The GameInformer article thread

For the reapers, the Pathfinder learning the 'secret' of a powerful and ancient force being apparently on the warpath could an extra dimension to the need for the him/her to succeed (because the whole of humanity could have been wiped out while they were in transit, etc). This would be enough to give a background motive for players of the ME trilogy whilst serving as a bit of extra conspiracy-style information for new players. Keeping the secret to avoid panicking the rest of the newcomers would be important.

Cerberus (or perhaps a group with similar motives), I could see playing some sort of role. Slowing down or hindering the progression of the other races would fit right up their street and allowing humanity to rise to the top of the pile and become the dominant race amongst the newcomers. If not in the main game, covering it in DLC would give players the choice.

Who knows?

There is a whole lot of stuff in here that I'm excited about. The combat. The classless character development. That they found a way to keep and improve interrupts. The commitment to improving squadmate interaction. Etc.

But this quote just deepens one of my primary concerns for the game. This sounds exactly like DA:I, including the massive explorable areas with no relation to the main quest. The situation described in the first bullet point makes it sound to me like, in DA:I fashion, each area will have one "primary" side quest, like closing the big rift in Crestwood, or stopping the undead in the Exalted Plains. And considering it can be started from a quest giver or just stumbled upon in exploration, it also sounds like they will again carry no narrative weight. Just exploring a large environment, killing things, finding/capturing some critical points or whatever, and occasionally you have a brief, rudimentary conversation with some NPC. Probably some holo-notes.

I really want to be wrong, but I am now basically convinced that whatever mistakes they learned from in DA:I, this wasn't one of them. Just a lot of wandering through pretty, personality-less, story-less wastelands, just like DA:I. 40 hours of a good game, grafted onto another 100 hours of nothing.

Guess it got to me finally. I am become BSN, griper of forums.

On the plus side, MP still sounds great. I sunk 200+ hours into ME3MP, so that alone might still make this game worthwhile for me. Never thought I'd say that about a BioWare game. Or any game for that matter.

Here's hoping. I really want the game to be engaging, because there's a lot about it I'm already interested in. That was the saddest thing about DA:I for me. I like the story quests and character stuff, but there's so much tedium to go through for it.

Me too. DAI felt a bit grindy because of the insane respawn rate and general dullness of the encounters. I don't mind fighting a lot if it's actually fun. And if fights are optional. I never got tired of killing stuff in Witcher 3. I could pick what to fight and when. And it was just really fun to me. It was fast, it was smooth. It was good. Plus, the music!
I too LOVED the characters, my favorite DA characters in fact. Morrigan back!!! Some of the story quests are among the coolest I've ever played. The Temple of Mythal was SO DAMN GOOD. I thought the game looked drop dead gorgeous. I was happy for a while just looking at all this beauty.
It just didn't all come together all that well. So much wasted potential. They went too big too fast. It was a decent attempt at semi-open world. But they really didn't know how to fill these big open spaces with good stuff. I'd perhaps argue DA2 was the best Dragon Age game because the downsides didn't drag the experience down all that much. Has far more replay value to me simply because it's an engaging narrative and has fun combat. And Hawke is just a blast. So much sparkle. DAI didn't really have either for big stretches. It's really hard to keep focused when doing open world, I get it. DAI showed how to not do it. Now I hope they're doing it better with Andromeda.

I really, really hope they can live up to that. Few things can be as tedious as unrewarding exploration and on the flip side few things can beat engaging exploration

Shinobi said most onversations are like the old ones.

They always were, why would you expect it otherwise? At best they'll give us a bit more time, since this time there'll the words and not a symbol.

The lack of ambient music in DAI bothered me too. And you really notice because your companions don't talk much. At least in my game I sometimes went exploring for an hour without any banter. Music is often overlooked when reviewing a game. But it's so very important to me. It can enhance the gaming experience A LOT. And Witcher 3 was not only an amazing game, it also had one of the best soundtracks I've ever listened to. DAI had a good soundtrack but you didn't hear it nearly as often as needed.
A lot of the atmosphere in the trilogy came from the soundtrack. Especially in ME1.

I found combat on Hard in DA2 pretty challenging, especially as a rogue, but in a fun way. At first I HATED the anime feel of it all. Rogues looked like circus acrobats. The exploding body parts were ridiculous, turned it off immediately. And the art style was not to my liking. But the story was well done. And I really really love Hawke. You need to play at least three times to experience all the personalities. Paragon and renegade gave you very different experiences as well. Both Hawke and Shepard had personality and therefore so did the games. Great great voice work (except Meer, I really dislike his flat voice for paragon, works for asshole Shep though). When I heard Jo Wyatt would voice Ciri I was ecstatic. The inquisitor was a colossal failure to me. There was no spark, no charm. And I really don't want Ryder to be a doormat again. It's one of my biggest concerns seeing how much marketing emphasizes a lighter tone, white armor and rich young people on the Andromeda Initiate poster. Bring back SOME level of gritty, please. Hawke had it tough, Shepard had it tough. The inquisitor was prisoner for one whole day before being worshiped. Yawn.

My biggest gripes with DA2 was the recycled level design but it somehow almost made sense for the claustrophobic feeling of Kirkwall. And the third act was way too short. So while the game was rushed it's actually impressive how great a story they delivered in such short time.

DA2 had several great ideas that I really want to see picked up again. I thought the dynamic personality system was GENIUS. How the game would always update in the background which personality was used the most and then deliver auto-dialogue and specific options to deal with a situation based on the result. So they actually solved the paragon/renegade dilemma! But then they didn't implement it in ME3. They could have made Shepard react to the boy's death based on which personality Shepard has right now. No forced emotions.
Of course Hawke seemed to suffer from multiple personality disorder when switching between the three options a lot. You were clearly meant to mostly stick to one. But it was still possible to be ruthless to the enemy and kind to the companions.
I only realized just how complicated the personality and friendship/rivalry system was when I played an angry rogue who pissed off half of her companions so much that at some point she even received disapproval when she was nice to them! With Varric she could not get on his good side anymore at some point. Hawke gave him a gift and received disapproval!!! On the other hand, if you were friends, they did not mind you insulting them. Sometimes they even thought it was funny!
DA2 got so much crap at the time but more thought went into the relationship dynamics than any other game I believe. Companions dropping by, having a relationship with each other outside Hawke's influence was another great idea. They put some of it into ME3, which was awesome. You know, your squadmates chatting via com when you entered a room. So awesome.

There is always something in every single one of their games that's brilliant. I wish Bioware would realize what this is and make a game that features all these things. They should respond less to the whining and more to what people liked and expand on it. Not do the extreme opposite of what people didn't like. That never works out. DA2 was too small, so they made DAI way too big. *sigh*

There is likely something special to Ryder. The GI article says there is a narrative reason tied up with being the Pathfinder that explains our ability to easily retrain skills. Quoting Fabrice Condominas, it said we might tackle one mission as an "Infiltrator", and do the next as a "Sentinel", respeccing in between missions. That's a lot of flexibility. I also wonder, is that narrative reason connected to Ryder's genetics? Why pick the child of the lost Pathfinder to replace him?

As far as the biotics, I was just referencing it on the most basic level. The eezo nodules have to be there, whether by design as with Miranda, or accidental exposure as with most human biotics. Same for the amp. (Presumably no human brain has yet achieved amp-free control of biotics.) It sounded like biotics training might be part of the "basic training" before launch, but that could just be website marketing. We'll see soon what they have in store for us.

Changing between games makes your assorted game saves worth a damn.

Being able to walk into Tempest's galley and completely reset Ryder's build is not the same thing. This is "Kingdoms of Amalur" level of flexibility. The GI article makes a point of highlighting it and saying that a narrative is built around it. There is something special about Pathfinders that allows them to do this.