I always RP my characters even if they have slightly set personalities ala Shepard. That said I have to agree w/ the final sentence. While I thought Hawke's family was a mistake it did give something to work with. The origins in DA:O, Shepard's personal missions in ME1 (I Remember Me, etc) these quests give us an opportunity to define the character beyond the main story. Inquisition didn't need Origin style backgrounds, but it did need something besides war table missions and a couple of dialog options.
Currently I'm playing an Inquisitor that firmly believes she was sent by the Maker, but beyond that I don't know much about her. Yes, I can develop her as a character through her decisions and her dialog options, but that paints a very broad stroke, there's no way to define her outside the Inquisition. I recall the devs saying that there would be an "origin" to the Inquisitor, but it would be spread out w/in the game. Unless you played an elf and to a lesser extent a mage, there really wasn't much to latch onto. This doesn't mean the Inquisitor is a hopeless lump of coal. I recently played a Qunari w/ Sumalee Montano voicing. She hated the Qun, always struck first, made decisions I wouldn't personally make, but also showed some vulnerability at times. If you know the system and enjoy creating characters DA:I can work, just not as well as past titles.
I've always thought that having multiple Origins with one option being "mysterious stranger" or something equivalent that has no in-game content and which would allow the player to fill in any gaps (something I attribute to Sylvius as a suggestion) is the best way to set up an RPG. Just enough to get a feel for what the game might assume about your character, but still enough freedom to make them your own.
With just a "boom-flash-bang!" type of action intro like in DA2 and DA:I, the player is free to make any background or character they want... and then just wait for the game to come along and smash that on the rocks later on. It leaves the player on the defensive, which results in them being passive and not wanting to establish a character on their own... which then results in the feeling that the PC is boring and cardboard.
While DA:I may have tried to move away from DA2's mistakes, it seems to make them all over again, just in a different fashion. Having an action-based intro that leaves you feeling nothing even as your family dies to having an action-based intro that leaves you feeling nothing even as you are crowned head of the Inqusition.Trade a big empty-feeling city for a big empty-feeling countryside. Trade disjointed side quests that barely fit together to tell the story of Hawke for disjointed side quests that barely fit together to tell the story of the founding of the Inquisition. Take actiony, overly flashy combat with no tactical camera to actiony, overly flashy combat with a poorly done tactical camera. Promote the game's romances with tag lines "from viriginal girl-next-door to through you right up against the wall" to promoting the game's romances with "Ride the Bull" and shirtless pictures of Cullen.
It just seems like both games suffer from poor execution of theoretically interesting ideas.
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