New Mass Effect Teaser Trailer

Well, we wouldn't be the first ones to remember that about only 1% to 2% of the Milky Way was actually explored.
But Peebee said it's "been there, done that" so it MUST be true.

That's not a change; the Reapers could have gone everywhere anyway.

She wasn't actually wrong. As far as she knew at the time, the whole galaxy used to be run by the Protheans. Not quite true, but what is true is that you can maybe find stuff in Andromeda you can't find in the MW, because everything in the MW was constrained by the Reapers.

Peebee had no way of knowing anything about the Reapers.
Liara was the foremost expert on the Protheans and even she knew barely anything. Peebee would have had not concrete reason besides wonderlust to the Nth extreme to get out of the Milky Way.
So what if the Protheans had ruled the galaxy? They vanished 50.000 years prior, leaving very little trace.
Imagine if the story was different. There are no Reapers and the Protheans just decided to isolate themselves completely from the rest of the galaxy. They live in a very small, isolated corner in that 95%+ unexplored MW. Based on her curiosity and wonderlust, Peebee manages to find them. Rediscovering a civilization that was thought extinct 50.000 year in the past, that would be the discovery of a lifetime (even an Asari one). There could be countless places/ruins/secrets just waiting to be found in the MW. Or do her discoveries count only when there's no breathing alien to tell her anything so she can say "First"?
Yes, I have strong opinions on Peebee.

Hey, the writers can put stupid stuff anyplace, if they try hard enough.

Exactly the point. Constraints can't stop dumb. Hell, dumb constraints cause more dumb -- most of the problems with the MET are caused by ME1's incoherent Reapers.

Sure, there could be - and probably are.

Thing is, most of the planets within reasonable reach of an active relay have probably already been explored. I always sort of expected they'd have unmanned deep space probes going out in different directions, dropping comm buoys as they go and sending back whatever data they collect so they can expand the map of the known galaxy.

In order to explore farther away from any relays than they already have, they'd still need to organize some sort of deep space expedition that may involve cryo pods and a load of funding. With the Ai, she was guaranteed access to a cluster that no Milky Way species had yet explored.

I mean, they still scared the shit out of me in ME2, I definitely continued to feel their looming dread despite them not being as scary as Sovereign anymore. However ME3 was just lol.

And Drew's ending I don't think would have been much different, but it would've made a whole lot more sense to the major plot. The reason the story got dumb is because they promoted an awesome character writer in Mac Walters to lead writer of the plot. There is no doubt he is a good character writer, as he is responsible for the love we share for some of our favourite characters. However he struggles write a coherent plot. Although admittedly that is a bit unfair, due to the Mass Effect trilogy never really having any over-arching theme of the Reaper's existence. However that is what made them so badass, their explanations were always just "you're too insignificant to exist let alone explain our motivations" which was epic. Imo, their existence should have just been left unexplained. Or at the absolute max just hinted at to open up sequels.

Pretty much. Really tired of this "the grass is always greener on the other side" attitude over Drew that somehow always come back leaking over any number of unrelated discussions.

I don't know that his ideas would have turned out better.

But I do know that what we did get sucked