I'm not sure about the new Dragon Age game. I really liked the first one, but after reading reviews of the second, I passed on it and haven't had much enthusiasm to return to the series.

I thought Skyrim was third person. Been a while though, can't remember. This one is third person

Dragon Age II was a huge disappointment, utter garbage IMO. Bioware just made up for it. I'd say Inquisition retains the greatness in the gameplay that Origins had and then eclipses it, with a giant continent to explore instead of several zones tied into one small map.

They even declared that all of the space in the zones in Origins combine to equal the entire starting zone in Inquisition. You can easily waste a few hours exploring an area without any need to pursue the main objective in the storyline. The environment is what's got me hooked so far.

And then there is the character creation, which is very customizable. Haven't seen custom characters this good since Skyrim.

Someone made a Daenerys Targaryen, looks pretty spot on to me:

I, on the other hand, loved DAII. It's a flawed game, but it did some thing very well and made some much needed improvements over DA:Origins.

Downsides:
- Recycling of environments was very noticeable. (This was mostly due to time constraints, but a shame nevertheless).
- Forcing your team to fight one endboss was flawed.
- The find&drop missions: just finding items and
- the lack of different species for Hawke. This was one of the major selling points of Origins so it's a shame they didn't include it.
- The fight against the Arishok could very unenjoyable if you had the wrong specs. It's a one-on-one fight (though you can chose to fight him with your party) and could end up like Benny Hill: Hawke running around waiting to recharge abilities.
- lack of customization of other party members. (Could be plus depending on how much you like to micromanage or not).


Upsides:
- The character writing was the best Bioware had done till then: as the game takes place over 10 years, the characters grow, their relationships change. Varric and Aveline are probably my favourite videogame characters (though the Mass Effect series have some entries as well these days. Not far enough into Inquisition to judge the companions there). Also the characters had lives outside of Hawke.
- Warriors and Rogues were greatly improved over Origins: Origins had a serious bug where warrior skills did less damage than his normal attack. and Rogues needed micromanaging to make use of their backstab ability. In DAII two-handed warriors could damage multiple opponents and speed and mobility of both warriors and rogues was improved.
- The personality system of Hawke allowed for giving Hawke a specific character while not punishing the player for switching his responses around like KotOR or Mass Effect 1 and 2 did (Paragon/Renegade and Light/Dark side basically forced you into one of two playing styles. My Hawke was mocking towards bandits and self-important officials, joked with his friends, was sympathetic to innocents and family and agressive towards demons and complete monsters without it ever feeling out-of-character).
- The Rivalry/friendship system (something I really miss in Inquisition so far.) Rivalry/Friendship meant that you can get bonuses for characters liking or disliking you, so you were no longer forced to agree with your teammembers on everything to get full bonuses. Together with the personality system it meant that Hawke could become a fully rounded character without getting punished for it.

Minor (or more personal) improvements:
- Changing Hawke's family appearance based on Hawke's appearance. Annoyed me to no end in Dragon Age: Origins that the Warden's family would always look the same, no matter what the Warden looked like.
- The story was much smaller scale than the usual epics. Hawke was out to protect his family and friends and get involved in a major civil war. Allowing for very personal stories (the quest "All That Remains" being one of them). A lot of players felt railroaded by the end, but I liked the point of it; this was something that was going to happen one way or another. Varric points out to Cassandra that there are a dozen different reasons for what happened and she can't just pick one person out to blame for it all.
- Less Darkspawn (who tend to be generic evil species. Only exceptions are the Brood-mother bit in the Deep Roads in I and the Architect in Awakenings) and more villains/enemies with specific motivations and personality.
- Finding sources of crafting materials instead of picking up each plant when you're wandering about (bit of a step back in DA:I, but at least the components don't count towards your inventory limit).
- Both DLCs (Legacy and Mark of the Assassin) were great.

Good, but could have been used more:
- Using Varric as an unreliable narrator. We get two cases of it in the whole game and both are great. Could have done more with that.

So far DA:I improves over a lot of these points, but I do miss the Rivalry system (not that I haven't encountered characters I would prefer a rivalry with so far).

Rented Dragon Age. Going with a dwarf warrior (dual-wield).

You can set your party members to function on their own using the scripts.