Inquisition was okay, definitely a step up from DA2, but that's a low bar to begin with. I mean, Inquisition was a good game and definitely an attempt to recapture some of the magic of DAO and the earlier games, but the ridiculous amount of fetch quests and the sheer size of the Hinterlands, not to mention that you have to return there several times throughout the game really didn't do it any favours.
In truth, Dragon Age 2 did more damage to the series than Inquisition. In case you didn't know, DAO had a production time of nearly seven years, this was laying down the concept of the game, worldbuilding and story writing before actually developing the game. There is a reason why DAO was considered a masterpiece at the time. DA2 was an attempt enforced on Bioware by EA, who had purchased Bioware because of Mass Effect and DAO. To put that into perspective, Inquisition had a production time of three years.
DA2 had a production time of less than 18 months, in an industry where two years is the average for a game of that size. The concept was sound, kind of a fantasy version of Scarface, the immigrant rising to a position of power and wealth on their own back. The concept was sound, the execution was not. Because of the rushed nature of the game, multiple areas were reused again and again and again. Enemy cloning factories must have lined the rooftops of Kirkwall considering how many times you got ambushed or attacked in the city. Several times throughout the story, you were railroaded into decisions that made no sense or ones that given more production time, you could have easily avoided with a bit of preparation. In the end, you have a hero/heroine who always succeeds except when it really matters and then you have someone who is just incompetent as the main character.
Dragon Age 2 was a very divisive game in the community and while a lot of the vitriol aimed at it has mellowed over the last few years, most people will agree that it is definitely the weakest game in the series and now serves as an indicator of what an EA-run Bioware would look like.
But more than that, like I said in a previous post, most of the writers and the creative team that worked on Dragon Age Origins have left to work on other projects at other companies. Mike Laidlaw was one of the last. Hell, even the two guys who founded Bioware have left. This whole debacle with Anthem and the revelations of the work practices at Bioware during its production indicate that while we aren't seeing the last days of Bioware, its still a poor shadow of the company that made Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect and DAO.
