While I would LOVE to see these added.......not ever going to happen. All support stopped July 2017 after the online mobs showed up with pitchforks to roast the game. Some of it was deserved but a lot wasn't, and it resulted in EA cutting off funding and support early for the game.
As far as the budget goes....yeah, less that the ME SERIES but not so much from what I understand a standard ME game, it was just wasted often due to trying something beyond the capabilities of the studio that was trying to make the game. Not beyond Bioware, but beyond the Montreal(IIRC) studio of Bioware, who previously only did DLC and I think ME3 MP, not a full game. They had all these great ideas but couldn't pull them off, thus wasting a bunch of time and didn't have a good vision for what they could do.
Personally, I think they fell into the trap of trying to create a game to compared to ME series instead of trying to make one compared to ME1. They tried to do too much in the game.
1) They should have had less people trying to be love interests.
2) They should have made it setting up the Nexus and the first colony and exploring the surrounding area....maybe even dealing with the insurrection, Exiles, first contact with Kett and the scourge.
3) The time frame was off, 14 months was too short, so it should have been 5 years and MEA should have taken place in those years leading up to the first Pathfinder showing up on Hyperion.
4) They needed to go back and reread their character BIos and compare how they acted, because Vetra shouldn't have been a scoundrel background and Liam shouldn't have been a first in first responder/police action...their bios seemingly where backwards, in Vetra should have had Liams background and Liam should have had Vetra's.
But none of this is going to change, and it seems that EA/Bioware has cut off this limb and is going to try and forget it exists because by all appearances ME5 is back in the Milky Way with some sort of Shepard continuation or tie in.
