It is made worse by the poor integration of open world and story (as in, little to no integration). You can spend hours locating mosaic pieces or torturing yourself in the Hissing Wastes until you forget there is even an earth-shattering plot you need to stop. This makes him even less of a threat.
All Bioware games have this problem. There are some exceptions (events that are triggered/timed in ME2) but most of the time you can take however long you want. Shepard is playing three card monte with Vorcha while the Reapers are attacking Earth.
Inquisition demonstrated BioWare had no idea how to make a compelling open world. They invited comparison to Skyrim when they said it was a big inspiration, so let's compare: all the main story quests are confined to discrete areas that are visited once and never again, with the minor exceptions of tracking down Hawke in Crestwood and finding the ritual tower in the Western Approach. In Skyrim the only regions this is true of are the two final areas in the game: the Skuldafn ruins and Sovngarde itself. In DAI the main story might as well be a separate game altogether, tacked on to the scavenged MMO that it once was.
What's notable is that it's the
only Dragon Age game like that, even final levels. DA
's final level is Denerim where you've spent a decent part of the game, and you've probably been in the Fort if you were arrested. The end of DA2's act 2 and 3 happen in places you've been. This may be just asset reuse but it's also a nice touch.
The open world is such a waste, the developers knew and forced you to do at least some exploring for the story to progress. There are entire regions that are easy to skip - Hissing Wastes, Emprise du Lion, Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves... they have some minor stories attached to them, one has Solas' "loyalty" quest, but that's it.
(I had to look through the Dragon Age Fandom wiki to remember these, and wow I forgot about all the stupid collection shit. Astrariums, beer bottles, mosaics for the Forbidden Oasis which is also skippable, shards, Skyhold customizations, songs, Elven artifacts, logging stands, quarries, Red Jenny caches, Red lyrium veins, Veilfire glyphs... they really padded this game out.
While the excuse for Corypheus's lousiness might be that Solas is the true villain, I'm firmly convinced the reason is that they didn't want to reveal too many secrets about the Blight, the Black City, or the Magisters Sidereal themselves until the next game, and so any solid facts or history regarding Corypheus had to be kept to a minimum, limiting his development or his exposure to the player outside "Submit or die!" speeches. Boy, that sure worked out great!
Solas as true villain only works if Corypheus is a villain too, and he's not. Not revealing secrets about things when you are actively fighting someone who has first-hand knowledge about all those events is just blue balling. If we haven't found out some answers to those secrets in DA:I, what other chance will we have? We're not going to find
another Magister. They had one chance to answer questions (and raise some further questions), and fucked it up. Having Corypheus talk more would have made him a better villain and made it a better game, but nope. Gotta keep those secrets for the next Dragon Age game in ten years... or never in the case of Failguard.
