I've lost all interest in playing this game. But allow me to explain why...

To be clear I don't hate the game. In fact at first I absolutely loved this game. The original Mass Effect games remain my favorite games of all time. But now I struggle to even care about these games.

I say games plural because I felt the same way about DragonAge: Inquisition. In both cases I simply, and quickly, reached a point where I just felt no desire to keep playing. As a result I have never played ANY of the DLC for Inquisition. And I probably won't for Andromeda as well.

But I'm not here to complain, as I said I loved this game once. And I loved all of the games that came from BioWare before this. So I want to provide feedback on why exactly I've lost interest in these games. Constructive Criticism is super important, after all, and with luck this will reach the Devs. Because despite it all I want to care once more.

Contrary to popular belief, this lack of interest is not due to the open world nature of these games. I actually consider that one of the game's strengths. That said, the open world formula didn't help either. I think the devs just put too much emphasis on this facet of the game. Rather then having a focused refined story experience for the player, they spent too much time forcing the player to travel far and wide for every little thing, as if desperate to prove the game was indeed wide open. This was absolutely devastating to the pacing of the game, which is a huge factor in keeping people interested in the game. Truly open world segments of the game should simply be left out there for the player to discover on their own, or ignored completely as they focus on the core story. Many quests that forced you to travel needlessly across systems should have been removed or redesigned. That one "Contagion" quest, for example, should have never left the Nexus.

Still this wasn't the primary reason why I lost interest. Ultimately it comes down to game breaking bugs. However the bugs I'm talking about are not fatal game crashes or major combat bugs. I'm talking about bugs that broke the narrative experience for me. Yes this includes the disastrous facial and body animations outside of combat, but there's much more.

Like in Inquisition, Andromeda suffered from the terrible Banter bug. This was probably the biggest issue I had with both games. And part of the main reason why I stopped playing both. Even when the banter would actually play it was and still is too often interrupted by other dialog or events, many of which I flat out don't care about. SAM not shutting up about things I already know about being the most blatant example.

But there were other more blatant bugs that often stopped all enjoyment of the game dead in its tracks. Originally the Cora loyalty quest was bugged an impossible to complete for me. As a result I was not able to finish that quest in my first playthrough. However this also meant that I was never able to find the Asari Ark, or save Captain Dunn in the final mission. So as a result of this one bug, the entire play through felt like a complete waste to me. 

I looked forward to fixing that in my next playthrough once things were fixed in the first patch, but then the NG+ inventory bug caused the Movie Night quest to break. And I found myself unable to talk to my crewmates on the ship for risk of breaking the game. For a BioWare title that's effectively a death nail.

If I could boil down all these issues into one bite size criticism it would be that BioWare failed to focus on what's most important in a BioWare game: Character Interactions. Both between the player character and the characters in the world, as well as between the companion characters themselves. 

Character Banter should be prioritized far far above environmental warnings. Bugs that affect character missions should have been prioritized far above bugs that affect combat. And making all the characters look as good as possible outside of combat should have been the one of the biggest priorities in a game where the player interacting with those characters is so central to the player's experience.

I do hope someday these issues are addressed at least to the point where I can once again enjoy the game. Until then, I guess I'll have to just move on to something else.