The charm of Origins for me was that we more or less explored the whole continent, seeing it from different locations with different kinds of people, races, ideas, lore, etc. I wasn't simply visiting Ferelden, I was exploring it. Everything from cities, towns, forests, mountains, caves, and more. I was part of the world and I felt my character (and partially I) was a native Ferelden. After I beat the game, it felt like I knew the whole continent and when I replayed the game it was kinda like a homecoming and sometimes it even managed to surprise me with something new that I missed.
While I was quite excited over visiting such a broad landscape that the OXM article described, a part of me was worried that each area in almost every location would only offer a layer of the bigger whole and not doing the continent justice since we only visited one city over a dozen, for example.
Having the story take place 'solely' in Orlais and Ferelden gives BW the chance to focus their attention fully on creating a seamless world that is both rich in explorability, lore, vistas, characters, etc, in these respective places. Having to concentrate on--what apparently the article described as five continents--is a a lot of work, and requires a lot of attention put into, trying to create each world believable. Having too much in your hands could easily make some places very rich in detail with much effort put into, while others could be very poorly done and simply exisiting simply as a another gameplay area that is there to expand the game to make it look bigger and better, which is sadly an element found in too many games.
Anyhow, this all comes down to execution. It's perfectly possible to create many explorable areas that all have deep 'characterization' put into them, while as well as creating one location that is very poorly done without adding anything to the story other than serving merely as a "game hub" where you stroll around and do quests in. It is entirely up to BW; what kind of story the want to tell, where they want to tell it and how they want to tell it and ultimately in which way they want the players to discover it. The only thing we can do is hope BW creates a believable world over these places we will be visiting, making us forget or at the very least ignore the fact that the game needed other locations to discover.
And hey, let's not exlude the idea of downloadable contents or future installments taking place in the areas we won't be visiting
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Ninja-d!
