The Pyjack's Den! The ME News Discussion Thread

Most people outside this forum won't appreciate a 600 year jump in time. They'll take the trailer at face value, they're not sitting their decoding the minutiae like we are. Equally, in my experience most people outside of this forum equate N7 = Shepard = Mass Effect. That was obvious when MEA was being trailed, and since then you've had yet more people playing through the OT so that belief is probably ingrained in a whole new gaming generation. I'm not sure why this is news, and BW are well aware of what expectations they set running when they tease this stuff. The bottom line is that in the short term it's in their interest to keep it vague enough so as to keep everyone interested. That's great, but at some point down the line when the masses realize what's going on then it'll be the same reaction that MEA got. I'd have thought they'd want to avoid a repeat of that, but hey-ho perhaps not.

Almost all Mass Effect players I know IRL, I either know or can feel certain, associate N7 with Shepard.

They don't watch videos like any 'signing off'. They don't look at all the media. They don't go on discussion boards or Reddit about all this. They associate symbols with characters and they'd still be going N7 is Shepard. They have a copy of ME2 and ME3 or whatever box, and its all N7 and Shepard. They're not going to look even moderately deep into it, they're rarely going to look at the story context.

This is not me saying Shepard must return because of this. It is not me saying they'll be alive, nor playable. I'm just saying we have a certain kind of viewpoint that most gamers familiar with Mass Effect (NOT Mass Effect's details) think when they see an N7 emphasis.

But Andromeda. Yes, Andromeda. I had to field disappointment from others that it ended up this Ryder Daddy instead of Shepard. MEA did not have the best reception. Its best not to consider it a good thing that MEA pushed N7 alongside AI in early vague marketing and it ended up having about 1% to do with Shepard. MEA is a height of 'mismanaged expectations' that I'd hope they learned from.

I personally think the figure in this tease is either a new protagonist or antagonist, and isn't Shepard. But if after all this nodding towards Shepard (already much more and far more obvious then for MEA) results in literally no form of appearance (whatever context), yeah that's asking for blowback. I don't know the degree to which is optimal in relation to how they're currently communicating, okay, but if they're not going to do Shepard at all, just shut up about them entirely. Because yes, to the NORMIE, N7 is Commander Shepard fighting the Collectors/Reapers. And not enough paid attention to N7ness of MEA for that to yet change.

What I get from the short trailer and the knowledge we had before:
1) The game is set in the Andromeda timeline. We start in or after year 2819.
2) Both galaxies will be involved (likely via Mass relays, because the Milky Way species had 600 more years to figure the technology out).
3) We are playing/starting from the Milky Way point of view (that's why Liara is prominentlyin the 2020 trailer and the 2022 distress call), which basically is confirmed now with more details regarding that call/us being at the receiving end in the MW.
4) We (likely) get a new human protagonist, which should or could be the N7 shown in the short vid.

Because of the timeline no one should expect Shepard to be alive. If anyone does, it's on them. I don't think they will play the "but he/she was 600 years in Cryo"-card and I doubt they will declare Shepard immortal after a destroy ending - even if they choose it as starting point for this new adventure, which I'm not sure of. Another general note: I don't think, that the N7 is a bad guy. Some people (maybe the Andromeda Initiative) probably are just doing something not everyone in the Galaxy is agreeing to - like, let's say opening/planning a Mass Relay to unknown space (Andromeda) which was forbidden before the Reaper war if I remember correctly.

BioWare has a history talking human this and human that (like in ME3 where it was "retake Earth" or in Andromeda where it was "a new Human home has to be found") when it's actually a multi species concern, so I wouldn't read too much into the "human defiance" stuff.

More so Hudson than Mac, because IIRC, Walters has stated they could have done things better (I'm positive he's said that on Twitter, but I could be wrong), whereas Hudson just kept doubling down.

It looks more like Peebee than Liara to me, but then with the Geth being there it makes more sense to me that it would be Liara. Who knows.....?!

Chances are it's neither of them.... 

It could just be the lighting and the dark patch is a shadow. Who knows. All things being equal it looks more like Peebee than Liara to me, but it could easily be either, or neither.