Old Mechanics in New Games
Dragon Age is easily my game of the year. After 75 hours played on my character, I beat the game last night. This is one of the greatest gaming experiences I have ever had. The game is head and shoulders above any game I have played in recent years, let alone just this year.
Hyperbole aside, there are a couple things I do find old, tiresome, and out of place in this game.
One of the main problems I have is taking everything not bolted to the floor. Running around grabbing things from every box and crate and barrel around town or in people's houses is both time consuming and is stealing without consequence. I might just be lazy but it is just annoying spending a good bit of time going through a town opening up every single barrel and taking the loot and after a half hour of taking everything having nothing but a bunch of mostly worthless items. If there was an auto-loot button that allowed you to just in one click select a barrel and loot everything out of it, the experience would have been much smoother. I think this "take everything" mentality worked better in 2d games than in 3d games.
The other issue is two sided. On one side it is something I like but on the other hand it causes a problem. Loot in Dragon Age is not important. While your game is certainly easier with better loot, the best loot in the game is not incredibly better than the early loot in the game. My tank ended the game using the same armor he had worn since five hours in. You could probably even beat the game with the first equipment you start with. It would not be easy but it is possible.
The problem this causes is that the game really throws a ton of loot at you. You constantly have an army's worth of armor and weapons that you loot and they are almost always inferior to what you have. Since 99% of the armor and weapons you pick up will be sold, I would almost rather cut out the middle man and have item loot less frequent and just have the monsters drop money. Or you could even have the characters not drop money, drop less equipment and then just occasionally have caches the monsters keep that have equipment and money.
Both of those problems with the game just seem like relics of old games and in the big picture they are relatively minor gripes. At the end of the day Dragon Age is still one of the best RPGs since the Baldur's Gate series and I cannot wait to see where they take the DLC and sequel.