What I'd actually like to see more is characters who don't just stumble randomly into the game or are passively being maneuvered into it as someone's else pawn but who deliberately choose a dangerous duty. Rising to the occasion is one thing, but it's gotten a bit old.
In Dragon Age, they traditionally don't let the protagonists be real characters and in this franchise it's explicitly all about Thedas the NPCs anyway.
Not really sure what's the difference between "rising to the occasion" and "choosing a dangerous duty". I mean, either way the character will have to be railroaded into the plot. And you can't expect the game with a complex, overarching plot to have a character just "choose" a dangerous duty... or walk away from it, because what else? You could argue that you can do that in TES - just ignore the main plot, but there's a reason why in TES the main plot isn't really much developed, an only takes a small % of all available content...
There's also a reason why one of DA's major focuses is struggling with destiny thrust upon the player in one way or another, or dealing with a situation larger than they are. The design of gameplay or story isn't the only thing that determines how the PCs are situated in the plot - it's an actively and deliberately explored theme. So being annoyed about it r PCs role in the story and how it's done is a bit like being annoyed that, say, "Animal Farm" is an allegory about Stalinism and not a story about animals.
Also: I'm sure you realize that how "real" the character is is largely dependent on a player. That's the nature of RPGs - you don't just passively watch the character unfold and "be real"; you have to add something from yourself, be it through choices in game, responses or plain old headcanon on certain occasions. Audience participation in story like this is crucial, no matter of boundaries put in game (we can only be Wardens/Champion/Inquisitor, etc) and how little you think your choices may matter in the end.
Like... you can't be serious in comparing *customzable* PCs and well-defined NPCs! Obviously it may seem that it's their story anyway, because aside from choices we help them make in their personal quests or approval level their characterization doesn't rely on us. PCs does. How real you make it depends in large part on you.
If Trespasser and other past games anything to go by, you're going to play another cipher that exists only as a story vehicle and to provide characterization and support for the all-important NPCs in entirely one-sided conversations, until you are thrown out like the useless dead weight that is the other ex-PCs once the game is over. To be the protagonist, you'd have to play an actual character first, to say nothing of being allowed to have any actual personal impact.
Bioware writes some really good NPCs, but their overall storytelling has always been rocky and their treatment of the player characters incredibly lacking. It's not our story. It's Solas' story and likely Mythal/Flemeth/Morrigan's story. We're just there to enable and admire them and then be discarded so we can't rock the metaplot-boat.
Well LOL, all characters are story vehicles, including Solas and Flemythal. They're the catalysts who help our characters act, make decisions and so on and in return they are influenced by decisions of our character. In other words I find your assessment as being quite one-sided and not taking into account the context of PCs characterization having to be somewhat murky in default story in order to help the player make them their own.
That naturally means that the NPCs, especially recurring ones (how many NPCs there were since DAO and how many were discarded when they weren't necessary to the plot, ey?), appear to be more memorable or that the story is "about them" - because they're a constant in every playthrough. You can't expect the PC to be that constant, when a player can make many different choices, including how liked they are, or even if they're dead or alive in some cases.
Basically, you're confusing two things. The PC is always a cipher, a story vehicle and audience's surrogate - they will always be important to the story, but (depending how customizable they are) they will always be something of a blank slate. The RPG element of the game is what allows us to make them "real" at least individually, to us, in every playthrough.
We can always discuss how the options available in the game help us with characterization or let the PC stand out, or whether it's fair to them to be "discarded" like a "useless dead weight"... HOWEVER, if Trespasser is aything to go by this is likely NOT the fate that is going to await our Inquisitor. At the very end of the DLC they're basically given a new arc and new task, and if post-credit scene and recent hints are any good indicators, they are elevated to a role of "players" in an elaborate game for fate of Thedas and - depending on their past choices - can have a very different relationship with what appears to be future antagonist, which may or may not have a direct influence over how we deal with him. How is that "one-sided and discarding a character like a dead weight" I'm not exactly sure.
If you don't care for anything or anyone but what you got out of it, good for you and I honestly don't mean that sarcastically at all. People do want different things from their games. But I think it's damn obvious that the purpose of Trespasser was to utterly gut the Inquisition and Inquisitor to make sure they can't inconvenience the precious metaplot. It takes Inquisition's premise and ending and turns it inside out, to the point where actually being invested in the organization and characters feels like a huge mistake, because it should have been obvious given Bioware's history (especially in this franchise) that the player character was never actually going to matter.
Well obviously I have an entirely different impression, as described above. If anything it's the Trespasser that made me convinced that we're going to see Inquisitor in a major role in terms of moving the plot forward.
The "gutting" I hardly see as gutting at all - they lose a hand and an Anchor, but I considered it a clever and actually very sensible move, especially if they want to bring Inky back. Why? Because at the very end of base game, I sat there, wondering... "okay, so are they just going to leave what is ultimately a near-god who effectively rules all South and has a unique magical power, which Morrigan theorized is a key to open gates to Black City and who said that Corypheus likely fears what Inquisitors will do if they find out how to do it? Huh, if they don't remove them somehow this is going to bite them in the a** later in tehstory, HARD".
Needless to say, when I saw Trespasser's teasers for a while, especially the image where Inky disappears into the mirror, I was convinced that BW is either going to either kill our PCs off or "send them to parts unknown", so they wouldn't be able to unravel any plot they could throw at us just by marching in and flashing their superpower they'd likely have time mastering or researching over the years.
But by removing the Anchor they evened out the field - they removed the problematic power, while leaving the character AND an organization, that is now free to secretly work against Fen'Harel, rather than being pulled in all directions by Orlais, Ferelden or whoever else there was.
With Inquisitor either "retiring" or working for Divine, they can actually focus on the task at hand, and while they may not have as much influence as they had before, it's unreasonable to assume that they don't have any pull or allies at all, or that anybody has "gutted" their coffers or secrets and powers they discovered or researched, either during base game, Descent, JoH or Trespasser. Anchor or not, the Inquisitor still remains the biggest badass in Thedas, with dozens of dragons downed, people all across bordrers impressed ro fearing them and alliances made. Inqusition so far remains the only organization who has any idea who Solas is and what he's planning and any power we know of that can even attempt to track him down and stop him.
Cory just wants to get back to that City without any reflection on his part about what happened in the past.This is not very good for an interesting character.
At no point after Haven did he feel like a serious threat to the Inquisition or The rest of Thedas. He spent half of the game with his tail between his legs licking his wounds and if you think that he should just serve to be a vehicle for the story then you have lower standards than mine in terms of what an Antagonist should serve into a plot.
Er... you sure you're not confusing terms here? Like - you imply that people who expect an antagonist to 'just serve' as a vehicle for the story have lower standards, but it's YOU who want Cory to be a bigger vehicle for the story 
Character-driven story = the character is a vehicle for the story. The plot is determined by their actions and internal struggles or is focused on them, and thus they are the ones that move it forward, rather than external factors.
Either way - I simply don't look at the role of antagonist the same way you do, OR I expect for antagonist to fulfill the same role in every story I enjoy. I don't expect the plot of the game to be driven entirely by protagonists or antagonists - or that there should effectively be ONE antagonist, or ONE problem to overcome (or if there even should be an antagonist at all. The story can be good without them and I enjoy the drama where the "antagonist" itself isn't even personalized - a disaster, a complex situation, an illness, war with no defined 'good or 'bad' side, and so on). I simply look at the bigger picture.
In Inquisition, rather than Corypheus, the main "antagonist" or the story is actually the state the world is in - weakened, quarreling, infested with all kinds of problems and with many mysteries and ancient powers lurking in the shadows, waiting for its moment to strike. It's been like that since DAO, where what threatened Ferelden wasn't as much a Blight, but internal conflict that tear the country apart and not let it unite even in face of Archdemon leading hordes of monsters of the surface.
Also - Cory is a Blight-infested magister who's been Blighted for millenia. Since the Blight is effectively shown to twist living beings into monsters or caricatures of themselves it's actually pretty impressive that Cory still managed to have an agency of his own AND that he almost descended on South with an army consisting of South's own Wardens, Templars and mages, and bringing an army of demons and feared Tevinter supremacists behind them, together with Red Lyrium infestation and Nightmare feeding itself fat on people's fears.
That his scheming machine was at full speed when he arrived at the Conclave and that it began falling apart after Inquisitor disrupted the ritual doesn't change the fact that he almost succeeded and that it still took monumental effort for the South to try and overcome its own problems in order to even try and face the 'evil' they themselves had am unwitting hand in helping rising.
That in itself is an interesting story to tell and one that I enjoy. Corypheus' biggest fault is simply that it's an easy target - it's easy to focus on him; it's easy to blame everything on his madness, ambition and Blight-infestation. Introspection? Examining world and seeing things in ourselves that we may have to try and fix? That's a harder feat to pull, but one that ultimately is a focus of this particular story.
Retour en haut
Merely that the series as a whole and major story beats have been planned (and even humorously foreshadowed in DAI, as revealed recently to general public by Mike Laidlaw) and the general direction the franchise took is largely deliberate, rather than a mere effect of being surprised by DAO's success.
. 
