If you were the Creative Director on Andromeda, what would you have done differently?

The galaxy is so large you wouldn't have to address many of these issues if you didn't want to.  You don't have to run into quarians and geth. And the genophage wouldn't noticeably affect krogans for decades, maybe even centuries anyway.

If I was Andromeda's creative director... I probably would have wound up in a screaming match with marketing.

A retcon isn't a cop-out? Not sure where you're going with that.

a) As if Bioware haven't reduced consequences to choices to codex entries before!

Even if the game is set immediately or a couple of weeks after ME3, on a planet with no krogans?

c) Sure if I made the game and I had infinite resources I would make the most reactive game based on player decisions ever made! But we're talking about BioWare here. We've all seen how they operate and handle choices.

That doesn't answer the question I asked. How is your proposed retcon not a cop-out? Put another way, what do you mean when you say "cop-out"?

It is a soft retcon. You can be in a part of the Milky Way that doesn't know diddly about Shepard, or the name is a distant legend.

You take the optimal ending - Destroy, and retcon the death of EDI and the Geth because that bittersweet ending was not what we needed on top of Shepard's end. Shepard dying I expected, but to invalidate his work with Legion, the Geth, and EDI was a shit move by the writers and by now they should know that - it has been a very common complaint re: endings.

Therefore, the Milky Way is a disaster area, but everyone survived well enough to rebuild... Is it that big of a retcon, and is it so unpalatable?

Edit: absolutely NO save transfers from any previous game. That would be next to impossible.

New game, new time, new peeps

Edit2: thinking about my proposal, I see lots of issues in this future for Bioware to explore. Lots of Slavers, for one. Speciesism. Fragile alliances.

Could have been a better game

Maybe Shepard lives, doesn't speak at all to quality of life.

Shepard was supposed to die. He was already dead once, stupidly enough, then survived a suicide mission. His time winning against insurmountable odds was up, even if it meant he died the victor. A modern John Henry, if you will.

You are going on about artistic integrity. That is not something I am willing to engage in.

1) I wouldn't have used No Man's Sky as a starting off point, especially after it launched and it was a big old pile of meh.

2) I would have thrown out the MP mode of ME:A, not every game needs a MP mode and honestly I think open world action/RPG type games are better off without a MP. Look at The Witcher 3 Fallout 4, and Horizon Zero Dawn those games may have their faults but they were successful with fans, critics, and money they made, it's extra work and a drain on resources and people who play open world action/RPG style games might not want a crappy MP mode (doesn't matter if co-op or PvP) that generally nobody cares about after a month or two look at games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and Saints Row IV those games have MP modes and NOBODY really likes them and few people are still playing the MP on either game. BioWare got LUCKY with ME3 MP mode, it was dumb luck, they can't replicate it's success in DA:I or with ME:A because it was a fluke.

3) I would have set realistic goals. I would not have said that "ME:A would have 30 planets with different kinds of terrain, animals, and plenty of alien cities, languages, cultures, and societies to explore" because that was and is 100% bullshit with No Man's Sky. I would have been honest.

4) Mac Walters would NOT have been brought in. Not because I hate him or his work, but IMHO I feel ME:A would have been better served PR wise without his baggage and the controversy of the endings to ME3 that both him and Casey Hudson caused. If I was forced to have him on board I would have offered him a consultant's position, much like Gene Roddenberry had to accept for all the movies starting with and after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Because I feel that Walters has been in the trenches for too long and ME:A was a chance for a fresh new perspective to move the franchise forward.

5) The tone of the game would have been more serious and fun. I just got through binge watching Farscape and I was reminded that while that show has some of the most bat shit crazy episodes of any sci-fi show it also had it's share of very brutal and very dark character based stories. Yes, you could have the hero dreaming he's in Chuck Jones inspired Road Runner cartoon show then the next episode have a brutal 2 part story where his clone is killed and his girlfriend goes into a depression for several episodes. The main quest of finding Meridian would have been very serious and dark but some of the side quests would have been wacky as I could get.

6) I wouldn't have used the Frostbite 3 engine. This engine is said to be a real pain in the ass to use and I get why EA wants every studio that isn't working on a sport game to use it, to save money and maybe see if other companies would want to lenience it (and how many non-EA studios have used it I wonder). I also wouldn't have tried to push the 4K resolution.

7) I would have marketed the more traditional way than the ass backwards way that did.      

8) After the game was released I would have checked into the closest mental hospital and/or disappear for year. So I could rest and make sure that no one could bother me. 

the fact you see using such a copout as a good thing leads me to believe we'll have to just agree to disagree. if you want a fuller context on why going to the milky way again is a bad idea even after playing the original trilogy just look around this and other threads that touch on that topic. This is coming from a guy who likes this game because decent gameplay can mitigate a mediocre or even bad story (unless you're part of the "I can't use 275 powers at once boo" crowd.) but with a highly personalized ending plus that ending can be one of numerous options that changes the galaxy beyond repair and was designed to be a distinct end, it's the last thing they should do. If they did, the head of that project should be fired. Promptly.

If the solution is to run to new unfamiliar parts of the galaxy and avoid the familiar places to avoid addressing variable states of worlds or factions, then what's the difference, really? Fans who want to see quarians would be no better off. Might as well just pick a world state where they're alive and run with it at that point. 

As for the genophage, its effects would actually be immediate. It wouldn't take them long to figure out that they were tricked and they're still affected. From there, their society would take a downward turn from there. Of course, the drastic changes that would likely happen to their society would probably be watered down into flavored dialogue and perhaps fewer or greater krogan NPC's at hubs depending on which state was picked, assuming that the game doesn't just come with a set outcome from the start. 

I don't know about that one. I've seen quite a few Geth diehards begging for their return on BSN. Not to mention, all synthetics were destroyed by the Destroy ending, meaning EDI as well. There would be no AI until the MW races were to try and rebuild them. That would mean EDI and the Geth would be gone forever, as it would be impossible to replicate them as they were. Considering they evolved independently from their creators, not to mention the Reaper tech that was also used to further advance them, there would be no way to restore them. I wouldn't be against that reality myself, but I can't say that for most of the Mass Effect player base.

I agree there wouldn't be much resistance about the geth not appearing again. I let the quarians destroy them on Rannoch. Without the reaper interference, the quarians would have destroyed the geth.
I never cared for the thing. Its too bad there wasn't an option to throw the platform out the airlock. I'm sure once Joker learns his sister and father are dead, he won't care about the platform being destroyed