I find it very hard to enjoy Inquisition (and not for a lack of trying, trust me). There's just too much filler and aimless wandering.
The game has many little flaws, most forgiveable -- but this one is almost a deal breaker.
Nobody enters a fantasy world to experience boredom.
The game is at least eighty percent walking around big, pretty environments doing dull tasks which have no emotive power and no relevance to the story.
The scenarios presented on the War Table seem far more intriguing than collecting shards or ram meat. Let me play those!
The story missions are great -- (especially the attack on Haven; so epic!) -- but there's not enough of them. Or rather, they're not integrated well enough into the rest of the game. They do nothing to make the side-quests feel worthwhile.
The game shouldn't make me feel lonely and depressed until I have enough Power or XP to progress to the next story mission.
Dragon Age: Origins was designed in such a way that it felt like one giant story mission. Almost everything you did felt critical to the success of the Grey Wardens' quest to unite the land.
The Deep Roads, for example, were endless, but at least we were there for a very good reason -- to find a Paragon, settle a civil war, and in so doing secure dwarven allies to defeat the Blight. That's the kind of motivation that makes grinding fun.
Why am I killing dozens of undead in the Fallow Mire? Or dozens of bandits in some desert? Why am I killing angry wolves and bears as I travel from one point of no interest to another point of no interest?
Because the Inquisition's directive is to "restore order" to the land? Wow, that's inspiring. 
Let Cullen's and Leliana's minions do that rubbish.
In short, keep your Skyrim out of my Dragon Age, please.
I love the big, beautiful environments BioWare crafted. Major kudos to the art team.
It's just so sad that there's nothing very fun to do in them.
Ever heard the writers' saying, "Murder your darlings"? Well, those environments are your darlings; if they don't significantly enhance the story or the player's enjoyment, they should be eliminated and replaced with content that's fun to play.
The kind of content that pre-DA2 BioWare was always known and respected for.
Regan_Cousland,
I agree with you and what you've posted here.
The environments are beautiful and the companion quests are very well done but too short. I wanted more interaction, more quests with all the companions.
But the heart and soul is missing and in place of an immersive, emotional story we have a lot of chore quests or meaningless nothings.
I agree, the emotional impact from talking to quest givers and finding out why and how and what that particular quest has to do with the quest giver and the story as a whole is missing. The cut scenes and close ups add to that immersive, I am in the story feel as in I am the Warden or I am Hawke and this my world. For instance, in Redcliffe, talking to the Mayor you get two different dialog cut scenes if you bring Alistair or Zevran. Same with talking to Bann Teagon, Kaitlain, the Bar owner the dwarf.
Remember the Alienage and the emotional impact of walking around seeing first hand the poverty, squalor, fear, hopelessness then talking to Solis, Shianni, Ser Otto, the beggar woman, listening to the crowd talk about their disappearing loved ones. Seeing then freeing them. Then talking to the Elven slaver and the ending of the quest and the feeling of killing that last slaver and feeing and talking to the leader?. All that busyness of finding out who is missing why and how. All that story and emotions for 2 quests.
Compare that to DAI and the quest to free the slaves from the Red Templers. Did I talk to anyone who lost a loved one? Talk to an escaped slave? Find out from a person when talking to them why it was happening? Nope. Just went in and hacked and slashed killed the slavers, flicked the lock and set them free. Quest done on to the next.
So yes, I missed the story that was the entire game.
I do understand what they were doing with as Mr. Darrah said in an interview that they wanted to attract the 20 mill Skyrim players and 1st time RPG players. Also that a dev did say they were immensely inspired by Skyrim. But I don't think they understand what makes Skyrim a hit and what made DAO so great either.
In Skyrim there was so much to do - redoubts, dungeons, forts, dragons, thalmors, quests and quests, potions, harvesting, selling, crafting etc. Every inch was put to good use - so much to slack and hash and then the modders. My oh my the modders turned that game into that great game. But DAI is a poor mans Skyrim and nowhere near outstanding as DAO.
Bioware was always about the story, it had really fun combat, tactics, inventory, monetary, potions and graphics but always the immersive, epic, emotional story.
I hope you are right and can convince Bioware to go back to what made DAO great but I have not that hope.
Just wanted to support you
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