You can't change companion weapons or armour

A chance? Sure, there's a chance. But if they don't think that helmets are important, why would a hypothetical alternate design have helmets on some of the outfits? Remember, Iakus was talking about having breath masks instead of proper helmets and so forth; my reference to liking it in the quoted passage was based on not having such gear being the reason for the dislike. (I should have been more verbose there.)

Who even cares for "maintaining iconic look at all times" though? I can understand it with SOME characters like Kreia in KOTOR 2 where the hood over her eyes really is a huge part of her character and presentation (still, she has all the standard armor slots you can use) or Mass Effect's Jack whos tatoos on the body are absolutely big part of her character. But Cora? Liam? Vetra? Really?

They implement character creator in each game knowing fully that it means various fanart, YouTube playthroughs and cosplays. etc will feature not-iconic Main character's look (Shepard, Ryder, Warden etc) yet they're fine with it. They're happy enough having the "iconic" look engrave itself in public's counciousness just with the marketing power (and of course it works)

Yet with squadmates, they somehow feel the need to control their look in literally every scenario imaginable. Why? It didn't matter that Ashely could wear any armor possible in ME1. People still saw her white-pink armor as the iconic one. I really just dont get it.

But if the thing you want is opposed to the basic design objectives, the chance that merely offering more choices will cause them to accidentally satisfy your desire is very small.

(We've had this conversation before, haven't we?)

The new dialogue system is not an improvement of the RPG aspects of this game, you just click an Icon and your character goes on a scripted spree of lines and interactions. 

A lot of true stuff, but to be fair you didn't mention some key aspects. Non-combat perks are a thing one again with waking up cryo pods. Check the list of things they do, from crafting, to vendors etc. And we won't be able to gain all of them in any single playthrough so there's actually gonna be some basic RPG mechanic of chosing what do you want to do better/easier at the espense of something else. Even ME1 didn't work like this as you could've just swapped squadmates to unlock a higher Hacking crate. Small, but still. + there's Noman progression and customization, Mako didn't have that. Fully agree on loss of tactical pause though and complete removal of squad progression & customization. It's unfortunately business as usual with this series. 1 step forward, 1 step back.

Wich is especially tragic if you start 5 steps back with every new game, though...

Like you can tell the DAI team actually made the outfits (and their derivatives) make sense. Such as Cole's rags and Solas wolf motifs and traveling gear on his clothes. They're not perfect but for the most part the character is dressed reasonably for their personality and their place on the battlefield. Even Vivienne with her cleavage while huh inducing kind of skirts by with her being so reliant on barriers since she's a front line fighter.

Like even if it's not the smartest thing for them to wear their outfit is character friendly. Meanwhile for ME that's the exception not the rule. (And let me not get into how Miranda and Jacob's outfits are pure stupidity for them to wear on the field. In their quarters? Yep sure. In the field? LOL)  So it makes the iconic excuse look even stupider.

Yep thus my use of exception not the rule. Jack's outfit did make sense (That stupid nipple belt didn't though. Either give her a tank or free the nipples the in between shit was dumb). Meanwhile we had Thane, Jacob and Miranda in the huh? pile.

Like it's just off. If they want their iconic looks so bad they could do it in a way that makes sense with the lore. (A defaced suit of Cerberus armor for hazardous environments would've been just as character friendly for Jack). Also the biotics don't excuse the environments. Biotics don't protect against environmental hazards. That was stated in ME1. Not to mention using biotics constantly tires one out so even if they did it wouldn't be as efficient as just wearing armor.

Yea, well... it had quite good characters for the most part, but it sacrificed so much of the series gameplay complexity. BW had brought some of it back in the meantime, but still.

yes environment setting are biggest thing vs its stupid decision....

To be fair, ME had no good track record for that since ME2 either. While a could buy Miranda's high tech body glove, seeing Jack enter the dead and vented collector ship with nothing but a breathing mask... yea. I'd say PeeBee is in good company. That's why I always say ME left it's hard scifie path after part one, since back then it was spacesuit or bust... how it should be pretty much all the time.

Bioware loves to kill my hype, apparently. I just got back up to ME3 and now I'm down to Infinite Warfare.