@EgoMania wrote:
Yeah, I dunno Fred. Though valiant attempts, you still have to basically make the past forgotten because you have 3 of them. Three possible futures is one thing since they haven't happened yet as the game ends with that choice.
But 3 different pasts is a little harder to explain so you'll have to make it all go away and I think a lot of people will complain about it. I mean the whole Shepard story would have to be more obscure than the Protheans ever were.
Ideally you'd need some cataclysmic event that makes the previous 3 possible pasts irrelevant for one and the same reason and not different ones and this event would have to wipe out any knowledge except perhaps the most rudimentary bits to ensure it all at least looks like one past.
And then you'd have to explain how this cataclysmic event didn't wipe out life till the point of extinction because if people survived, why would they've forgotten the past?
It's just all a bit too iffy in my view to even touch for them.
For the most part this is easy to get around, because, one way or another, the Initiative seems to have been wiped from the Milky Way's collective awareness by the time of ME3, so the only ones still aware of the necessary tech and stuff are black-ops intel types like Liara, who, if they decide to temporarily resume ark missions, can, and probably will, do it in secret, which means that when they once again stop sending arks it will be a permanent finish, and we won't have to worry about continuous MW updates.
As for real-time contact between Andromeda and the Milky Way, it will be 600-1000 years in the MW's future, it won't matter what things looked like at the end of the Reaper War, just what they look like now.
As for the Andromeda tangent, well, the Heleus cluster has become a bit of a cluster f*** in my view so we also need to get away from the Ryder story. I just don't think that the Pathfinder angle really worked.
From what little we gather about the Kett, they are a lot like the Roman Empire, and Helius is essentially Britannia, semi-explored, semi-controlled, restive, and full of problem children. The governor has aspirations to Caesarhood and a personality cult, his second in command is either power-hungry or a hardcore pro-republic patriot (e tu Brute), at least one of his generals is a sadistic SOB out for Caesarhood himself, and sooner or later there are going to be legions turning up to ask some pointed questions.
Now that the governor has gotten himself killed by an unlikely alliance of Celts and Viking settlers, it remains to be seen what will happen as factions of imperials and barbarians squabble for power.
Maybe we can start at a point where the AI has fallen apart with some Kett wars and the new protagonist is leading what's left of the survivors to the area where the Remnant originated to start over. The Quarian ark would've already arrived so we have the old races back on board as well and we would've lost a big battle with the Kett that we just escaped from but as the Kett would've suffered significant losses they don't have the momentum to pursue us.
Then in this new refuge (the old home of the creators of the Remnant who have died out ages ago) we discover that they already experimented with creating life and we find more local races that are perhaps a bit more flawed and we can decide to help them evolve, survive, or even fight them. That way we could sort of build a new cluster of alliances, or occupation or destroy some of them to see how we can build the strongest society to fight the Kett who one day will find us and try to take revenge on us no doubt.
Perhaps you lead people to freedom from the Kett but politics started brewing even before arriving and while you are out trying to strike new alliances, subjugate people or whatever you see as right, you may find your own people splitting in factions and depending on your choices they will side with you or be against you.
I would like the idea of having a power base that's split that you try to go along with you but they won't all play nice and they will also form their opinions based on your decisions in dealing with other races on new planets and in general. So you're basically trying to build two alliances at the same time: your home base and between the planets if you know what I mean.
This setting could be used as much for a new single player game as a mmo style game if that's the idea for the future. In that respect it could even open up playing different races and not just genders as anybody could be the one who lead us to relative safety.
So maybe people find this a terrible idea and that's ok lol, but I think that BioWare may not be keen on revisiting the Shepard era. Hence my attempt to give Andromeda another chance but in a way that might make it more interesting (well that's my personal view of course hehe).
I like the idea of a fractured power base as well, forcing you to pick sides and forge what alliances you can to keep going. I think that in many ways that was something Andromeda was sort of working towards, with a lot of the decisions you made on different missions. This was probably supposed to play out in MEA2, with you having to try and keep alliances with as many of the 6-7 capitals as you could.
The rest of your ideas would make a great game, but it would almost make more sense for them to be a separate game as MW refugee arks arrive in another Kett occupied cluster.
