Short post so I can get back to Dragon Age.

I think the reason why Dragon Age 2 was so bad was because EA thought they could do the same thing they did to Mass Effect 2 to Dragon Age,which was a general 'streamlining' (read: oversimplification) of the RPG elements and get the same result. You can do that with a shooter/RPG hybrid where the RPG elements play second fiddle to the shooting part, but not with a pure RPG. Then you get a dumb game.

Also the story wasn't told very well either. There was no overarching goal.