Why do people here act like animations....

What I most remember is Liam provoking Vetra about bringing Sid to Andromeda in banter.

Also, the scene where Peebee announces she's decided to stay and asks for help organizing her space is pretty cute.

I finished the main plot but I agree it wasn't as lively as I'd have liked.

To make this fly you need to say why it's OK for players to have to do the motivational RP work in Skyrim but not OK for them to have to do it in DAI.

I'd do it myself but I'm not qualified; I found Skyrim's open world  no more interesting than DAI's.

Obviously it's not about if it is OK. Everybody is OK to do whatever he wants with his game.

But Skyrim was designed that way and gives you all the means to do that. In Skyrim you have your toys and its up to you how to play them. They could put much better (main) story in their game but it isn't story what still keep this game alive and well up until these days. You can pretty much remove main story (only story, not content like 'fusrodah' itself ) from the game entirely and I don't think that this will lower Skyrim's popularity much.
In Skyrim you have good and flexible means to entertain yourself. To create your mini-stories. There aren't many things that are 'set in stone'. Multiple ways to interact with everything.

In DAI there is no means to entertain yourself. Those huge areas serve no purpose but to be there for the sake of being huge.
Remove main-story and you have combat that is set in stone. By this I mean that you cant have different in nature combat. No stealth-way, no snipe-em-from-afar way, no let's-set-a-trap way. You just enter combat mode and basically all freedom you have is to fight more or less efficiently. By itself this combat system is in no way inferior or anything like that. Actually combat system in Skyrim more or less sucks, esp. for melee. But it does has freedom and many many ways to deal with situations.

You can't create your mini-stories in DAI. I mean, you can, but you can as well just close the game, take pen and paper and write it down, because you can't play it in DAI. There is main-story and shitty side-activities what consists only of running, fighting non-immersive fights and sonar-pinging, that's it. There is no means to do that differently.
Fights can be engaging and interesting if you are on rails of story and have reason to fight those enemies. If you are out on the open air and you know that the only reason this bear is here is for you to fight him... well, I, personally, lost all the interest in bears soon enough. It is anything but immersive. In Skyrim bears are part of local biome, they can chase deers, they have lairs, there are things in their lairs that can hint you about this particular bears story(!), making some fcking generic bear special.

So basically, Skyrim has huge areas and toys and you can immerse yourself in with activities around this toys (of corse, under condition that it is somewhat your thing). DAI has huge areas and doesn't have toys and you can like combat however much you can, but it is one and only thing you can do there. What there else? Puzzles? They can be interesting ONCE and if are not repeatative. Also god save you form banter bug, final blow to question why you are out there at all?

Bioware doesn't make sandbox games.

Sandbox games are those where you are free to roam, interact, and generally do whatever you want in a world. There's typically no real important objective to be completing. Elder Scrolls are sandbox games because people sometimes choose to obtain a house, furniture, and generally just live in that world for a little while. Bioware worlds are not sandbox because players are generally driven by quests in their worlds.

And yet the open worlds are more interesting for the simple reason they aren't lifeless and bland. Maybe except the Hissing Wastes. They are about the only place comparable to the deserts MEA comes up with. But the Dwarfen Tombs at least provide interesting loot.

Not to mention why the leader of such a large organization would be out picking elfroot and other menial tasks.

Witcher 3 does it and so does GTAV.

Witcher 3 also has open maps so to speak. You have the main Novigrad/Velen map, Kaer Morhen, Skellige, and White Orchard. People in those maps are not "telephone polls" but rather people with daily activities and such. They even react to you and such.

It seems like the worlds of Witcher 3 and GTAV were made with the wholw world in mind and the player just a small spec in it. With MEA and DAI, the world was made to fit the player.

Hell, Shenmue on the Dreamcast had a more interactive and reactive world than DAI and MEA and that game is nearly 20 years old!

So if you are the ultimate authority in DAI, why is the ultimate authority out doing menial task that should be delegated down to the lowest level?

Also I would say that Skyrim is the game that doesn't hold your hand because the world is set up to allow you to really roleplay and make your own story. You can marry, hunt, buy houses, kill nps, join guilds etc. None of which you can do in DAI.

The other things that really differentiate Bethesda worlds are the character mechanics, lore, and how they treat followers.

Bethesda games offer a lot of non-combat skills (crafting, speech, etc.) your character can develop, and plenty of ways to make (or save) money.  Characters aren't class-limited in terms of the kinds of combat skills they can develop and utilize. There's a much broader range of morality (you can kill non-combatants), and quite a few different factions you can join - or not.

So, yeah - huge differences there.

The Pathfinder is fine because you are slightly taking orders from the Nexus leadership, but in DAI you ARE the leadership. That is like Jien Garson going out to collect minerals. Doesnt she have far more pressing matters to do?