I like the Dragon Age series, and I agree with you on a lot of your points. In my opinion, you have to play the games in order, read the lore, and turn on subtitles to understand the dialogue and what's really happening. Honestly, as EQ_Theta said, Dragon Age is a somewhat complicated game, lore wise. If it makes any difference, you can go back and look at the lore through tabs, albeit it's still confusing.