I had a whole post written but yours ^ addressed a lot of it. I'll summarize.

I'd put DAO in a similar category as you put BG3/DOSII.
Originally Posted by Wormerine
...the fact that they lack in aspects for which I enjoy cRPGs doesn't mean they are something different...
You can't kill NPCs (companions or shopkeepers) unless it's part of a script, sure, but there's a ton of choice in the game and opportunity for roleplaying your character that make up for that imo. I suppose I place less weight on the "constant access to all the verbs."

I'll concede that it is more restrictive and maybe less of what old cRPGs are. But that's a matter of scale, not intrinsic differences, at least imo. But as you and others have said, DAO is in a hybrid space, moving from old-school cRPGs to newer ARPGs/MMORPGs.