My worry: more freedom, weaker storytelling

Pretty much. One of the reasons i am so confident is that ME 1 was their first shooter game. Wasn't that good in that respect. ME 2 was much better. Inquisition was their first open world game.

I'm worried the only thing worthy in this game will be the characters and the story is going to be weak.

To be honest, I should already expect that.

According to Mac they started drafting the story-framework by making characters. It's not a good sign. Typically a writer makes a plot out of an idea-statement like "suppose if ______ happened". Obviously some of that is done for us because Mass Effect has Mass Effect but they needed to recreate that away from the Milky Way so as an alternative we get Remnant tech, but I have a feeling this is something they created later.

We also know the very first encounter with the Kett immediately leads to shooting them in the face rather than trying to create nuance and intrigue. It's first-contact, basically. My biggest hope was that the writers had thought of ME:A's plot-statement as "Suppose if we meet a new alien galaxy and experiene first contact as a player" but then you also have "The protagonist is special" and you have "EVERY PLANET HAS A STORY" but ah well. I'm sure it has good moments and great ideas, but so did DA:I. DA:I actually peaked at times where I felt it was shaping up to be real interesting but eventually it let me down again by constantly erasing its own stakes that worked well.

I'm so afraid that the Hyperion will be burning as we have to explore and colonize, be in conflict with the Kett, but then we just fix Hyperion at some point and the plot lets us meander around for the sake of exploration while Archon does villainy stuff you never see and everyone goes "Ryder, we must stop Archon. He's so terrible!", and then it all culminates with some bad encounter where you kick ass and not a real denoument. If they want a kick-ass "everyone works together against Archon" end mission at least make it like Suicide mission in that everyone is shown working together and the game reinforces the themes of Ryder being the hero and his squad being like a family.

i find its far easier for strong characters to make up for a weak story then vice versa.

Well you're just speculating. 

Go into ME:A not expecting the writing to be as good as ME1. You'll save yourself from disappointment, and by managing your expectations, you'll probably enjoy it. That's not to say it'll be bad, but we've all known for awhile now Bioware writing isn't as good as it used to be.

If you ask me, the writing will probably be ME2 level.

OP, you seem to be a bit paranoid that this game is going to be shit based off a couple of threads that I have seen you make. Why are you paranoid?

Well said.

A game "on rails" doesn't at all mean that the story is going to be better. Its not a correlation coefficient to say that a game on rails is going to have a better story than an open world game. FFXIII had a pretty shitty story compared to other FF games IMO and that was a game largely "on rails." TW3 was pretty much as open world as you can get and the story there was far above average. And I say this not as a TW3 fanboi but someone who is looking at things objectively.

What "open world" does is not only open up the maps, but the story as well. I don't think a linear story, where there is a very precise sequence of events, is at all superior to an open story. Reason for this is because that is just not how rl works. In rl things tell a story through time. We don't focus on one thing until we find out everything there is to know about that one thing and then move on to something else, we take a little bit of this and a little bit of that until we understand things in a more holistic way.

I will say that what a linear game gives is more focus for doing one thing at a time. That said, I think semi-open world is the best of both worlds here and that it allows for multiple stories to be told in one place all the while having stories to explore elsewhere as well. The devs at BW have said that the story doesn't feel constraining at all - you are free to do what you want, when you want, and that's a level of freedom that is a nice touch for an otherwise very Mass Effect, Mass Effect game.

I hope you are absolutely wrong in this regard. Considering ME2 had NO story, the last thing I want is for MEA to follow suit. The only thing ME2 did right was create compelling characters. Other than that, between the lack of a plot and the terrible resource minigame, it was a nightmare. The less similarities between the two, the better! I'm hoping loyalty missions are the only thing MEA is taking from ME2.

Since Mass Effect was intended to be and ended up being a trilogy, plus the fact that Andromeda is nothing more than a spin-off that takes place somewhere in the space-time of Mass Effect Universe, one can expect it to differ in some aspects from the original trilogy.

I think the semi-open world approach has a lot of potential to be great. I mean, through the whole 'on rails' experience of the original trilogy, I would always look at a skyline, skybox or some epic vista and think 'Man, I wish I could go there.' Now it sounds like I can.

Of course, the quality of storytelling is something I can only really judge when I play the game. So I'll wait on that. DAI had its fair share of well-written bits, it's just the rather uninspired bulk of the sidequests that washed that out. If they learned from that like they say they have, then I think the DAI formula could actually work well.

Honestly Im not too concerned. Im inclined to believe them when they tell me that the side quests are much improved over Inquisition. As for the main story, again Im inclined to believe it'll be decent at the very least. So long as I get more Mass Effect, Im happy. I dont need them to revolutionise story telling.

The difference is Witcher 3 generally has better writing, and empathy to its otherwise random quest NPCs, but I agree. Games like Deus Ex HR and MD, and I'll add in Fallout New Vegas have WAAAY better quest design.