IF MEA had a Linear Story Mode

I guess they know better than to mess with the krogan.

I would have really appreciated just a storyline instead the open world. All Bioware games that feature the open world approach are vastly underwhelming and the best games Bioware has ever churned out where those with big and tight storylines.

The open world areas in ME:A did nothing but serve as filler content to artificially stretch the playing time of the game, spending hours with boring mining nodes, driving around through empty deserts for hours only to get frequently stopped be ever respawning looters/mercs/kett resulting in repetitive firefights and solving the same puzzles on 5 different planets. Thats not my idea of fun, thats just boring grind. A day in the office.

In contrast, the story missions were pretty decent though, finding lost arks, boarding an alien ship, fighting in an abandoned alien city.... thats much better.

I hope Bioware ditches their open world approach for good and and spends all their resources on story driven games with great detailed missions. The open world thing is nothing but a fad that serves no purpose besides as playground for MMO's. Open world belongs to those theories that sound great as a concept on paper but never turn out great in reality. (In singleplayer games) 

 Choice made in ME1 > consequence in ME2. Totally the same thing as choice in MEA > consequence in MEA. Anyway you go trying to talk to Khesh after taking the dialogue choice of making Raeka the interim ambassador.

I... don't understand the question? I'm already playing it that way, and I don't mind more quests popping up around the planets. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I do not. I thought the story was pretty linear tbh. Way more so than in Inquisition. But if it's even more linear, I am not against it either. I'd be sorry to miss out on some rather cool side quests, like Knight's and Salarian intrigue, but whatever it takes to get the game produced.

So, I just don' know how to answer your question?

I always think the pacing of a game is a bit off when it has an open world, (yes, even the Witcher 3) however many of the missions & mechanics of this game were designed with an open world in mind so I don't think a "linear story mode" would work.

However, MEA set up how big and open the Helius cluster is, so I would have no issue at all with any possible MEA2 being more linear.

yah and thats why I said there is still paragon/renegade around and why it is still NOTHING about paragon/renegade
it is about dialogue options, both game choices and dialogue choices were limited to paragon/renegade
now we still have paragon/renegade, but the dialogue options are split into 4 tones with 1 outcome
so yah, I go fresh up my swahili and I suggest you take some classes in basic understanding

I like ME:A just fine but to be honest, I much prefer the style of ME2 and 3.

I'd rather the next ME game go back to that, with added character-based content.

So like ME2/3 mission style? I would love that.

I'm kinda sick of everything needing to be open world. I mean it's fine when it works(see MGSV and Witcher 3) but when it doesn't, the game literally(
)
becomes painful. DAI and MEA both go into the latter.

If they made a scoring system for each mission where power combos added multipliers or headshots and aim accuracy improved ratings as well as time and then made all that factor into a rank from E-A which would unlock special gear and skins for SP and trophies, plus make a level-select screen, that would be awesome. The main missions, story or not, are great and easily the best parts of the game. Loyalty missions too.

Looking at your avatar I think I understand your grief. I'm playing Nier Automata right now. It's a kickass game BUT it's really held back by the forced open-world quota that every game and its mother needs in this day and age.

But I also see why people don't enjoy doing "tasks". I like when games have variety though. And MEA's tasks are never shoot this many enemies or pick this many random minerals. There's one quest where you have to find a specific mineral across all worlds but I never set that quest as a beacon, I would do it if I was near it and it fits well with exploring new planets.

Me personally, I just like having options and I like being able to drive on planets. But I would also settle with how Uncharted 4 handles the Madagascar level where it was open world with driving but it was still a "linear level" in the story progression. It worked really well. Habitat 7 is a great linear level design where the player can breeze straight through it but also take alternate routes and do some exploring. I think going forward, if MEA2 does planets again, there should be larger set piece missions part of the main story on each planet. In MEA, Kadara and Elaaden are pretty much optional outside of Kadara port so it takes away from their value and the main storyline's value. It's also makes the malign campaign seem more disjointed and shorter than the OT games.

And yeah I too enjoy having a great story focused game to immerse in after doing mundane tasks at work. I just feel the OT's gameplay is a bit stale now. Maybe going the route of Halo3 (the last one I played) with large set pieces and vehicles mixed in. Almost like Tuchanka on ME3 but bigger, playable, linear maps.

Also, having a linear story mode going forward could allow for the best of both worlds with fans.

......?