Going to the Milky Way in Sequels

Who said anything about cleaning them up? BioWare should just declare them non-canon. They wouldn't be the first RPG developer to relegate official canon into apocrypha.

Eidos, for example, disregarded the endings of Deus Ex: Human Revolution when they made the sequel. Did people bitch and moan about their preferred ending not being catered to? No, they were just happy to play as Jensen again.


If it was really over, people wouldn't still be talking about the endings. BioWare are certainly not over it, since they're building their entire new game around them.


Because the ME we remember and loved for 2.5 games was the ME set in the Milky Way, not the pale, 2.5 million light year distant imitation BioWare is trying to shove down our throats.


No, but I visited Palaven, Tuchanka, Sur'Kesh, Rannoch and many more places, forming various emotional attachments to each one of them and the people that inhabited them. Oh, and I've actually, physically visited Earth - and I have a sneaking suspicion you may have, too.

Andromeda, on the other hand, is just a distant speck of light inconsequential to everything in our lives, real or virtual. It's something that makes sense visiting millions of years into the future when there is nothing more in the Milky Way to discover.


Yes they do, literally everything we did in those 2.5 games was to save those planets from becoming lifeless gravestones as a testament to our dead civilization. We formed emotional attachments to these places, and to the people who lived there. The Milky Way meant something to us because it's not just the setting of Mass Effect in-game, it's also where we live IRL. The Milky Way galaxy is OUR galaxy, and as Mass Effect players we're more consciously aware of that fact than we may think, that we're playing in OUR galaxy, not a shitty frisbee of light and gas 2.5 million light years away.


No, it won't. And if this is your quintessential Mass Effect experience, I feel sad on your behalf. Andromeda would be a fine setting if the premise on how and why we get there made sense... but it doesn't, so it's not a fine setting.


But it's not going to be Mass Effect. Yes, it will be called Mass Effect, but it will be a hollow imitation of what Mass Effect is. No one has any kind of emotional attachment to Andromeda, and the fact that the situation in the Milky Way is left unresolved just means fans are going to wonder how the hell the inevitable outcome of said situation is going to affect the colonists in Andromeda - after all, if the Reapers win, will they chase down the refugees all the way to Andromeda to finish the job? Or if the galactic civilization wins, will they attempt to make contact with their distant relatives and tell them it's safe to return home?

ME:A is just BioWare's next step in their years-long effort to ignore the elephant in the room.


But that's not what Mass Effect is about. Mass Effect was about saving OUR galaxy from the Reapers - to undo the Fermi Paradox. It was not about jerking around in other, distant galaxies doing pointless things. The natural story progression of Mass Effect is to see how the Milky Way civilization evolves without the suppressing influence of the Reapers, not to galaxy-hop in search of meaningless activities to do.

Even DA:I which everyone compares ME:A to was a direct continuation of the previous game's story - not in terms of the player character, but in terms of the setting. It was the continuation of the story of Thedas.

By the look of things right now, ME:A will turn out much the same way No Man's Sky did. A pretty but repetitive waste of everyone's time. Is that what you want Mass Effect to be about?

The Geth are my favorite race in Mass Effect, so I would say they hold a lot of value. I'm hoping they show up in MEA. If not, they may as well have made Destroy canon since then what is the difference between that and Andromeda? 

Make destroy canon or add another ending. Have a ME keep like a DA keep. Now lets have that game in the Milky Way. excellent

The lore was already destroyed. Time to use space magic to do something useful for a change.

And where are you getting this EC made things ambiguous thing from? Wasn't the whole point of the EC to explain and clarify this shit? Did you miss the part with all the speeches and the slideshows? If anything the original ending was better for continuing because it was just a magic space wave of varying colors where we didn't actually see anything happening. Shepard could've flown the Reapers into the sun in that ending and no one knew anything about what the green shit was supposed to do. The relays were destroyed but things being destroyed and rebuilt in the sequel is something no one has batted an eye at in any franchise.

So no, there is no going back. Only forward.

How many people bitched at/about Deus Ex to begin with? Do you realize which fanbase you're dealing with? Wanna look at TOR and Revan for how people respond to canonization of their character/game? At least there they should've expected it because it's Star Wars.

And these people still talking about the endings are the ones you want to flip the bird to one more time? What, was twice not enough? And no, like I said, they're doing the opposite of building a game around them, they're dumping them and going to play somewhere else.

And? Again, who the fuck cares what the stars/planets our pixels move around in, are called? You think people sunk hundreds of hours and untold playthroughs in this series because "omg dat Horsehead Nebula?" No, they sunk the hours because "mah waifu" and "dat ass" and "I should go". All of that will be present in Andromeda in some form.

Oh you mean for the one to three missions you had on each of those worlds? Dirt world (which we didn't even get to go to), dirt world, kinda jungle-y world, dirt world and oh a few more dirt and grass worlds? Please. You liked them when they were first introduced, you'll probably like the new ones just the same.

As opposed to the places you just mentioned... that are also distant specks of light (in case you haven't noticed, space is big) and also fictional.

Deep breath.

The. Planets. Do. Not. Matter. They're fictional balls of dirt (and generic, to boot) with precisely zero intrinsic relevance. The species, they do matter- but they're also being preserved. We have asari and krogan confirmed. I'm sure we'll see the other major species soon as well. If we lose some, yeah that'll be a loss, but better than losing all of them I think. And losing all of them is what would happen if you would chain us to this ruined setting.

Oh and the Milky Way being our galaxy also means precisely dick, because again, we haven't experienced any of it for ourselves. Random stars we have not and probably never will see are as good as any others. "Man I sure hated Star Wars and all those other sci-fis that weren't set in the Milky Way" - said no one ever.

If you step back from the inflated importance people put on their associated headcanon, you'll find it's the same for you too. The "Bioware formula" isn't complicated at all. It's actually so simple it's devious. Get people to choose from a limited set how they relate to characters and state that in-game. That's it. That's what's at the heart of every romance, bromance and character support thread. That's the sole reason you give a shit about any of this. Take that away and it's generic sci-fi plot number 137.

And how we get there makes sense enough, we've got enough technobabble and space magic (in small doses) to make it happen.

Oh I'm sorry, but just get over it. Bioware is not going to mail you a hand-written apology. They fucked up, they're not apologizing, they're trekking through and they're being somewhat careful not to piss off people even more. That's it.

The trilogy is over. Everything is resolved, despite it not being to (most of) our satisfaction. The Reapers are done, regardless of the colors you picked and you got a nice little slideshow of how everyone lived happily ever after (or not so much). It's over. Move on.

This is something new, in the same vein, for you to get attached to. And again, one galaxy is as good as another.

No, Mass Effect was about saving the people. And you did save the people. An impressive amount of the people, if you played your cards right. But like I said, it was the people and choosing who you wanted to marry, kill, bang is all that ever mattered. Everything else was backdrop to that, interesting at times, but merely facilitating those interactions. That's not to say that there wasn't excitement, action, drama, tension and overall cool stuff outside just dicking around with your squad/random NPCs. There was. But the reason you cared so much, the reason you really got invested the way you did was the character interaction and how it seemed like people interacting, not stick figures or plot points colliding.

Characters have always been Bioware's strength and you can be damned sure they'll do their best to get you as immersed in these characters as we were in the last. That is provided you choose to come in with an open mind (like you did in ME), instead of remaining hostile and derisive for no warranted reason. I'm no biodrone, and I've had my kicks calling them out on their shenanigans (quite belligerently at times). And even though my faith in this new game isn't the greatest, I still acknowledge it for what it is- a new beginning, and a new chance to do it right. By all means, don't forgive them for ME3. I know I don't. But shitting on this new game out of spite and an unfounded refusal to accept change isn't the way to do it either.

The Catalyst didn't advocate that choice, it merely stated that the Crucible allowed for that option. It doesn't recommend it however because "The peace will not last" and thus is provides Shepard with two more options that it views as being far more acceptable, Control followed by Synthesis.

If we look at this as the Catalyst logically listing solutions from worst to best (in it's opinion), that explains why it shows a slight distaste for the Destroy option, seems to consider the Control option as relatively acceptable (Shepard 2.0 supplants him as the new MCP), but gives a ringing endorsement and has a full sale's pitch prepared for Synthesis.

(As for shooting the tube, it was likely some kind of capacitor or breaker to control the power flow between the Crucible and the Citadel, which is why it only fired after it was destroyed. The system was probably built to bypass it in that eventuality, thus allowing the full energy from the Crucible to finally power up the Citadel section and fire the energy beam)

The same way that your neighbour's wife, house or car doesn't belong to you, even if they do have familiarity by association?

All jesting aside, I do understand the point what you're getting at. Once we're in Andromeda it's only natural the characters (and audience) would become connected to it and that's a huge reason to care about the setting, characters and events that all take happen there.

It'd be interesting to see how many characters Milky Way go native, those who feel homesick or those who feel like they're outsiders? There would be those whom might feel that Andromeda will never be "their" galaxy, even if it has become their new home? Will the Milky Way species be welcomes or ostracised in this new galaxy by the natives?

Will some insane Andromedans propose building some kind of "giant space wall" to try and keep the undocumented alien refugees from the Milky Way out? I mean, they don't know the type of people we're sending, Krogans, Salarians, Humans... and some of them may be good people?

(Seriously, if Bioware doesn't have the stones to include some kind of allegory for immigration in MEA, that's would be a seriously wasted opportunity. The largest exodus and mass migration in history is the friggin' premise of this game, so having the Milky Way species being treated with suspicion, fear and bigotry by certain native species would be very poignant and reflective of similar events that have happened and are happening in our own world.)

Okay,I'm still buying Andromeda.

I'm preordering the game because I said I would and I'm curious about the beginning of the game. The explanation of the how/why/when/who is what I'm interested in.

I agree that if going back to the Milky Way would be one reason why I would buy the game.

My bad.

Because we did not evolve there? Because we don't consist of matter that originated there?


With the exception of hydrogen, every last atom in your body originated from now dead stars in the Milky Way galaxy. You do not contain even a single particle that came from a dying star in the Andromeda galaxy.

That's why the Milky Way is "our" galaxy. We ARE the Milky Way.


Because the premise doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It contradicts itself and the games that came before it. I enjoy non-traditional sci-fi as much as the next guy, but I expect authors to develop a believable and sound premise, regardless of genre, especially when it's supposed to build upon an already existing franchise. BioWare have failed to do so.

Because the premise fucking sucks. They put zero effort into it. Andromeda is not a well-developed idea, it's a barebones quick fix to enable the devs to make more Mass Effect games (read: more profit) without pissing off Mac Walters.

Narratively, it's a mess. The trilogy is set in a time period where the technology to make intergalactic journeys don't exist. The Codex made this very, very clear. Space travel is incredibly difficult, which is the whole reason why the Mass Relays exist.

The trilogy is also set in a time period where less than 1% of the stars in the galaxy have been explored. There is no impetus to explore other galaxies because we've barely begun to explore our own backyard. In other words, the idea of travelling to Andromeda is financial and practical nonsense. No nation, company or group of people with more than two brain cells are going to look at this proof of concept and go "Yeah, we should totally waste a bunch of money and resources on this pipe dream."

"But wait!" Says BioWare, "They're fleeing the Reapers. That's why they bother going there. This isn't about exploration, but about survival."

Ignoring for a moment that a survival instinct doesn't magically invent the required technology for said survival to occur, why flee to a galaxy 2.5 million light years away when the Magellanic Clouds, two perfectly good galaxies, are located a mere 150,000 and 200,000 light years away, respectively.

"But they're irregular galaxies, life is less likely to exist there." Actually, they're not irregular galaxies, but even if they were, what would it matter when the colonists can simply terraform planets into habitability? The existence of native life has no bearing on their ability to colonize a new homeworld.

"Yes but we need native life so we can introduce more alien species players can meet." But that's not the fucking purpose of the exodus, the point is to preserve the species of the Milky Way, not to mingle with new aliens.

And take a moment to remember what BioWare forced down our throats in the endings: all life eventually develops synthetics that kills their creators. Andromeda had no Reapers to suppress the creation of genocidal AI's, so it is either an organic graveyard or a synthetic super empire or both. According to BioWare's own logic, it would be an even less safe place to colonize than a Reaper-ravaged Milky Way. And if Andromeda turns out to have their own version of the Reapers, they're basically rehashing the plot of the trilogy.

Honestly, the more I hear about BioWare's Andromeda premise the more I get flashbacks to the endings of ME3 not being peer-reviewed. It's becoming extremely obvious this premise wasn't peer-reviewed either, because it's laughably easy to poke holes in. Sci-fi as a speculative genre isn't a free pass to ignore internal logic and consistency. Mac Walters has consistently failed to understand this simple fact, which is why everything he writes is absolute garbage.