I promised myself I wasn't going to jump into this debate since wherever EA gets mentioned, well, the 'I like where this is going /sarcasm' meme seems appropriate. None the less, wall of text incoming:
Firstly, to address the main point of the thread: as far as I'm concerned there are two kinds of protagonist for RPGs, there's the player created protagonist common in sandbox RPGs like Skyrim and there's the developer created protagonist more common in the so called 'action RPG' like Darksiders II. Generally speaking the distinction is made clear by two key points: the former tends to be a silent protagonist most of the time, and they will be referred to be title ('The Warden', 'The Fateless One', 'The Monster Hunter' etc.) while the latter will generally be fully voiced and will have at least one name already defined. ('Hawke', 'Shepard', 'Rush Sykes' and so on) There are exceptions: Link would be an example of a silent protagonist whose character is fully defined and very much falls into the second category by means of very much being a protagonist designed by the developer; Gordon Freeman is the same. On the other hand you have game protagonists referred to be title only who are very much developer designed: The Prince of Persia would be an example of this, as would 'The Kid' from 'Bastion,' although in this case it's more a point the game is making about how the characters define themselves. I'll stop talking about Bastion before I go off on a tangent - and I have a feeling I'd be treading on EmceeProphIt's toes if I started expounding my own ideas on the meaning of names in Bastion before he's had the chance to cover it - so I'll just make the observation that Zulf is most often referred to by name and lets his past and cultural heritage inform his actions while The Kid is never referred to by name and is the epitome of being defined by his actions rather than his past or his heritage.
I would posit that no-one here would hold lack of customisable main characters against a game series like 'The Legend of Zelda' or 'Final Fantasy,' which raises an interesting question. Does the name of a series refer to the style of game-play or to the world in which it's set? Both of the examples above tend to play fast-and-loose with any form of established chronology or canon (pet peeve I'll mention here: 'canon' is the established narrative of a work of fiction as laid out by the author (or a rank within the hierarchy of the church - or if capitalised a manufacturer of printers), 'cannon' is a medieval piece of ordnance, I've seen this mistake made on this forum quite frequently), making them strong arguments in favour of game-play style over fictional universe. Off the top of my head I must admit I can't think of any examples to the contrary. It could be argued that Resident Evil changed from being a survival horror game into either an action game or third person shooter, and then to an interactive storyboard of QTEs but that would be being facetious. The point I'm leading to is this: If a game is presented as a sequel, is the consumer justified in expecting it to play the same way - with the same kind of protagonist as framed in the first paragraph? I don't have an answer to that, but for it even to be open to discussion it has to be framed that neither of the two is objectively inferior to the other, and that's where this gets a bit sticky.
The argument that keeps popping up against developer designed protagonists is this: 'If I wanted to experience a story that I wasn't controlling/influencing I'd read a book.' In my view this is much the same as saying all books have to be philosophical deconstructions of the protagonists' morality, all films have to be action flicks and all stage productions have to be period dramas. This may look like a complete strawman but hear me out: much as games by nature of being an interactive medium have a natural strength towards non-linear narrative design (that is to say - telling a story that isn't fixed to the artist's vision), these other media forms are also naturally inclined towards the content mentioned.
Books can go into far more detail on a character's motivations due to the use of narrative voice, furthermore they don't have a fixed pace. In a film or game, within a single scene one second of screen-time can be reasonably expected to correlate to one second of actual in-universe time. Books don't have this constraint, letting the author delay the action as long as is necessary to make a point insofar as they do not trespass unduly on the reader's patience.
Films, being a purely visual and auditory experience (excluding use of subtitles) naturally lend themselves to genres that emphasise spectacle. Stage productions with the impracticality of special effects and large casts in a small space as well as the added production hassle of blocking the scenes with account for the audience line of sight, have a strength when dealing with dialogue heavy productions.
I very much expect that none of this has done much to assure you of the validity of the three comparisons made, and quite rightly so. Imposing arbitrary limitations on what an artistic medium can explore holds it back unduly. Most of the modern classics defy the expectations of the genre in some way, but to attack the original premise: that games should not be restricted to non-linear stories directly, that would prohibit titles as wide-ranging as 'Halo', 'Half-Life', 'Final Fantasy', 'Command & Conquer', 'Starcraft' etc. So for those of you who've ever uttered the words 'If I wanted to experience a story that I wasn't controlling/influencing I'd read a book.' then I hope you treat the games listed above with a similar amount of scorn, at least then you'd be being consistent. I would also refer you to the most recent Extra Credits video on gaming and 'fun' as a tangential evaluation of the impact of placing arbitrary constraints a medium. You might prefer a game with a player-created protagonist, but that is a matter of personal choice, not objective quality.
Now to deviate a bit from the topic, but in a way that's still relevant. The issue of the developer's history cannot be dismissed; pertinent comparisons to 'Dragon Age II' and 'Dragon Age Origins' have been raised as examples of each storytelling technique and the studio's strength at delivering an enjoyable game-play experience through them. At this point some words have to be said in defence of 'Dragon Age II'. I'd first like to be clear that the copy-paste dungeons were frankly inexcusable, especially for a studio with the size and the resources of Bioware. I also haven't played 'Dragon Age Origins', making any form of comparison impossible. Treating those two points as no contest but only tangentially relevant to the matter of narrative technique, (I'll come back to them later when I discuss developer credibility) the other main criticism I've seen levelled at 'Dragon Age II' is that the story made no sense. This is objectively wrong.
To begin, go read this article on wikipedia, it's only 25 lines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic_literature), the rest of this passage will sound like gibberish without a solid understanding of the concept detailed within. The second relevant distinction to the following discussion topic is what constitutes a plot hole. The widely held understanding is that any point that is vital to the understanding of events as detailed in the narrative that is not explicitly stated is a plot hole. The very concept of ergodic literature throws this out the window as it places the onus of working to understand a text on the audience, rather than the more widely held belief that it is the responsibility of the artist to make the text widely understood. A more useful definition for the use of this investigation then is that a plot hole is formed when any and all possible rationales for explaining the way events occur in the narrative is actively contracted within the text. To simplify: within this discussion a plot hole is not when the text does not explain itself, it is when no explanation is possible.
To give an example, also from the same developer, it was stated in the backlash from the community against 'Mass Effect 3's original cut that the motivation for the Reapers constituted a plot hole. Their logic was represented as 'I created synthetics to kill organics so that organics would not be killed by synthetics,' quite clearly a flawed premise. Except that Reapers were only stated to be synthetic once, by Shepard who couldn't be expected to give a flawless judgement and based almost purely on Sovereign's affiliation with the Geth. By contrast, Mass Effect 2 showed the putrefied biomass of captured humans being pumped to the chamber in the Collector base where a Reaper was being created, making it possible to infer that they have at least some organic parts. I won't waste time emphasising just how much information there was in the original cut to make it clear that the Reapers were bio-synthetic as the extended cut explicitly states it so it's no longer in doubt. The point of the matter is that the aforementioned summary was at best a misrepresentation, at worst a deliberate straw-man. Put the work into understanding the text and you instead get 'I created bio-synthetics to act as data storage for the DNA and cultural history of organics, before they get killed by synthetics and lost forever.' still a less than ideal solution and one that reflects a machine's lack of understanding for the elements of life that are important, but then that's the whole reason why Shepard's fighting, and definitely not a plot hole.
Most of the comments I've read about the plot of Dragon Age II just stated 'it didn't make sense' as self evident fact, so I'll make an open request for people to point out what exactly 'doesn't make sense' and I'll do my best to explain it, referring to what elements of the source material I'm using to back up my interpretation. To address what I expect will be the two most common causes for confusion though:
1) It doesn't follow a 3 act structure, despite showing clear act headings. This is to some degree a legitimate complaint as it highlights how the presentation actively serves to confuse the reader. I believe that if we take the theory of ergodic literature, the text does have a responsibility to give the audience a fair chance of understanding it by not deliberately obfuscating the information. Rather than having a clear beginning, middle and end each act serves as its own self-contained story, with the conflict of the last act tying back to events and objects set in place by the first two. This may make the whole thing seem to lack cohesion but...
2) It's a story about a person, not a conflict or an event. The story of the series may be open to debate: the first game focused heavily on the Darkspawn threat, but if the name of the third and the plot of the second are anything to go by it seems that the conflict between the Templars or the Chantry and the Circle is going to be the main source of conflict for the rest of the series, however far it goes. 'Dragon Age II' is about that so far as it's the reason the story is being told, don't forget that most of what we see as the audience is a story within a story: namely the story that Varric is telling the Chantry seeker and the question the dwarf is asked is not 'Tell me about the battle' it's 'Tell me about The Champion.' (Referring back to my first point about deliberately misleading the audience about the text structure, and to my first point about how the game refers to the protagonist being important for purposes of distinction in terms of who is making the story, the criticism that this phrasing misleads the player into believing the protagonist will be entirely of their own creation is a legitimate one.) The story therefore follows Hawke, not necessarily a single event. The event the Seeker is of course interested in is how the conflict between the Circle and the Templars escalated. Some of the information is irrelevant, because Varric has his own agenda in his retelling which is representing Hawke in a way that suits him and will therefore add details that colour the Seeker's view of Hawke appropriately, but most of it ties back to the causes for the escalation: namely the lyrium idol in act I, the death of the Viscount in act II, and the ongoing presence and influence of Anders across all acts.
Any other points I will address on request regarding 'Dragon Age II's storyline, I am fully prepared to defend my statement that the criticism that it doesn't make sense is objectively false insofar as the definitions of a plot hole and ergodic literature stand. (Do quote me please, I probably won't check this thread again otherwise)
Lastly, the matter of the developer's credibility. I'm not going to try to defend this to any great length, it's frankly a lost cause at this point. 'Dragon Age II's copy-paste dungeons were inexcusable and the series' departure from its previous format and storytelling style was misleading from a consumer perspective. On the flip-side, I very much hope the people who are complaining that they mixed up the formula aren't the same people blaming the guys behind Call of Duty for releasing the same game year after year. The thing with innovation is that it doesn't work every time, and if getting it wrong once means that your fanbase turns hostile overnight then frankly I wouldn't want to risk innovating in that kind of environment. Mass Effect 3's ending was a monumental cock-up, even ignoring the whole issue of it not making sense (debunked as shown above) it was a de-railing of Shepard's character taken to the extreme and the extended cut again re-writes Shepard's character by giving the audience the freedom to decide if s/he is enough of a moron to sacrifice the whole galaxy just to flip-off a millennia-old AI. (In the original cut Shepard wasn't, and I respect the developer's view on that) Given the number of people who missed it as well the game clearly didn't do a good enough job of communicating to the player that they didn't win the battle either. This was however an extremely costly mistake for the developer; the changes for the edited cut could not have been cheap, so I imagine they will be wary of making that mistake again.
Bioware have also recently cocked up an MMO, so yeah, the last three titles from the studio have had some major issues so the immediate scepticism for another title from the developer isn't entirely unfounded.
Referring back to my point about the cost of getting it wrong when a developer tries to innovate; I'm going to leave the blame for this one at the door of the games press and the publishers. With the practice of pre-release reviews only being admissible if they give over a certain score, the consumer is essentially being cut off from any way of evaluating the merits of a product before purchasing it, the same with pre-order bonuses. This means that the sale of any individual product is not a reflection on it's quality, but on the last title to be released by that studio. The consumer has no way of protecting themselves from a substandard product other than to look at a studio's past titles because the review process is flat out broken. If the reviews of any given product were accurate and unbiased then if a studio made a high profile mistake through innovation then the only sale that would be impacted would be of that one specific product.
Oh and as a parting note, I quite liked 'Dragon Age II', but it has some serious issues.
