Mass Effect 4: 12 Mistakes Bioware's Next Gen Sequel Must Avoid

6. ME3's Fetch Quest To Story Ratio

One of the biggest problems with ME3, even ignoring the ending, was the fact that it felt like "Fetch Quest: The Game." Because of the war assets minigame, just about every background NPC on the Citadel had a line of dialogue that would trigger a quest to find some item. That resulted in Commander Shepard flying the Normandy around solar systems, scanning for or retrieving items on or around planets, then flying back to the Citadel to give people stuff. It felt like 70% of the game on day one, thanks to the fact that there were barely any multi-map missions anywhere besides Tuchanka or the Citadel. Another complication was the fact that ME3's journal was inexplicably merged with the Codex and had crucial features removed. First of all, every mission wound up on the same list, which only served to disguise the fact that there were so few story missions. Second, there were no details reminding you what to do or of your progress, so you had no idea if you'd done any parts of the quest or where to even go. And third, there weren't any journal mission reminders on the galaxy map, so you'd constantly have to exit the map to figure out where to go to find the items. For ME4, Bioware Montreal needs to do two things to fix this mess. First, roll the journal back to ME2's system, which was the best one of the trilogy. Second, make more planets with missions on them. Even if most of them are procedurally generated vehicle sandboxes, it's better than flying around trying to deliver things for numerical rewards.