Notification-popup-quests are back.

I love Angry Joe. Not a big fan of snooping to pick up side quests, tho.

Eactly. If they're part of a larger mix of aquiring side quests and ain't used as content-filler like in ME3 it's totally fine to have some pop ups.

My reaction is that at least it isn't a pop-up notification that leads to a fetch quest this time.

However, how exactly do you introduce a murder subplot with Ryder as a detective as a little "Oh yeah, you've got a new quest notification, dude!"?

In the Batman games it makes sense cuz Batman is a detective. In Witcher it makes sense because Geralt needs to solve monster-problems and he needs some bloody money. In Andromeda, I really don't see given our Pathfinder role what a murder matters to Ryder? Perhaps it's because it's murder of an MW thing but why does Ryder have to check it out?

It didn't?
It sure did to me. I was actively boring myself with bad activities that I knew were necessary for my EMS, not to mention I like to solve what's in my quest-log.

That's another issue. Instead of getting a notification you used to get conversations that introduce a side-quest with proper context until ME3 introduced those low-quality things. Also, radio-chatter is not good enough. Everything felt so detached when you were running around the Citadel in ME3 and almost every quest objective or delivery just leads to someone, somewhere, talking.

As I see it any form of this notification introduction to a quest unless it's "Quest log updated, go talk to concerned guy" or something or "Someone's been murdered, investigate, then meet witness" is bad. If it's an excuse to create objectives that have "context" but with no real character or engaging, world-building component to it, it's completely useless to me. I'm playing a BioWare game not a mobile phone app that wastes my time with checkboxes.

Unless you wanted to play Multiplayer to get the best ending

Obligatory:

In fairness, ME3 had an incredibly short development cycle and BioWare did not have very much time to make the game. Choices had to be made to get as much content in as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if this "streamlining" of this feature was a compromise just to get side quests into the game.

BioWare could also justify this approach by suggesting SAM has provided Ryder with augmented capabilities being able to overhear these conversations and deducing whether investigating these potential issues could be a benefit to the Pathfinder crew or not. It's really all about execution, and unlike ME3, BioWare has had a lot of time to get this game right.

That's a problem with the scanning minigame rather than the quest mechanics, isn't it?

As for the quest log, I always thought that these activities shouldn't be flagged as missions in the first place.

But here was the problem with ME3's Notification Pop Up Quests:

Step 1: Walk past somebody.
Step 2: "Oh crap, I forgot my favorite stuffed turtle when we evacuated off of Planet X."
Step 3: Fly to planet.
Step 4: Scan planet and acquire stuffed turtle.
Step 5: Walk up to npc.
Step 6: "Excuse me...I think you left this back home."

The vast majority of them led to scanning bullshit. I think there's a clear difference between that, and walking by an NPC on the Nexus who goes "Fuck dude! We're lucky we escaped those Pirates on Planet Z. That distress signal was a trap."

So I think context is important here. The way Brad described walking back a murder scene, and getting a quest to investigate it, sounds good to me.

How do RPG protagonists ever get caught up in anything? Generally it's because we're the most capable person in a un- or mis-governed region, and that's usually a good enough excuse to shove us into any old situation the writers think would be fun. Sure, BioWare could make it their mission of deconstructing the game's power fantasy: box players into their specific role, give them jurisdictional boundaries, etc., and I'm sure we'd get a more cohesive narrative. I'm sure the end result would be good too, but BioWare doesn't need to do it. I'll take that concession if it means I get to go on a murder mystery in my space game. I like murder mysteries.

But hell, as Pathfinders, we're entirely justified jumping in on a case. It's either in a law-less or -lite area, it's cowboy rules, and if it's within the jurisdiction of the Initiative, we're basically Spectres, so there's not any managerial oversight that'll stop us.

Actually that could work because this was a cool thing about FO 4 and Skyrim.  And I was actually surprised/ pissed off at how few quests it seems I got like this in FO when it seemed to be such a huge part of the Skyrim system. 

Perfect example of this though was the one with the Batarian Prophet.  I would have loved to fly down to Khar'shan and actually retrieve the thing while under fire.