What does DA:I in space mean, and why is it so horrible?

DA:I was a good game when it came out. That was the general consensus at the time. There were criticisms towards it's ratio between Side Content and Story, but for the most part people were able to appreciate the good things about it.

Then The Witcher 3 came out, and it was so good that it emphasized all the problems DA:I had, and people looked at it with an even more critical eye. Unfortunately to the point where they exaggerated.

- Fetch quests, literally 98% in the game are fetch quest. This is not even so much the problem because all rpgs have them. However in DAI they were all uninspired. "Go fetch my husbands ring templars stole it* *walks a few feet gets ring* "You found my ring, kthanxbai" *mission complete*. That's lazy, there's no other word for it.
- Locations that were pretty but otherwise empty
- Terrible combat (worst in the DA franchise). Played like an MMO. No matter what class you played. This was made worse by the fact almost all of the classes were broken.
- Shallow characters, with shallow banter revolving around sexual acts, looks or fashion or otherwise engaging in petty highschool arguements (looking at you Dorian/Viv). With the exception of characters like Solas or Cassandra. Can't forget Varric, I probably wouldn't have played the game for as long as I did if not for him.
- Subpar main story and cookie cutter villain.
- True ending released as dlc.
- Poor balancing, especially when it comes to difficulty. It seems the idea to make the game harder was to turn archers into tanks and give mages god tier barriers. Nightmare mode was actually more of a chore than a challenge. If you were say a reaver, it just meant spamming the same dragon rage button for longer just to kill 1 mage/archer.
- Terrible AI. While many games have bad AI few are as frustrating as DAIs. Ranged characters who charge tanks. I once spent around 15 minutes closing a fade rift because those frost demons actually hopped outside of the vacinity and had I followed, it would have reset the fade rift lol. Closing fade rifts just became a game of waiting because of those demons. I'd usually just stand at the rift and press X repeatedly to disrupt the thing until the squad could kill the demon.

To this day I only went through the story once, a first for a Bioware game. I installed Trespasser but never actually got around to playing the game to that point. It got to a point where I just couldn't tolerate the combat. By the time of Trespasser better games were also out. Also winning a few awards doesn't mean much. If I remember correctly DAI didn't have much competition around the time it came out. It was a bit of a dry spell for wrpgs then. Fallout 4 wasn't even out yet, neither was Witcher 3.  Still I don't think it was that successful, it was nowhere to be seen in NPDs top 10 sales literally 2 months after it came out, strange for a game that launched on around 5 platforms, and EA never disclosed it's sales which is very telling.

This is idiotic.. Earlier Bio games didn't release on the two new consoles because they didn't exist yet. It's not like new console gamers magically popped into existence when the consoles were released. They migrated to the new consoles from older platforms.

Being released on five platforms also held the game back though. I don't think that it would've made much difference in the long run. After all I think the final DLC and Patch weren't even released on last gen, if I remember correctly...anyway it's a moot point, especially since I mainly wanted to debunk the argument that DAI wasn't successful, which it was. The circumstances don't matter.

I agree, I greatly despise hybrid realtime/pause combat. It lacks the tactical finesse of proper turn based combat and the real time action often isn't as refined as the pause function ends up being a crutch. 

Let me break this down for you in simple terms...

It's far easier to sell more units of a game on five platforms (Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, PC) than it is on just three (Xbox One, PS4, PC). I'm sure you can do the math, but the sample size of potential buyers is much larger with five than it is with three...

Content (as well as the DLC you mentioned) was cut from the game because of accommodating the Xbox 360 and PS3, but you can't honestly believe DAI would have sold the same amount on two less platforms. Many gamers still did not have a PS4 or Xbox One at that time. BioWare also felt they needed to release the game on last gen, as DAI was originally slated for 2013. I'm agreeing with you that DAI was successful and I personally enjoyed it, but I was just merely explaining part of the reason DAI's circumstances were unusual.

Agreed. Either go tactical turn-based or go action-oriented. BioWare can have its cake and eat it too. Those two combat systems don't mix and they have to either go with one or the other. Until then, I will always envision Dragon Age having lackluster combat due to the compromises being made.

Huh? Nothing made you use the AI.