Hints of Beyond Thedas in DA4?

Didn't it win Game of the Year? I know some people have said it didn't have much competition that year but even so, clearly some critics must have loved it too.

I would say each of the DA games had their strengths and weaknesses. DAO is still my favourite but DA2 suffered from an extremely short development time, which accounts for most of the things people didn't like about the game, otherwise it might have had a better reception at its release and it has grown on me over time. The main problem I had with DAI was some of the huge open world spaces that to be honest were tedious to cross, particularly the Hissing Wastes, yet felt compelled to do so on foot so I didn't miss potential companion banter. Other people like exploring just for the sake of it but I always tend to feel that when your character has a job to do, like saving the world, I just want to get on with it. I don't mind hunting for clues, information or items that are relevant to that but most of the time in DAI we were just making collections that didn't lead anywhere or if they did, as with the occulara, by the time we got there the boss fight was underwhelming as we were too powerful for them (so on all subsequent play throughs I just ignored them).