So this is quite shocking when you think about it

I doubt it. Considering the reddit leak which mentioned vaults that open elite vaults they planned to make the game more sandboxy than it is now if anything else. Also there is the issue of trying to make procedural generated planets like NMS, implying anything but the mission structure of ME2 and ME3. Looking back at the change of direction, I think the game had a much shorter effective development cycle than 5 years, more like 1.5-2 at best.

Graphics in MEA was never an issue for me. Game looks amazing, performance on my 970 is absolutely stunning too. Average story, mostly uninteresting companions, lack of background music, some boring fetch quests - those are my issues.
But I still hope next patch can fix a lot - bugs I got on my NG+, maybe finally we will got back music during exploration and DLC - who knows, maybe we will get some new companion ?

Wrex never again looked as good as he looked in ME1; and no other krogan ever looked that way. (Maybe the latter was the reason BioWare changed it?) I was always disappointed that they moved away from that style. Drack is drab and faded because of age, so I'm okay with his coloring. You're right, though, that Wrex's ME1 coloring and "sparkle" were very cool. He is the single ultra-realistic thing in ME1, and continuously improved graphics have never surpassed it.

Edit: Also, sorry for jumping the gun on my initial reply. I didn't focus on the specifics of your post, but instead answered 100 past posts that I'd ignored. I shouldn't post so late at night. I notice that I start adopting the general internet snark a bit more.

It's only demanding because of incompetence on Bioware's part.  There is no reason that a game this average in the graphics department should be demanding at all.

The game has issues, but environments and backgrounds look incredibly stunning. The artists that worked on the planet/environments in general did a stellar job. In-game cutscenes (at least currently with my characters armor set) look absolutely amazing. In regards to the vid posted? I have played through Drack's Loyalty mission and i really have no complaints about how this game looks.

Even if the game was down-graded in some fashion it can be understood due to the scope and how big the game is.....graphics and performance tend to take a hit when you have all of the effects and processing in place. My complaints mainly come from a story that is a bit lacking and mission markers that at times are in some obscure hard to reach places and some side-missions that were boring fetch quests.

I have even tried to ignite "additional tasks" only to find they don't appear anywhere on the map. Not sure if that means i've missed an opportunity already or if it's an glitch, but there have been times where i would approach a planet and it would show me what missions are available, then when i get on the planet and try to initiate the mission, nothing happens....no mission marker or anything shows up.


Getting off topic tho....graphically for me, the game looks fine and incredibly stunning in parts...i had to just stop and look around at the visuals from time to time... 

CDUbiware? Damn those Canadians and Europeans. Downgrading my entertainment whose opportunity cost just doesn't compare to other so called "indie" developers. Oh wait, Hi! Hello Games! No Mans sky was amazing

That makeup job makes her look like a dead prostitute from the 1800s.

Don't forget they said they would update Sloan then we got a scarier version her who looked like she passed out drunk with her shoes on at a frat party

I can't tell if left is a young boy or woman

The only problems I have in terms of hardware are on Eos. For some reasons I suddenly get lags there. Game runs smooth and suddenly it turns into a slide show. Noone can tell me that Eos in itself is more demanding than the other environments. And I don't have top of the notch equipment in my rig. It seems like this planet was especially poorly optimized.

I've watched that video before. Even if they felt like reducing the quality in order to support low end systems, it's still no excuse for rolling back on facial expressions also. These don't demand additional resources.

My face is tired.