I just finished playing through Andromeda during this last week's free Origin Access trial period, and I thought it was awful, to be honest. The script that has all the characters talking like cheesy sitcom characters, the fake dialogue choices that only let you choose between 'yes' and 'yes, but obnoxiously', the bizarre doubling down on ME3's much-reviled space magic bullshit to the point where the Remnant make the Protheans look like cro-magnons bonking things with stones. Every quest has you ping-ponging from planet to planet, sitting through load screens and burning ton after ton of space fuel to have NPCs drop three lines of dialogue on you instead of just calling you on your goddamn space phone. None of your squad can die, you can't miss any of them, they won't argue with eachother; they won't even argue with you. Forget ideological differences; everyone just idolises you from moment one, and can't wait to flirt back when you pick the romance dialogue options, now helpfully marked with all the subtlety of poking your finger through your other finger and thumb and winking.
I don't think anything gets worse than the Angaran First Contact scene. You travel across the universe, find your way to a mysterious planet with an unknown race of sapient beings. How will you speak to them? How will your culture's co-exist? What will this event mean for your two races. Surely this will prove one of the most remarkable days in history for both sides? No, actually these motherfuckers just stroll out and greet you in perfect English, then with all the pomp and circumstance of a low-key job interview you get walked down a couple of corridors to a bland office and palmed off onto some schmuck who immediately launches into generic RPG quest-giver speech patterns and sends you on your way with an "Oh, we'll help you out, if you complete these three tasks for us". How the mighty have fallen.
It's so disappointing to watch every successive Mass Effect game focus more on the combat and less on the RPG-ing, to the point where Andromeda has a story and villain about as memorable as a D-tier superhero movie, and almost no consequence because it has barely any meaningful choices to begin with. Who gives a shit about choosing one Asari Pathfinder candidate over another when every alien in this game has the same face model? You can't even rely on the Loyalty Missions to have tough choices, because most of them leave the choice-making to the squad mate themself and leave you to just sit there, watching the game play itself, thinking of better times...
