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

*sigh* ...Nowadays people tend to throw around "show don't tell" without understanding what it means, same way they throw around "mary sue" without really understanding what it means.

In reality "show don't tell" applies to both written AND spoken AND visual medium - the very same rule is as important to literature with no pictures involved, as is to pictures with no words used. So a written codex entry in a form of a journal/book page or a war table mission (and the war table itself) is actually more "show don't tell" than, say, an NPC pointing directly at something and explaining what the objective is, ergo: telling us what is happening and what to do, rather than showing it through clever narrative tricks.

"Show don't tell" pertains HOW exposition is being done - not what medium (visual, written, spoken) is used.

And in that regard no - Inquisition doesn't have 'long-ass walls of text that have little to no relevance to what Inquisitor is supposed to be doing". If you claim so, it means you either didn't read many of them, or don't understand that not every piece of codex we find is there to be about the exact mission we're on, but expands on the lore of provides us with details about the world or hints and clues leading towards a larger story.

While you might have certain expectations towards the game, no - the game ain't a simulator of human interactions. It's a simulator of how it's to be a leader of a large organization. It involves interacting, socializing, delegating, exploring, fighting, listening and - of course - reading.

Also - ask yourself how much it'd cost to voice most of content in a game this large. Then ask yourself just how fast "an entertaining dialogue with an interesting character" would grow old, if it was all we got. Personally, I prefer some variety in a game that requires about 100 hours for each playthrough - from character interactions, to finding a lost journal to striking visuals that convey much without a word being uttered. Thankfully BW gets better and better at this - in regard of visual language alone, DAI beats its predecessors to a pulp. So many things to find...

Well, sure. But text-only is far cheaper than entertaining dialogue with interesting characters. Abolish the entire DAI war table and you free up enough zots for .. one cutscene? Two?

... So this is all about rewards now?

Oh sure - I'm not going to argue that DAI content was strong all across the board. But at this point we're talking about something different, with some arguing that there should be more spoken dialogue/cinematics, some even claiming that most of the written stuff is garbage, while others that they should just be replaced with one type of content alltogether - nevermind the cost of it, or the fact that VO/cinematics ain't a 'be-all and end-all' of telling the story in the game, especially one of scope of a big RPG.

Either way, DA team has proven so with JOH - which didn't have more cinematics/VO than the main game, yet was praised for improvements in implementing quests and side-quests across the zone.

They were obnoxious time wasters... for you. For someone interested with lore and larger story, they were a trove of useful or immersive information, nevermind a pretty much perfect "show don't tell" device of Inquisitor delegating their forces all across the sphere of their influence.

... Of course, if you only care about rewards or rewards for applied skill, this would be a moot point.

Suffer through reading text?

Such horrible torment.

I applaud you for actually resembling Dorian with that post.

But Dragon Age and Mass Effect borrow major mechanics from each other frequently. It's absolutely undeniable. Especially since Bioware themselves consistently and explicitly say they do this. Believing the two are incomparable is flat out objectively wrong, lmao. 

That being said, on-topic, Inquisition was far too big for its own good, and had some of the worst side content in Bioware's history. It was incredible shallow and tedious, and the story was restricted until you did a certain number of items on some arbitrary checklist.

I've been replaying Inquisition lately, and I'll admit that I was much too hard on it over the past few years. It legitimately has a lot to like...

But certain parts of it or so fucking unbelievably tedious that I can't blame people for thinking it was a trash game. Out of the 100+ hours I put into the game (and I even skipped the optional locations), only about 20 of those were actually spent with any sort of meaningful content. After 3 years, of course people are mostly going to remember where the majority of their time was spent. Especially since it's so insultingly shallow and pointless. I don't think Bioware was necessarily 'lazy', but I do think they had no idea what they were doing, and only made the game as big as they did because 'open-world' has become a fad that honestly needs to die until devs can figure out how to actually make an open world interesting. 

Mass Effect Andromeda will undeniably suffer from this as well. It will hopefully be better, and I intend to play it through all the way, but it's just the nature of open-world games. Especially when coming from a company that is known for their focus on narrative and characters. A world as big as Andromeda will detract from that. 

I have no problem with reading text. I love reading. I wish Bioware would bring back full-text dialogue.
The problem was, stuff like codexes and journal writings were so very out of the way in those big open world zones and DAI was user-unfriendly.
The War Table was okay. I enjoyed reading them. But I got tired of the War Table as a whole, so I downloaded a mod that instantly finished missions.

Its more about knowing exactly what my character's gonna say and not say for the roleplaying. I hate being surprised.

And Fallout 4 shows how cancerous the Dialogue Wheel can be. Up and Down and Left and Right. ONLY 4 options. ALWAYS 4 options. 4 ways of saying "Yes". One or two word "paraphrase". Impossible to tell what the character's gonna say and how they say it. Incredibly dumbed down dialogue. Voicing takes up more space than silent text, so inevitably the dialogue will be smaller and shorter and less than what it could've been with silent text. But thats another issue. I'd settle for full-text with the cinematic voicing.
And Horizon Zero Dawn is just the latest one to suffer the dialogue wheel.