Don’t stress about doing all the side stuff if you’re not enjoying it. The Mako is kind of fun to drive around until flips over, but the places where you use it were built out of repeatable code and procedurally generated assets (not randomized but procedural) to fill in the game a bit. What kind of RPGs are you used to playing? Mass Effect is the progenitor of a lot of tropes in the genre, and the way it flows from scene to scene, or doesn’t, as per your criticism, is pretty common for the era outside of Bethesda games. In fact, I’d still argue most games are better off with the load screens and without the open world design, especially one where you’re traveling between planets like this. And what else were you hoping for besides the city hubs and combat areas? That’s probably informed by the other RPGs you’ve played as well.