The characters in Andromeda were better to me than the husks from the first game. Part of that might be due to just how much our expectations have changed after ME2 and 3 (especially seeing those characters develop in the next two games) but I do agree with you on that.
Moreover, the game was designed that way because that was the restriction :/
After my most recent playthrough of the trilogy I actually contemplated writing a retrospective and on my notes for ME3 I literally wrote "Everything has been appropriated for WAR" and it's no lie, because if you listen to interviews with the staff they constantly talk about how they used WWII movies as reference for it and at E3 they marketed it as "Full scale, galactic war!"
Reporting back. Only 2hrs in, but I'm enjoying it already.
Pretty much the same
I love Bioware games. (I have almost 1000 hrs into DA:I)
I was actually reading the start of this myself when doing some research, just last week. Granted, I do have very strong opinions and thoughts on the series myself, a lot of it based on known facts and not assumptions, but it'll probably help knowing I'm not writing something that's not already been said. Hey, I may get into Youtubing over this idea lol.
They always seem to adress the biggest criticism at face value whilist taking two steps backwards. It's like "Boo, the Mako handled poorly, those planets were too empty." and the response was "here's a game WITHOUT the Mako! Way more linear, less sense of space, yay!" and then people were like "Boo, Shepard feels like a static brick! He has no character arc!" and the response was "Hey, here is Shepard WITH 100% LESS INTERACTIVE CONVERSATION." It's pretty frustrating to be a BioWare fan when they keep disappointing your expectations like that, but I guess you gotta cut somewhere to meet demand. For what it's worth, I considered DA2 and DA:I to be on the same level with DA2 offering an interesting, focused narrative with good reactivity and Inquisition offering lots of choice and customization in a much more generic plot. Once again, they did actually do exactly what people asked for but it just came with another load of downsides.
I went through 95% of this game feeling very alienated and dissatisfied despite the graphical enhancements and improved combat. You can't holster, there's no sense of exploration in levels and all levels start by dropping you into a linear series of shooty bang bang with "WAR" as the backdrop. I think ME3 impressed me in one big area: The depiction of impending doom and the unfathomableness of the Reapers (before the ending that is). I was actually kinda ok with Harbinger not being there to trash talk you and the sense of darkness in the game was legit, but perhaps also a bit inconsistent with earlier games which isn't a good thing IMO. If improvement means completely abandoning the style and direction you previously stuck with, in a trilogy no less (note, Trilogy isn't the same as "it's 3 games", it's a descriptor to say that all 3 games share a common premise) it probably wasn't the way to go but they did it anyway, and EA probably forced them to incorporate more combat-heaviness for marketing as well as the gun-modification system because that was also just in Dead Space 3 at that time.
Sure, ME2 and ME3 feel more similar to each other than ME1 to ME2 or ME3 does, as far as game-design is concerned IMO. However, I found there to be not only a shift in subtle design-changes in 3 such as the massive increase in autodialogue and loss of player agency but also the style of the writing or maybe just the quality of it. ME2's dialogue felt like something out of a good professional screenplay. ME3 had moments that really felt like fanfiction to me and otherwise just characters suddenly not being truthful to how they used to be portrayed (Udina is a big one, Illusive Man too, even Samara does something I couldn't believe) it just made me groan constantly and somehow ME2 despite its floundering main plot had me invested and fully immersed in the world and how believable it was. It also kept characters except maybe Liara feeling very consistent to how they were written in the first game.
