I'm playing Dragon Age: Inquisition for the first time, a nine-year-old game at the time of writing. To play with a controller, which I want to do, you have to go into the settings menu and toggle the input method from keyboard and mouse to controller by hand. This is already egregious even by 2014 standards, and I'll explain why in a minute. But what truly paints my goat is this godawful popup that you get when you've failed to attach a controller before launching the game:
Error
No controller was detected. Keyboard and mouse controls will be used. To play with a controller, please insert one and restart the game.
You have to restart the game to play with a controller! What the actual fuck!!
It's been long enough ago that I feel safe to reveal that I worked on the PC port for Rise of the Tomb Raider, which came out in 2015. I worked on the menus and input handling in particular. I made all those damn buttons clickable, you're welcome. One aspect that I took special pride in is that you can play RoTR with any input method you want, and the game will figure it out on the fly. If you start playing with the mouse and keyboard, but realize that you would prefer playing with a controller, you can just pick up your controller and continue playing. All of the inputs will work as expected and the button prompts will swap between mouse and keyboard and controller automatically. Because I take pride in my craft as a UI programmer, goddammit!
