Mass Effect '5' speculation (Official Thread)

Only one that's accurate is your description of Destroy.

I suppose if they want to ignore RBG, they could open with the grandpa and kid saying "Okay, just one more story". I think themikefest has even suggested something along those lines. It doesn't invalidate the other endings, instead telling the kid a story. (Points if the grandson looks like the kid that dies on Earth/Catalyst). If those two are far enough distanced in time from the era of the MET, it might be more along the lines of mythology than history.

That said, I still want MEA2 with Ryder over any other option.

A. The easiest way to continue Mass Effect would be to focus on what's going on in Andromeda. Kett, Jaardan, Scourge, Remnant, Benefactor storylines leave enough interesting material to go forward. The pathfinder job is also a great vehicle to explore the universe.
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B. When it comes to the Milky Way, people have to accept that there are either parallel universes (and it is OK to tell a story in any one of them) or that they played just ONE important person in the history - the person that solved the Reaper threat (for the moment) - but that the evolution of the galaxy doesn't depend on that one person and that even though every player envisions the decisions being made as THE best going forward, that might not be the case.

Let's start with the two big decisions along the way: no matter what your decision on the genophage was, the Krogan won't stop pursuing a cure until it's done. So the real question here is not will it be cured, but what does the galactic community do about it? Accept it or "release" another one? That would be the decision BioWare has to make.

Geth destroyed by the Quarians or via destroy? That one is basically just a memory wipe (likewise with EDI), because the knowledge to build them is there, so again it is just a decision to be made by the devs, whether they will be part of the future or not. Siding with the Geth would've obviously crippled the numbers of the Quarians, but the thought that they would be completely eradicated when they lose the war is absurd, because why should Geth follow every Quarian around the galaxy if the war is about Rannoch? So again the result would just be a few different codex lines depending on the players decisions.

Now to the big ones: the endings. The effects of destroy on synthetics were already touched upon, but what it really comes down to here in the meta sense is where do the devs want the galaxy to go to? The sense I get from ME3 and MEA is, that the evolution the devs have in mind is some form of symbiosis happening between organics and synthetics. I personally choose destroy every time, but the hints are pretty clear, that BioWare sees organic/synthetic hybrids in the Mass Effect future. In ME3 synthesis was the option hardest to get to (outside of the breath scene), which was surprising to say the least, after all three games basically laid out destroy as Shepard's goal, but in ME3 it was presented that way. MEA then threw the bone to synthesis as an evolution step with the AI in the pathfinder's head (calling it symbiotic instead).

So the question how to go forward from here - if we want a game in the Milky way that isn't taking place in one of multiple parallel universes - starts for me with "how does the synthesis ending even work"? We know that the crucible changes the DNA of organics and the code of synthetics, but that doesn't create hybrids yet, does it? So one way to explain it would be that organics got ill after the crucible fired and synthetics had the cure: to implant AIs (basically themselves) into organics. After being implanted into organics, AIs wouldn't need own platforms to run around anymore, so in this ME future there are only these kind of hybrids left. How do we get there from destroy/control? Here comes Alec Ryder's research into play, because he independently developed how to implant AIs into organics and could've left his research results for the galactic community to build upon, despite the initial refusal through ambassador Goyle - resulting in the same hybrids, just after a longer period of time.

Now I see lots of problems with these kind of hybrids. Just to name a few: If every person has an AI in his mind, will "indoctrination" once again be a problem for the galaxy (i.e. can people be hacked)? How much free will is still left, when there is always an AI in your head? Will all the organics be "online" all the time and let the AIs be part of everything (MEA touched on this a little)? Will everything be transfered into a collective database? So does everyone eventually know exactly the same whether they experienced it themselves or not (ala Geth) once it is transfered into the database?

Lots of questions (and you probably have many more), but let's say evolution goes there at some point from all endings. Reapers being destroyed or not would also not matter in this initial state, because there is no conflict left that touches their programming. So where to go now?

BioWare could go anywhere from here, but let me throw out two possible ways:
1) ME5 centers around exactly the question, whether such a hybrid form is really where we as a galactic society want to develop into? Let's say it has all the negative effects we can imagine and we are part of a group that wants to put the wheel of history into reverse and rid organics from outside influences build into themselves to get back to free will and self determination.
2) ME5 intertwines everything that has happened so far in the trilogy and MEA, without touching possible negatives of us becoming hybrids (kinda like MEA). The council had good reason to forbid traveling through Mass Relays with unknown destinations, but couldn't hinder the Andromeda Initiative to travel there conventionally. Now for once the council proves to be right and ME5 starts with the invasion of Kett in the Milky Way...

That is just an illustration that DNA/code was changed. Doesn't mean that you don't have to come up with an actual explanation of how that will work out if it is part of the future.

And i would rather not having you vomiting hatred all over the forum could9. But we can't always get what we want...

Look, this is useless to debate.  cloud9 feels as he feels.  You don't have to agree and you're certainly capable of blocking his posts if you don't like them.

I don't really care if you break forum rules.  I'm not a moderator.  I also pretty much disagree entirely with everything he says.  My point is that it's a useless debate.

If you're happy with their decisions more power to you, but that doesn't mean I have to go along with everyone else just because they like it. If they keep on making the same mistakes and not listen to critics to improve their games, then BioWare would be fucked on the long run. I'm just telling it like it is.

Ok, define "hate".

Wrong. The moment they bend to the group that doesn't like what they are doing they are fucked. They should be able to tell the story the way they want as it is theirs to tell.

It shouldn't be necessary to even mention it like you did, but there we are.