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

My opinion on OP's question is that for the setting of ME, open world is not going to work. Why ? Because planets are too big - it's impossible to fill it up with meaningful content. Mostly boring scan/fetch quests and mooks to fight who are totally unrelated to any quests. Look at Skyrim and Fallout - both open world games but are limited to one map. For a space game, like ME with many planets, it's unreasonable to expect the same type of open world x6 (number of explorable planets).

I may be in the minority but I loved ME for its story/character development/companions/role-playing. I don't want it to become just another open world game, where the main attraction is leveling and griding.

I voted no. I like the open world design and enjoy the quests. I'd be fine with a middle ground but I'd prefer to stick with this design.

Of the 200 quests, it's probably the 60 'additional tasks' that I find most annoying (and not all of them).

In fairness, these are on a par with OT quests such as 'return locket' 'find Book of Plenix' etc etc

In MEA there were fewer 'jaw-dropping' quests at the top end of the quality scale, with real consequences that played out within the game.

When I replay ME1 nowadays I add the key binding that fastforwards at 10X speed. When do I use it? When I am in the Mako. If such a binding or mod were available in MEA, and someone created a mod to remove all laod screen and travel animations, I might just try playing it again. Dropping probes from orbit suited me just fine.

Now thats not to say I did not like open worlds in general. Trotting on my horse slowly through Toussaint taking in the sights and knowing the next adventure could be just round that bend in the road was amazing. Wasted many hours like that. But that was not ME. To me MEA is the result of some suit in an EA boardroom using buzzwords like 'open world' to gain approval without knowing what an open world needs to actually succeed. 

Don't interpret this as me being TW3 fan. I liked their open world implementation but they had huge timesinks that served only to make the game much longer than it had to be. Making me put on a play. After I go through a week of missions to find Ciri I have to deal with the paranoid concerns of dwarven d-bags. It seemed like it would never end - everytime you think you are about to complete a task another contrived plot device slaps you in the face. Yes, I think their open world worked for them but TW3 is not a game MEA should have learned from.

Open good.

You can just drive by. That being said, I agree that those random encounters are pretty useless. Mindlessly killing exiles without any story connection is not what going to a new galaxy should be about.

Honestly the only gripe I had with the side quests/tasks was that towards the end of the game they really started throwing planet-hopping into every single one of them. It's pure annoyance if you're trying to complete a quest/task straight away.


I actually found exploring the open world very immersive and refreshing for a ME game.


I definitely wished the setup of the later planets were more like Habitat 7; carried more twists, etc.  Getting to Elaaden you just knew Bioware was done. 

Even in the first few levels I just hit the pedal and didn't take the bait of dropped in enemies every few yards. I simply refuse to do these useless generic fights whenever possible.

My favorite open world games:

-The Witcher 3: obviously by far the best open world RPG with crazy amount of quality content. There is nothing even close to this game.

-Fallout New Vegas: not too big world, but big enough. But an amazing RPG.

-Gothic 3: quite big world with an excellent design. Too bad it was not finished, buggy. TW3 world design is influenced by this game.

-S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series: conceptually my favorite game. It has huge world (mainly SoC) divided into smaller maps. But different factions, mutants, anomalies, that realistic element, the best atmosphere ever. Completely unique game perfect for open world.

-Oblivion: it is repetitive like any Bethesda game, but still with decent amount of diverse content.


And no, open world is not a problem. Just need to be properly done, obviously.
Like i already said, Andromeda problem is repetition. You already know what you are gonna do on the next planet.

MEA was a mistake...

What's great about the vaults? Solve a few riddles or look them up on youtube, use your jumpjets, fight a few remnants, repeat. That's all there is to it. As generic as they come.