First let me preface this complaint by saying that I enjoy Dragon Age and while I wish fighters had a bit more stamina, or faster regeneration of stamina, I'm enjoying the game pretty thoroughly.  Nevertheless, my anticipation of the growing story is overshadowed by a realization that hit me as soon as I saw the world map.  That is, DA:O is centered almost entirely within a single nation, which is itself not a particularly large part of the world it exists in.  By the end of the game, you'll still be like most Americans who haven't gone to another country that isn't Canada or Mexico.   
Conversely, most fantasy novels (ostensibly the source material for western RPGs and NOT Japanese ones) show the heroes travelling across at least an entire continent, and par for the JRPG is to have the entire world at your disposal by game's end.  To a certain extent, this is just a matter of scale - if you made every inhabited location in Baldur's Gate, NWN2, or Dragon Age ten times further apart, you'd be approaching the geographic distance commonly portrayed in fantasy stories.  And yet, it seems to me that all too often, these locations are backwaters and outposts, not the real cities/cultural centers that distinguish one place from another and give you a real feeling of having gone somewhere.  Take for example (to those of you who have played already) Lotherin and Redcliffe village - one has a bit more grass than the other, but as far as locations go, they're both pretty much rundown medieval villages.  How many of those do you see in Final Fantasy? 
 
Anyway, what do you guys think?  Are WRPGs missing the boat with their scale, or are my expectations 'leagues beyond' the average RPGamer?

" By the end of the game, you'll still be like most Americans who haven't gone to another country that isn't Canada or Mexico. "

" @Veektarius said:

" By the end of the game, you'll still be like most Americans who haven't gone to another country that isn't Canada or Mexico. "

What is this implying? "

I like DAO just the way it is thank you.

Sci-fi WRPGs have you traveling to different planets. No problem with scale there.
 
Fantasy novels can get away with skipping the travel time, because they can just say "it took a hundred days to cross the continent" and leave it at that; if a game made you spend a hundred in-game days to cross the continent, you'd probably be pissed. With fantasy WRPGs it's just not plausible to have to spend that much time on travel unless you have some sort of portal magic to take you everywhere, which would defeat the purpose of making the world seem big.

Not every single game needs the whole entire world in its scope. I think it's a breath of fresh air to see a game where you're not trying to save the whole world.

Because FF sucks?

And when FF games open up in the 4th act you're bored to tears because there isn't enough story to continue to cover the upcoming grind

I think there is more than enough story to be told in Dragon Age that we don't need an excessive amount of window dressing. Plus I'm sure they are leaving other regions of the world, such as Orleis, out of things to be covered in future installments.