Grey and Grey
One of the big marketing points about Dragon Age is about how the player is forced to make tough decisions. How the game takes place in a world full of shades of gray. How there's no clear line between right and wrong. Maybe it's because I've only been playing for a few hours, but this mostly seems to boil down to filling your party with jerks. Let's take a look around the campsite, shall we?
Alistair: Your first and by far most--if not only--likable party member. He used to be a Templar initiate, even though he doesn't care much for the church for whom they work. 'Course, he became a Grey Warden before he was fully initiated, so he's also the only member of your party who isn't a criminal or a heretic. He's got a sarcastic streak but is rarely a full-on ass, and when push comes to shove, he's actually a pretty nice guy. Plus, he's generally in good humor, and his quips are pretty funny sometimes. This is why he's got a permanent place in my party, even though he's specced almost exactly the same as my main character.
Leliana: Leliana is the least unlikable of the rest. She's got some kind of pseudo-French accent, but that's not the problem. She used to be some kind of cleric, but was thrown out of the church because she wanted to rewrite their entire doctrine. They make her out to be some kind of flower child, though, who is just trying to preach love and happiness, and the stodgy old church ain't having any of it. All it really boils down to, though, is that she gets pissed off when you're mean to villains and murderers if they ask for forgiveness, and doesn't give you any credit for helping the church.
Sten is a dick. He barely says 3 words at a time, and they're all three negative. Sten is a member of a race of assholes, who was doing a little scouting in your country when he decided to murder an entire family on a whim. He said he wanted to repent, and by that, he basically meant "die fighting the darkspawn invasion instead of in a cell." I thought that sounded reasonable since we needed all the help we could get, but that wasn't really very smart, because this is an RPG, so he's not in a lot of danger of dying in battle. It looked like I had the option to kill him when I met him, and judging from the fact he's not that handy in a fight and has given me nothing but grief, I regret not doing so. Now I'm stuck with him, because there's only an "I think you should leave" option, not a "time for your repentance" option. Maybe if they pull a Mass Effect and make you pick a party member to die, I can pick him.
Morrigan: The obligatory giant bitch. She's a rogue mage who practices magic without the sanction (and against the wishes) of the folks trying to make sure mages don't get out of control and destroy the world. Again. She's also the one they put in to make the 13-year-olds happy, since she walks around with her tits hanging out and thinks everything is ironically funny, and that everyone and everything is dumb. She hates me for being a generally decent person, and always has some smarmy response or insult to fling at NPCs or my other party members, mostly Alistair. As enjoyable as it is to listen when Alistair insults her, the only reason I keep her around is because she's the mage, and in this game, your party goes down without a spell-flinger. As soon as I get myself another mage, she's out on her half-exposed ass.
Ogre: Ogre is an ugly-ass dog. And also technically your first party member. Ogre tries way too hard to be charming, like a television Jack Russel, but again, he is butt-puckeringly ugly so it doesn't play off that well. That said, he's not a jerk, so he's pretty high up the ranks in this party. Of course, he can't open locks or freeze zombies, so he is of limited use.
So there you have it. An ex-Templar with no love for the church, a blasphemer who wants to rewrite said church's teachings all by herself, a multiple-murderer, and an illegal magic user who is messing with power that once destroyed the world without adequate supervision. Edgy! Guys, if you really want shades of grey in your game, you don't do it by forcing the player to pal around with outcasts and criminals. You do it by letting them build a party of respectable, upstanding folk, and then putting them in situations where they have trouble deciding what the respectable course of action is. To be fair, they look like they are trying to put the player into these sorts of situations, and I can see that I might come across some actual tough decisions later. But when the deciding party is a rag-tag band of assholes, it's not so big a deal when they bend the rules.
