Mac Walters is Lead Writer for Andromeda

Yeah, sure, traveling to Andromeda breaks what Mass Effect was special for which was the Relays and the sense of realism despite of how much of a fantasy it was. There's real weight to the feeling that we're only capable of going beyond Earth and our Milky Way galaxy thanks to the Relays which origins were unknown, but despite of being a terrible contrivance, rebooting the series where we "somehow" made it to Andromeda via unthinkable technology is just the only way the series can escape the hellhole of what the endings of ME3 did to the canon.

It's a chance to redefine a new sense of realism for this new setting taking place 400 years later, only, there's no feeling of home now because we can no longer compare humans or Earth in the same way to all the wonderful planets we go to or relatively feel close to real life's time line, so now it's full on fantasy-sci-fi. That's my biggest turnoff about this game and it has always been, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt. If it has good gameplay, it has good gameplay and if the story is great, the story is great. I don't need anything else.