Some of my other thoughts are in a similar thread (Is is worth it, MEA?), and after I'd posted there, I started what is now my third playthrough. I find myself still frustrated by some of the same problems as before (I had some choice words for the inability to save in several crucial places) in what might have been design choices that were poorly made.
I'd said somewhere in the middle of my first playthrough that it's as if the developers never played the game end-to-end, so they didnt have any understanding about the annoyances. Like modules that were connected together, but no one took the trouble to actually play the game and find out that the whole was not greater than the sum of its parts, but instead, somewhat diminished by them.
Most of problems fall into one of the following categories: Plot, UI/quest, graphics, abandonware.
Plot - Well, for one thing, it's bound to never get finished, but the opening salvo on what could have been a new series was a misfire. So, if there were ongoing developments planned to make it seem less like Reapers 2.0, this was badly played as an opener. The relationships among the characters just feels rushed to try and reach a level of development that the previous characters took three games and several years to achieve. No more N7 (the one gets killed off) or Spectre (kind of a weak/bitter example of the group represented), but a Pathfinder who isn't picked for being the best of the best, or working hardest at being a Pathfinder (that was Cora) but because Dad popped off and you inherited an AI.
The UI....quest system is broken. Banter based on location and quest events keeps triggering long after. Since sometimes that is the only clue that some task is nearby (thanks for not burdening us with a quest marker for so many side quests which would have been useful), it's aggravating/misleading. You can't save your game half the time, likely because the game is silently trying to autosave all the time, which I think was a workaround for crashing, or other bugs. The "dynamic" UI buttons.... please. For the love of all things holy and right... don't make buttons move around when you are trying to click them. It's not cool, or slick, or anything else positive. Your brain spies a button and in-between committing to the act of clicking it, and actual click, it swoops away, and you have clicked some other button that took its place. Swooping is still bad.
Graphics - alright, so a lot of the release graphics issues were addressed before the development team was completely yoinked. We build shaders now, and tell jokes about when Addison looked like a clown, and my Pathfinder looked like she was constantly in a state of wide eyed shock. She still does, a bit... except now with weirdly black shaded eyeballs. You can't fix the disturbing sameness of the asari colonists though. I assume this was to reduce the amount of required resources, and they lacked customizable parts that could be randomized for each individual. Character appearance feels like a downgrade from the previous three games for both Ryder customization and NPCs.
Abandonware - if the widely reported production problems never came to light, it would still feel like the studio treated a top franchise with negligence. As if they didnt have to worry about the long run because they didnt want to continue Mass Effect, or didnt care. No quality control for what was released... we'll fix it later. Or not. Whatever. How do you release a game with such glaring problems if you actually care about the outcome?
Bioware may have fallen victim to their own success, in various ways. Surely after the ending of ME3 they realized that they could make a huge misstep when it game to the people that bought and played their games. But, no... They set their own bar for what made an excellent game, and couldn't clear it. Were our expectations of a fourth ME game too high? If any other studio had produced this game, would we be as disappointed?
As far as if any other studio had produced this would we still be disappointed?? Well, I will assume you are talking top line AAA studios and not an Indie one, but....
Story...no, If Beth, Ubi, or many others I would have been happy to see a story this to a point well written to try and mesh characters, action and exploration. Problem is Bioware made their name on doing exactly this, and this product was decent, needed fleshing out and not up to their standards.
Graphics....yes and no....the planets, most aliens and general stuff are beautiful and you can see the effort and care SOME things are given. The issue is either the engine, the use of the engine or just lack of skill in TOTAL that creates the issue. When main characters, such as Addison, and Female Ryder have such GLARING issues it creates a disconnect to the game. When you can see an obvious effort to NOT make female characters good looking, it creates a disconnect in a Sci-Fi/Fantasy game. When characters do wonky things cause the engine is borked, it creates a disconnect. And while pretty other stuff can hide some things, the obvious disconnect stuff wouldn't be tolerated in just about ANY game dev. You have a Battle Field game and your character "break dances" either in a cutscene or moving around the map and it isn't acceptable on a AAA title. When you want to cuss and jerk back from the screen because of the weird facial animations or looks of characters it isn't acceptable from an AAA dev.
Quest....yes and no...it was almost like they couldn't decide if they wanted a more Morrowwind style quest system where stuff is in your Journal and you found stuff through exploration or if they wanted a more ME2/Skyrim system where markers lead you to everything....either is fine, but require different support when doing them, and this made many quests seem broken when actually they were just not handled properly. And yeah, some were broken.
All in all, it isn't a bad game, it is actually fairly decent if you just look at it from a stand alone point and not expect ME trilogy quality from it. I agree with you in that yeah, I don't think anyone ever played it beginning to end....and I think that was because of the troubles in production. Most of this can be laid directly at Bioware's management's feet in dropping this title on a production studio that wasn't ready for it and didn't include any truly experienced oversite people to watchdog them. At the end you can tell from stories and the final game, someone came in, kicked butt enough to get the product out the door, but failed to really check the product or maybe just didn't want to delay it any. The game is a story of ALMOSTS....it is almost a great game, the studio could almost handle it, it was almost ready for release, and it almost had a chance to be supported longer.
Almost is sad, cause I can see what it COULD have been with just a bit more work and polish, plus a few DLCs.
