Spitballing: We need a new term.

The only games to really attempt to not have a static game world are open world/sandbox games. Expecting that out of a game that's not intended to be that is what leads to that complaint.

ME3 had the absolute WORST fetch quest system in the history of gaming.  And yet ME:A is considered to be the massive failure of the Mass Effect universe.

Hell, ME1 had some pain in the ass side missions, but nobody talks about those!  Helena Blake, for example.  Talk to her on the Citadel, board the Normandy, fly to one randomly generated, lifeless, featureless world, drive the Mako through crazy ass terrain, spend waaaay too long getting to your destination, which happens to be a cut and paste version of the same damn building on every unexplored world in the game, finally have a decent bit of fun in the fight, then get back on the Normandy, fly to ANOTHER system, repeat the above...then get back on the Normandy, fly to a THIRD planet, repeat all the above with the exception that you can talk Helena Blake into dissolving her criminal enterprise instead of a 3rd fight.  And many people praise that quest chain because of the different ways you can resolve the situation.

Taking out the geth bases on 3?  I want to say three different planets, but there may have been a fourth involved.  Similar structure to the above, except Geth instead of humanoid opponents.

ME:A takes the same concept, but instead of flying to different planets on the Normandy, we're generally driving around with the Nomad.  There are multi-planet quests in ME:A too, but it's basically the same concept as ME1, but with larger maps.  Expecting elements from open world games, such as more dynamic worlds, day/night cycles, etc, is expecting elements that aren't a part of the type of game ME:A is.

I could agree that there are too many "tasks," and I would welcome maybe a 30% reduction in those types of filler for more fleshed out side quests, but the writing is subjective, animations are being fixed (and mostly have been), no AAA game released in the last 10 years has been free from technical issues, the bad design decisions are again a subjective judgement...

Honestly, I see way less cringy dialogue in ME:A than I did in the MET games.  Some of those lines in ME:A are cringy as FUCK, though, so on some level I'll grant that complaint, but by and large the writing was decent to good.  

I mean, you're never gonna convince me, I'm never gonna convince you, but some of the main complaints about ME:A come the false belief that it's an open world game, when it just isn't, no matter how much you want to call it one, so that you can call it a BAD open world game.

I did, repeatedly. Not only about it, but about ME1's many, many other flaws. 

And I even said, multiple times, that if Andromeda had the same problems of ME1 they would not be forgiven.

And about ME3, a huge number of people criticizes it for its fetch quests. So it's not only Andromeda, and ME3 is far, very far from an open world, nor are its fetch as impactiful in the overall quality of the game. 

Using the term CDPR coined: "Regional open world".

But I usually call DA:O and MEA "open-zone" games or "open area". I would not put those in the same bin as DA:O or ME2 which feel like hub based games. I much prefer hub based by the way. Open world only works for story driven games if it really adds to it. Witcher 3 found the right formula for it I think but it can be improved upon and I think the size of the world can be reduced. InFamous is a game I have fond memories of for how it did its condensed and GTA-like open world area.

Not to be confused with "this game is the worst thing I have ever played", just to make things clear. We don't think Andromeda is terrible as a video game, but it is underwhelming... and boring. It's just far from the AAA standards of 2017 and well below the bar set for the quality of features in previous Mass Effect games. Again, it doesn't mean there is no quality just that it's worse despite being newer.

Are you nuts? The hell they don't. Last time a high-profile AAA release shipped in such a state as Andromeda was Assassin's Creed Unity. The game is a technical mess that generally plays well but it's still a technical mess and especially in the story/cutscene department it constantly fucks up.

And also, in what way is it a better version of ME1? Becuase the level design is better? Apparently some of you find fun in just walking around a map which I seem to miss. Going from A to B in a story-driven game has one thing it needs: An inspiring imagery or music or atmosphere. Andromeda seems more deliberate than ME1's UNCs maybe but they're still just wide open maps without anything interesting in them. Andromeda spreads maybe 10-20 half-decent side missions across each world but ME1 kept a single side mission to each UNC where going from drop-point to the location of the quest took maybe 1-5 minutes and then the side-quest was resolved in a brief encounter or conversation and it was memorable, and all of it held up by the incredible context of Mass Effect that shone so brightly in ME1. In Andromeda the context for anything that happens is much more vague and sometimes nonsensical, like the Exiles in general. The Roekaar are also just the new "excuse-faction" which happens to be everywhere so you can shoot things. In ME1 it was simple. There were bandits, Renegade Krogans and Geth... and husks and a lot of the time it wasn't even as if combat was the highlight. I felt like I was experiencing a world. In Andromeda I feel like I'm going through the motions to tick some boxes and have some conversations that are written to pad out the game with super cliched sci-fi tropes.

I, for one, can enjoy these types of games, but Andromeda isn't a very good example of one. I suppose it's something of an accolade to be better than ME1 in some regards (no all, unfortunately), but in a decade I'd expect more, especially given Andromeda's competition. 

But I'll indulge you for a moment; let's ignore all the side content in Andromeda: what kind of game are we left with? A bad one. Core combat is good as usual, better with mobility but worse with squad control and power options, but just about everything else is worse for wear. Quality is all over the place in almost every area: dialog, quests, loot, encounters, animations, etc.. At least with Inquisition, I knew at the end of my mundane adventures, I'd be able to get some enjoyment from my companions and a fairly solid main quest. Andromeda just isn't consistent enough to get that.

And of course, this is all on the supposition that we can easily ignore all the side content. Completionist tendencies aside (which they sort of shouldn't be given that "get out of the Hinterlands" became a meme), how is it that I tell a good quest from a bad one having only the initial quest prompt? I guess it's nice that quests are sorted in the journal, but that still doesn't stop them from being a mixed bag within their own tier, and it still means I have to consciously decide not to do content in a game based on an immersion-breaking understanding that the quest probably won't be any fun. And how does doing that affect the experience? In, wait for it, The Witcher 3 I was impressed by how often such mundane premises could lead to interesting or utterly absurd outcomes. A simple quest to retrieve a pan has both narrative depth and charm. It really kinda sucks that in BioWare's newest games I don't feel like turning over every stone because I know I probably won't find anything interesting. For a game about the wonders of exploration like Andromeda, that's especially unfortunate.

Open world has a very clear definition in my mind: The entire game takes place in one big physical game world where aside from houses or caves it's all loaded simultaneously as opposed to being broken up into multiple maps. This is what GTA was and what Skyrim is known for. Those games coined the term.

and the exact opposite of MEA.

I like any kind of games, my problems with Andromeda has nothing to do with its genre, but with its shortcomings. 

And punishing the player for wanting to play the game is a mistake. If I could know before hand that a quest would be meaningless and by the time I would finish it it would have been a waste of time I wouldn't do it, but how can I know? I expect quests in games to be good, to find something in them that makes them interesting. It's not anyone thought that the developers were no capable of creating interesting quests and filled the game with bad ones. 

i really do not see how that makes the game open world. I mean yes you can go anywhere but what's the point if you've done everything?

But it is worse. Andromeda broke where it mattered most: the presentation. BioWare's legacy, especially in the past decade, is almost exclusively founded on presentation. Their stories have never been literary masterpieces and their characters usually followed the same tropes, but what set BioWare apart from the competition was their ability to take their average stories and elevate them above everyone else's with impressive storytelling. So it's kind of a big deal when so much of Andromeda's jank is centered around its cutscenes, VO, character appearances, and animations. Nothing ruins good storytelling faster than idiotic camera placement, bland dialog delivery, repeated and dumb looking faces, and lame animations.

If BioWare wanted their game to be judged next to games like Fallout or Skyrim, then they shouldn't have made a Mass Effect sequel. In Skyrim I can do just about whatever the hell I want, so I expect a degree of jank. I can't become the leader of every faction in Andromeda or shoot a fury spell at some random NPC. There can't be a three way be a three way battle between me, my Imperial troops, a Stormcloak camp, and a dragon. Of course Andromeda isn't as buggy as Skyrim it has no right to be.

And no Witcher 3 was most certainly not worse than Andromeda at release.