In this quoted post, the first paragraph is a fair, but positive characterization of some of TW3's quests, while the second paragraph is an overly reductive characterization of some of ME:A's quests. Someone else (Deadly Parasite?) already touched on this either here or in the community thread, but a lot of ME:A's side quests can easily be characterized the way you're characterizing TW3's quests. So we're back at a "feeling" where the Witcher stuff "feels" important, or you "care" whereas with ME:A even though the level of exposition/story is similar, but you don't "care".
Granted a lot of people are saying this, so they probably fucked up somewhere (not sure if it's more than just some of the awkward delivery and animations; TW3 had these factors too but probably not as severe). But on the whole I'm not seeing the vast gulf many are implying. ¯\_(ツ_/¯
It's sort of a hard thing to articulate, because I think a lot of it is that the writing in TW3 is just straight-up better (with the standard disclaimer about this sort of opinion being subjective) - subtler, wittier, more sophisticated, more surprising, more character-appropriate. It often nails the tone, too, in a way that ME:A does not. Think of how your first meeting with the Nilfgaardian emperor feels like something out of film noir, or how the Bloody Baron questline has the flavor of an old-school fairy tale (y'know, the morbid kind) or even a Southern Gothic story, or how one questline gives you a kind of Victorian murder mystery in a big, fascinating city. Nothing in ME:A has that sense of place, or of menace, or of strangeness, which is pretty damning in a game set in another galaxy. Did first contact with the
Angara or Kett
In TW3, NPCs speak in wildly different styles, depending on who they are. Peasants use simple, often crude language; Dijkstra is equally foul, but his dialogue sparkles with intelligence and wit; the Bloody Baron speaks in language that is simultaneously grand and lowbrow ("in this hole, this reasty mire... what could go right here?"); and everyone uses Witcher-world idioms that seem authentic. Characters whose first tongue is a foreign language speak differently than natives. Can ME:A say the same? Its six companion characters, Kumail-Nanjiani-the-salarian, and a few other notables are distinctive, but I felt like the vast majority of NPCs speak the same generic blather, making them nearly indistinguishable. Few characters have distinctive syntax or diction. A futuristic society should have its own dialogue style and distinctive idioms (in fact, being drawn from many different worlds, it should have many such styles), but nearly everyone speaks English like they're buying a latte in Brooklyn.
Also, as I think I've said before (forgive me if I'm being tedious), the effects of presentation are hard to overstate. The vast majority of ME:A sidequests have no frills whatsoever - default camera angles, forgettable voice acting, minimal cutscenes. Because the player is accustomed to the higher level of polish in the main questlines, these deficiencies scream "NOT IMPORTANT" at the player, and the player checks out. I don't care how good you are at writing - *no one* can make a quest presented this way have any serious impact on the player if said player has been conditioned to expect a certain style of presentation in the rest of the game. TW3 has some visual bugs, but its sidequests have always had hand-designed camera angles and editing, and the effect of this on their ability to intrigue, surprise, and move the player is difficult to overstate. In fact, I think ME:A's animation bugs are a red herring. If it had precisely the same bugs but also quests with high-quality camera direction and facial animation, I suspect that most players would find them much more engrossing.
I feel a little bad using TW3 as a chair leg to beat on ME:A, simply because I consider it something of a high point in AAA RPG writing, and it's not fair to insist that every new game match or improve upon it. But I think it's a useful point of comparison, being the game that proved – to me, at least – that open-world RPG and affecting, highly-scripted narratives were not mutually exclusive things.
