Who exactly was this game aimed at?

Yeah but the context around Citadel was different.  It was a final DLC for a game that unleashed a storm of controversy over being too dark and depressing and sh*tting all over our characters.  Citadel was to be a more upbeat send-off.  A bit of light to balance the darkness.  It's popularity largely came from contrast with the main game

What was MEA trying to balance?  

Ugh, don't say that!  That means we'll get a grimdark DLC!   

At people with a sense of adventure who don't need everything to be grimdark, apparently.

I've watched Firefly.  I love that show.

But MEA is not Firefly.

Firefly is basically a crew of Han Solos out stealing, smuggling, and staying under the radar.  

MEA is "exploring strange new worlds"  "seeking out new life and new civilizations".  And oh, yeah, trying not to let tens of thousands of people slowly die as the power and food runs out.

Not saying some humor would be inappropriate.  But Mal Reynolds could not command the Enterprise.

But when they had to be serious in Firefly they were serious. When Mal and the crew came and found Shepard and all the people dead ME:A would have had Ryder or someone cracking a joke.  Everything became serious after that, and other times when it needed to.  The crew also had a range of personalities.  You had Zoe/Simon all the way to Jayne.  Pretty much everyone in ME:A was on Jayne's side of the line.

Yeah, but aside from Kirk hitting on every female alien out there, the mood was (usually) more serious.  Not grimdark, but not every episode featured tribbles either.

Edit:  basically, if they wanted to do a silly, light-hearted story, they should have had a silly, light-hearted plot to go with it.  Not "If we don't fight off these genocidal aliens (which we are woefully, nay incompetently prepared for)  and find some worlds to colonize WE ALL GONNA DIE!!!"

Under 18 or under educated.

Meh, maybe on the Scott comparison I can see a little bit of that but I'm not seeing that Sara/Lara comparison at all.


MEA feels like it is going too hard for the Buffy tone (sticking with the Whedon comparison), which is fine for a story about a bunch of high school kids in a deliberately tongue in cheek supernatural setting.  Not so much for an older crew in a sci-fi setting that is supposed to be taken seriously.

Yeah, MEA is NOTHING like Firefly. Or Farscape, or any of those cool shows that knew how to balance humor and drama. Not thematically, and sure as hell not tonally. Farscape nailed it perfectly. Equally utterly horrifying and stupid fun. The heart stuff gets to you, makes you cry, the humor makes you laugh tears.

I would have LOVED Andromeda to be like that. The humor on these TV shows was actually really good and fairly grown up. There is a big difference between the type of humor on these sci-fi shows and MEA to me. MEA makes me feel ancient and I'm only 33. Like somebody said above, I relate more to Drack calling Ryder a kid than I do to Ryder or any of the sitcom crew. And I'm still a kid myself in comparison to people twice my age who've been through serious shit. The entire Initiative, except for Drack, feels like a bunch of morons to me. I'm having a hard time taking anybody seriously who decides to go to a new GALAXY and then cries how they want to go back because, big surprise, it's nothing like the fun journey they imagined. A year in and half of them are already murdering maniacs while the other half keeps demonstrating their incompetence. The best part were the protesters on the Nexus who demanded everybody to be woken up so they can all starve together, I guess. It's like nobody who joined has any common sense... not even Ryder's own crew. Just look at Cora during her loyalty mission!

But I digress.

If you want to sell a badass smartass you need to sell the badass part first. Otherwise you create a douche like Ryder. If you've got no skills and no experience due to age, you're not going to sound like a cool cat no matter how hard you try. Which is why listening to teenagers is so painful. They are so full of themselves, yet they understand nothing and don't realize that they know nothing. It's painful. Joke-cracking Ryder is painful. Professional Ryder is fine. Insecure and clueless but at least he admits it and tries his best despite it. I'm ok with that Ryder. I'm NOT ok with everyone else.

I was about to say that what Mal lacks is ambition, and Mal+ consumate ambition = Kirk, at least in the new ST iteration. I also see (and love) the similarity to Kirk. I am not sure if F!Sara reminds me of Croft, but I only saw Croft in the movie. I wish she was a younger Janeway, and perhaps that's what they were shooting at. Perhaps it's not a bad thing that she is immediately recognizable.