I love DA:O too, but I actually liked the characters and character stories in Dragon Age II a little more.
For me there is a happy medium between complete sandbox/faceless protag games like Elder Scrolls and completely linear fixed actor narratives such as Final Fantasy, that the better Bioware games typically hit for me. And especially because of the time frame Dragon Age II takes place over, I really like the way they could let characters develop over a long period of time.
