I'm a Bethesda fan. I beat it multiple times to do things differently and tried seeing the NG+ differences. The game is a shallow turd, their most shallow effort ever.
Fair enough but the first part where you say that you're a Bethesda fan is the difference between us (and possibly for Dragon Age too) is that I was never a fan of Bethesda Game Studios. Never cared about The Elder Scrolls and while I played a few hours of Fallout 4, I thought it played like shit and traded it in the next day. Starfield is what has made me a Bethesda Game Studios fan going forward.
I do believe that those who don't like Starfield is because they love The Elder Scrolls and/or Fallout and just can't accept that it's not those games. Even I know it's a very different type of game compared to those two other franchises. A perfect example is my friend who shit on Starfield for eight months, finally played through it before the May update, completed it, put almost 100 hours into the game and would rate it a 9.0/10 for himself. It made him a Bethesda Game Studios fan to where he went and played Fallout 4. Couldn't beat it because he said there's some kind of base building requirement in order to advance the story or something like that but he put over 50 hours into the game, would rate and rank it above Starfield. Point being is that he understood why BGS fans (like yourself) don't like Starfield when compared to at least Fallout 4 which I would assume also applies to The Elder Scrolls and other Fallout games.
With Dragon Age, outside of the few hours I put into Origins back then, I only ever played Anthem which was also only for a few hours so like with Starfield and BGS, I had no opinion of the studio going into the game. I'm also a combat/gameplay first guy and if I love and enjoy the combat in the game, I'll take a weaker story or weaker graphics or whatever because it's all about if im enjoying the combat and gameplay loop to where I want to keep playing the game.
On a side note, I never played Halo until Infinite. Loved it. Campaign is freaking great. Went back this past August and played through every Halo campaign. Combat Evolved is a great foundation, Halo 2 is better, Halo 3 was mediocre as I hated that Gravemind aspect if im getting it right. That fucking creature or whatever that was in the game. Hated it. Halo 3 ODST is the worst in my opinion followed by Halo 5. Halo Reach is the second best Halo game in the series for me after Infinite and Bungie's best fucking Halo game. And Halo 4 is third best. Love how it continues after Halo 3 and does something different instead of just following the same damn thing as the previous games.
Point being is that if you start a series/franchise from the beginning or a development studios games from early on and they do something different, chances are that you're not going to like it because it's no longer familiar to you and isn't what you were expecting it to be. For me, a lot of series, I skipped back then and have only started them now with the newest entry (like Dragon Age) or with certain studios, only started with their most recent game (Starfield from BGS and Infinite from 343) and because I never played the older games, the nostalgia, love or whatever it maybe simply doesn't apply to me because none of that exists.
Does Dragon Age: The Veilguard have issues? Absolutely but every game does. The strongest aspect is the combat/gameplay and as I said, this is the most important aspect for me in any game. If you win me over here, you'll most likely win me over with the game overall unless everything else is total shit or the game is a technical mess. The main story quests are great, boss fights are excellent and all the varied environments and locations make the game a joy to play through. Story/character wise, outside of what feels forced in Taash, I have no issues at all. I like the characters, like the overall plot and story and best of all, I have nothing to compare it to because it's basically my first true BioWare game.
To each their own and all that but there's a lot of series/franchises/studios of games that I have never played and like you can see from my experience with Halo, going back to play these old games is never a good decision because no matter how amazing they may have been at that time, years/decades later, they simply pale in comparison now thanks to better tech, better controls, better combat and gameplay and just a better overall presentation of a video game.