Though I'm not saying that I know what they're doing, and that it is necessarily a bad and evil thing. That's what I believe, but it is hardly a fact.

However, based on how they removed the "guff" in ME2, I think my opinion is the correct one. Because of what they removed, we have no weapons, armor, or ammo that can be bought. Furthermore, look at the storyline. It's a joke. I can go into detail about why it is a joke, but I couldn't take it seriously even the first time I played it. So character customization took a hit, the storyline took a hit, and only the shooting element of combat improved.

And ME3 promises to be more of the same... So what "guff" is there to remove? The planet scanning, yes, but what else? The only things left are character interactions, NPC interactions, exploring, and storyline. Frankly, if I wanted to play a shooter, I would play Call of Duty or Halo, or even Gears of War, all of which will always be better at shooting than Mass Effect... Until the day Mass Effect sheds its rpg title altogether.

I, for one, would welcome the removal of "guff" in the form of countless datapads dropped by mercenaries about how they talked to this other mercenary that said this, and how another mercenary intends to betray the second, and blah blah blah... I appreciate their efforts to give the sidequests storylines, but I would have appreciated it more if they gave the main quest a decent storyline instead, especially since no one will remember what happened in the sidequests anyway.