A story is only as good as it’s ending.
Which they fixed after a shit ton of complains on how lame it was to have the same ending no matter your choices in a series that was praised for the choices mattering.
DA2 had a good story, but the game itself was such a downgrade from origins.
they moved from the tactical crpg style, to a more hack n slash approach, no more choosing your race, only human.
story reduced to a single city instead of an entire country, etc.
The issue with Thedas is that the Blights are basically the coolest "calamity" that you can use in any dragon age game. The "mage/templar" feud simply is not compelling enough to carry an entire game. No wonder it was just one of the sidequests in Origins.
It feels more like a background issue than the actual main plot.
Also, larpers will tell you DAV failed because "woke".
What larpers dont know, is that BioWare was extremely "woke" from the get go with its lgbtq+ representation. in both ME and DA.
DAV sucks because the story sucks and the dialogues feel like they were written by your average twitter/tumblr user instead of normal human beings.