Comment by WorldMaker

I thought the smaller scale helped make the stakes feel more believable. The very rare case in scifi/fantasy of seeing any sort of stakes deflation.

(DA2 I completed thrice to really explore the wild variety of the story tapestry coming out of DAO, which also lent a lot of interesting feeling to how well developed DA2 was but it wasn't always obvious in a single playthrough. and I don't expect to have that many finished playthroughs of any of the others. I think that's why it ended up my favorite.)