22 Random Tidbits about Andromeda (GI 24th nov) marked spoilers!

Yes, my bad.

That would be interesting. I'd sacrifice the humans.

That would be interesting to say the least.

I think the 100k per ark is debunked by the article. 20k are asleep when Ryder wakes up. While we don't know when the MC exactly wakes up compared to the other, he's part of the Pathfinder team, I think he'd among the first to wake up.

Ok, that first phrase there worries me a little. I don't want an Inquisitor 2.0, since I thought they were kind of bland, I hope when he says the beginning it really is just in the beginning and then Ryder gets actually shaped to our liking later on... Dunno how exactly that would work in ingame mechanics though, but at least the voices may be more emotional than in DAI.

It mentioned the beginning of the game for the comparison. It's more about the background of Ryder and not being as experienced as Shepard. 

Meaning it's more about being unknowledgeable about the universe and military life than about actual personality? Well that seems reasonable then, even that can bring a certain air to Ryder, of innocence or something...

We're still going to be in an unknown galaxy, for everyone in the Initiative.
I think, as I said before, that Mac was referring to Ryder being relatively inexperienced, not him being a blank slate in terms of personality and background. Though I think he should've used other words and not blank slate.

This seems to be what they're going for, as far as I can tell. From the descriptions of the siblings (not like Shepard!), to their appearance, to their voices - it seems like "innocent", "untested", "young", are the things they're trying to convey.

Although regardless of how much of a noob they are, we're still going to fight as well as Shepard did. Maybe even better

You can start a colony with 2 people but you're quickly going to run into a genetic bottleneck. The 160 figure is the lowest estimate of how large a population needs to be to maintain a healthy level of genetic diversity.

Inquisitor was indeed bland but not because they had no predefined personality. I love when BioWare allows me to characterize my protagonist fully without too much autodialogue, even though I think DA2 and sometimes ME3 had a smart system where it would continue the dialogue based on what the player had picked earlier.

However, I think Inquisitor was bland mainly due to how the role was handled. You go from being a prisoner who's accused of a pretty grave accusation in what is essentially a mystery plot that hamfistedly gets resolved way later in the game, but after a short while they start asking you for directions and quickly you become the tip of the spear and soon the leader and it's all while you've still not proven yourself innocent really, but the characters just start believing you.

I'm thinking Ryder makes a tad more sense because s/he's part of the family of the current Pathfinder, so passing down the role seems slightly more like a given. I do hope that he may be a bit more like Hawke than Inquisitor though where there are certain pre-defined personal stakes like his sister or his dad as opposed to "I came from wherever and I'm a nobody".

They said the dialogue wheel will have 4 tone icons for certain choices. I hope that's just like DA:I then, except that had 5, but that was more than enough, so I'm glad if this keeps it slightly more fast-paced so we don't have to stop up and read too much for every choice - personally I like the ability to skim a paraphrase in time to keep the flow of the cinematic sequence.