Worse than DA:O or DA2? Hardly.
Yes, it's even worse than these. I actually think that DA: O combat system was pretty good, but it was brought down by crappy enemy encounters. And I don't really remember much of Dragon Age 2 - but I absolutely disliked every fight in DA: I.
(1) Combat-wise, your choices do matter. Classes play very differently. A ranged rogue does not play like a fighter, who does not play like a mage. Builds within classes also matter: an arcane warrior does not play like a rift mage, and a battlemaster does not play like a tank
Maybe on paper, but in practice, everything feels the same. You just spawning your cooldowns abilities over and over, but there is nothing else to do - again, the game doesn't have the mechanics to make classes feel different. Abilities themself are not enough, because the way you using them feel the same everytime.
(2) Narrative-wise, your choices also matter. In particular, they matter a lot with companion interactions. The main story arc is the same, but the companions are the sounding board for your narrative development, and this in fact is one area where DA:I succeeds really well -- much better than anything Obsidian has managed in recent years for example.
What? No, they don't. You're interactions with companions takes place through the dialogues and you don't really have a choice in that regard - sometimes you can
emotionally react, but that's about it. The quest for Blackwell being the one, noticeable exception. For what few choices you might have, their reactions is made of two lines of dialogues and without lasting consequences. And companions are still the best part of the game.
The whole conceit of the Inquisition and the war table actually gives a reason and a structure for all the random questing, and spices it up well with the "off-camera" missions handed to your advisors.
I actually think that war table missions may be this game biggest mistake. If anything, here is when the game could give us a couple of choices - since it all would be presented through text, it wouldn't take a lot of time and resouces to do. Instead we have this ocean of another filler quests that don't have any consequences and the rewards are comically tiny. Apparently making strategic alliances with Ferelden's noublehouses is worth less than giving a couple of soldiers some blankets.
Nah it's fine, it's good enough to tie all the adventuring together. Trying to push more story at you would make this style of game more annoying. It's an open world style game, those need fairly simple stories, or else just an emergent story with faction mechanics which DA:I doesn't even attempt.
I didn't say that the BioWare should create more story, I said that they need to change their approach to them. Right now the story demands that you're a person in a position in power, but both gameplay and particular events in the story contradict that.
Again, disagree. This is cool when it's done well but it's by no means something that every game, or every RPG, has to have. There's nothing wrong with a simple story arc that's about collecting allies to kill the big bad, and then killing the big bad.
Again, it's not my idea, it's what the game is built upon on. The whole premise is that you're a leader of a massive political structure and you choices could potentially change the social landscape of the world. The game constantly beats you over the head with this, making other people asking you about the weight of responsibilities, trying to judge your choices, criticizing you for them (especially in Trespasser), making your character talking about them over and over - but you don't have these choices, spare a few that don't really matter in the long run (mages vs templars). I don't demand that the game should have a lot of C&C, the game itself demands that. You suppose to be in control, but you never are.
This, I think, sums up your position rather nicely: you expect a certain set of features in a game and if it doesn't have it, you think it's objectively bad, same as the people who hate the Twitchers because they have a fixed protag, or because they're aRPGs.
C'mon man, spare me this "I know better than you what you said" kind of arguments. I like Witcher 3 (though the first one is still my favourite). And it's actually a pretty good example of what I'm trying to say. Witcher 3 can get away with mediocre main story, because the heart of the books (and games) lies in small-scale places and events - villages, farms, particular houses etc. And only on that level C&C actually matter - since Geralt faces that kind of choices everyday. In the same time, main story doesn't need them - because Geralt doesn't have a say when it comes to making big, political decisions. So it's all thematically appropriate.
On the other hand, DA: I is all about big decisions that could potentially change the world around you - and about a problems of running organisation of multi-level complexity. Yet the game won't allow us to experience that. The premise of the game is in a constant struggle with its content and one of that things required changes.
And I consider Andromeda to be a better game that Inquisiton, simply because shooting is somewhat competent, so there is something - anything - that works as intended. Nothing in Inquisiton works as intended.
