I tend to dislike the sense of forced diversity in stories as a story should be focused on telling a story rather than meeting a specific checklist to be politically correct. That said, at least in the comics, Kamala Khan was diversity done right. Her religion and cultural background were just a part of who she was rather than her existence feeling forced representation. The fact that she is likeable and relatable helped as well. If they can introduce her well, and Marvel has done pretty well with their movies, is will be a nice addition to the future MCU line up.
@H0RSE: What they are saying here isn't that the universe isn't fleshed out enough but they think its better to let everyone's personal headcanon to also be their official canon which is lazy narrative design. I would also point out that Overwatch started out as the MMO Titan and was in development for a good ten years at least. For a shooter its universe would be pretty well established.
@Barighm: The problem is that part of the fun of speculating is to try and predict what happened and pick out secrets of the story. If you have no set canon that speculating is a pointless exercise and loses it's engagement. Sure you might be wrong about your head canon but that is where you take the new information and work it into your existing theories.
@Wraith3: I am going to be honest. I have never seen anything indicating an official canon ending. However large scale story is really a core characteristic of the ME series. I enjoy ME for the sense of adventure, exploration and discovery.
I think I will agree to disagree with you on this. Regardless the noise from the devs is that neither of us are going to see any form of ME for quite a few years. They have completely shelved the IP. It sounds like ME:A isn't even going to get story DLCs.
@omnichris: There is very little need to drive around in Andromeda if you don't want to. The planets you visit they point out exactly where you need to go and there is nothing making you take side paths unnecessarily. Its all optional. Even the gathering is optional. You can get by perfectly fine with weapons you find or buy from stores. Most of the missions where you need to go off the track and gather resources in ME1 (which was only for quests) really didn't have much to them and had repetitive layouts and something at the end of the quest you clicked on that told you had finished.
I think a lot of people remember the earlier games with filters remembering realistically what they were like. ME1 was great particularly for its time, but it didn't have better quest design than ME:A. Hell most people seem to forget how mind numbingly boring scanning in ME2 was like and that was somewhat obligatory to upgrade your ship.
@Wraith3: Oh of course there are more stories that could be told but nothing on the same scale and really nothing continuing the Milky Way's story without invalidating a lot of players original play throughs (Things like who dies, what gets cured, which races survive). Even in ME:A they leave it unanswered. The Milky Way gets swept clean every 50 thousand years so we aren't likely to see relics of the past return to be a major thing, most of the major political conflicts existing already have been resolved one way or another and I don't really see them introducing a plot on the same scale that wouldn't mostly just be rehashing existing stuff.
It is hard to weave mystery and a sense of discovery into a setting like that and to me those qualities have always been a major part of Mass Effect.
@Wraith3: You mean the one where they will have to invalidate two of the ME3 endings and a galaxy where most of the biggest secrets in the galaxy are already revealed and practically all the loose ends from the original trilogy are tied up?
The whole reason they moved on is the Milky Way's main story has been done. The aftermath, regardless of the outcome, would probably be a lot of rebuilding and politicking and less fighting giant robot threats. The biggest point left over is the Leviathans and frankly that is a bit too similar to the reapers.
@smoke_dog_4ever: Actually the first game had large almost empty worlds. If anything ME:A was more of a call back to the first game. At least the Nomad was more manoeuvrable than the Mako. I am not sure I found ME 1's story particularly better either, just different.
The main difference is the old ME games weren't so open. You generally had series of corridors to walk down. While ME:A doesn't force you to go too much of the beaten track to finish the story, a good portion of the side content in the game is off that track.
@texasgoldrush: I agree with this. Andromeda actually had a pretty good story and pretty good characters. The main issue I had was it should have spent a bit less time hinting at what is coming in some future ME and focusing more on the events happening in the now.
That, the grindy quest structure and the animation/bug issues were the major problems. I would actually say ME:A handled none crew members with more detail than previous games.
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