Do you prefer ANDROMEDA? or Milkyway?

I think that is the problem BioWare faces with the Milky Way and why the choice consequence in Andromeda had less of an impact.  To me no matter what approach BioWare takes in The Milky Way from rebooting, to making choices canon, to ignoring choices, or minimizing the choice so the choice can be included (see Ashley and Kaiden in ME2/ME3) there is going to be people that don't like that choice.  I think Andromeda was the solution they saw as the best solution to a situation of no real good solutions and why I don't think it would be a good idea to return for they would have the backlash of the choice situation.

Could you expand on this a little? Justify how? To whom?




Is the time-skip itself the issue?

How so? They gave you four possible endings. You going to honestly tell me THEY decided how it ended? You may not like the Catalyst. I sure the hell don't. But saying you have no choice is pure bullshit. You know where you didn't get a choice? Leliana. Sure, they swiped that under the rug but she was as forced on you as Liara.

Totally agree.  Makes your entire run of MET pointless.  Why even bother playing when the ending is decided for you?

You mean after barely surviving AI genocide?

^{That's not a serious question.}

To be honest, it sounds like being sentimental for the sake of it.
Yes, continuity is important and visiting old places in new graphics gives you a lot of points, but Andromeda not being "home" is the cornerstone of that setting... At least I'd think it is, because "actual accents may differ"^(tm). It's like saying that a game about, for example, birth of USA doesn't have corresponding appeal because we can't visit London.

I'm not the one who has ever said the Trilogy is perfect.  You've mentioned a number of those flaws yourself and you decidedly give the impression that you don't liked them.  Since when does making the problem worse by making everything canon rectify those issues? 

By going back to the Milky Way 600+ years after having gone off to Andromeda, it's  far enough into the future where Bioware can insert some conditional references to choices without disrupting a future story.  Isn't that better than negating everything but one path just to keep the timeline close?  Are you really giving up anything?  You can still visit London.  You can find easter eggs referencing not just what one of your Shepards did, but be able to find references to what any of them did in different playthroughs?  Isn't that better than gambling that Bioware won't pick something you really don't like as their canon and you're stuck with "tollerating" that?

By doing it through Andromeda, we have a population that was unchanged by any of the choices, so they can go back and represent the "old MW races" and eventually repopulate (or depending on how far the timeline is advanced, have already repopulated) the galaxy.  We gain new races that emerged in the Milky Way during that time that don't have to be related directly to synthesis since they can emerge after a subsequent apocalyse that wipes out the synthesized races or the remaining unsynthesized ones (depending on ending).  References can be made to that decisiion as part of the galaxies history without making it an integral part of the new story.  We also probably gain Angara as a species and some nifty Remnant Tech (maybe even keep Meridian since it could conceivably be the vehicle that gets us back to the Milky Way).  They could also decide to bring some kett along for the ride or just leave them all behind in Andromeda.  We don't have throw away ALL of Andromeda to get back to the Milky Way.  Conceivably, farther down the road, we could be getting stories based in both galaxies.

The ONLY disadvantage to this that I can see is that people would have to let Shepard die... not necessarily die right at the Crucible though... They could also reference a situation where Shepard is said to have died of old age or died trying to save the galaxy yet again during the subsequent apocalyse.  By choosing an ending to import into the file, we could effectively choose the future MW galaxy's backstory at the beginning of that next game, and we all liked being able to choose Shep's backstory, didn't we?

TBH, I really don't understand why this idea is getting so much resistance.  I don't think "Andromeda taint" is the issue... it's the scapegoat... and I believe what matters towards removing the "taint" is just writing a good story in whatever sequel they make.  I don't believe they have to throw away everything about Andromeda to recover from the reception this last game got.

Anyway, I've explained myself multiple times in as many different ways I can think of.  It's really time I just bowed out of this discussion.

I should have been more explicit upthread. My problem with the concept is that I don't think a 600 year gap in itself will do what you're trying to make it do. I mean, it can "work" if we inject enough handwavium so that all possible choices come out within a rounding error , but it'd be pretty obvious that's what's going on. I don't see how world-building with such a conspicuous lack of integrity actually honors the choices we made. If anything, it violates them.

Of course, it's easy for me to be negative about a proposed solution to a problem when I don't have the problem myself.

Probably true but not necessarily. People knew who saved the Citadel from Sovereign. It's not impossible in the span of two years that they met for some other reason. However, it is sketchy, just like the crap they came up with for a dead Leliana.

That sort of world-building though was done throughout the Trilogy, with some problems (see Garrus discussion going on), sure.  However, it still falls in with what Bioware has historically done with the ME games to allow for importing a single character across games.  Creating singular canon for major choices that they've given us in the past has never been their style.  They've worked very hard to avoid it in fact.

As I said, I don't see it really much different than selecting your backstory for Shepard in ME1.  The backstory never really affected much beyond giving you one hand-wavey type quest for each background that was adapted in the dialogue to fit the Shep's with different backgrounds (albeit that adaptation was sometimes poorly done).  Bioware have regularly used the concept of "archives" to present historic backstory - this would just make those archives sensitive to what the player tells them is their choice of galactic history.  They did a similar thing in the Citadel DLC referencing Shepard's background.  Did having that reference "violate" the choice the player made of that background.

I don't agree even that allowing history to become just history over a long period of time is a handwavium that "violates" the choices anyone made.  Declaring a canon clearly violates the other choices some people made.  To me, you're speaking nonsense when you say handwaving choices "violates" them but extincting them by creating a different choice as canon doesn't. 

Fine, I'd go for that.  Create game 5 in an entirely different galaxy (not MW and not Andromeda) using entirely new cast and with absolutely no intended adherence or attempt to adhere to any of the old lore in any of the previous games.  I'd definitely go for that.  I'd go for that with Anthem if they do SP; but I should mention... Didn't they try that with Andromeda... and the old BSN blew up so badly it got axed by Bioware long before the game even released... long before anyone could have known about any of it's flaws?  Didn't the old BSN continually mention the old lore?  Don't they still mention how Andromeda breaks with some of the old lore?

But the events you're proposing aren't "just history." They're contrived history. The idea that events would actually lead to a place where the choices of ME3 wouldn't matter doesn't pass the laugh test. The handwavium comes in when you force them to have identical outcomes anyway.

Oh come on now... here on earth, how much importance do we give to 600-year-old history.  We stick the tale in an archives and maybe, just maybe dig it up for a book report.  WWII isn't near that long ago and, for the most part, we've moved on from it.  The Berlin Wall came down in the 80s and Germany is considered an ally of the US.  In Canada, the air raid sirens were dismantled probably 50 years ago already (Correction, since I looked it up: It was in the 70s and some are apparently still standing in various states of disrepair).  Do you ever really think about the impact of the Council of Constance or even the Battle of Agincourt beyond maybe a cursory note in a history text?

Still, IF you consider a handwave (before you even see what sort of "handwave" they write for it) a "violation" (your term, not mine), then you have to consider the elimination of a choice option already given the player as also a "violation."  They are essentially the same thing.   The only difference is that the latter completely eliminates the importance of all but one decision {creating a singular "right" decision) and the former doesn't completely eliminate the importance of any of them, but lessens the impact of all of them equally.  The "handwave" (i.e. easter egg) to past events has been done by Bioware throughout the ME games.  They have repeatedly avoided declaring a canon decision.  For example, even when Udina wound up being one the council, it was done in such a way that the player was never told they could not possibly have chosen Anderson in ME1 or ME2.  If Anderson had been on the Council, it was instead implied that he stepped down.  If the player had appointed Udina, the conversation changed and acknowledged that choice.  What I'm proposing is really just the same as what they've been doing all along.