New Mass Effect Teaser Trailer

Thank you, but as you know this fandom is quite divided and people confuse the messenger with the message all the time.

I'm pretty convinced Shepard won't be back as the PC and I know that's not something people want to hear.

I think it's interesting that the direction of the game may be bringing the Geth back post Destroy ending. Or fighting the Geth who survived the Destroy ending somehow.

Mostly because it's nigh impossible to keep track of all the decisions made over 3 games. Is Conrad Verner dead? Is he alive? If alive, did he get shot in the foot in ME2? Did we sign his autograph in ME1?

People were upset that in ME2 Conrad thought we waved a gun in his face in ME whether or nor we did. There are going to be so many decisions like that it will be impossible to keep track of them and honor them. That's just one minor thing in a trilogy full of choices.

Ok, so maybe all of the NPCs we've ever met in the OT died in the war and we just need to think about Shepard's core crew. Does that solve the problem? Not really.

The downside of Shroedinger's squad (who could be dead or alive) is that you can't get too into the details or it will piss people off. So say Shepard comes back. There can't be a mission that involves Wrex because maybe he was never recruited. Or Ash shot him. Or Shepard shot him. Or he was Shepard's best friend. There is no way to build a mission around him that takes all of those variables into consideration, so the end result is he can't return in any notable way. That goes for pretty much the rest of the squad as well. Every squadmate from ME2 could be dead. So they can't return as squadmates or major plot points in ME5 otherwise all of the people who killed them during the Suicide Mission will cry foul. Tali could die in ME2 or ME3, so she definitely can't be a squadmate in ME5 or have a major impact on the story. They tried the "replace Legion with Not-Legion" thing in ME3 and people didn't love it.

Ok, so say they just say f-it and set ME5 640 years post reaper war so that almost all the squad is dead and they keep mentions of how they died really vague so we're not sure if Wrex died on Virmire in ME1, the Citadel in ME3 or in his bed on Tuchanka post-war. Bringing Shepard back alone without all of her beloved crew is going to be really depressing. Like Alien 3 levels of depressing. Everyone will cry "No Shepard without Vakarian!" "My house on Rannoch!" "Where is Kaiden/Ash/Traynor/Cortez?" "What about Joker?" The thing we loved in the OT was all of the relationships we made along the way. That's why we love the Citadel DLC. Bringing Shepard back when all of his team is gone is not respectful to those relationships.

Shepard can't come back because it's too difficult to bring his squad back and he's not fun to play without them. If we're playing during a time Shepard is alive, Shepard will be off doing something important and we will only hear news reports about it.

I think the direction of ME5 will be that we are 640 years post Reaper war and everyone except Liara (including Shepard) are out of the picture. Shepard chose high EMS Destroy and lived out her life happily ever after with her team. However, now there's a new problem and Liara, the Shadow Broker, has tasked our PC with fixing whatever it is.

To be fair i do think they will mix the better points of Destroy with Control: Reapers dead, Krogan, Quarians and Geth alive (Synthesis is too bizarre for me to even contemplate a sequel for it).

And while i don't believe they will bring back Shepard, i do believe they need to adress the trilogy ending to move forward in the Milky way.  Having the story takes places centuries later would also help with that since they could make the explanation shorter than if ME5 takes place  in a timeline when Shepard and company could all still be alive.