// As much as I like the concept and fantasy of an open-world RPG game, in most cases, I think it usually ends up hurting the narrative. It adds weird gaps between story arcs and tends to take away the sense of urgency during important missions. I like the hybrid of smaller explorable hubs & zones.

I think it works for some games, especially games like Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m not saying Mass Effect couldn’t ever pull it off but the amount of development time needed to really flesh out a game like that needs a patient publisher, which EA is not.