From what shinobi is saying it sounds like Andromeda is kinda like Inquisition combined with saaaay Mass Effect 2. Wherein you have a small handful of open zone planets, like Mass Effect 1 and Inquisition, which have an assortment of missions, activities, etc. You can spend a lot of time straight on one of these, visiting settlements, chasing big bads, taking over outposts, discovering stuff, going on missions, etc. And return to them. But there may also be smaller hand crafted specific zones either on space stations or other planets.
So it'd be like...land on one planet and it's kind of like Mass Effect's variation of Hinterlands (only hopefully more interesting!). And then you might also be able to land on another planet during a quest arc that take you to a specific outpost or facility, like the Cerberus base during Jack's loyalty mission.
That's kind of what I've been expecting since I heard there were loyalty missions.
Frankly, I think we all need to brace ourselves for the inevitable wave of people saying "IT'S JUST LIKE INQUISITION" if ME has anything that even smells like an open-world area.
It's unfortunate that Inquisition started with one of the more disjointed and MMOish open areas in the game in the Hinterlands. If it started in something like Exalted Plains or Crestwood, where there was a clear narrative hook for the entire area things would have gone a lot smoother.
Then again the one lesson that Bioware really, really needed to learn is that they should expect players to want to fully complete an area before moving on unless they're absolutely forced to do so. Having a few minor and limp reminders to move on is not enough to compel a player to leave an area, especially if you can easily conquer it by sheer bullheadedness.
If you want people to leave an area and come back later you either need to make the difficulty in the section you're supposed to return to be such a large jump that it's nigh impossible to brute force or actively lock it off until the player accomplishes certain tasks.
However I do think Bioware has learned some of its lessons, because I found the new area in Jaws of Hakkon, the Frostback Basin, to be one of the best areas in the game.
Returning to Mass Effect, I had really forgotten just how much I hated the fetch sidequests in ME3. You know, the ones you get from ambient dialogue and have no real interaction? I can't tell you the number of times I've been running around the Citadel and suddenly had a quest pop up and I realized I'd missed all the setup dialogue. Now, sure that stuff isn't Shakespeare, but it's world building I'd like to have.
At the same time, I'm really enjoying some the ambient stories that don't have quests associated with them. If you don't know what I'm talking about, there are a handful of throwaway stories that occur through ambient dialogue between characters on the Citadel that have multiple beats requiring you to return to the area multiple times to get the full fleshed out story. The most famous of these is the one in the hospital where the Asari relates the story of Joker's sister's death and her fears of the consequences.
I had noticed a few in my earlier playthroughs, but I'm trying to be more patient and noticing even more. Like the Human soldier going off to the front who is married to an Asari and trying to get her daughter back to Thessia but being blocked by red tape, or the little girl whose parents sent her off to the Citadel promising to meet her there. They're nice little bits of world building.
Other things that are annoying me: Once again, I'm reminded just how terrible the journal is. I'd love to know the story behind that one, because it was fine in ME1 and ME2 and suddenly we stepped back to practically Baldur's Gate 2 in terms of usability. Hopefully we have a functional journal in Andromeda.
I'd also love to know why they changed the menu to give one of the two largest and most prominent areas to the control scheme, while moving the journal off to the side and combining it with the codex. It still baffles me how they could break the menu that bad.
That being said, still really enjoying the game. Just caught up with Samara and Jacob and I think I'm about to do Omega before meeting up with the Quarians.
