So, I think I may have figured out the main reason why the overall story plot of this game didn't . . . quite . . . work. There are a lot of little things, but I think the major issue underlying them all is this:
The game switches structures twice and becomes muddled as a result.
Speaking from the player's point of view, there are two basic types of story structure, the active, and the reactive. (There's a third type, static, when the story isn't there to drive the action but more just to tie it together--this is the type of story you get in Starcraft or Diablo, but it's irrelevant to this particular discussion.)
A reactive story is BY FAR the most common in games. It is driven by WITHHOLDING information from the player: you don't know who the bad guy is, or what he's doing, or what you need to do to defeat him, or even what your overall goal is. You're just shoving fingers into the dike as fast as you can and hoping it all works out in the end. This kind of thing is great for suspense and for driving the plot. When it's well done, the player feels like a detective, slowly putting the difficult-to-assemble pieces together. This is what drives games like Baldur's Gate 2 or Planescape: Torment or Mass Effect or Pillars of Eternity. You start out with a mystery and you chase it. When it's done less well you wind up feeling like a glorified gofer or even like the devs are INTENTIONALLY screwing with you for kicks. Like, say, in the "Main Plot" of any Bethesda game. Those games are so awful in the plot department because they're *written* as reactive plots in a world where you often *play* as an active character. If they could figure out how to write an active story to go along with it they might qualify as some of the greatest games of all time.
Active stories are rarer--maybe even nonexistent. In an active story you know where you're going (or can choose). You know what your goal is (or can choose one). Usually what you get is a bunch of reactive stuff that is (nominally) tied together by an active plot. This gets you a Fallout (Water Chip) or Dragon Age: Origins (Defeat the Archdemon). But the active parts of those games are small and only serve to take you from one mystery to the next one--the areas themselves are generally pretty reactive.
Inquisition, however, does a weird thing: It starts out as a reactive story. A mysterious disaster (which you did not even get to SEE) has happened. Chase it. And then suddenly BOOM, here's your enemy, you know all! It becomes an active story! Cool! You have a goal, you know what it is! You are the master of your fate! This actually works pretty well IMO because this is right at the time that the game world opens up. You can go where you want and do what you like, and there's sure plenty of stuff to do (too much, IMO, at least for the amount of story they gave us--if there were more story sections like Here Lies the Abyss, the amount of content might have been just dandy.)
Then it kind of falls all over itself and tries to go back to being reactive again. And this really, really does not work. I don't think it's necessarily true that it CAN'T work, but in this case it DOESN'T. The game doesn't transition when the story does--unless you're nuts, you probably reach the "Corypheus is marching on the Elven Temple!!!!! CHASE HIM!!!" part of the game LONG before you've wrapped up the side areas, so suddenly there's this huge gap between story and gameplay. Well, and that's assuming that you're like me and the excessiveness of the gameplay areas didn't knock you during the FIRST reactive phase. (As long as I'm nominally chasing something and this is Contributing, I have a lot of tolerance for Pointless Side Activities.)
Also what happens is that the Side Activities are portrayed as "Helping the Inquisition" in the pre-setback reactive section. And in the active section when you drive the goals, it's all good. You're the boss. If you want to run around picking up mosaic tiles, that's your prerogative. But when Cory makes his Big Comeback, the side activities turn instantly into pure distraction, especially since the game puts fake time pressure on you at the same time. This second transition was a botch job.
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Sorry for interrupting.
