I see origins as a freaking amazing idea, and the dark urge is the next level of this concept.
Every game have its story settled for the main character. In mass effect sheppard is a human soldier, period, how cool would it be if we could live the story from a quarian perspective? (Not to shit on ME, I love it).
I see origins just as a series of subplots that I can choose for my character. They should be a little more customizable (see dark urge, I don't love that some origins are too heavily tied to a class or another), they should never result as being one more predominant than another (see Fane, he is the main character of DOS2 and that's wrong), but they are a revolutionary idea all around.
Nothing about this is revolutionary. Dragon Age Origins is basically that without a predetermined character like Shadowheart and the others. I don't have an issue with the Dark Urge. Its a fine orgin - IF there are alternatives. But all of them are following mostly the same trope with some difference in the detailing - dark secrets, evil tendencies, maybe redeemable... and they all get a heavily prefered treatment compared to your own created character.
It comes down again to communication. If Larian said in the beginning we would be playing the role of the Dark Urge and had the potential to play alternative origins... well it still would have been pretty boring set of origins and characters, but they would set the expectations correctly.
Telling you can play Tav, with his/her amazingly meanlingless backgrounds as main character of the story and then sneakingly introduce the origins which all steal the show right in front of boring pointless Tav, just to crown it all with edgy 'Dark Urge' as a player option... well, we see where it ended. People feel like their expectations, nutured by Larian themselves, weren't met.
