A few constructive thoughts, if you're going to make a game as long as DKS there needs to be more plot, more dialogue, more interaction with other characters. A lot of RPG's present the player with this odd situation where you're this super powerful character on a great mission but you seem unusually concerned with doing petty little odd jobs for every minor NPC you encounter. You're a great dragon knight but you spend an awful lot of time helping someone recover a few pigs, delivering a letter, etc. Seriously, does all that require the time and attention of a dragon knight ?
Also, one of the things that distinguishes a great RPG is memorable individual boss fights. DA:O is a great example of that.Broodmother, Father Kolgrim, Arl Howe, etc. But in DKS the bosses pretty much look the same and act the same as everyone else, just more hit points and more power. Black Ring Generals look just like every other Black Ring character and all of those characters are pretty much identical. Same with demons, goblins etc. And boss fights tend to be distinguished just by throwing huge numbers of minor minions at you while you run around trying to do something gimmicky like pulling a couple of levers.
And you need larger areas to explore and more variety of areas. Orobas Fjords isn't really a coherent map, it's a series of relatively small disconnected areas. And a lot of those areas are similar. Taking out one flying fortress is interesting, by the fourth one I'm really wanting something different.
There are other issues, particularly having to do with gameplay, but I think it all comes down to a basic sort of issue.According to a doc I saw, much was cut from DKS because the original plan was over-ambitious. So in the long run a less ambitious plan might result in a more focused, more polished final game. Quantity of time spent playing the game is not a measure of quality. DKS could have used some editing, the sort of creative attitude it expresses would stand out more if it was more focused.
I say this as a fan of the game who has played it twice and spent over 250 hours on it. And I think that there is a great game to be made by the people at Larian but DKS has the feel of a work in progress, a work that was considerably modified over the course of a long period of development, with those modifications coming about because of problems with potential publishers, time and budget constraints. etc. I would like to see a great game come out of that but I think that has more to do with refining what was original and attractive in DKS than with going off on other tangents.
