Progression concern

I'd say "meh" and go and play a better game.

That's my serious answer, lol. I haven't touched the MET in 6 years, there's no chance in hell Bio can convince me to pick it up and play it ever again.

well then.

Alright

Really?

Seems rather unlikely.

'let's put in a hurdle to people buying our game'

Game makers usually fall over themselves to remove barriers to entry.

The game may allow for some past choices to be articulated, but there will inevitably be a vanilla state that will allow new players to just walk in. As have been said, Dragon Age did this. In the default version, a character you never met won't be waving 'hello' at you.

Mate, there's Mass Effect Tapestry that has both MEA and MET story flags content.

It will likely work exactly like with Dragon Age. Especially like that since MEA doesn't import MET save files, and next ME game will likely merge Andromeda and Milky Way, so importing will be necessary even for just minor Codex content.

I expect the next Mass Effect to begin at a singular starting point at least when it comes to the Milky Way side, so no need to play the old versions of the trilogy or the remaster for that. The protagonist would find him-/herself in a situation, that for example your Shepard created, but not mine.

So I don't expect to import anything at all, but even if that were intended we still likely would just have to set a few story flags at the beginning of the game, that would be reflected in codex history entries or could come up in conversations, which could either be done in game or in the ME archives. Not sure yet whether the next game has anything to do with little decisions made in MEA, but of course those could also be imported from the Tapestry.

Why do I expect this? Because I think the writers need creative freedom to bring out the best story they can and going back to the Milky Way, but without Shepard as the protagonist, does exactly that. Shepard could've done anything and it wouldn't matter for the new protagonist's own struggles through the situation he/she finds itself in, while in MEA nothing too divergent happened so far.

For those that haven't played around with the Archives, the Tapestry will hold up to ten world states … but if you've done more than 10 runs, those additional runs are still available, you just have to select one from the Archives and add it to the Tapestry, which will remove a world state from the Tapestry, to make way for the added state …

And from there, you can make that run your active, tweaking it using the Tapestry (for example, if you create a world state to match your ME3 run, you can then go back to ME and ME2 and select options to flesh out that world state for all three games).

Even though only 10 world states can be loaded in the Tapestry at any given time, the others, with just a bit of effort are available to you.

When you enter the Archives, you can select a Tapestry for either the MET or MEA … the MET Tapestry falls under Shepard, while MEA Tapestry falls under Ryder. Just spitballing, but if the NME bridges the MW and Andromeda galaxies, I could see the option to select your preferred world state from both the MET and MEA, to start your NME run.

How much would carry over?

You don't need Origin installed to access the archives and the tapestry that resides within the ME archives …

It's web based … accessed through a browser, installing/reinstalling Origin is irrelevant.

If you had an Origin account for MEA, you have an EA account and persona … ME Archives cover both MEA and the MET.

The "persona" reflects which platform you're using. I only play on PC, so I have one persona.

However, a person who played the MET or MEA across PS, Xbox and PC would have three EA personas.

Here's a link to take you there: masseffectarchives.com

You'll have to explore it a bit better than you did … it will show your achievements … there is a menu you can open on the left that gives you access to that, as well as the characters for Ryder and Shepard. Ryder will load from MEA, for Shepard, you'll have to create your own from one of the defaults for the MET … Origin is not relevant to this effort. I'm guessing that MELE will pick up your Shepard like it does for Ryder in MEA. Unfortunately, the character world states for MET are up to you to build. Why build them? For possible import into NME. Otherwise, it's just there for your own edification.

The achievements import is hit or miss … if it is missing some in MEA, you can fix that. Same for MET … generally, ME1 achievements must all be loaded, ME3 mostly gets it right, ME2 seems to depend on the person … some have achievements, others don't. Correcting it to match your achievements is boring, but simple. Again, your choice to use it or not.

The archive is for all platforms and has nothing to do with Origin … which is PC specific. You seem fixated on Origin … this has nothing to do with Origin. FYI, the replacement for Origin is in user testing … no idea when it will be out, but at some point, Origin will go away … so Franky says relax. [EDI reminds me to tell you, that last part was a joke]

The MET achievements are a bit hit or miss. It seems to vary from person to person and perhaps by platform. They are supposed to upload (except for ME1 when it's a standalone vs something bought via Origin or the EA store … I bought my ME1 from Amazon, on disc … had to load up everything).

A guess … MELE will load up automatically, like MEA … there may be a few misses (I had to add a few to MEA). I think the original ME2 works for some because of the Cerberus network and ME3 because of the galactic news or whatever is the cover for getting adds on game content from EA.

The archive and tapestry are far from perfect, but they work better than when first deployed. My DA Keep is pretty pristine at this point … ready to do imports of world states into DA4. My MEA is similarly pristine. If I purchase MELE, I might never clean up my MET world states, but go with the world states created with MELE play.

Having the world state for the sake of a world state is not interesting to me, but having something to set the world state for the next Mass Effect is interesting … just don't know at this point whether the relevant world state will come from MEA or MET/MELE or both. It also avoids some of the problems BioWare had with past game imports being wrong (which you can correct in the tapestry) and allows future games, running on different engines to take on those world states.

OBTW, I'm not an Origin fan (you should ask EA about all my 0 ratings from 0 to 10). I've helped several friends get things working when Origin craps the bed, knowledge learned from spending too much time with EA tech support. I saw the early beta test of the 64 bit replacement for Origin … I don't recall the name of it, but it was very early and had limited functionality … I wasn't interested in testing it, so I got rid of it … perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised when they release the finished product, perhaps not.