30 - 60 minutes to drive across planets?

Don't hold your breath on it.

This may sound good.
As long as it is not like SWTOR.
If they follow that way.
It will be more a chore than entertaining.

The moment I hear of this I can't stop imagining how you're stuck behind ridiculous terrains and have to circle a long way around just to get to where you need to be, which builds up to the hour long traveling, kinda like ME1.

I hope I'm wrong about it.

Find?  Bro, I asked that question!  Today, because of this forum question!     

I was actually just very excited to have been tweeted back to by Michael Gamble and actually wished it was for one of my other questions instead but.... there ya go.

Even ME1 had fetch quests.  Asari writings, x number of this type of element, turian insignia and league of one medallions.

ME1 fetch quests weren't intrusive as DAI though and were less of a hassle to complete.

It really has more to do with making landscapes feel "natural" than it has to do with killing time.  If most planets are uninhabited, you're not going to see a bag of goodies every three steps.  I'll gladly say that fetch quests were meaningless time sinks, but having the player discover something with every step feels cheap and unnatural.

If it really is that long of a drive... they better have a lot of points of interest along the way. I don't wanna sit in a vehicle doing nothing but driving for more than like 3 minutes, much less 30. Good god.

And please don't have a mission that requires that 30 minute drive to the other side of the planet, but then have to drive 30 minutes back to drop it off for a fetch quest. OH GOD.

Actually, both of those would be non-issues with sealed hardsuits

Making an area 40% smaller doesn't really qualify as "tweaking" to me... And you'd think that would be long done by now.

Still, I don't buy the numbers anyway. There really no way it would take an hour to traverse any of their planets if all you do is drive. The Nomad clocks in at an average of just over 100km/h. Let's be generous and reduce it slightly to 100. Okay, so they're telling us some maps are 100 kilometers across? I call BS on that, and not because I hate Bioware or anything, but just because it's a ridiculous notion. More likely, someone's bad with numbers or estimating or interpreting dev quotes.

Even 50km across seems excessive. How could you meaningfully fill that kind of area with content (that isn't just respawning enemies you have to either ignore or dismount to fight before continuing)?

Maybe if someone is occasionally fighting and taking in the sights would it take that long. Maybe.

Psh, cliffs? This is the Mak- err, Nomad! We have rocket jumping!

50 minutes seems a bit extreme, but maybe it's all story related instead of it being side-missions. If these segments are part of the main quest, then hopefully these planets will be plush with linear main storyline plot points aligned with side-missions. i'd be on board with that.

Spending time on each planet we explore 30-40 min would make sense being that the whole narrative behind Andromeda is exploration. We are not fighting or preparing for an enemy on the level of the Reapers or Collectors. I'm sure at some point there will be a grand scheme we will have to stop and get involved in, but i don't see them having us explore wide open barren or visually impressive landscapes with us wandering around with nothing to do except admiring the scenery.

I think some planets will be like how some exploration was handled in ME2, whereas you landed on this planet for that small mission or you received an "SOS" and completed that small mission there.....all other planets might be full scaled major plot-point planets to drive the narrative and storyline along.

If it takes even the lower end that was stated, 30 minutes, to simply drive across a planets map that worries me a lot. I'm not interested in ME for a driving simulator, I am pretty sure the driving part is something I will just have to endure to get to the story and the more interesting gameplay. So yeah, I don't want to spend even 5 hours in total simply driving. I'm assuming that time doesn't include all the missions and getting out on foot. In that case the missions would be really short.