Randomly cutting in here. Regarding your point about DA & ME not having clear cut canon, I have many reasons to suspect that this effects the kinds of fanfic written there, and not always for the better (despite a lot of good writing in those fandoms). On the good side, even though this may or may not work with your style of fanfic, DA:Origins' warden is such a blank slate that fanfic writers can take DA:Os plot as structure, pick one of the origin stories, and then create just about any character they wish as the warden. I've enjoyed a wide range of DA:O fanfic because each individual warden becomes really fascinating. The only "bad" thing is that it can be hard to find variation. Most of the mage wardens are shy and bookish, for instance.
On the other hand, DA2's Hawke is far from a blank slate but not quite as narrow as ME's Shepard, and DA2's canonical story is a complete deconstruction of the heroic fantasy so, at least to me as someone who is REALLY INTERESTED in how canon is interpreted, I've read a lot of Hawke stories where the writer isn't making commitments to *why* that Hawke makes certain choices. I think some of this has to do with all of the fandom bullshit surrounding so-called "correct" ways vs "wrong" ways to play Hawke (because god forbid Hawke ever does anything supportive for the templars and/or does something nice to a templar). While I have read many really good short character studies, very few DA2 writers commit to writing long fic that explores the canon in a manner that I find satisfying (which makes me pine for my days in Final Fantasy XII fandom where this was more common). So much of the long DA2 fic I find is kink fic, totally tangential "what if" fic (which can be really good but it doesn't have anything to do with canon), or AU.
Sadly, I also have a hard time finding solid in-character, canon-believable, canon-grounded portrayals of DA2's cast members in long fic. It sometimes feels like DA2's canon scares people off so they just run wild writing interesting stories that have little to do with canon, unless they are sticking with short characters studies. YMMV.
That problem of canon.
On the other hand, DA2's Hawke is far from a blank slate but not quite as narrow as ME's Shepard, and DA2's canonical story is a complete deconstruction of the heroic fantasy so, at least to me as someone who is REALLY INTERESTED in how canon is interpreted, I've read a lot of Hawke stories where the writer isn't making commitments to *why* that Hawke makes certain choices. I think some of this has to do with all of the fandom bullshit surrounding so-called "correct" ways vs "wrong" ways to play Hawke (because god forbid Hawke ever does anything supportive for the templars and/or does something nice to a templar). While I have read many really good short character studies, very few DA2 writers commit to writing long fic that explores the canon in a manner that I find satisfying (which makes me pine for my days in Final Fantasy XII fandom where this was more common). So much of the long DA2 fic I find is kink fic, totally tangential "what if" fic (which can be really good but it doesn't have anything to do with canon), or AU.
Sadly, I also have a hard time finding solid in-character, canon-believable, canon-grounded portrayals of DA2's cast members in long fic. It sometimes feels like DA2's canon scares people off so they just run wild writing interesting stories that have little to do with canon, unless they are sticking with short characters studies. YMMV.