean time, you can try forcing the graphics settings with a command line. Here’s what you need to do:

To start, make sure the quality setting you choose is equal to the setting set for Mesh Quality inside Options>Graphics

You will need to add a new command line parameter. To do this:

Through Origin:

1. Right click on the Dragon Age Inquisition title
2. Go to game properties
3. Type the command line parameter in the Command Line Properties box.

Through shortcut:

1. Right Click Shortcut
2. Go to Properties
3. Under target go to the end of the field and type the command line parameter into the box

Once there, add the following command line parameter: -ShaderSystem.ShaderQualityLevel <quality setting>

In this instance, <quality setting> should be one of the following:

• Ultra
• High
• Medium
• Low

An example of how to set your quality to high would be: -ShaderSystem.ShaderQualityLevel High

Once the Dragon Age: Inquisition hotfix is released, you’ll need to go back and remove the line you added.

Interestingly enough, the final paragraph of the post adds that “pre-patch 2, all users on PC were being forced to use the Ultra shader quality. This means that those of you playing on lower settings will notice a decrease in quality, particularly players using low or medium settings.”

Therefore, “To achieve the same visuals as pre-patch, users on lower settings will need to change their settings to Ultra, which should likewise be used in conjunction with Ultra mesh quality. Mismatching the mesh and shader settings will result in other visual artifacts like overly shiny hair.”

Using Ultra settings will, of course, have a performance impact on less powerful PCs.