I find it ironic that you complained about the side missions in ME1 and don't mind the side missions in this game. I have exactly the opposite problem (didn't care about them in ME1, drive me nuts in this game). so far, at least half of my side missions have been stupid fetch quests. There have been at least a couple of missions where I have literally walked into a room on the Citadel, pressed one button and then watched a 5 minute cinematic that completed the mission. WTF?
Multiquote fun. It drove me nuts in ME1 because in that game, you're literally chasing after someone and racing against time. In this game, even though, yes, Earth is being destroyed, it's understood by everyone involved that you're playing the long game, and while faster is better, there is no clock where an hour + or - really matters, it's all about getting everything you can. So the fetch quests are to bring in materials that help the war effort and the only time you're doing anything to the likes of checking up on a loved one, its because you were on a bigger mission when you happened to find a recording. This makes much, much more sense to me and its why I like it better.
Planet scanning is still mundane and boring, it's just less mundane and boring than it was in ME2. Also, the mouse sensitivity in it is HORRIBLE, at my current sensitivity that makes shooting functional (but not perfect) I move about an inch of screen space by moving the mouse across my entire mousepad. Yuck.
Yes, if you hold down the RMB it moves slowly, which is why you don't do that, tapping it only every once in a while to check the position. It shouldn't take more than 2 or 3 seconds to find any of the scans.
That's fine, but it's not really worthless if you are interested in the lore of the games. It's not that he adds a huge, branching, interesting storyline to the game, it's that his recruit mission contains a lot of information about the Protheans, enough so that he simply should have been a part of the main game and not a stupid DLC. Without question, you are missing a significant piece of the game with that not there.
That's a shame, but my understanding was more that he is mostly ignorant of anything important to the game. It does annoy me that they left him out, but not enough that I'm willing to cough up $10 for him. The game is full enough that I can't be bothered.
I feel like it's a LOT less control. It feels like you are picking cinematics to watch, not affecting the conversation. In the other games the dialogue options didn't change much, but at least there were enough of them that you felt like you were controlling the conversation. Of course, it got progressively worse because ME2 was closer to this than ME1.
I understand how you feel, but most of the choices in ME1 were fake choices anyways. You would pick a meaningful arc to the conversation and then everytime Shepard talked it would kick it back to you even though all you would ask was something like: why? It was silly. It's a definite change, one that emphasizes a kind of a third person distance rather than a tighter control over the character, but it doesn't seem out of place for me or like I've lost any real control. This one is going to vary a bit from person to person.
Like what? So far I haven't had to make any earth shattering choices other than ones that either gave me or didn't give me war assets...
I've enjoyed all of the main plot bits, from Udina to Mordin to the Rachni. I've also enjoyed that the Quarian mission keeps letting you make a choice and then completely ignoring it (depending on your choice). It feels appropriately frustrating.
Don't get me wrong, the game is imperfect (seriously, Bioware, HIRE SOME BETTER ANIMATORS), and falls prey to a lot of the problems that Bioware tends to repeat, (including some false choices, which one of the things I said above is) but I think it is probably the best of the series.
the rhetoric is so hyperbolic on all sides it seems people either love or hate ME3. and so much of it is based on expectations and pure fanboyism that I'm finding it difficult to get any kind of fair snapshot.
