Do you prefer ANDROMEDA? or Milkyway?

We shouldn't declare that without knowing what the internal assumptions were before writing ME3. If Bio's intention was to simply abandon the MEU after ME3 in favor of doing a new IP, then there's nothing theoretically wrong with the design. (The problem is not getting buy-in from EA on abandoning the IP, but that's above the writers' pay grade.)

Note that the stuff before the endings is wildly divergent too. I don't think Bio ever had any intention of carrying any of the ME3 choices over into future games.

Sounds like a dystopian future.  I don't think I care for it in my Mass Effect.

I'm just pointing out that what you're saying doesn't make sense. You're saying that someone shouldn't be allowed to write games because he did the job he was supposed to do.

Good points regarding the need for some sort of timeline advancement if we try to continue the plot. My beloved near-future setting has been irrevocably changed, barring a drastic “reboot”.

In regard to Control, I don’t think it’s nearly as clean as you do. If the Reapers just retreat into Dark Space after killing billions/trillions, how long should pass before the galaxy just relaxes? This is the type of event and threat that forever changes a civilization. The Protheans tried in several ways to get just such a reprieve. Their goal wasn’t to resume life as normal; it was to rebuild a more prepared society that could defeat the Reapers. How could any society just resume normal life with the Reapers gone but lurking? They’d learned and experienced too much. The threat of a future harvest would remain a permanent specter. Forever resolving that situation by removing the Reapers via Destroy is far cleaner in my opinion.

I wouldn’t care which they picked. I just wish they had picked one so that the story could proceed with some sort of continuity. I don’t get the view that choices in a saves file are somehow sacred. I know many of you feel that way, but I think it’s a silly handicap placed upon future writers. It greatly limits future possibilities, because groups A through Z feel that their decade-old choices are super important.

I think you’re starting to stray from simply sharing our respective opinions and feelings about the series toward pedantically arguing. That being the case, I’ll see myself out while we’re still on good footing. I’m not sure I have much new to add at the moment, anyway. It’s mostly just wistful “what might’ve beens”.

You two need to define clean.  Basically it looks  like you are talking about two different things.  To me it looks like one person is talking about less impact to the current setting, the other is talking about less dangling stories.

I'm not really happy with describing choosing a particular outcome as a "F-You" to anybody. It doesn't invalidate those choices any more than our various Shepards invalidate each other. I presume most of us have made most if not all of the available choices, at one time or another. (I think I've done pretty much everything myself except for some of the Renegade petty douchebaggery.)

OF course, this may just mean that I have a poor grasp of ending partisanship.

I think Synthesis would fail a usability test before even getting to popularity. I can't imagine the writers would actually want to try using that as a setting.

Ah yeah, the classic "put things way way out of context"  me saying "the genius that thought that having different endings was a good idea, should not touch a pen ever again." it's the equivalent of saying to a friend get lost to put an example. That you like to manipulate things to your own convenience, that's another thing, but well nothing new here, it's your usual behavior, so feel free to keep twisting and changing my words to your liking.

Since the guy said the details have changed over time, I would say the genophage never existed. The krogan have a genetic defect that a female can give birth once in their lifetime.

Or have it that it was cured, but it didn't work for every female because there wasn't enough testing to make sure it would work for all. So instead of 1 live birth in 1000, its now up to......I don't know, 10 live births in 1000.

I don't see why the krogan would be a problem. If the genophage isn't cured they're no worse off and continue as they were in the OT. A few lines of dialogue here and there to show Tuchanka is in turmoil over Shepard's betrayal/common sense decision are all that's needed.
If the genophage is cured then, again, a few lines of dialogue saying how the future is bright for our krogan friends.
The only problem I see is if the next game is set a few decades or centuries into the future because that's when the effects would start to make themselves felt.