Dragon Age was good but not as great as it could be. ME 2 was better as a an overall package.

Personally, I liked DA Origins more, because of the story and characters. It got boring towards the end though.

Dragon Age Origins was one of the best games to hit the gen, Mass Effect doesn't come close.

Both great franchises. Altough Mass Effect is the RPG franchise ever created. So there is no need for further discussion.

Dragon Age: Origins is my favorite this gen. The choices and origin stories were really well done.
Dragon Age 2 had good story too, but there were some forced parts to get the diverging story lines back on the same track. Understandable since it would have been a lot more difficult to keep all different decisions going then simply have a different faction fight by your side as at the end of Origins.
The game play was a big disappointment though in DA2, recycled dungeons and spawning waves of opponents. That better not be in DA3. Still I completed 3 playthroughs to see all the different choices play out.

Mass Effect 1 was great too. I didn't like it as much as DA:O. Probably since I have been reading sci-fi since as long as I can remember it all felt a bit simplistic.
Mass Effect 2 was disappointing, I wanted the story of the reapers to go on, get to know more of their history and origins and what happened during the past purges. Instead it was a collection of character stories. The gameplay was also a step back compared to the first, although not as bad a step as DA:O to DA2.
I haven't played ME3 yet, the demo put me off from buying it.

I agree that the DA series has a far better moral choice system. With Mass Effect I never felt compelled to try out the different choices, instead I simply went the paragon route.

The demo was bad. I almost didn't buy the game after playing it. But the game is pretty cheep now if you want to jump in.

I still want to finish the story some time. I'm waiting for the ME3 wiiU reviews. I might as well get the complete version since I lost my game saves.

Makes sense.

I loved them both for different reasons, well I didn't like DAII so much, but Origins was brilliant even with the generic fantasy storyline. It had brilliant old school gameplay and the Origin stories were a brilliant way to set the game up. DAII had an original story with an interesting cast of characters but unfortunately they made combat less tactical, reused assets and it left the whole package feeling lazy.

Mass Effect on the other hand I feel has to be taken as a whole. To be honest, I've always felt if Bioware started Mass Effect the gen before, they'd have released it as a single epic game. It works well as a TPS/RPG hybrid whilst the continuing storyline and character development really made me feel for the characters, more so than most games.