DA2-style story spanning multiple years?

Didn't like it when Fable did it, didn't like it when DA2 did it. The world is never reactive enough/doesn't change enough to be believable, characters don't change enough, events don't progress enough, and you always have to "get back into the story" once a jump occurs. If done well it can be awesome, but I don't see it done well in games imo.

The big problem with DA2 timeline is the scale of the time passed doesn't really work. I love the game but anytime i play i internally compress it to year gaps between acts.

The seven years (ten if you include the framing device) that pass in DA2 help make it far more meaningful to me than the other games. It's a trilogy like Mass Effect, just boiled down to one game.

I'd love to see that again, but I don't see it happening, considering most fans don't seem to want a game like DA2.

I'm going to flip that question around on you. In any story that contains a suitably big time jump, the implicit promise to the reader is that changes have occurred to the world, and the characters, and that the storyteller will catch the reader up on these changes. People previously living in the town could no longer live there, people have faced ruin, people have received great fortune, parts of the city have changed its infrastructure, new houses and businesses have sprung up and old businesses closed down. In general life goes on.

What changed in the world of DA:2 during those timeskips. Apart from "tensions grew" I mean. After the Viscount died it must have been a period of great turbulence. I'm sure many things would have changed between Act 2 and Act 3?

My problem with the time skips in DA2 is that very little changed when they occurred in the story. The world remained very static throughout the time skips. The Qunari are camping out at the port when their ship crashed, and when we skip three years we find that they are still there. Companion characters don't change. Kirkwall doesn't change. You don't have the opportunity to change Hawke's look, like giving him a new hairstyle (you need the Black Emporium DLC for that) when the game does a time jump. Nothing really changes when we do a time jump in the game, and it seemed more like an excuse to skip over content they didn't have time to create (like that period where Hawke was either a smuggler or whatever the other thing was at the beginning... you had to pick one and then the game skipped over it and went to the end where you quit).

I would only want DA4 to do it if it was going to be used better as a framing device. Wasn't a fan of how DA2 used it at all.

I don't really agree. Characters did change between acts - for instance the Bethany we see in Act 2 is a lot colder towards Hawke than she'd ever be in Act 1, Anders got noticeably more angry and obsessive between Acts 2 and 3, Aveline got married between acts (if you helped her get with Donnic), Isabela tells Hawke in Act 3 "You and I have nothing in common anymore".

And things did change in Kirkwall. Witness how Meredith's taken over the city by Act 3 - Templars in the Keep, mages all shut up inside the Gallows - or Petrice's rise to power between Acts 1 and 2 or how Athenril in the prologue was all charm when she was trying to get Hawke to work for her, but a year later it's a different story.

I wouldn't say no to another game similar tO DA2 with the personal story an timeframe but with a proper development time an budget, i'd actually probably wet myself

I would like a very long prologue, a "before shit happens" that gets me immersed in the world. I would like to feel like time passed, perhaps a few in game months. Where you have a job, people you like, people you hate. You see where you live, pre massive war and destruction.

Then shit happens. An actual attack on the city that ends in a lock between two sides. a siege on Minrathous. And I would like the start of the siege to have this kind of "optimistic, they can't break us" feel. Time pass. And the place look wrecked, shortages, morale destroyed. A black market underground kind of thing. You can tell the difference from Before War Siege and After War siege both in appearance and how people act.

The push to get out of that, overcome these very localized very personal to you problems. Maybe you feel like you've gotten things almost settled- Then there is an act 3 that is for more Universal problems like Solas/Titans. By this point, you are attached to people. Attached to the land. Invested. And now you're protecting what's yours, not just this ambiguous "save the world, mostly because I don't want to die, saving the world is a bit incidental."

But I'm talk 6 months for the prologue, 1 year for the war and siege, and then maybe another 6-12 months for the save the world plot. Which is a much smaller amount of time than 7-10 years. DA2's landscape didn't change much, but how people talked did. I'd like more of that, and definite landscape changes.

Incidentally, the Hinterlands had some reflections in the war, but it was very little. Constant skirmishing like that would have wiped them out long before Inky descended upon them, yet there they were and the sound to match. The houses that were on fire are still on fire later aren't they? That last part I'm not 100% sure on.

Crestwood had the rain to day change that was very reflective of the local rift affecting weather that is neat.

But it's all just hodge podge isn't it? And since the game was "play in whatever the fuq order you feel like!" they couldn't really commit resources to more that would matter, I would think. Each location had to be frozen in time.

I think it's cool to learn that in ME1, Liara being recruited in late game changes her reaction to being found. She's practically delirious (and should likely be dead due to lack of water.) but we'll pass on that bit. But it doesn't matter if you do the mage tower last- even though you hear about it's fall in Lothering, which is locked in at the start of the game. The mage tower should have had more losses and Wynne should have been delirious with exhaustion. Rightly all dead, unless there is water access and a store of food in that room.

In conclusion, I'd like a game that spans two years with distinct time marks like DA2's acts. I think a "sense of time passing with world reflection" clashes with "do the quests in any order you like" however, so find it unlikely?

While the execution wasn't perfect in DA2 (third act was very rushed for example) I love that game, seeing everything get worse and worse. I much prefer the story of DA2 to DAO and also DAI's main plot (looooved the elven stuff at the end, though). Partly because the narrative was something different, in no small part due to the time jumps. I'm not a fan of time jumps usually. But here it worked very well because it was integral to the narrative about a city descending into madness.

When you put it that way, couldn't the main plot of Inquisition have easily taken place over 2-3 years, rather than just one?

the first RPG I played was Neverwinter Nights 2, which was divided into separate chapters
I also loved that about DA 2, and I love head cannoning about what happens in the years between the acts

so yeah, I'd like for the next game to have a similar narrative to DA2, but not in entirely the same style (aka. not in a framed narrative told by someone else)

I went ahead and said yes even though it wholly depends on the narrative Bio intends to craft. Though if DA4 does require a lengthy time passage I hope it is unlike DA2 in that we aren't forced to endure dramatic events...i.e. give me a path to save mom (even if incredibly difficult,) let me bust Bethany out of the Circle, I want to personally deal with Mother Petrice...there were a number of things DA2 did really well but player agency wasn't one of them.