>>179272
Hey, that was me. I actually ended up playing Origins about a year later and was pleasantly surprised. It ended up addressing a lot of the concerns with a decent amount of non-linear quests. First thing I did in the game was destroy some encampment and then I decided to do a side quest which was to do exactly that. Instead of having to do it again, the protagonist said something along the lines of "I actually just did that" and it was immediately completed. I remember there was another thing where you have to solve these ritual murders, and there are like dozens spread around the map. I just happened to find the murderer after only having discovered one of them and was able to complete the quest that way.
It also had an unusually mature storyline for a video game involving child murder, has improved AI with various states and schedules, emergent gameplay, dungeons, New Game Plus, and incredible art direction. It's better as a game than all the others prior to it and one of the better AAA games to have come out in the last couple of years, but that's because they came to the conclusion that there was nothing good about the earlier titles and and started with Soulslite, which is something that makes me sad. I never bothered with the latest two so I couldn't tell you how well they do.