Bioware's hardon for deserts

You are forgetting grasslands.

All of those planets represent ecological disasters. Which is synonymous with barren.

What I regret is that they used the electric storms and gravity inverses on Habitat 7. It made for a memorable opening world, but left Elaaaden without its own theme.

There is also a very nice moon where Vetra's quest is taking place, but it is mostly a white-gray take on Voeld.

I was thinking about an unproductive steppe grassland with poisonous grass, and/or uncontrolled grass-fires but it will be very close to Havarl in its enviro-disaster.

Island archipelago world with flooding events and rogue waves and/or a world with active seismicity and accelerated erosion with mudslides/rockfalls or a permafrost world with exploding pingos; volcanism issuing forth clouds of poisonous fumes and ashes would have all required dynamic systems... Kadara sort of tried to look like that... and its geysers are not that spectacular.

I dunno. I would have loved more terrifying worlds, like habitat 7... but we gotta play there, and it gotta change for the better based on our efforts...

They started you out with Habitat 7. Floating mountains, lightning storms, etc. When I stood up after crashing to the planet and looked out it was awesome. I felt like I was in another galaxy 600 years from the Milky Way. However, after that, aside from Havarl, it was just downhill, plain sand and ice for the most part. It was just a letdown.

They're other ways you can convey a planet hit with disaster other than plain sand and ice.

As a person who lives in a desert I think you guys are all missing out.


Goes to wash the sand off his car for the tenth time this week

I liked the planets and thought that there was plenty of variety. They even managed to make Eos and Elaaden look different.

The barren nature of some of the planets is logical given the story. I also don't think Kadara is getting enough recognition. The rock formations looked like coral, there were lethal sulphur springs and the plant life was completely alien.

As for being Earth-like... well yeah, Earth has a whole heap of different environments, the more barren of which are effectively repeated on the less habitable places in our solar system. I'm kinda glad they didn't go overboard with the Discworld-style fantastical elements.

For me, the one disappointment environmentally was the fauna. Virtually everything you meet is a lizard, a crustacean or a big gorilla thing. And it's all trying to kill you.

I just expected more from the planet design but sadly it wasn't delivered.

For anyone who wants to see something very interesting. Google this 'seven kindgoms decennium' and check the images. It is the cover of a heavy metal album I came across and they draw inspiration from fantasy and scifi . When I saw the cover artwork I immediately thought that this is how I wanted Andromeda to look like.Alien and most of all...Alive.
I can't share the picture now because I am on my phone .

Apart from Havarl and Habitat 7, it all looked so dull.

There did seem to be an excessive amount of desert in ME:A. It's possible that I'm the only person that wishes there was water exporation. Whether it required a mech-like suit (like the Leviathan in ME3) or just free diving. When I played Leviathan, I felt it had so much potential, if they continued the ME series.

Agreed. Even something as superficial as making the sand on Elaaden a different color would have gone a long way to helping it feel less like Eos Volume II: The Chronicle.

The marshmallow planet is annoying.

I didn't really have a problem with Voeld, got a nice Hoth vibe from it and there was a better effort to distinguish the frozen wastes from the games arid dunes. Which cannot be said for the Old Republic, Hoth and Tatooine are basically the same art assets but yellow or white. 

I was disappointed they don't look different after beating the game.

I was expecting to read something about Sloane Kelly and then realized the OP was talking about deserts, not deserters.