Mass Effect Trailer Breakdown: Shepard’s 100% Returning -

I saw that video the other day. Don't need a parallel universe for Shepard to return. Having Shepard return would not be hard to do.

I just did that a few minutes ago. You know what I saw? The grass is getting tall. I will mow my lawn tomorrow. 

I suppose you think your high EMS Destroy Shepard is alive and well... but let me ask you this, how long has it been since Shep drank a Tupari? More than 3 days?

If nothing else, I enjoy Atharia's high quality productions, the fact that she has a sense of humor about Andromeda, and the fact that she is very adamant that These Are All Just Theories, Don't Take Them Too Seriously. Easily one of the most engaging ME YouTubers out there right now.

Here is my trailer analysis: They tried to put together some cool looking space scenes amd reused some art assets here and there to do it a little cheaper. Analysis ends. At the time the trailer was put together, they themselves probably only had a very vague idea what exactly the game was gonna be about, if they even have an idea today. Given the writing chops we've seen on display from BioWare in recent years, I'll be glad if they put together a half way coherent story actually, forget about deep references to obscure ME lore or anything like that. When Andromeda was in production, we fans came up with some great ideas how one could have put the Initiative into Andromeda with high stakes and believable methods and what they chose to go with in the end was the geth gluing 3 relays together for some handwavey FTL telescope and then using a retconned type of "Odyssey Drive" that completely destroys the whole logivc of the reaper cycles. I will certainly not get my hopes up for some super well thought out story for the next one, that's for sure.

That's just my cynical 2 cents.

Good sci-fi has rules that it sticks to - if it doesn't it loses a lot of suspense because there can always be the next ass-pull that saves the day and the audience never really knows if the characters involved are truly in danger in a given situation or if it's just a setup for the next rule of cool moment.

Good characters and story and good setting and adhering to its rules complement each other.

And great sci-fi is not afraid to breaks it owns rules to tell a great story: Star Trek, Dr. Who, Star Wars, Transformers, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men, Babylon 5, Farscape all broke the rules of their respective universes when they had too, sometime the results are classics that redefine the characters and their universe and others are crap that are best left forgotten. If you don't take, chances and try new creative directions then they get stale and boring and lose interest that is what happened to all of those franchises at various times over the decades.