I've made my point of view clear on this: I feel the BioWare bashing has gone way too far the last six months or so - every single thread related to any of their games turns into a Codex thread.
Oh c'mon, now you're grossly exaggerating. The comments here haven't been that much out of line. It's a sad state of affairs if one cannot express his/her opinions here about a game (not religion, not politics, etc.), unless it's expressed in overly cautious, politically über-correct, unpersonal and unemotinal, shiny happy people kind of way. We aren't that fragile or sensitive are we?
They've made three games with a "hardcore RPG" approach: BG1, BG2 and Dragon Age. They've made four games with the streamlined approach: Jade Empire, KotOR, ME1 and ME2. NWN is somewhere inbetween.
But that's just it! Look at your own list. DA is in the "hardcore RPG" approach camp (well, I wouldn't call it "hardcore", but let's not argue over semantics). Is it too much to expect its
sequel to be in that same camp as well? Sequels usually continue in the same general vein as their predecessor, you know. Plus Bioware already have a streamlined, action RPG franchice going (Mass Effect), why drag DA into that too? DA:O wasn't a commercial flop or a critical failure for Bioware. Wasn't that enough of a message to them, that there might be a market for this kind of game? A game which continued the legacy of Baldur's Gate with its PC gaming sensibilities/heritage (let's not argue how well it did that now, however).
Most of us who are upset at Bioware about DA2 (well at least me), are upset because of them doing a
sequel to a game, they themselves called the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, and turning it to an action/console RPG. It is about them doing a
sequel to a game that at least leaned towards the older school, party-based RPGs, and then deliberately changing it to something which has, among other things, streamlined character creation and combat with an "awesome button" (which, judging from the demo clips I've seen, looks dreadful and boring — teleporting rogues, awesomely hack-hack-hacking at an enemy while awesomely standing still, enemies spawning in waves out of thin air, more hack-hack-hacking, ridiculous melee area attacks, even more ridiculous deaths in explosions of blood, mages machinegunning fireballs, etc. etc.).
I wouldn't have minded if Bioware had made an entirely separate game just like DA2, as a different franchise, but as a sequel to DA:O, I find it just as Skavenhorde, as saying "bugger off" to the ones expecting something which would have continued in the same general vein as its predecessor.