When I heard news of dragon age inqusition, I reloaded my copy of Dragon Age II so I could have a nice save file to import. Can't even find my DA:O saves anymore and my DA2 saves were corrupt. Then I read about "The Keep" where you can create a custom save file anyway. Oh well.
Anyway, this is what I really hope for:
1. A party of five, not four (or even six - please!). I don't care if the fifth character is always a Mabari. I just want control of some fifth party member, like I had in Origins. I had "Dog" in DA Ii (thanks to the free Black Emporium) but he was a blue circle thing that appeared and disappeared, did strange things, and most importantly couldn't be customized or really controlled. Don't like that. Give me back a "fifth" under my control.
Oh yeah, and let me summon some stuff temporarily for fights with blue rings that isn't under my control, pets, elementals, whatever. How about a mage school that focuses on summoning?
2. I think I've become a broken refrain on this, but I would like to see more than 3 classes. I know priests/clerics are not playable in this gameworld. They're just useless zealots to hand out assignments and have their churches blown to smithereens. It would be interesting to see a fourth class that focuses on control or support roles along with your mages, rogues, and warriors. Instead of basically having three archetypes with three variations (specializations), how about more archetypes. Please. Like archers or bards or monks that are not simply a kit/specialization of rogues.
It seemed odd to me that Sebastian Vael had to be a rogue, when such a noble archer was really clearly a warrior, or maybe an archer "class" that was neither rogue nor warrior. It felt icky giving this noble, holy Chantry guy points in "Scoundrel" or "Sabotage".
3. I will say one thing about DA 2: loved the new crafting & enchanting system, it was really simple, made it easy to make stuff, got rid of the damn BS complexity (and bugs) of making runes and potions in DA:O.
All I would say is offer a few more options, next time, please, for grenades, potions, poisons, and runes. In particular, I would love to see more armor runes for SOMETHING other than elemental damage resistance (which, to be honest, you face pretty rarely). How abour armor runes for knockback resistance, stun resistance, general magic resistance, etc.
Also, humbly, I think it should be the case that poisons are either limited to rogues, or at least more effective in their hands.
I also think playing as a rogue should be more interesting, in that stealth should sometimes be a tool to change the nature and outcome of events and encounters, and not just something to use on the battlefield. Yes, that means sometimes rogues prevail by avoiding things. The game doesn't have to be ALL the time resolved through combat. Occasionally it can be sneak past the damn mage and take his scroll.
Here's something I'd love to see back from DA:O; rogues being able to pickpocket/steal, make traps, and track enemies.
P.S. I'm glad to see the ability to be a different race, and this time now including Qunari, will be a returning game feature. This is good.
It would be cool if one of the acquirable companions was something unusual with a whole bunch of unusual abilities (I am, of course, thinking of Shale the Golem).
That said, I liked the way in which each companion in DA II had their "flavor" unique specializations, too. Just found it odd Isabela didn't have the Duelist skill tree or Anders Spirit Healer.