Dragon Age Cisquisition is very far from being open world. Did you not watch any of the demos, it's a re-tread of Dragon Age 2, corridor forests and all.
DA:I is very far from "open world" because Bioware can hardly grasp what "open world" means. They think open world means that you can walk outside the graphics of the road.
Open world means that you can explore not just the graphics but also interact with everything in the world no matter what your progress in the main story is. In fact, under perfect conditions you should be able to complete every quest in the game at your own pace, discovering the world on your own agenda without even having a "main quest". But more importantly, open world implies that the world is filled with self contained, autonomous story lines, unto which the players stumble while exploring on their own and which ideally, organically guide them through the main story as well. Without those, there's no reason to explore, other than admire some graphics on digital trees or at best, find an easter egg. Morrowind was excellent at that, even Skyrim was pretty good at it, up to a point.
Bioware, on the other hand, never produced such a game. They made up for it with excellent writing, tight storyline, strong characters, engaging gameplay and solid mechanics. Something they threw out of the window with ME2 and DAII, because the only thing that goes through the management's head is "button-mashing-console-driven" bottom line.
Personally I love story driven, linear RPGs such as BG, The Witcher or DA:O as much as open world ones such as Morrowind or Skyrim. But I have no hopes for DA:I, I really doubt Bioware has had a revelation with it.
