Open world was a mistake. MEA lacks the subtle small things

The open world nature makes quests feel very boring and repedetive. The game is like "hey here's a very important, story heavy mission, go to this random location where you might have been already and press a button".

In ME1-3 you had typical shooter corridors (nothing special), but these where specifically designed for the missions and made each mission unique in itself and also allowed for a lot of additional small but great stuff. I mean things like helping a random sick Baterian or letting him die because Shepard has a hate for Baterians (because Mindoir) or just pushing a merc ouf a window. And don't forget the Biotic God from ME2. All these small interactions didn't realy impact the story, but helped in developing Shepards personality. It's something ME1 and 2 did absolutly great and ME3 was lacking a bit which was fine though since it's the 3rd part and players would have a good idea of the character they're playing.

MEA hardly gives you any chance in developing your Ryder. The casual/emotional/professinal/logical is a nice idea but it dosen't cut it. The game's lacking the smaller interactions I mentioned above. Things that have no or very little impact and the story and are purely there for character development, but at the same feel natural and not forced. For example interrogating an enemy  merc, or helping out some people that where hiding from a virus (talking about Mordins recruitment mission) or just having more conversations with NPCs.

The only reason MEA is open world is marketing. It's this typical "back to the roots"-cr*p, "all about exploration", "like ME1", "so large", completely disregarding that the exploration was the worst part of ME1 (don't tell me you liked trying to drive Mako arround boring planets). Also this "more=better"-trend. It's ruining a lot of grat games.

Cut the open world and focus and characters and story and the subtle but importand small things. I think that's what the majority of ME playes want. Nothings wrong with an open world, but not at the cost of the rest of the game. A perfect balance between the 2 is pretty impossible if you ask me.