Well from what I've seen so far DA4's story seems to be exactly about Tevinter and the Qunari. I also am very interested in such a story. Furthermore, the art showcases a strong female Qunari character as a possible companion.
The Qunari are possibly my least favourite race in DA. It didn't help that they altered appearance so much between Origins and Inquisition.
Having said which, my current DA:I character is a female Qunari mage.
I would expect such disregard for the Qun from a profligate like you, its as expected as your fixation on proving our strictures wrong, what are you afraid of? You all live purposeless lives of self-gratifying indolence and waste....for now, Panahedan.
I found Inquisition's story and world, a bit bland in the end, without a lot of the depth of its previous installments (in fact, jettisoning the build up of those two games in the first act), but thanks to Dorian's insights into the Magisterium, I had fully expected DA:4 to deal in depth with Tevinter politics and the clash between the empire and the Qunari. of course if DA:4 was set mainly in the Captial of a Fantasy Byzantium that would press all my buttons. But I have a lot of experience being disappointed in this regard (Cyrodill anyone?), I can only hope they've learned to revel in their own world building instead of stymieing to set things to zero so as to not scare off newbies, in my experience feeling out of my depth in a fantasy setting is half the fun.
I suppose Inquisition is sort of typical of Dragon Age: really compelling characters, technically complete lore, enough side-quests, potentially nice-looking world (thinking specifically of the Hinterlands in DAI) but ultimately it's just missing something. I can't say what it is but the world is lacking immersion somehow, it feels quite ephemeral.
I suppose I felt the same way about Oblivion's portrayal of Cyrodiil: I liked it a lot, actually, and contrary to what a lot of people claimed, there was enormous variation in its terrain, from the snow-covered mountains in the north to the tropical swampland in the south, the sandy beaches in the west to the rolling green hills in the east, sprawling forests in the middle, mountain passes, more (albeit cookie-cutter, somewhat) forts and caves and so on than you could shake a stick at. But while it had all of those things it was just a bit... bland. It's hard to say exactly why because it
should have worked but didn't. Same with the characters, so many really individual people, more complex relationships than you might expect, actually quite detailed personality traits, schedules and so on. I think it set the bar high and then missed it, and while it was actually pretty well done in a lot of areas it didn't excel in any. Fortunately when running it on the PC nearly all of it is fixable with a huge array of mods to sort out the economy, scaling, to make the cities actually
interesting, the Unique Landscapes mods to make those unique areas actually unique. Maybe that was the problem: the scope was too big so the creativity was spread too thin. And there's only so much that can be accomplished with world-builder software to fill in the gaps.
That's a pretty accurate assessment of Oblivion but the real let down of that game for me came from the Imperial city, It felt like such a ghost town, and unlike a place like Vivec, it had no real character. The game I want is one where the whole map of Oblivion is just the city, and maybe some suburbs, with each settlement being like a district in that city, Bruma's where all the northmen live, there's a 'grey town' that all the dark elves congregate. Less bog-standard Romanesque vaulting and more HBO "Rome", a living decadent city. I don't mind if the map area is smaller, my druthers would be to condense everything into a form that actually makes a more interesting urban setting.
As for Inquisition, I think a lot of Bioware games are made by their secondary material, by which I mean the characters, companions, and side-quests that carry you along with the A plot, I found this happening in Dragon Age II, Mass Effect: 2 and Dragon Age Inquisition, and I think each are examples of how it can go right and wrong at the same time.
For Mass Effect 2 the story was mostly about finding skilled companions and dealing with their problems so they can go on a suicide mission. That was good because for the most part the companions where well written, some could even have history with Shepard that deepened their story, the problem though was that the A Plot became little more than a footnote in the narrative, very little happens in ME:2 that has great consequence on the over arching conflict of an invasion by Ancient Evil™, I think this is one of the things that lead to Mass Effect 3's pacing issues, because they had to establish the stakes and cost of a prolonged and hopeless conflict with the Reapers with only vague foreshadowing coming before.
Dragon Age II was interesting because it seeds plot points in every character's story that eventually come together in a climax you might not have seen coming and in fact have no control over, very Romantic, It starts out as a story about being an outsider in Kirkwall, as you Tony Montana your way into the halls of power, there's a first conflict between a corrupt city you're trying to save, and an authoritarian ideology that believes freedom is a pretense to abuse, a conflict that mirrored in every characters personal quest and in the overarching narrative of the story: the conflict between the Chantry and the Mages, who operate in a similar dynamic. *Spoiler Alert* fear breeds contempt and our denouement sets up a 'Civil War' between Templar, Chantry, and Mage...
Or not, Dragon Age: Inquisition's opening takes place after a summit between Templar and Mage forces is literally blown up by the arrival of an Ancient Evil™...ho hum, there was an interesting possibility of you believing you were an Herald of Andraste, which could have played into some kind of narrative of Faith in conflict with Magic or Cynicism as our Ancient Evil™ literally tries to enter Heaven "the easy way" but half way through the game you're pretty much told what to think on these issues. This wouldn't be such an issue if, like you've stated, the companions had more interesting stories to tell, but at least for me I found most of them to be pretty insufferable, (And I like DA:2!), they're personal narratives seem to happen coincidentally to the story of Inquisition instead of as a consequence of it. But that's just me.
