Originally Posted by
Mr.Silver
As I recall, the only real situations where Hawke could be argued as making things worse involve late-game quests based around Anders and Merrill. Depending on your actions, Hawke actually makes quite a fair bit of positive difference, it's just that, once again, Hawke can't fix everything. Hawke is the Champion of Kirkwall because he/she manages to stop crises before they cause too much damage, unlike the warden who personally saves at least two seperate kingdoms.
That's really the point of DA2: it's about someone who's competent, but who is fundamentally still relatively 'normal' in terms of what they can do on the wider stage. This is very different to DA:O (where the Warden's status borders on the messianic), which is why I'm of the opinion that one of the biggest mistakes with DA2 was calling it DA2. It's not a direct sequel in narrative, nor does it follow the same themes. Of course, this is EA's marketing department we're talking about.