Anyone else wish habitat 7 would be a full map?

(Raises her hand) I certainly want at least an MP map on that world.

Visually it was very distinct, and the only planet that didn't somehow fall into generic environments (the ice planet, 2 desert planets). I wasn't a huge fan overall of MEA's open worlds, but I'd have traded one of the ones in game for Habitat 7



I always thought that Paradox was meant to be on Habitat 7 given the lightning storms and space whales. Probably my foolish ass thinking there can only be one planet in Heleus that experiences storms 

None of the planets I've been to have been "generic" anything. There are alien details on all of them. You fail to even mention Havaarl - jungle with very different vegetation and a very remnant city view from the top of the sanctuary there and "space whales."  Kadara has all those burning lakes and geysers. That Voeld's structures are built on frozen seas has some intriguing implications if a sequel is made and that planet eventually warms up. H-057 is clearly a moonscape where one is restricted to exploring only within bubbles. Eos and Elaaden are completely different sorts of deserts... Eos is a rocky desert with hoodoos. Elaaden is more a loose sand sort of desert. They are unqiue from each other. We don't get to see a whole lot of it, since it is just meant to be an urban hub environment... but Aya's waterfalls and extreme cliffs are spectacular.

Furthermore, these were all supposed to be potentially habitable worlds... which means that they would fall within the parameters for life as we know them here on earth. A pathfinder looking for a home for humans (along with a few other species with similar environmental requirements for life) has no reason to explore environments deemed before departure to be unsuitable for life. Now, perhaps if we get a sequel and the pressure is off about finding a home and there are other reasons for the pathfinder to explore... we'll see the even more alien environments become introduced into the series.

... and BTW - Voeld had storms... they're known as snow storms or blizzards.  They clear after you reset the vault.  It was also raining on Havaarl much of the time... not a violent lightning storm... but a more gentle jungle rain storm.

Not I.

I don't think the open world concept was a bad one, but I think the really large open spaces was so Eos - Part 2, Voeld, Kadara, and Elaaden hurt my experience with the story since if you wanted to do more then just the main story you were stuck driving around a lot. The ones that I preferred was Habitat 7, Eos - Part 1, and Havaarl since they gave a bit of the open world feeling, but at the same time felt like they supported a story better. I do think the approach of Mass Effect 2 and 3 was better then Mass Effect 1 and Andromeda since the story never felt like it took second place to driving around.

Also we see rain on that station we visit initially as well in the Civki system during the last couple of quests. So we do see various weather types and environmental situations.

Desert and snow worlds aren't really unique  so I can agree, pretty generic and bland. Bioware overuses deserts for sure cause there's 3 in Andromeda and 2-3? In Inquisition, it wears on the player if that's all they're going to make and I'd say they've overused it at this point.

Might wanna spoiler tag that mate 

Sorry about being condescending... I get really tired of people asserting that deserts are the only environments in this game... often claimed by people who only played the 10-hour pre-release trial and are just looking for various excuses to dump on the game itself.  Their common modus operandi is to use exaggerated generalizations that are very misleading to other people who haven't even bought the game yet.

I haven't played DA:I yet, so I can't comment on the environments in that game.  The environments in ME:A, however, are a vast, vast improvement over any presented to us in ME1 (many of those planets are basically just different colored rock mountains to make it difficult to get around in the mako).  Conversely, I loved many of the environments shown in ME2 and ME3... although they are wildly criticized by the fan base here because they are more linear maps.

I would have loved Habitat 7 to have a bigger map. I wasn't a fan of the open world thing, I felt it detracted from the Mass Effect thing, but it was one of the more visually impressive.

I can and I can say the environments in DAI are very beautiful. Took my breath away when I first saw the cutscene that introduced us to Skyhold. It was very well done. The one nice thing I can say about Frostbite is it can do environments and locations beautifully even if it does struggle in one or 2 other areas like hair and faces. I do think things aer getting better though in that area so steps are clearly being made in the right direction.