If ME:A really is an exploration game with a linear story on the side a la Inquisition...

I like Bioware's story telling and I did not mind the extra component of exploring in DAI. I did not miss the cinematics but understand others do.

Witcher series in my mind are not comparable except for being an RPG. I hope it stays that way, diversifies the RPG genre, a genre I very much like to play.

I hope Bioware does not emulate any RPG and finds its footing of old as trendsetter and not as copycat.

You know all this talk about DA:I actually made me boot up DA:I after playing around with a fun setup in The Keep despite how I keep saying i don't like it. But anyway, I second this. Seriously, go pop in DA:O on your pc or PS360. It's such a good, and COMPLETE game. It really is one of the very best examples of BioWare-made, BioWare-like game where choices matter and they matter to your story and not some hypothetical sequel instead, at least most of the big ones. Once it gets going it's hard to stop. That said, I played the game with a friend of mine back to back and that made the experience better, and I was fortunate to have a friend at that time and age who wanted to play a nerdy single-player game simultaneously with me, so we could sit and gush about how epic each our playthroughs were. If you have any gamer-buddies that are not just into online or competitive stuff, get them to play DA:O with you

God I hope it isn't Inquisition in space. Dragon Age: Inquisition was one of the most boring and soulless games I have played in a long time. It wasn't horrible, but was just dull and crammed full of filler.

DA:I is a game with gems and moment for shivers but those are so watered down that it becoming harder and harder to relate. Final nail for me was that one "side mission" which opened my eyes on frustration with how the game goes. In Western Approach was that little fort called Ritual Tower from where you jump to siege of Wardens Adamant Fortress. When I finished with Adamant Fortress I immediately returned to Ritual Tower because due to cut-scene jump I wasn't able to explore it. However, except architecture there was really nothing of interest there. Ok. I traveled to location's Keep and was given the quest to kill couple of bandits guess where? Right, near Ritual Tower. Oooookay. I went back again and killed two bandits and it resulted in 'mission complete' message with insignificant amount of exp and gold. Such wow. I killed 10-12 exactly same bandits just on my way there! Why keep's chief was interested with these two in particular? NO REASON. So much storytelling. So much drama. So much Bioware strength.
Literally no excuse for such missions to exist - not in the way it was presented. Go through half map and kill two clones of same enemies that were generated from thin air and in much larger quantities all around you.
And missions exactly like these represent about what, 80% of the game?
It isn't about "optional". It is about fact that 80% of the game is irrelevant skippable genericness.
God save literally any game from 'side-content' like that.

Apologies for my english and also to all those who tired and bored to hear "DA:I is bad"-speeches.

Wut???  ME1 side missions do not even remotely feel as detailed as parts of the main story.  Most of them amount to... land on planet, drive mako around collecting a few things, and fight way into an area to end mission.  The player may get a couple of lines of dialogue either on the planet or on the Normandy with Hackett.  Some of the quests that do have dialogue on the planet contain lines that just don't mesh with all backgrounds of Shepard and some are blatantly bugged in one way or another. 

For example, all Shepard's using the paragon options will talk to Toombs like they lost their squad on Akuze.  Kohoku may show up dead in the second facility, triggering that dialogue early and the "Banes" dialogue goes absolutely no where.  The lines used for non-Torfan Shepard's during the Kyle quest are pretty lame and then Kyle, who is allegedly the one so wrought with guilt over Torfan refering to Ruthless Shepard as the "butcher of Torfan" like it's just something he heard about in passing is just ridiculous.  If the major was in command on Torfan in such a way that he feels responsible, then the major should consider himself to be the "butcher."  The other "hero" quest also contains some really lame cliche lines... "to bad we kicked your ass into terminus, huh?.... "Someone up there needs a boot up his ass..."  The three background quests on the Citadel are only marginally more cohesive because only the appropriate background Shepard will encounter the quest matched to his/her background... so they didn't have to try to fudge the lines to fit all three backgrounds like they did with the planetary ones.

Also, the UNC Cerberus side quest was completely irrelevant to the ME1 main quest, as were virtually all the side quests.  They were there only to allow the player to accumulate XP and, in some case, some Paragon and Renegade points.  They could have been completely eliminated from the ME1 story without any really noticeable effect.  (Case in point... the number of people who now essentially speed run ME1, only doing a couple of the side quests for import purposes.)  Some of the ME1 side quests were later made somewhat relevant by forcibly writing them into the later games... and most of them don't really have much effect even at that (e.g. you get an email here and there in ME2... oh wow (sarcasm).

Finally, there are really no side quests on either Noveria or Feros that involve more than a couple of lines of dialogue and a "fetch" of something.  You can skip over sections of those "hubs" (like nuking the Rachni kids)... but really those are not designed as side quests, but are designed to allow the advance of the main story line in a few different "choice" directions... and even skipping them has very little ultimate effect on how ME1 plays out.

You're so "up" on the ME1 writers and so "down" on ME3 ones that you're not even comparing what's really there to make this string of "anti-ME3 and ME:A" threads... and you keep trying to use some sort of "crystal ball" to trash ME:A five months ahead of it's release... only making your prejudice more apparent.

I disagree. Otherwise you can say the same for DAO and ME2, that you had to buy the dlcs to get the complete game.

I have to say that DAI grew on me and I've just put an insane amount of hours in a completionist playthrough and I have really enjoyed it.

But, still it's not what I wanted from a Bioware game... I too dislike that it forces you to do side missions which seems hardly relevant and the lack of cinematics even in conversations with your companions, which are one of my favourite parts in the game... For me, it works well if you are doing a completionist playthrought and if you're ready to get a little skyrimesque game exerience...

It doesn't work that well for me though when I'm looking for more of a Bioware game experience, which to me means more focus in story and in companions... if I want to do a more main plot focused playthtrough, well, now I know the game well enough so that the experience it's more satisfactory than it used to be... I know the exploits to avoid having to do too much side quests and which side quest are more interesting and/or feel less, i don't know how to put it, inmmersion breaking?... But that's just a way to fix something that doesn't really quite work for me... The things I love in a Bioware game are there, but in less quantity than in other ocasions and I feel like I have to work to get them without other less enjoyable things ruining it ll too much...

I'd be so much happier with half the maps we got (or the same amount of maps but half their size) and more developed loyalty missions or one or two more main missions, and I'm not particularly thrilled about the emphasis in big maps in MAE. I just hope it's true that they learnt from DAI. I do love Skyrim and The Witcher 3, but I've always loved more Bioware games and I don't want them to become more like any other game... If anything, I wish it would be the other way around, because I prefer playing with Shepard, the Warden or Hawke than playing with Geralt or Ciri (even if I love them both) no matter how cool the Witcher 3 world is, and I could never replay Skyrim or any Fallout game as much as I replay Mass Effect and Dragon Age games, precisely because of their lack of, well, some narrative or characters for which I could actually come to care

I disagree about Feros - I think some of the side quests add to the general sense of something being "off" about what's happening beyond just the fact of the geth attack. It's hard to retrieve my memory of what I thought the first time I played it, but there's more than a line or two of dialogue with all the ExoGeni people that you can discover on your way to the headquarters. Plus there was Ian Newstead and his attempt to warn you about the THRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNN!

Replaying Inquisition there is actually a fair bit of world-building/story respectful side quests in there, it's just littered with meaningless crap on the side which I thankfully decided to skip this time. I try to keep myself focused on the plot, that is, doing things that circumvents the Chantry having denounced your organization and aiding people to join your inquisition, no "go do this for me, my Husband is gone!" garbage and it helps the game feel slightly more coherent. I think the main difference is still in how little cinematic stuff there is and how segregated the "Open world" aspect is from the "main missioN" stuff.

Even if one labels them differently... the point still stands that the quests to make the colony operational again have absolutely zero impact on the outcome either within ME1 or in either ME2 or ME3.  Not finding Gavin Hossle's data has a total impact of -5 War Assets.  They do provide a little bit of XP and or a few paragon/renegade points if the player needs them (and it's not so much that the player could not possibly do without them and still be able to, say, use a paragon or renegade option with Saren. 

As optional objectives go, it's certainly not like, say, Assassin's Creed Black Flag, where not meeting the optional objectives has a direct impact on the player's synchronization.