Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there an ending wherein you assume the throne, marry Anora, spare Loghain's life, and banish Alistair?
The point I'm trying to make is that the battle against the darkspawn and the Archdemon is a backdrop for a story about a young nation trying to form it's identity. It's the story of the newest Warden, but it's also a story about pragmatism vs. idealism; Loghain's way vs. Cailan's way. There are elements of pre-determination vs. self determination, and several other topics that could be argued for years. As far as the ending goes, it's only the "same" in that you always kill the archdemon. By that logic, you could say that the ending to Fallout is always the same because you always blow up the Mariposa military base. The ending to BG1 is always the same, because you always kill Sarevok. DAO gives you the opportunity to make the "Heroic Sacrifice" wherein you die at the end of the game, but still win.
I always thought that the weakest parts of DAO were in the character customization and inter-party interaction, and those are largely personal preferences. I like a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. type system, where skills and perks are derived from stats, and all stats have a purpose. Dragon Age was very min/max in terms of attributes (Really, what use has any warrior for the "magic" attribute? Why is it even there?) I also felt that DAO was somewhat juvenile and lowbrow in the way it handled dialog between your player and your companions. Save for Shale, who I think should have been in the main campaign instead of Zevran, I thought most of the dialog could have been distilled to, "Buck up!", "You're pretty.", "Being nice is stupid.", or "Let's bone!" Or at least that's the way it felt to me.
Overall, I think that DAO is on par with some of the best work Bioware has ever done, and deserves to be in the same conversation as Baldur's Gate and Fallout, in terms of "How to Make a Great RPG." It had a long enough development time to create and really flesh out the world. It introduced a novel way of looking at magic and mages, which developed an inherent instability and conflict, and, on the PC at least, it looked amazing, save for the ridiculous amount of blood spatter residue. There was as much, if not more, choice and consequence as there was in the classics that we all use as the metric by which to measure all new games.
Bioware has lost a lot of their luster in recent years, and they've made a lot of missteps, particularly I feel, with the changes that were made between Mass Effect 1 and 2, and DAO and DA2. The overall feeling I have is that they're changing their games into hyperkinetic, T&A obsessed splatterfests. I feel like the company philosophy is to get as many fair weather fans from as many gaming genres as possible, instead of sticking with one genre, and having die-hard zealots within it. I think they're especially going overboard with the DLC. But, for all its arrogance and ridiculousness, they showed that they're still capable of knocking socks off, and I think that's what they did with DAO.
I'm not saying that DAO is "teh PERFECT game 10/10!" But let's try to maintain a sense of perspective.
