Cities or Inquisition?

I doubt all that time was spent moving forward. The project lost its project director Gérard and Chris Wynn the development director in 2014. I think some kind of shakeup happened but I'll wait and see.

I don't play DA for the city hubs.

Yes... Bioware lazyness. But if you really into it, Noveria/Feros felt like an alien world, except less interaction with NPCs no matter how bad it is. I enjoyed how the terrains and climates were designed, like it's not something you will find on Earth.

ME1 had the biggest hub world (Citadel)

ME2 had the most. Smaller than the Citadel but the most like: Citadel, Omega, Tuchunka, and Illium.

THIS. Val Royeaux was just sad. I expect MUCH MORE from a 100% current gen game. I do not expect Witcher 3 cities. But I do wish them to be completely open. However, if for whatever reason that can't be done (let's ignore much better cities existed on the PS2), at least make these hubs seem big by giving us a view. And making them have lots of different areas. I want a populated ME1 Citadel at the very least, plus maybe 5 other larger settlements or even full alien cities. I mean, Skyrim had bigger cities than DAI! And those cities were already ridiculously small for how many people supposedly live there.

Now that I think about it, the less open a city, the bigger the chance they at least appear large and have diverse districts. Illium was super small but it FELT like you were in a large city. A view is VERY important for the illusion of scope. I loved that about Illium. And then of course the quests expanded a hub's scope further. ME2 in general had superb art style. Best-looking game by far. And even DA2's Kirkwall was nice, even if it was basically 80% of the game.

And I expect several clubs!
I REALLY hope the hubs are closer to the trilogy than DAI. Skyhold was the only good hub.