Sorry, I don't think that older games are "better" in any way. Hell, I'm so fucking excited for Skyrim that I don't know what to do in the meantime, and stuff like Minecraft and Mass Effect and the likes makes it clear that the medium is moving foreward. It's just sad to see that a company that used to make great games with deep, intriguing stories and a clear idea about what they wanted to say and do, has become a company that seems to focus on, well, tits and not so much else. There's probably a lot of ambition here, but from the demo it seems like they fail to get it across, and that's the big problem with DA2. The BG comment was probably not because "omg games /rpgs were better before Windows xp", but more a comment on how they were able to bring out the ambitions of being extraordinary.
There's a lot of games that does that today - Portal did it, Magicka does it, Minecraft, Psychonauts, etc. The great loss is that the biggest company around, one that used to have immense ambitions, seems like it's been reduced to jiggly motions and fast, unninvolving gameplay. It'll probably be fun, but when you have that much money, time and talent to work with, you should reach further than what the demo showed.