If the next Mass Effect retains some of magic that made the OT so good do we risk losing more casual

Well look at ME1. In the end you had two big variations and eight little ones.

The two big ones are obviously did you save the council or let them die.

the other choice is who sits on the council is it anderson or uldina. Then you have the dialouge change depending on if shepard was paragon or renegade.

In the end the only real choice was did the council die or not. The other big choice in that game was who you saved on virmire and did wrex survive and did you have an LI and if so who.. After that the choices didn't matter beyond a small dialouge you get in ME2 and ME3.

Now I am not saying those small things don't matter but to a "casual" gamer I don't see them caring that much. Alot of modern games have hardcore choices that can be sad. The last of us and the walking dead are two that came to mind and they are INCREDIBLY popular. So bioware going back to old school RPG's like ME2 wouldn't risk alienating anyone.

I didn't hate andromeda (in fact I am gonna buy it again since I traded it in a while ago). In fact my biggest complaints about it were the combat system,animation,and character creation. Some of the VA's could have been better as well. So if they make the next mass effect game be the MEA sequel I just hope they branch it out like they did in ME2.

Ironically from what I remember MEA actually had more ending variation then ME1. You have more options for who is the leader. Whether that will matter in the future is anyone's guess. And while I think they should take SOME risks I hope they don't go too far since ME3 would have been a ten out of ten game if it wasn't for that ending.

All that said MEA is my least favorite ME game and it didn't have the same "magic" that the trilogy did. That said there are very few games that compare to the trilogy.

I still think EA and bioware should take the risk and do an andromeda game and milky way game. It would keep the excitment up for the series and allow a mass effect game once every two years. I don't think bioware is doing "bad" like some people seem to think but anthem probably still made a good profit so EA isn't gonna throw bioware away. DAI was heavily critized but made a good profit and MEA was very heavily critized  and still made a profit. And in the end the point of any for profit company is to make money and EA is a for profit company.

Did you destroy the Jaardan AI or if it survived did you give her to the Angara or put her with SAM is another one they even said would be explored later.

None of those things made Mass Effect 1 special to me, so if you want to start pointing out what makes the game special to you. I think you are going to see a lot of people with different answers to your line of thinking.

Personally for me the only thing that really had any impact on the game was the Ashley/Kaiden choice and I doubt they will ever do that again because of the nature of sequels and online whining. As far as the ending choices go the ones in Mass Effect 1 had just as much of an impact on to me as the choices we make in Andromeda with the fight on Meridian for if you save the Krogan they will help you or if you give the AI back there will be troops supplied and so on. Besides plenty of the choices in Mass Effect 1 didn't impact the endings for I remember the complaining about how the Rachni didn't help with the Sovereign battle. Yes there was an ending alteration if you saved the council or not, but a different backdrop and a handful of altered dialogue didn't seem that major of a change.

The only risk with Mass Effect was that they went the action/RPG route, there weren't risks with either sequel.

I propose we swap this word out for gusto. 

As I said in another thread: will the OP ever answer to questions like this? I doubt that.

Indeed it is. BioWare can't make a new game that doesn't cater to the latest trends in some fashion. Andromeda did this because it lowkey copied Witcher 3's side quest design and had the open world style of any Ubisoft game and very marketable combat. Mass Effect 3 also had to be sold to audiences as "Hey guys, this is totally a standalone game, just jump in!" and "it's WAR and it's shooting bad guys!"

Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition also became less and less about their tactical pausing, although I still used that plenty in them, but the way they were developed in contrast to DA:O was to make them flashier and more slick-looking to make the combat look inviting to action fans. There's just inherent problems in creating all new AAA games that basically dictates that you can't have the same focus, whatever it was, that led to a game that looked and played the way ME1 did.

ME1 was very blue ocean. You could liken certain features in it to other shooters, strategy games or RPGs but ultimately it was an innovation with its "digital acting" and brand new super-detailed IP. That intricate focus it took to get that together is really hard for BioWare to do in their current state. The closest counter-example would be Obsidian's Outer Worlds but I sincerely doubt that will rival Mass Effect, and sadly I just read that Chris L'Etoile was fired from Obsidian this april, and all his work was left unfinished. If it wasn't for that I would've hoped for Outer Worlds to be the next biggest IP jumpstart like ME1 with a similar emphasis on choice and world building delivered with narrative competence.

DESCRIPTION COULD DESCRIBE FIREFLY, WHICH IS FAVORITE SHOW AMONGST VORCHA.

WE LEARN SOME OF GAVORNS TRIX, ALWAYS MESSAGE WITH VORCHA.

QUESTION MANY THINGS YOU SHOULD. UNFORTUNATELY, NOT ALL TRIX LEARNT. I VORCHA WOULD LIKE GOOFIER IF THERE IS GENUINE EDGE TOO. GOING TO HOPE OUTER WORLDS IS NOT TEEN CHEESE BUT EVIL DEAD CHEESE. ONLY TIME TELL, SOON WE KNOW. NOW VORCHA THINK ABOUT PLAYING ME3MP.

GRAAAAAAH!