You can't fault Bethesda for their world design, it is one of their strong suits and the main reason why people buy their games. However, many parts of their worlds, like settlements, feel like set pieces for a amusement park. Bethesda seems to follow the "rule of cool" with their designs. "Who cares if this makes no logical sense for why it should be in the game? So long as its cool add it into the game." This is one of their biggest problems other then their writing.
Thing is, those two issues tie into each other and they compound on each other too. If a location makes no logical sense, like Megaton, that's going to cause some to look closer at what else is wrong with what they have in front of them. Because there's no longer a strong sense of secondary belief in the story.
This was one of the reasons Shamus' five part series on Fallout 3 had a quote similar to this: "You can't just point at one thing and say, 'THIS is why this game is bad or the logic is flawed.' It's a compounding problem."
I think Dragon Age and Mass Effect are about as generic as it can get setting wise.
The settings were blase, no doubt. What made them fun was who you had by your side throughout and what you had to do to reach the end of the games.
