re: Mass Effect Andromeda

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I didn't play long into Mass Effect but wasn't it already open?

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yes, but in a very well-done way. now it's gonna be like MGS/Far Cry/Dragon Age where you drive a truck around planets looking for giant question marks in addition to the main quest

having structured hubs and meaningful sidequests is paramount to proper narrative pacing. you want John Smith to do some sidequests and then have a main quest open up, then some more sidequests that tie into main quest, then another main quest mission. do it like Deus Ex or Witcher 2. when you just blot the map with ?s, you get people that just want to do them all before going back to the main quest and it ruins the pacing.

it wouldn't be so bad if the side quests were more than Woman approaches you to find husband -> find husband's corpse -> return and tell woman -> get a ring or some stupid shite. you can only clear so many caves or close so many rifts before it gets stale. well-done sidequests have big self-contained arcs or one-off/two-off arcs that tie into the main story and give background or world-build