Everything that was wrong with Andromeda. A video that sums it up well.

The more I play ME:A, the more I enjoy it...and I originally gave it around an 8-8.5.

Each ME game's side missions have their strengths and weaknesses (ME - land Mako on planet, drive around to collect mineral, hack probe, investigate anomaly, return to Normandy, ME2 - land in section on foot, collect resource caches while shooting bad guys, exit to Normandy 2 and collect mission funds, ME3 - get dropped off by Kodiak to re-used multiplayer map, shoot things and survive, get extracted) but I appreciate the fluid way in which you can engage these missions. ME:A's maps are just combined large scale representations of these main and side missions that were separated in previous installments of the franchise. I think it's only sin is that they created too large a map than was necessary where you can be driving long stretches from one main dot on the screen to the other.

I think with the sequel, they could shrink the map, provide more areas to explore on foot like Harvaarl or Habitat 7, and have more ME1-like side exploration missions using the Nomad.

I’d agree if all those quests were like that and they weren’t interesting. To me they were interesting for the most part and not all quests were “fetch” quests.

That was annoying but I thought the biggest problem was the "tasks".  They were kind of ridiculous, trying to find some random something or other that could literally be anywhere in the vast open world.  At least with Mass Effect, you were prone to come across these things in the midst of a mission.

There were many of the "little quests" that had a great deal of story to them.  Like the Krogan on Elaaden who had been forming a friendship with an Angaran trader when she just suddenly stopped coming around, so he gives you a cryo bracelet to deliver to her... and you find you she had been attacked and left to die on Elaaden, walked back to the Paradise and found transport first to Kadara then to Aya and was so traumatized by the experience that she wanted nothing to do with AI aliens again.  By delivering the bracelet, you were able to convince that her krogan friend really cared about her and obtain a promise from her that maybe sometime she'd find the courage to go see him.  You then had a choice whether or not to tell the Krogan what had happened with her.

There are also many side quests in ME:A that take you to multiple locations on different planets to complete them.  Peebee's loyalty quest involves finding remnant on Eos, Voeld, and Kadara; then finding POC on Elaaden, all before you go to the lava world where the quest finishes.

There were a lot of "throw away" get this, bring it back quests.  I've mentioned three in my previous post from ME2 alone - get a combustion manifold, get a lost locket, and get a Salarian's genealogy.  I can think of more - get evidence on Pitne For, get two packages for Ish.  From ME1 - smuggle a package for Opold, get power cells to fix Zhu's hope power, go kill a big varren, find three water valves, find 10 Matriarch's writings, find 3 Salarian ID tags, give Xeltan this evidence.  Come on, there is very little difference between the quests in ME:A and those in the OT... There are just more of all types of them in ME:A because ME:A is twice as long a game as any of the single games in the OT.

ME:A is not perfect.  It has it's flaws, but this sort of misrepresentation of what IS there... comparing only the very minor side quests in ME:A with only the more major ones in the OT without even acknowledging that the same level of minor side quests exist in the OT... is, quite frankly IMHO, biased and simply unfair criticism of the game.

It might help then, given the general gist of this thread since clips7 made his/her posts, to at least acknowledge then that the sort of multi-faceted quests like those you like in general do exist in ME:A... because the fact is... they do.

Andromeda also had many little side quests that chained together to give us a backstory about what happened at Promise and Resilience.  There were also changes made to the colonies after you completed certain tasks.  Not as visual as some would have liked, but definitely there.  The skies cleared out a lot on Voeld after you activated the vault.  (I do believe the temperature hazard not responding was a bug.  Why, because I;ve had two playthroughs where the temperature hazard disappeared completely before I even activated the vault and I've had playtrhoughs where the rate of life support depletion has been far more extreme than average.  Also, the hazards on both Eos and Elaaden fully disappeared after the vault was reactivated.  it took a little time on Eos because that planet was serving as the tutorial; but the removal of the hazard on Elaaden was immediate.) 

Other changes I've noted include:  After you solved the Collective vs. Outcast issue on Kadara, many of the random spawning enemies are actually not hostile towards you.  Depending on how you dealt with the water feud on Elaaden, you would see a change of proprietorship at the Paradise and, potentially, encounter groups of Anayea's thugs hunting you down even on other planets (as she promised). 

Sure, they maybe could have done more... but they did do some.  To make extreme changes would have meant making two versions of each side quest (one if done before the change and one if done after the change) or, alternatively, locking down a number of quests so that they would have to be done only before or only after the change.  Not very practical for such a large game meant to be played as an open one.

Although I think most would prefer a good story and characters to improved side quests (though improved mostly still boring as hell and still just as superficial as anything that has come before).

Good thing MEA had both good story and good characters as well. 

I agree....but i do appreciate the effort given for trying to build worlds, because in all honesty i thought the worlds felt fully realized, but alot of the narrative got lost on cumbersome tasks and side missions...more focus on the task side of things. Yes you can obviously choose not to do them, but when folks first play the game they may want to try everything or discover everything. As much as liked how the worlds looked, i would much rather have a more tightly focused story and maybe have the side quests handled like how it is in my current playthrough of ME2.





Scanning planets for resources and then either finding a "SOS" signal or your ship just finding something of significance. This keeps the story aspects tight with you immediately landing on the planet to investigate the side mission without having to travel 5 - 10 minutes over a planet getting side tracked by other multiple tasks/ side missions along the way......i would take linear more story focused structure over open world designs any day...

If anything Andromeda proves that the two do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive.  I also feel that Andromeda had the best story writing of the four Mass Effect games, due in no small part to how they designed their side quests.  To most game companies side quests are either filler or just random fluff which expands upon something in the campaign.  And while there are side quests in Andromeda which fit this description most of the side quests, especially the planetary quests, which had its plotline which fed into the main plot line in the game.  Its something I have only seen from one other game (Witcher 3) I wish more companies would do this sort of thing. 

Respectfully disagree. Andromeda had a great story and interesting side quests. It’s just not the game everyone wanted.

1) Well if that constitutes a great story I guess I will not be asking to borrow anything from your book collection.

2) You mean it's not the game the majority wanted.  If that were not the case, we wouldn't be where we are right now.  I do think it had potential but the lack of insight into the Archon's motivations resulted in another generic, cliche villain.  I didn't sympathize, he didn't terrify me, never felt threatened...most of the time I just felt like laughing at the way he was presented.