I don't believe they were trying anything but how to spend more time polishing the romances. If they had actually decided to just create a few areas for use the least that they could had done was to make them decent looking. I think it was bad design based on comments about DA:O, I seem to recall that the reason for the big open spaces was some dev saying that spending time on things that nobody notices (he pointed to the scattered books on the Mages' tower as an example) I say that everyone noticed the absence of proper level design.
That whole game looks like it was made by a student playing around with UDK, and I dare say that there is a chance that it would had come out looking better if it was true.
But please, don't say that their stupidity was innovation. The game just looks lazy.