Seems like many of the negatives in some of the reviews are things I've been worried about for a while:
- Story is a rehash of Origins just on a bigger scale- Chosen One, Save the World from Ancient Evil.
- Taking design queues from AssCreed in terms of junk filler collectable quests, even if they tie into the Power mechanic
- Lack of big city areas- The RPGFan review mentions Val Royeaux, supposedly one of the biggest cities in the DA world, is limited to a marketplace and there are no areas like Denerim or Athkatla from BG2
- The PC menus are rubbish
- The tactical camera is not as versatile as the Origins tactical camera. The Eurogamer and RPGFan review mention how the Tactical Camera frequently gets stuck on objects in the environment and in areas with low ceilings. Which means its very much not like the Origins tactical camera which had the ability to break from the geometry to give you an open view on things, regardless of whether you were in an open area or an indoor location.
- The Tactics menu (that they've been reluctant to show in any streams) has been severely gimped and dumbed down.
- Various technical glitches unrelated to bad firmware- characters glitching through geometry, dialogue options disappearing
Seems like its a much better game than DA2 (low bar to clear there) but once you get past the visual upgrade, a lot of those concerns are still big concerns for me.