Andromeda is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On a serious note, it was a facetious response to a facetious statement.

No, I'm failing to acknowledge that any of that has anything to do with a causal linkage between open world and ... well, anything having to do with story.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree about, "does not try to incorporate personality-changing character development into the story." "Geralt is Geralt," is extremely reductionist, and does a disservice to nuance over epic. He changes, and the decisions you make have a real impact, though on a more personal, character relationship level, rather than the traditional Bioware save-the-world/galaxy level.

And with respect to, "the player hasn't even got a limited option to make a 'renegade' ... vs. a 'paragon' one," I thought for a moment you were talking about DAI, not TW3.

Don't get me wrong. I love me my Bioware games too, and who doesn't like epic? I just wouldn't mind if Bioware tried adding a few other arrows to the old story quiver.

I'm sorry, but without some kind of explanation that I can understand, this just sounds like leaping to conclusions to me. There's no reason that I can think of that would make that statement be true. I mean, I even disagree with the premise: a good story shouldn't need any kind of external impetus to move it forward, it should move forward on it's own merits. The player should, organically -- without coercion or trickery -- want to move the story forward. I think a pretty good definition of a "bad story" is one that needs external impetus.

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

I'm just scratching my head over what halo has to do with anything

Arcian has very good reasons to dislike the game, but criticizing someone for having a different opinion is flat out idiotic.
Side note: It seems pretty silly for someone to mistake their opinions for facts.
I think what would constitute a fact about ME:A reception wise is: "Mass Effect: Andromeda is a very subjective game, either you'll like it or you won't"
What would constitute an opinion about ME:A would be either, "Mass Effect: Andromeda is the worst game in the franchise." Or, "Mass Effect Andromeda is my personal GoTY."

I'm fairly certain that's a basic of storytelling in any form.  The more organic the story; the more entertaining it will be.  --Note:  this does not mean that individuals will not find it entertaining, but the size of your audience that is entertained increases the more organic a story is.

HOWEVER, in my experience, Bioware delivers character driven stories/plots.  Hence the love/hate relationships people have with characters from Bioware's games.  If the characters were shite, people would lose interest in the "gather army, fight bad guy that wants to destroy the world" fantasy or sci-fi version of the one story Bioware tells.

At least Andromeda attempts to break away from that with the Kett, who doesn't really want to destroy everything, but they will if you don't follow their religion.

Which, IMO, is something that isn't new.  Yes, it's new in that the size of the playable environment has increased exponentially over the past decade, but, as technology advances, being able to render these wide open worlds is becoming easier. 

What's not new is the unlimited perspective that a video game player can have and how difficult it can be to mold that perspective into a plot that doesn't feel forced.

A good writer can use technical limitations to frame a narrative, but a true artist can blend the world to frame the narrative.

I don't think the narratives are "suffering" because of advanced technology; I think the narratives have always been of the same quality, but technology makes the flaws more and more obvious.

Now, MMO narratives are a terribly complex issue on their own.  IMO, I don't think we yet have the technology to tell a great MMO story.  When we can manage do something like the old NWN persistent worlds, instead of the "instances" of WoW, but with the same story developments, maybe we'll be able to get something great...but afaik, we're not quite there yet...

I hope that kind of makes sense...I'm not really a writer, so most of this is just my opinion....

The main plot of the game has more than a passing resemblance to the Halo trilogy, which is not that strange since Halo 4's lead writer Chris Schlerf was lead writer for Andromeda during a large part of the development.

Basically, evil race of dogmatic aliens want to access ancient, artificial superstructures only capable of being accessed by humans and their AI constructs. Said ancient superstructures are defended by very advanced automated synthetic constructs displaying hostility towards both the evil dogmatic aliens and the humans. Should the evil dogmatic aliens succeed in accessing the ancient superstructures, it will be the doom of mankind in the galaxy.

Exaltation serves a similar role to the flood spores in Halo 1-3 and the Promethean digitization laser in Halo 4, namely a plot device that turns affected allies into enemies and poses a direct existential threat to the protagonists.

Comparing the flood to exaltation is a bit of a stretch.  though I recognize the basic plot structure is the same.  But then the that can be said for probably a lot of sci fi. 

If anything, the Reapers and their husks acted as a technological version of the Flood, from both a practical and symbolic standpoint. So that card had already been played in the trilogy.