Don't always believe the morbidly hateful...
Turns out, that isn't the case.
Ok, first things first: Dragon Age 2 tells the tale of a refugee escaping the destruction of your homeland to the Blight that swept through Ferelden. So basically, it starts at about 10% of DA:O.
In Origins, you fought against this Blight, as the hero of Ferelden, one of six different origin stories, and your actions influence your future allies, love interests, and in the end, the fate of the kingdom. The story followed the fate of the Blight, and from the start you knew that the endgame would be the final confrontation against the Archdemon. In DA2, you have only a clue clue what will follow. You know there will be, eventually, a confrontation between mages and templars, and you know there are problems brewing everywhere. Yet, and this is where the storyarch of DA2 shines: not always do your thought out actions lead to predicted outcomes. In DA:O, when I saw an outcome I did not like, I knew: in my next playthrough, I will do this differently. With this game, so many factors could be influencing the so many unwanted outcomes, it at times seems impossible to look at a single event as the key influence. Could this have been avoided with that action? Would the alternate outcome be better off? I have no clue! This makes the game a highly replayable experience.
If you give the chance, the story WILL grow on you. The complaint that no character is as memorable as, say, Oghren is a mute one. Oghren was fun, and you laughed at his expense countless times, but in the end, he was memorable because he could fit tightly into the stereotype of the boisterous dwarf, as Morrigan could fit into the stereotype of the self-interested apostate, Wynn of the wise mage, Alistair as the reluctant hero... I loved Origins, but let's not make these characters anything other than they were. Dragon Age 2 has smooth dwarves, fanatical elves, a hard-ass female soldier that has a strong sense of duty, but that, and this is key, doesn't feel that it is above to ask a personal favor with selfish motives... the list goes on. Every single character feels believable, which, while certainly diminishes the fantastical aspect, certainly makes them more relatable. A complain that these individuals are less memorable is only valid if one does not dedicate the proper attention to their, long, storylines.
And if the charactes are relatable (not only main ones, mind you) the complaint that most tasks feel meeningless cannot be considered valid. Does helping the mages fight the injustices from the templars feel less enthralling than, say, the Romeo-Juliet quarrel in Dantooine, in KOTOR (one of my favorite RPGs), or the Consort quests in the first Mass Effect? Does attempting to save the life of your mother mean anything less to you than finding the woman's little brother in Redcliff, or helping the young Dalish man prove to his crush that he's worth it? Side quest are meant to immerse you on the environment, and boy does this get the job done...
Enough with the story, combat is also considered a main concern. The claim that this 'isn't an RPG', or is that this is an Action RPG is simply ridiculous, to the point one must ask if these people even know what an action RPG means. An action RPG means that the story unfolds as a traditional RPG (storybook, quests, dungeons, armors, looting) but when there's action, you're in direct control. You click/press all punches and are in control of all moves. Here, the action is no different than KOTOR/DA:O. The only difference is aesthetic. Where you'd get a soft, dispassionate attack and a number popping up at the opponent's head, you'll get many, slick, powerful attacks in the same space of time (without you having to press anything other than the first attack order), with a health bar decreasing while you do it, and special abilities buttons in the bars beneath. Nothing else is different. They say the tactical element is gone, I say try taking out the High Dragon or a few of the demons without tactics, even more so in higher difficulties. When a horde of enemies comes at you, while neither of them represents a challange as individuals, chokepoints become vital to you survival. That's just an example, of the many ways tactics still represent a vital role. Were all the RPGs that came before DA:O's tactics scheme Action RPGs?
In the end of the day, saying this game sold-out, or is catering to the XBOX generation is nothing but a fancy way of putting yourself conveniently away from them. Does anyone trully think that those that only play Gears of War, Call of Duty, GTA and the likes will look at this game, with its moral choices, with many times its effects escaping your control, with dialogue-based interactions, and will think: "Man, this was made just for me...."? The game isn't perfect. The navigation between areas is not a favorite of mine, there's a bug that stops you from even attempting to complete a side quest (the enemies never appear) and the use of recicled environments for every quest of the game does get tiresome, but the story will get you so enthralled it doesn't even bring the score that much down.
I played this game almost non-stop, and it took me the better part of four days to finish it, taking time to do all the sidequest, and I still guess I missed some of it (I'm not sure). That I saw on the first day of release people bashing it with the usual complaint that the game designers sold out to EA (I'm a Brazilian man who bought this on Steam, I would have every right to be p****ed off at them), or that this was a step down, simply because it doesn't follow the formulaic Bioware scheme of 'seek allies on different corners until you're ready to face the final quest'.
So in the end, it's a game that shuffles the formula, experiments with a different sort of RPG storytelling, presents characters that are in no way stereotypical, will offer dozens if not hundreds of hours of replayable fun, and somehow people still think this was made to cater the mass media, and most importantly, s**w over their loyal customers... Sometimes you truly can't win.
There, please feel free to rate my review unhelpful because you don't agree with it.