Narrative Experiences and Pre-Prod Thoughts on Recent Community Update

I suspect that quote is just a reference to the player character being customisable like the previous games rather than set. Gender, appearance, name, and class choice, probably race aswell. But you don't need a morality or personality points Meter in order to play different kinds of characters. Just the ability to make choices in story and in dialogue allows you to play the character you want to play.

I appreciate special dialogue options based on race/background, class, or the knowledge/skill perks you may have unlocked. And I would appreciate special dialogue options that result from our decisions, but i personally would prefer that they be specific rather than triggered by a generic meter 'you completed this quest first so you get this extra option in a later quest'
'You pissed off/made happy this faction in the game and that effects whether you can convince them to help you now'

If there must be a meter I'd rather it be a reputation meter that affects how npcs react to you, rather than morality or personality meters affecting how your character speaks in auto dialogue and/or what dialogue choices you have in the future. Having my character assigned a personality because they happened to pick one dialogue option position a couple more times then the others and then being forced to talk that way in situations where they wouldn't is annoying. Having the game assign moral value to my char based on a choice makes an assumption about why i made it in a game where i can roleplay many different reasons for it, some of which are completely opposed to one another.
Paragon/renegade, light side/dark side, diplomatic/humour/aggressive: These meters attempt to declare who my character is and feel like they limit the kinds of character I can play. A reputation meter just says what other people think about my character based on my choices, not so restrictive.

But I think you can do without a meter entirely in a story focused game.

As I understand the process, pre-production is where they hash out the story they want to tell, main plot points and characters involved. They also establish what sort of systems they are going to need, visual effects they want, gameplay mechanics, etc. It is much easier to make adjustments to the story or mechanics at this stage, which is why so much time is devoted to it.

Full production is when everyone starts working on their own part of the process. The writers flesh out the characters and write dialogue for them. The designers create the backdrops for the action. People start programming the various elements.

Alpha is when all the component parts are brought together into one cohesive whole. This allows them to play through the game in its entirety and see whether all those component parts work together. At this point, adjustments may need to be made because it is discovered that they don't. Maybe a character needs extra lines of dialogue for a conversation to make sense. Maybe a fight scene doesn't really work. Also, programming bugs can be spotted. I once supported an IT student working on an element of his course involving creating and programming a simple child's game. All worked fine until one specific place and I was amazed at the amount of lines of programming we had to look through to discover exactly what the problem was and fix it. Just one omission of an instruction had made all the difference. My respect for the creators of major computer games increased enormously after this experience. It must be a nightmare trying to locate and fix what seems to the player to be just a small bug.

I gather from Mark Darrah's pod cast that Alpha can also be important when it comes to starting and releasing funds for the marketing process.    They are near enough to release to begin hyping up interest in their product.   It could be anything from 6 months to 1 year before the game actually ships.  He thought it more likely the latter with DA:D to avoid crunch and choose an optimum time to maximise sales, namely autumn of 2023.  He anticipates another trailer either for DA Day or more likely the game awards.

Anyway, the next stage will be the Beta milestone, when they hope that everything is now working okay and the game is very near its final form.