If I recall the keeps in each larger area are to act as hubs.
Regardless, to not take advantage of places like Cumberland, Val Royeux, and a rehashed Denerim is just a massive missed opportunity when we're dealing with the variety of cultures we will be faced with
We're almost guaranteed to have Val Royeaux, if the majority of the game is in Orlais. If we don't get Val Royeaux, then nothing makes sense anymore.
Well, it was mention that we are going to travel through out Thedas so am sure we'll see some kind of big city.
I've learned never to assume seeing a sliver of something means I get anywhere near the rest of said something, yeah. Just because the first two Dragon Age games never employed much of an "instance-based" approach to locations doesn't automatically mean the third game won't either.
There's a lot of ground to cover this time and several "hubs" (as Mike Laidlaw himself referred to them) in the way of keeps the Inquisition acquires and can interact with. Regardless of the negative reaction which may well come thereafter, if the developers believed while assembling the game world it was a good idea to segment cities in order to present event-based settings as a means of offsetting the substantial workload associated with concocting a livelier set of wilderness locations, that's what we'll end up seeing.
Several things have added up to lead me to believing this will be the case, including a history with BioWare location sizzle reels, the recognition of a trend of no discussion on city exploration whatsoever, the choice to call keeps "hubs" and the tiny fragment of civilization we've been shown versus everything else.
There *are* other possibilities here and there is *of course* the possibility I'm totally mistaken. Maybe come E3 we'll see a sprawling, fully-exploitable city and everyone can breathe easy on this front. I doubt it meself.
The more I think about it the more I feel your point makes sense. Thanks for the though out response. I would feel quite conflicted about not having a city to be honest on one hand I will feel bad because its not there on the other hand I feel this "instance based approach" may not be so bad if it helps the devs to divert their resources to make the game and the plot more fleshed out can certainly give it a try and then again no cities to explore...bah ignore me i am rambling in my confusion... 
I'll be disappointed if there aren't at least one or two cities to visit.
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