DA4: More story with less choice AND less story with more choice

TL;DR: DA4 should have a Story vs. Choice mode set at the very start, where Story removes the illusion of choice and does cutscenes as set pieces with no dialogue wheel, while Choice puts an NPC in the protagonist's shoes and you, the PC, can do whatever you want, including ignoring the story altogether.

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A common complaint about DAI is that is has too much filler, not enough in-depth story. One of the many contributors to filler are the many map zones that have little or no connection to the main story. So a common remedy suggested for DA4 is to have fewer maps. 

Another, less common complaint is that there wasn't enough player agency in DAI. You can't break out of the heroic "Chosen One" role the Inquisitor is forced into, there are very few degrees of freedom, and you have to follow the main story to experience the best content or even to unlock the many map zones mentioned above. On the other hand, the extra maps created a small amount of emergent gameplay, at least for explorers.

Thinking about all this, it occurred to me that these are symptoms of the same problem: the tension between strong storytelling needing to have full control of all characters for best effect, and players needing full control to make their own stories and discover new ways to enjoy the game (emergent gameplay). And that the criticism of DAI boils down to compromising too much between those extremes and trying too hard to find a middle ground between them, making everyone somewhat unhappy.

So, why not give up on compromise in DA4 and just offer both extremes as a choice?

Offer an explicit player choice, kind of like a difficulty level setting, where you can choose either Story or Choice (or Freedom or Emergent Gameplay or whatever label for the maximum degrees of freedom extreme that would be most self-explanatory).  Probably needs to be a game-global setting that you set at the start and can't change, or perhaps, you are allowed to change from Story to Choice, but not the reverse, and once you change, you can't go back.

Story takes control of your character. You can still choose the look, class, race, gender, etc. as always, but once you finish with that, you relinquish control of the character during cutscenes. There would be no dialogue wheel. Instead of paying lip service to dialogue choices that all end up driving to the same result, just don't even bother to offer the illusion of choice in the first place. There might be big A/B plot choices like Mages vs. Templars, but only if Bioware is willing to write the combinatorics of the story as fully and deeply as a linear plot would be. BTW, one of the reasons I don't really like "Choice" as a label for the other option is because it would imply you can't make big plot choices. But I can't think of anything better.

Choice sacrifices the story for total freedom to do what you wish with your character. You can completely ignore the story if you want -- the story will at best be in the background that some NPC is doing, taking the place of the PC. This frees up the PC to just go do whatever. All zones would be open, nothing would be locked, other than scripted adventures with locked sections that are unlocked through progress. The game would be as close to an open sandbox as possible. The story might be abbreviated, and set-piece cutscenes might be replaced with dialogue-wheel interactions that, instead of moving the plot forward, change attitudes of NPCs. Like the factional karma system in Bethesda games. The goal of dialogue should shift towards roleplaying and diplomacy, instead of being constrained by the needs of the main story.

During the start of the game, the Choice option should detect if this is a first playthrough and put up a big warning that you might want to try Story first. It should still allow Choice, but some effort should be made to prevent first-time players getting into something they didn't intend.

Speaking of Bethesda, yes, this does move DA4 a bit closer to the Skyrim style of game in Choice mode, but let's face it, Bethesda sucks at Story. DA4 can be a better sandbox experience by taking a step towards Skyrim, without sacrificing the best-in-class storytelling strength of Bioware.

What do you think?