In 2 there were quite a few problems with how they represented mages (I love DA2, btw). First, you could be a blood mage, and templars could be standing in front of you telling you how awful it is that there are blood mages everywhere, and you could practically be severing a vein right there in front of them and they'd just be stood there, none the wiser.
Second, Orsino. Oh Orsino. If you sided with the templars and Meredith, what he did at the end made a lot more sense. You
could argue it made sense even if you sided with the mages, but you have to do a lot more mental gymnastics, and when it comes down to it you end up just staring at your screen shouting "you fucking nob, we'd fucking won
"
Third, even though you can be pro-mage and you can encourage your companions to eventually be pro-mage (or at least get Fenris to chillax a bit), and even though you can completely agree with and justify Anders' actions at the end, the game has you standing facing one direction telling everyone that mages can be trusted, that a few bad apples shouldn't tar everyone, that mages need more freedom, while behind you there are 20 mages turning into abominations, sacrificing kids, splattering their own blood and the blood of innocents everywhere... you get the picture.
It was quite 2-dimensional in the way it presented the tension between magic undeniably having some danger to it, and the argument that mages can be trusted. I understand it wanted to present that tension, but it didn't do it very well.
Cut to DA:I, and I think it does it a lot, lot better, even though the mages at the beginning make you facepalm because of what you find out they're doing at Redcliffe (if you've got that far). You get a lot of different viewpoints by mages in this game, some that haven't actually been presented at all in the series. For example, Vivienne has some very interesting things to say about the benefits of having Circles. Now, I disagree with her on principle, and because she's coming at it from a hardline conservative point of view, and she's very privileged and doesn't see that not everyone has it as great as her. But at the same time she puts forward some very interesting ideas that simply haven't been shown in the past. Then there's Dorian, the mage from Tevinter. He tells us all about the Circle in Minrathous, and what it's like being a mage there. It gives yet another viewpoint, and another side to all the evil scare stories we've heard about Tevinter. While Tevinter is surely fucked up, at the same time it gives another possibility for how Circles could exist and actually be positive for mages, rather than oppressive.
We also see other mages who are tired of the mage/templar war and just want to go back to the circle where they were safe. We read about the annulment of circles and how horrific they were. There's a lot of comment on the dangers of magic, and there are a lot of opportunities for mages to prove themselves and argue otherwise. There's also a decision late in the game that is VERY important for the future of mages, and I can't even begin to imagine what Thedas will look like in the next game as a result.
DA:I is a lot more nuanced in the way it presents various tensions, if you listen to people and look deeper than what's just on the surface. DA2 was nuanced as well in its own way, but they weren't quite as sophisticated in their presentation in that game as they have become.
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