I haven't played it but maybe its the idea that ones choices have no effect
The choices made do have effects: whether Merrill's clan get slaughtered or not, whether Fenris is taken back by his former master, still hounded by him or free to go where he wants, whether Hawke's sibling survives the deep road expedition or not, whether Aveline found a new love who helped her get rid of the massive chip on her shoulder or not... Plenty of choices do affect the overall story: it's just the final confrontation which is inevitable, which shouldn't have surprised anyone since the game's first scene between Varric and Cassandra establish that the Chantry itself is on the verge of collapsing: even if we don't know the details immediately, it's clear from the game's very first minute that Hawke either failed to stop the ongoing crisis or fanned the flames: and in fact, the game does allow you to chooses Hawke's role: mine was sympathetic to Anders' view and merciless toward Templars who abused their power, but had no animosity toward those who just wished to correctly do their job, and he felt no remorse about planting a knife between Anders' shoulders after his final murderous act of defiance; he remained willfully blind to Merrill going down the rabbit hole yet his greatest triumph was avoiding a catastrophic final showdown with her vengeful clan: others' will have fully agreed with Anders, or opposed him at every turn; they'll have pushed Merrill to destroy her Illuvian, or will have mercilessly slaughtered her whole clan when they turned against her.
The game's overarching theme is that some events are simply too big to be handled by a single man/woman, no matter how strong, gifted, or charismatic they are: it's foreshadowed by the role played by Kirkwall's viscount: far from being inept or foolish, he proves to be a reasonable and open-minded man trapped between zealots doing all they can to undermine him: when Hawke become quasi-co-viscount alongside the Knight-Commander, he (unless he's either as wrathful as Anders or a Templar yes-man) falls into the same trap: reasonable leader trapped between zealots who resent him for not allowing them to have the showdown they crave.
Overall, Dragon Age II's stroy is way better than Origin's, not only because it avoids the classic demonic invasion/evil overlord story to concentrate on its characters dealing with the socio-political issues established in the lore, but also because unlike most of Bioware's tale, it gives its backstory the opportunity to really affect the events instead of being mere decorum while some overpowered protagonist kung-fu-jesus everything in his wake.
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unlike other Bioware games its not just you running around single handedly doing shit, you have armys/spys/delegates at your disposal it makes it feel more realistic
I agree that pulling a Suikoden was a smart move (especially given that Konami dropped the ball on this series)
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That's understandable. Continuing to insist that the Reapers aren't real after Sovereign attacks? Not so much
Stupid, surely, but it's still understandable: I can perfectly see the council members looking at each other until one of them openly says what they were all thinking:
"Do you want us to publicly admit that this fucking insane, trigger happy, palling around with human supremacists woman was right about her lovecraftian mechanical gods conspiring to genocide us all?"
