If ME:A really is an exploration game with a linear story on the side a la Inquisition...

Well, an holster mechanism was present in ME2 www.gamefaqs.com/boards/944907-mass-effect-2/53184752
I don't recall if that worked only in non hostile areas, but do recall it was different from ME3 in some way because there were no holster button.

The Witcher 3 doesn't have side quests with ME1's LoD, they are far better. DA2 is like ME1, which is, quests with sometime cool stories in copy and paste level design.

And although overall The Witcher 3 handled quests better than DAI, the best secundary quests in the Bioware game are better than the best in TW3.

Not to got Off-Topic, but i can't actually remember one secondary quest in Inquisition  The companion loyalty missions, maybe? Even then, i found that the more standard ones (i.e. reach approval, go do the mission) were somewhat lacking in their final parts (Cassandra's, Bull's, Vivienne's, IMHO, have really abrupt ends). Cole and Sera's i really enjoyed, but i find it hard to compare them to the 30/40-ish, mostly well thought, secondaries of TW3

This is SO true!
I did enjoy DAI quite a bit. It's not a bad game to me at all. But that was indeed one of the reasons why the idea of replaying is not attractive. You are forced to spend hours doing boring fetch quests to unlock new areas and main quests. I did start a second PT right after the first but abandoned it quickly realizing that I cannot actually only do the main quests and finish the game in, say, 20 hours like a Mass Effect game. I thought maybe if I focused on the story, the gaming experience would get much better. That I wouldn't burn out on all the "exploration" and resource gathering if I focused on the story.

But it wasn't exactly possible. The whole idea of unlocking the next story point by doing something completely random is shit gameplay design. There is no logic to it. They kind of tried to justify it by saying ANYTHING you do helps the Inquisition gain more influence. And it does. However, in the end did it even really matter how much influence/power you had from a narrative point of view? It's been a while since I played the game, but wasn't it Morrigan basically who matters more than anything? Also, Solas and your stupid glowing hand.
It's specific people and what they know and can do that saves the world, right? It's a weak justification to say that without all this influence and power (=manpower), you wouldn't be able to literally clear maps and get where you need to go.

Sure, you needed to get invited to the ball and meet Morrigan there for things to get rolling. But it was not a strong narrative at all. Compare it to ME3 and the difference is apparent. While arguably not the best narrative structure of the trilogy, everything you did made sense. DAI was modeled after ME3 quite a bit. In both you have to gain influence and make allies. Both games are about negotiation. Building an army to stop an overwhelming threat. Only in DAI there wasn't that strong a direct link. The inquisition needed to close the breach. Only problem is that while its army could fight the demons back, only the herald could close the rifts. And in the end all these small rifts don't really matter because regardless of how many you actually close, the thing that matters is closing the entire breach. So closing individual rifts is pointless. They would continue to respawn. So why even bother? You only do it for the power points the game forces you to accumulate. The real objective is to stop Corypheus and close the breach. And that storyline happens no matter how many rifts you close... in fact, you could finish the game with a shitload of excess power points that have ZERO influence on the ending!
In ME3 it was actually the other way round until Shepard meets Starbrat and through space magic becomes the missing ingredient of the deus ex machina. But until that there was a direct link between every main story step that you could complete without doing any of the sidequests. The ME3 sidequests are like the DAI rifts. They add points to the overall war effort. And once you had enough you were good to go. However, unless I remember wrong, you don't absolutely have to do a ton of these sidequests to get enough war assets. You may not get the best ending, but that's not important here. You are not forced to do it to continue the story.
And you actually really needed to help the Turians so they'd help you. You needed the krogan or the salarians. And there was no artificial grind factor to accomplish this. A lead to B, B led to C.  Very straight-forward. And at the end you had enough firepower to hold the reapers off long enough to fire the crucible. It really was a collective effort.

You basically do all this in DAI too. But instead of linking the different main story parts directly via cause and effect, the game cuts the link and fills it with random power points collecting rather than actually make A the sole requirement for B. For the sole purpose of stretching the game's length artificially so it appears bigger than it actually is.
It's Morrigan who comes to YOU. It's Solas who teaches you how to do anything in the game. The inquisitor knows jackshit about anything and would be completely redundant if it wasn't for the anchor. It's the anchor itself that saves the day. And that weird instant adoration as the herald that serves as a poor excuse for the actual charisma and skill that Shepard possessed through demonstration. But that's a whole different narrative mess, I digress...

Bottom line: Bioware, please don't ever again force the player to unlock areas and main quest through random sidequests that have nothing to do with the problem at hand. If we need to go to place X, make THAT part of the next story segment. Make us fight our way there directly. Don't ask us to catch a runaway space cow so that the farmer gives you a hug that fills an arbitrary hug meter so that eventually everyone you've hugged will blast open a passage for your cuddly bear hero and his buddies to go through. I mean, why couldn't we do that ourselves?
Stupid game design is stupid.

Yeah, the dodging/going from cover to cover/melee animation when in cover lead to the holster animation being removed. 

Hopefully we won't lack anything in MEA, though rolling is out, probably because it overlaps with the jetpack animation.

That's fair  .

I recall BioWare quoted as being surprised that people felt they had to collect every single thing in DAI, though the power points does kind of lead you there.
And the curse of the Hinterlands has previously been reflected upon by BioWare in interview.

Yet huge worlds are seen as an something advantageous in games as well as a disadvantage, so long as there are interesting things to do and you have a choice, it cam work.

There's nothing wrong with side-content, the trick of the matter is that it's great side-content.
That Frostbite can handle an open-world zone mechanic tells us only about the potential quantity not quality.

Until the game releases and we can judge, all we are left with is our own frame of mind while we speculate.

I like DA:I, but I think the game is really poor. After my first playthrough I thought how great it was. This pink bubble disappeared when I started my second playthrough. There are no side quests that you want to do again with a different outcome. Very little main quests. World is big, but empty as hell. Or nvm, I bet hell isn't that empty, kek. Now, I won't write every single bad thing about Inquisition, cause most of us know about them.
I just wanted to compare how things look between Inquisition and Witcher 3. I've completed already 2 playthroughs in Witcher and I plan to play it again, because it's worth it. Lots of things to do, different and non-linear side quests etc etc.
The only thing I like more in Inquisition are companions and being able to create my own PC. I don't have high hopes for Andromeda, but I hope it won't be Inquisition in space. After ME3 I thought that BW can't create a worse game and yet, Inquisition happened.

I enjoyed every Bioware game I played, don't get me wrong. I see the flaws in their games but they don't ruin the fun or anything. No game is perfect and I never expect it to be. DAI compares less favorably to other games of similar design like Witcher 3 or even Skyrim than past titles. Especially after having played these other games after DAI, I see more and more wrong with that game. I see no harm in pointing that out. I like analyzing and comparing. But my criticism does not mean I didn't enjoy it. Or that these flaws make DAI a bad game. Hell, I didn't even particularly mind ME3's ending. It was objectively not well made but I still loved the game.

My concerns regarding MEA have less to do with failings of past games and more with the current trends in social media and society in general. And how it could impact storytelling. SOME of it can be traced back to DAI already. And while I didn't mind it there, I see how it could become problematic if the trend continues. I'm being vague here because I don't want to derail the thread or start an ugly argument.
Let's just say I'm concerned about the idea that games need to satisfy the personal fantasy of every player. (Even more romances sounds alarming to me.) And that "offensive" content disappears so it won't "trigger" people's moral outrage.
Bioware talks about how the trilogy was dark as if that was a bad thing. I'm a bit less concerned after seeing the fairly dark N7 Day trailer.

It can get annoying but it's a good comparison to BioWare games from non-BioWare companies in the AAA space. I don't even think Witcher 3 is that good even. I mean it's amazing, but it's got serious flaws that keep me from playing it again and again like how padded the gameplay objectives are. Talk to that person, use witcher senses, combat, talk to person again. That's side quests and main quests for the most part. Only difference to DA:I is that the conversations are definitely worthwhile and the open-world feels like it's alive.

I personally thought that the Witcher 3 was garbage. I don't hate or disparage anyone who plays or enjoys it. I just hate almost everything about the Witcher 3 and what it represents.



Atrocious combat and magic, tedious, repetitive and meaningless side quests, a gigantic open-world with fuck all to do in it, a generic story, and boring grinding, skills, and micro-managing up the ass.



I think that the Mass Effect Series is so much hella better than the Witcher that its not even funny. I even think Skyrim, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and DA:I are far better. I'm not even a big fan of Dragon Age, and I still think the Dragon Age series supercedes the Witcher.

I am still a noobie because Mass Effect is the ONLY video game I have ever played (for over three years now), so I am reading with interest the comments here about the other games with 'open world' designs and the problems many of you have observed with them.

What concerns me about an 'open world' game for Andromeda (whether it is similar to Inquisition or other games, or not) is the risk of becoming lost. Were it not for masseffect.wikia.com, other game information sites, and youtube playthrough vids, I would have been playing blind, missing a lot of opportunities and fun, and enjoying it much less out of frustration. Yet reading ahead spoils the big surprises for me and I lose a lot of the Wow Factor. For example, making the right team leader selections for the SM in ME-2 so that everyone lives. In ME-3 there are a lot of choices/decisions that must be met to keep Tali from jumping off the cliff on Rannoch and to prevent Ashley/Kaiden from being killed in Priority: The Citadel II. These are outcomes that I definitely wanted but I doubt that I would have gained these preferred outcomes without some foreknowledge. So I am even more worried about Andromeda's open-world and less-linear design. Mac Walters said, if I understand his comments correctly, that we will be able to avoid playing side missions without harming our progression in the linear aspect of the story (or something like this). I want to enjoy the new game and the side missions (I'm a completionist-type) but I cannot devote 100+ hours of play before restarting to create a new game+ to get better outcomes. I am hopeful that BW will provide enough clarity in-game (a better journal?) so that I can decide what I want to do without becoming lost, and also not feel that I have to study and analyze fan guides and recommendations. No game can please everyone, as forum members so aptly show in their POVs, but I am filled with apprehension of becoming frustrated with a 'bigger game' and becoming lost in a galaxy that I so want to enjoy.

Are you even serious here? Combat is a matter of taste. Repetitive and meaningless side quests? We must have played a different game. The only repetitive and meaningless quests are monster hunts, which are completely optional. The other quests, side quests, have normal storyline and even choices. They don't tell you to go and fetch 50 crap things and return, like in Inquisition or even ME3.
Open-world in Witcher 3 has some flaws, but it's still better done than in any BioWare game. Not to mention story. ME and DA games have storyline like this: Let's save the world, because big bad evil happened, hurr durr. Different was DA2 and thank God for that. So please, don't tell me that story in Witcher 3 is generic. That's just pure bullshit.
Even skills trees were more complex than in any BW game.