There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if an identical game was released by Bioware it would have a metacritic in the mid 90s and hailed as a glorious return to CRPG roots.
Dragon Age 2 has an 82 ffs, I don't think it's an awful game but it's a 7/10 at the most if I ever saw it.
Personally I have lost all faith in the gaming press, the games buying public aren't their customer, it's the advertisers who are. Any time a big AAA title with lots of advertising gets released the gaming press hype it up and they will generally get glowing reviews regardless of quality.
There are different standards applied to smaller studios when the games are being reviewed. Not one of the big reviews I read mentioned Mass Effect 3's ending yet deducted points from The Witcher 2 for it's ending. People are criticising D:OS's inventory, perhaps rightly so, but how many complaints about Skyrim's inventory did you see? New Vegas was slaughtered because of bugs yet Fallout 3 got a free pass.
I have no problem with games being marked down for these issues, they should be, but only if the same standards are applied to all games which they clearly aren't.
