Just a thought on the timing...

I'm not saying you're wrong, in fact it's most likely scenario right now, given the info we have. I'm just trying to figure out writers' thought process behind "we are the explorers".

Why do so many people think that something being a video game and/or fictional gives it a free pass to just ignore its own logical rules? Because all narrative games have logical rules. Fantasy games have rules for how magic works, for what their fictional races can and cannot do, how fantasy biology works. Yes, it's not consistent with our own reality, but it is consistent with itself. That's internal logic. That's why we believe magic functions in a game even when we know it is impossible in reality.-

When people like myself talk about wanting BioWare to write their games from a perspective of logic, we're not talking of real-life logic, but the internal logic of the Mass Effect franchise that ME1 established way back. Mass Effect is a surprisingly hard sci-fi game, but it still gets a lot of shit wrong - but even so, scientific hardasses like myself are okay with that because those differences with real-life science was established in the very beginning. It doesn't contradict earlier information simply because there is no earlier information for it to contradict. Like the fantasy example, that's fine - they're allowed to take some liberties with real-life science as long as they do it in the beginning and then keep those changes untouched for the rest of the franchise.

The problem with Andromeda then is that it contradicts that early information. Based on the internal logic of ME1, which is the standard by which all Mass Effect games must be written, Andromeda violates many of the rules of the franchise regarding spacecraft technology. The writers of ME1 forbade intergalactic travel during the trilogy by the limitations they set on the FTL technology that existed during the time period the trilogy is set.

I must also add that it's incredibly distressing that people like you and Sartoz are completely okay with BioWare writing one thing and then contradicting that same thing in later scenes or games. How are we supposed to trust and take the story seriously when it's not consistent? The primary cause of death of the willing suspension of disbelief is broken internal logic. Anything that makes us go "That doesn't make sense" is like stabbing the willing suspension of disbelief in the heart with a knife.

"As long as the game is entertaining I don't really care." Yeah but see, that's the thing, playing a narrative-driven game that can't make up its mind about how the universe works is not entertaining. Repeatedly going "That makes no sense" as you play is the antithesis of entertaining.

It's like reading a Harry Potter novel that states dragons are immune to magic, only for Harry to later wand a dragon to death with repeated uses of Expelliarmus. What's the deal, JK? You said earlier dragons were immune to magic. "Yeah, but it's more entertaining this way." Why even include the part of dragons being immune to magic then? "Well, back then it made sense, but I ignored it when it became an impediment in my effort to write cool scenes." (Not to riff on JK Rowling's writing or anything, just using her as an example).

Yeah, okay, you get cool scenes but now you have immensely annoying and distracting changes occuring mid-story as it's being told. It's poor planning. Would you be cool with poor planning when someone's building your house? Would you be okay with poor planning when your doctors are treating you? Would you be cool with poor planning when restaurant chefs are preparing your meals?

"No, but those aren't video games."

Alright, let's talk about video games then. Would you be cool with poor planning when the animators are lipsynching dialogue or creating gameplay and cutscene animations? Because I recall a whole lot of outrage over BioWare's poor lipsynching and ridiculous animation errors like Aria gliding around in the Omega DLC.

Would you be cool with gameplay designers making certain weapons and abilities crash the game when used? Or damaging abilities that doesn't do damage? Or defensive abilities that doesn't actually protect you? Or guns that doesn't shoot straight where they're supposed to? Of course not.

What about level design? Are you cool with invisible holes in the ground that makes you fall through the world and die? Or invisible walls which prevents you from progressing normally through a level? No?

Character design? Would you be cool with a human character having a black head and a white body? Or textures being missing? What about models clipping through walls and floors, resulting in jittery collision animations?

Of course you're not okay with any of this. So, let me ask you all this: what the fuck makes you people hold the game's writers by a much lower standard than the rest of the development team? Why are people like Mac Walters continually given a free pass to suck at their job while the animators and level designers are derided for poor animations and invisible holes in the ground that can be chalked up to poor Q&A, minimal testing and extremely stringent development time?

Writing is not hard compared to programming, yet you're kissing the writers asses when they're writing absolute garbage and shitting on programmers when they're doing the best they can with extremely limited resources.