Honest poll on whether Shepard should return in a future Mass Effect game

... and I'm saying it would play like DLC (short stories based on a series of novels)... not like a full game.  It would reduce Shepard to being Ryder (i.e. disempower him quite a bit).  If Bioware wants to do it, I'm not going to try to stop them.  I like ME:A... I'd like to see a sequel to that game and some closer to that story.  If they can two both as separate games, more power to them.  Personally, I'm not interested in another Shepard story.  In my mind, he/she has already beat the biggest, baddest enemies the galaxy had known for millennia (no matter how he/she actually did it)... and I'm good with it ending right there.

The thing is you might feel that way I would expect that there would be a very vocal group of people complaining how this new thing wasn't overtaken by the Reapers because the Reapers were more powerful etc.

The only thing I want returning is a post reaper Milky Way setting. Shepard + crew need to be done with

Hmmm...that's a tough one. Andromeda left a sour taste in my mouth and i don't trust the current group of writers to create a compelling story with Shepard involved. If the game had the staff that was involved in ME2 - 3 then i would say "yes".....but with Andromeda being 600 years into the future, there is no way to write a Shepard story. Even with the advances that humans and science may have achieved in general, there is no way Shepard could be alive within this time frame....and i'm not open to prequels ( i hate those)

So even if they wanted to write another Shepard story, they wrote themselves into a wall by trying to avoid writing a canon ending to ME3 and jettisoned this thing 600 years into the future.. ... They should have continued maybe 5 - 7 years after the Reaper threat then hit them with another threat (not as big as the Reapers) while the galactic races are still in recovery.

Andromeda's story is dead before it was even able to take off and because of how they structured the ending to ME3, (which lead to the 600 year jump in Andromeda) there is no way to bring Shep and crew back....Andromeda 2 would have to have the writing/passion and implement charismatic characters that was seen within the trilogy to bring it back from the abyss of death. 

Which all makes sense to me, but its the masses of people that want to find issues for if they really want to look that way you could easily change the unexplored Heleus Cluster in Andromeda to the unexplored Heleus Cluster in Milky Way and there isn't a known relay nearby so with the engines they are using it still takes 600 years. I just don't see it meaning that much to people for I don't think anything would have changed even if it was in the Milky Way.

Well....i agree with you to an extent, but i was thinking more along the lines if they would try to bring Shepard back....i think it would involve alot of "space magic" and even in ME2...i think the illusive man or Miranda mentioned that the way Shepard was brought back was "special" ...meaning that his situation was a unique case. Are you stating that they could have put Shep's body into stasis and that would have solved the issue?

That would have to involve some pretty specific and compelling writing being how ME3 ended...i would believe that with all of that devastation, that even if they prepared Shep's body for transport to Andromeda...it would take another 600 years to Andromeda and by that time who knows what would have happened in Andromeda by then..Ryder and crew would be dead also...mind you i'm talking about scenarios where they bring back Shep....The ships for AI already left by the time the Reapers attacked the MW....unless i'm not understanding something here.

You're not following me... Shepard wouldn't be going to Andromeda... Shepard could just be put in stasis in the Milky Way and part of the Initiative could return later to find him and whoever else in stasis, just like Shepard found Javik 50,000 years after he was put in stasis.

I'm only really saying that the space magic already exists within the ME lore to use stasis to basically negate natural lifespans and the technology exists to bring someone back to life from being basically "meat and tubes" and clinically dead.  It's not an impossibility... and only one of many possible ways Bioware could decide to drive this forward and eventually "unite" the two stories and the two galaxies.  Mac Walters did indicate that coming back to the Milky Way at some point in the future was a possibility... which just shows that they were possibly building in some ideas into ME:A to do just that.

Personally, I'll be very content if we just get an ME:A2 at this point... because right now, Ryder's story has a lot of obviously unfinished loose ends... and I'd like to see some sort of closure on it... as opposed to just abandoning it to remake a MET clone game.  The ME:A characters can always be improved upon in subsequent games... made older, wiser, edgier... whatever.  For the most part, they are young... and people change as they grow up.  Ryder could also be put back into stasis for some reason and have a lifespan beyond his/her normal years... allowing them to push a story even with Ryder ahead hundreds or even thousands of years.  We already have Ellen Ryder being held in stasis for an undetermined period of time waiting on a cure for her disease.  The Jardaan plot involving whoever attacked them could make for a very potent villain... and the future is wide open.

Ahhh...ok i gotcha. Ultimately, i would like to see them do an Andromeda 2, IF the writing and other aspects are improved, and yes, i can now see your understanding of it in how they could possibly join the two narratives together. I feel that Shep's story has been told tho and a strong story followed by improved character develop could bring Andromeda back from it's lukewarm debut.

Make a sequel with Shepard and the next game be a sequel to MEA with Ryder

I never thought the ME trilogy was all that great, and the main reasons Andromeda sucks are technical, not writing-related. The plot and characters are perfectly adequate (on par with the trilogy in my opinion, though that isn't saying a great deal). I thought the finale was especially good. I would like to continue in Andromeda with the Ryder siblings, but I could stand to cut most of the party members loose.

Isn't that basically the Control ending?  You're totally stripping away the player agency of Shepard... forcibly turning him/her to the dark side regardless of what the player did in the Trilogy... I can hear the uproar now.  People don't want Shepard to return with a personality other than whatever one they created for him/her in the first three games.  When they ask for the return of Shepard, they are asking for the return of THEIR Shepard and in a manner where they continue to control how he/she reacts and what he/she says and does.  If they throw Shepard in and he/she is not the PC, it can really be only a cameo that doesn't really give much indication of either renegade or the paragon personality traits... or your going to completely alienate those who had the opposite Shepard from what is presented.