If DA:I and ME:A is the direction BW are going in, whatever the something-that-is-happening is will likely be a boring MMO grindfest. DA2 was single player WoW. DA:I was even worse, with only a couple of standout moments. It went full SJW, the writing and storytelling were dreadful, the action was mediocre, the world and zones were utterly forgettable, as were the characters. I can still quote Minsc, Jaheira and Keldorn after 15 years, but I can't remember the names of most of DA2 or DA:I characters.
DA:O was fantastic. It had some issues, but instead of fixing those, they made an entirely different game, unrelated story, unrelated characters and a different combat style entirely. The Origins were a phenomenal addition, adding an amazing layer of immersion and investment in our warden. As a Magi origin, I remember the mixed feelings when I found the blood mage later on in the human town since I was *there* for the incident that got him expelled. As a city elf, returning to the alienage when the slavers were there made my blood boil. I was playing a good character until that point, but my city elf rogue didn't let any Tevinters there escape alive. If I played as an elf or dwarf, a male or female, good or evil, the world changed and reacted to me. DA:O was a great party based RPG, it's sequels weren't. I blame Mass Effect for it.
Mass Effect took the KotOR and JE formula and refined it. Where KotOR was old turn-based, stat-based combat like older DND games, ME wanted to be a shooter but still held on to the RPG essence of creating a character. By ME2 of course it was fully a third-person twitch, cover based shooter. The formula of action and "cinematic" dialogue/cut scenes is BW's thing, in the same way climbing towers to unlock vapid "content" is Ubi's thing. What's happened is that where ME1 and DA:O were very different games with only some similarities, the ME formula somehow took over and all BW games now follow the ME formula. Voiced protagonists (Fuck Hawke), dialogue wheels, storytelling, they only follow one mould now.
Shepard is only as significant is (s)he is because he was the protagonist of three games that linked together. Granted, the voice acting also played a role, I won't try to argue against that, but if ME had finished after a single game, he would be no more special than Revan, Master Li's student, the warden or Hawke. Voiced protagonists worked in ME, Saint's Row 3/4 and Witcher games, but made DA2 and FO4 shit, and were probably part of why DA:I was shit too.
New BW make EA games. The quality of the writing, character development and story are just not there, instead those have been replaced by action and empty worlds with "content" in them (almost all of which involve doing a thing three times). Whatever this something is (we already knew there was a DA4 was in the works so this article really is non-news), unless it's a true sequel to Origins, it will likely suck.