Joe actually made an excellent point in his review regarding one issue that few highlight, but something I noticed when playing. The conflict between listening to all of these NPCs and playing with other players in a party.
I remember playing through some story missions with a group of friends and we all had a bunch of NPCs to talk to after each mission. So many NPCs that we had to start asking each other which ones are we talking to and if we're done talking to them. There comes a point in this multiplayer setting where you don't want to force your friends to wait on you if you're trying to care about the characters and the world of this game, and then everyone just ends up skipping all of the dialogue and cutscenes.
If it wasn't bad enough that this half-assed attempts at including these conversations were included enough as it is just to have some semblance to the Bioware game of old, they're just a waste of time in this kind of game. But what sucks about it is that in order to get bonus points for the factions and unlock features for them, you gotta talk to them. Fort Tarsis is nothing but pressing a skip button over and over again. Running around at a slow ass pace, and skipping a bunch of dumb dialogue.
So much time is wasted in this game, and for little in return as a looter shooter.
This was a huge issue for me. The game had extremely poor way of dishing out its 'radio-call-NPC-story'. Both in terms of how it could just be shared in any situation without regard for combat scenario/friend chatter/etc, and also in terms of just general delivery of the performances.
When compared to something like Mimir's implementation in God of War, the difference in quality of execution is literally worlds apart.