May as well come clean about this right away; it is the opinion of this author that Dragon Age 2 is a very decent game - it could even be quite good at times, such as during the stellar final boss batlle - however, there can be no denying the game's glaring flaws. For every step it took the Dragon Age franchise forward, it seemed to take an additional three steps back. Bioware recently announced that the third game in the series is in full development, and is currently scheduled for a late 2013 release, so given the opportunity for evolution, here is how Bioware can knock it out of the park with Dragon Age 3: Inquisition, and restore the Dragon Age name as a top-tier RPG franchise...
10. Don't Re-Use Environments So Much
Arguably, Dragon Age 2's greatest flaw was the blatant replication of interior settings across the game's landscape. The game had a huge number of side quests that sent you to various locations both in and around the city of Kirkwall. As the game progressed, you would find yourself in a cave, saying to yourself "this looks familiar", and it turned out that you were correct, because you had actually been there before. Only now, instead of it being a bandit hideout like it was previously, it was now the lair of a monster that had to be slain. OK, not a big deal, right? Where it really got bad was when you would find yourself returning to this same location a third, fourth, and possibly even a fifth time. Back in Kirkwall, it was a similar story. Every home or mansion in the city seemed to have the same two or three architectural designs. Same thing for the warehouses. Sewers? Well, sewers have a better excuse, but isn't it odd that the underground tunnels beneath Lowtown have a door in the exact same spot that the the tunnels under the docks do? This is simply inexcusable. Was it due to developer laziness? Was it a result of forced development timelines imposed on Bioware by their publisher, Electronic Arts? We may never know. But this much is clear; in a game where a core element of the gameplay is using side quests to not only develop character stats, but to flesh out the lore of the game world, questing should never feel like a chore. By limiting the environments to a handful locations that you visit over and over and over again, Bioware walked dangerously close to the line of tedium, and for many of its fans, actually crossed that line. They need to make sure that this never happens again, not only in Dragon Age 3, but in any of their future RPGs.