"Kiss your plot goodbye. Here's loyalty quests and non-important companions!" paraphrased: Mike Gamb

I think you're taking it too literally. Surely they'll be part of the plot because they are main characters still but Virmire, for example, was not all Wrex nor Ash/Kaiden shows.

They'll still be involved and hopefully some will die because of my choices.

From the way he said it though, I think that not being able to die business may be limited to squad mates.  I think it's possible that other friends, acquaintances and crew may die, although I don't really expect there to be too many such "life and death" choices in the game... maybe even just one... or maybe even none at all.  I get the feeling that they do want to get away from the rather slippery slope that the trilogy went down.  In ME1, the "popularity" of the Virmire choice with fans, I think, lead them to make ME2 basically all about squad mate deaths and that grew into the rather depressing laments about the death toll in war in ME3.  They obviously want Andromeda to be about exploration and not about war and death, so I think moving away from the "make choice and X dies" philosophy is going to help set a more positive tone in the game overall.  I get the feeling mission successes are going to be more about fitting in pieces of a larger knowledge "puzzle" than about saving certain lives (or alternatively causing particular deaths).

Good to hear that there is reactivity in this manner.

Where did you exactly read they said the game has no plots and 'lots' of companion missions?
The funny thing is that as you criticize it to be too similar to ME2, others criticized it to be not so similar to ME2 or using the name loyalty as hype material.
ME had companions quest as well, even if they were shorter and less numerous. As I see it, it's more of middle ground beteeen ME and ME2.

Well, to be fair companion like Drack and Peebee would've been awoke for a longer period of time, since they were on the Nexus.
What you say might be true for Liam and Cora, but I still don't understand why you can't know a companion better or have a relationship with him/her only because they just woke up.

It's not that, it's the concept of having "loyalty missions".

You can certainly get to know characters better through conversations.  I actually find that to be one of the more enjoyable aspects of these games.  I'm just wondering how badly they managed to screw up their new lives by having something only the Pathfinder can deal with hanging over them right after arriving at a brand-new galaxy.

Do you mean after the SR1 was destroyed? Or during the time Shepard is chasing Saren?  Because that would only apply if recruited in ME1. What if he isn't recruited?
True, though its something that would be nice to know. Could make for some interesting conversations.

Maybe some of them are traveling with friends or family too and one gets in trouble? ir they lose something of high persnal value while exploring something , and you have to flee because it gets really dangerous an s/he asks you to come back? maybe one is interested in exploring a specific whatever? Ok, all my ideas stink because I'm not a very creative person , but I'd be very disappointed if a team of professional writers cannot come up with 6 o7 good ones

Good lord that's one heck of a hyperbolic spin on things

He had an effect on his loyalty quest , the dialogues there were different based on the choice of sparing/killing him right away.

It changes something like two whole lines.