My own thoughts on the Skyrim thing: It's a great game, but I agree with what Jay Branson has said about it.
that appears from my vantage point to have only a passing resemblance to an RPG
In way I'm glad it's successful for Bethesda, but I can't say I'm happy with the simplified direction that is clearly the future for Bethesda. Skyrim is more like a sandbox game with Diablo like elements, than an RPG.
They're not checking out Skyrim, they're checking out the amount of copies shipped.
Nailed it. As Dhruin's pointed out, Bioware has already said something along the lines of "we don't 'do' open world games. That's not who we are." Just like Bethesda has said "we don't do games with turn based combat, and strong storylines." Bethesda does open world games, with lots of freedom, Bioware does games with strong stories and writing. I think the only possibility is DA3 having more areas, and possibly (though not likely) have some optional areas like Baldur's Gate 2, that the player doesn't have to visit if they don't want to. "See guys, there is our exploration, just like Skyrim, now buy our game."
As for Dragon Age, to this day Dragon Age 2 mystifies me. Dragon Age was a successful game for Bioware. It was the intended spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. Sure there was some "evolution" to make it possible on the consoles, but it did have a few old school conventions. With a little polish it could have been great. And yet depsite the success, they threw everything out and rebooted the series to be more like Mass Effect. No more trying to define your own character, you are "Hawke", threw in the dialog wheel, threw out Origin stories, threw out the tactical combat, etc. Plus the usual mentioned problems of repeated levels, and so on. The Dialog wheel in particular irritates me off, when Bioware themselves defended the choice of not having one in the first game, and then they suddenly throw one in for DA2.
All in all DA2 was a much different game from DA1, not having any of the elements of DA1, and I can't understand for the life of me why, when DA1 was so successful for Bioware.
Anyways here is hoping DA3 feels more like the first one.