My Fear for the future...

Oh yeah, the one sidequest that involved flying from system to system for ten minutes followed by an excursion to a planet we already explored, scanning some things in the environment, and culminating in an anti-climactic cutscene involving characters we haven't been given reason to care about was really something

A. To each their own.
B. I guess your saying you want story based side quests as long as there is not too much story.

The one point I will concede is that ME:A is not actually that bad all told. It slipped up in some major areas like presentation (most notably facial animations etc) and the main story is atrociously poor. Yet in many ways, it does what DAI tried to do and improves it across the board. The Nomad is fun to drive, the banter is good, the sidequests have more substance to them and the terraforming aspect gives you a legitimate reason to be there doing any of this.

And yet, it still pales next to the older games, because the tone is too light throughout and the narrative though strong at first with the need to colonize and rescue the project, never develops into something more meaningful, due to the woeful sub Halo style story with the dreary Remnant and Kett. The cast are unfairly maligned IMO, but they needed greater drama both from outside menaces and internal, rather than just being happy campers all the time.

MEA does a lot of things right, and those decrying the loss of the past would do well to remember that the formula was getting stale and if experiments like DA2, DAI and MEA don't get everything right, they are at least trying. To that end, I prefer MEA to ME3 which felt tired and unambitious in its dogmatic adherence to old formula. But there is plenty still to do. The game has shot itself in the foot with a very dull campaign and any dlc or sequel must provide a more credible and sensible story than the hokey antics of the Archon and his cronies. We need real intensity, real suffering, triumph over genuine adversity etc.

And we absolutely do not need Cerberus or the Reapers. New series remember?

This was a very wobbly start, but if Star Trek had stopped making movies with The Motion Picture, we'd never have got Wrath of Khan. Think about that - a world where WOK was never made... Can we afford to let this series end so soon and let something like that happen?

I said "characters we haven't been given a reason to care about", how the hell did you draw this conclusion from that? I'm saying that the story most sidequests have is paper thin and not engaging.

I like the game being open world, but instead of Bioware getting rid of it, they need to improve on making the world feel more alive. More travelers, areas changing because of in game choices,etc.

I feel the main story was stronger than you apparently do, and I feel like the Kett were the Collectors "done right."  I HATED the collectors in ME2.  A very stale, boring enemy.  I like the Kett because of the potential due to elements of their society that were hinted at but never seen in game.  The Senate?  Was the Archon just a rogue fanatic, obsessed with the Remnant, or was there more?

I won't say the Kett were the ultimate baddies, or the Archon all THAT terribly interesting, but the Kett were better than the Collectors, and Archon was better than Harbinger.  At least, in my opinion.

I will say, though, that overall I agree.  ME:A's story could have used some work.  But I definitely gave you a +1 for the Wrath of Khan reference.  ST: TMP was terrible, but ST: WoK was the best ST movie ever made.

I agree about the Senate stuff, but it was like they were saying 'This race has all sorts of cool lore... that we're not going to tell you about'. And giving them that exaltation nonsense makes them such obvious enemies. Its too extreme, because it removes any realistic prospect of peace, because along with their 'death by vivisection' stuff, they seem so utterly monstrous that armed opposition to them can be the only answer.

Plus it all just feels like Space Qunari, coming to convert us to their 'truth'. I'd much rather have had something like angelic enemies, like a race of winged aliens, elegant and deadly. Or something like from Call of Cthulu, yet with some of them being intelligent and willing to communicate. Something grander than endless hordes of cannon fodder led by 'I R the win, you R the suck!' wwe heel villains like Archln (and Harbinger for that matter).

Exactly. Patch 1.05 shut down the noise. They said, "Here! We're still Bioware you m*****f*****s."

Bartender, I'll have what he's having.

i really should have added my 'C' but off the top of my head the three quests i ran into like the one you described all had characters i cared about and emphasized with.

I dunno if it's "cool lore they're not gonna show us."  I'm hoping they use it to set up things in ME:A2.

What I KINDA hope, is that the Archon and the Kett in Heleus are kind of a renegade faction within the Kett empire.  That the "exaltation" stuff was an evolution of genetic modification the Kett were using to improve their own species through their own people.  Or that it's a means of increasing their own military might, maybe outside the "normal" kett standards of conduct, but hidden from much of the Senate or something.  I'd really enjoy a play off of Nazi Germany, but with a twist, where the military is the "evil bastards," and at least some of the "civilian leadership" is either unaware or trying to actively curtail military power or something.

Edit:  That sort of situation leads itself to multiple resolutions, depending on how we interact with them.  If we go in blindly, with the experiences from the Heleus Cluster, we could easily wind up in a pure war.  But, if we investigate and learn the "truth," we could be setting ourselves up for some form of peaceful resolution, albeit with possible consequences for our relationship with the Angara.

Obviously, that is ALL speculation, and I have no idea what Bioware is planning for them in the future.  But there IS a good deal about them that we don't know yet, and that makes them intriguing as an opponent.  I could very well be wrong and Bioware is setting them up just as you fear, as the irredeemable ultimate evil baddies, but I sure as hell  hope not.

the kett, at least in Andromeda, were more of a means to an end. I don't think they will get much more attention in sequels...which bugs me.