Aaryn Flynn says: We Have Learned From The Mistakes of Inquistion....

Nah, Cerberus is terrible at hiding: it slaps its logo on everything and most of its work backfires.

I think it's just branding we see in countless forms of media.

A real shadow organization wouldn't act like Cerberus anyway.

In no way shape or form can I agree with the bolded part.  If a city hub is appropriate it should be there, if not it shouldn't.

Cerberus Agent:  "Ryder's last flight out, the synth...artificial person malfunctioned-"
Ryder:  "Malfunctioned!?"
Cerberus Agent: "-malfunctioned.  There were some problems, and a few...deaths were involved"

Your comment comes off as , I like city hubs and what they can being, there fore all game should have them.  There could be a hundred good reasons whey there is not going to be any in this particular games.

Baldur's Gate?

You didn't even have a major city hub in the first game, just a few smaller towns and  a LONG time before you get into Baldur's Gate itself. 

Natashina : On the subject of AI there's a lot less to deal with in Mass Effect thankfully. It is, at its base a cover shooter. DAI requires a bit more complex stuff ultimately. Hell I just had power useage off in every ME game for squadies and they just took cover and shot till I needed them to do a thing.

That... that doesn't work in a Dragon Age game. I mean you 'can' do that but it'll result in stuff taking a very, very long time to go down or your spending all your time in the pause menu. Games very much based around consistent skill use for actual damage. Mass Effect it's mostly guns, or at least you can get buy almost entirely on gun useage.

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Illusive Man had his proverbial fingers in many pies. It would not surprise me if he knew all about the ARKs. Hell, his organization may have providing some funding for the ARKCON project and took this opportunity to construct his own ARK.

So, what would be his motive to go to Andromeda? I know Cerberus is a human survivalist para-military organization. Is it that simple?

However, I can't see Bio introducing Cerberus as part of the critical story path. They keep telling us it's a new story, new chars, new place.

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Here's something that I'm also worried about for ME:A. The integration of EU and the game itself. BioWare has been a little shaky about that over the years and I think it's getting worse.

DA:O You had to either read the book or recruit Loghain to learn he's a much more complex antagonist than he's shown to be in during most of the game itself. He has some good motivations that are only lightly touched upon during the main game, and a bit more in the Return to Ostagar DLC

ME1: Just fine in that regard. The EU is nice to have, but I never felt like I had to read it to understand what was going on.

DA2: Same as above.

ME2: Here's where it happens again. It's only with the LotSB DLC. In order to really understand the full details of what happened and why Feron is so important to Liara, you need to read the comics. It isn't too bad here, but it was still annoying as a new player.

ME3: Kai Leng. No matter what he was intended to be, the character we got had to have the EU in order to explain why he was so badass. Bonus points for a character change so drastic that the EU was invalidated.

DA:I: Okay, this is where it was the worst. The entiredly of the Orlais storyline, especially Wicked Hearts Wicked Minds, wasn't really even touched upon in the game at all. The player had to read the Masked Empire, otherwise the story was left mainly to codex and tiny references.

I have only ever bought Dragon Age supplementary materials. I was glad I read Asunder and the Masked Empire before playing DA:I, otherwise I would have lost crucial story context. In this case, why should the player give a toss about the story decision? It's not like the game has any reason to motivate them other than, "Here's a cool looking quest chain, because it's Orlais and the player should see a ball."

One of the things I genuinely despise from game companies is when I feel like I have to read their outside material. It's supposed to be optional, not damned near required to figure out what is going on. With this new ME:A book that's coming out, I hope that it isn't required in order to get large parts of the story or the characters.

Edit Sartoz

I think they do help, but my point was is that they take cover and can at least take some bullets for Shep. They don't see a krogan charging towards them and go try to melee it.  Or run up to Harbinger and start punching his Collector body in the face. I watched Solas and Varric try to tank dragons repeatedly.  I didn't see my mages and rogues trying to tank frigging dragons in previous DA games.   So as long as the AI doesn't get completely stupid in ME:A like it did in DA:I, I'll be happy.

I used the Instant War Table mod on the PC version myself. I think my main issue is that the WT had some interesting quests that would have made sense for the Quizzy to be involved with. Instead, my dwarf was running her stumpy butt all over looking for crafting goods.

Also, one of the chains can affect the world state. A few missteps or lack of a guide and there go the rest of the Wardens in that part of the world. If they do something like a WT, I'd hope that they learned from DA:I and saved quests that can affect a world state for cutscenes and dialogue choices.

All of this and it still isn't my number one complaint about DA:I.  I honestly really enjoyed the game quite a bit, but man...it's got some serious gameplay design problems imho.

By the way, I like your idea for using something like the War Table for MP. That sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

1) Agreed the head of the Inquisition shouldn't have to go around picking flowers.  But I'll take War Table missions over "Creeper Shepard listening in on conversations" any time.

2) I miss the tactics menu

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Yes, me too.