Adressing the 600 Pound Gorilla in the room

ME2 loyalty missions are actually a very good example of how to make side content relevant and fun. They are completely optional, yet don't feel inconsequential in the slightest. Beside having obvious endgame impact, loyalty missions provide great character insight (and I think we can all agree that characters are a crucial part of BioWare games) and shouldn't be overlooked for their worldbuilding: Tuchanka, Migrant Fleet, etc.

N7 missions are the true "tertiary" optional stuff, but they are, what, 10-ish very short missions that can be completed in under 10 minutes out of 30+ total missions in ME2. They are too few and too short to be a nuisance even if you don't like them. And frankly, I did like them because they were fun little diversions. Some were just an excuse to shoot things up while some had a fun gimmick like going around Estevanico (hey, I liked it!) I'd say that to this day ME2 is BioWare's best effort at integrating critical path with secondary and tertiary "optional" material. Though even I would agree that it needed at least one more Collector mission after the Collector ship and before the endgame for pacing reasons. If you want to complete everything and not lose your crew, there's a LONG time between those two missions. If I remember correctly, you do 4 recruitments before Horizon, then another 5-ish missions before Collector ship and then everything else before Derelict Reaper. That's a lot of stuff that kinda messes up the pacing a bit.

Just as a reminder, N7: MSV Estevanico was the mission where a shuttle drops you off on one end of a ship hanging off a ledge so you could run to the other end of the ship and get picked up by the shuttle there. That's the mission. Of course, the shuttle could have just flown you to the other end of the ship. But then it wouldn't be a mission. You're of course welcome to like that, I thought it was a complete waste of my time.

I do mostly agree about loyalty missions being well utilized, especially Tali and Legion's. Not all were of this quality (Jacob's "rapist father" mission stands out). Anyway, the bigger issue in ME2 was that the main plot ("critical path") was really just a thin excuse for filling a roster with colorful characters.

I doubt it.  And the reason is DA I was supposed to be a giant war story.  Cameron Lee himself in a tweet a rather long time ago bemoaned some of the stuff that they weren't able to do as much of this war sim and kind of lead your Army, as the Inquisitor, real time.  But the reason why I doubt it, other then they sort of failed with Inquisition, is that MEA is not a war story.  Its an exploration story.  Sure there will be fighting, sure there will be enemy bases and stuff you might be able to capture, but at the end of the day you are SUPPOSED to seek out new life and new civilizations.  Which, I hope hope hope, BioWare does more in the way of diplomatic solutions to problems and maybe even some of the main plot points of the game rather then go through and shoot everything up. 
I know, again I loved Witcher 3, but honestly if they did not give us a NG + I probably would be a lot less inclined to replay it because its such a grind.  Hell I still have not replayed it.  BioWare keeps sucking me in, but I hope to get to a second PT sometime after MEA comes out. 

So perhaps one of the more common worries about Mass Effect Andromeda is that its going to be 'Dragon Age in space' or 'as wide as an ocean, and deep as a puddle.'  The idea being that the series going larger, and more open world, will cause the game to have worse content in terms of side quests, story quests, and over all deep philosophical 'fun.'  

But, I am not as concerned.  Why?  Because of BioWare's history.  

Dipping back very deeply into the time tunnel, way back in 2007 BioWare released a little known RPG known as Mass Effect.  And it was a pretty good game which started an amazing franchize.  But Mass Effect 1 tried to do two new things which BioWare had never done before.  1. Introduce a voiced protagonist for an RPG. And 2. Introduce shooting mechanics into a BioWare RPG.  And...well the first one was lacklustre, many of the replies did not match the dialog prompt, and felt disjointed from the tone to where...even now...I often look at the sceen like...what just happened?  And, the shooting mechanics...were quite bad and clunky at times.  But, this was the first time BioWare had ever done gameplay like this before.  Then when Mass Effect 2 came out both aspects of ME 1were vastly improved.  The dialog prompts had weight and meaning, they usually matched what was on the wheel, and the combat was smooth, fluid, responsive, and the enemies were far better designed.  Then in ME 3...the role playing did take a step back admittedly, but then the gameplay was a further improvement of the system set up in 2 and 1.  

So, fast forward into 2014 and BioWare released Dragon Age Inquisition.  And I did not hate the side quests as much as some people would, there were quite a few of them I enjoyed quite a bit in fact, but I also know it was not the best and had weird fetch questing and an unhealthy obsession with ring collection.  But this was BioWare's first RPG to go more or less open world.  And it also went through its fair share of development issues, they were learning how to do a lot of new things.  So, I think, MEA will really, really, really, be an improvement on the basic formulae.  

More evidence? Because BW has been here before.  They have released games with amazing side content (Origins, ME 2), and the rest of their games have still had pretty good side quests.  Only Inquisition had so-so story telling from the side quest perspective, and even then there were a few gems.  And plus, they do tend to look at other people's gameplay a lot.  Which is why I have said numerious times I feel Witcher 3 will be a lot more of an indicator on how ME A will do then DA I.  

Thoughts?

Quarian - Qunari. (not quite, but close enough...)