Situation in Andromeda

Well, judging by glimpses from trailer this actually could be the case. Though this delegation may not be the friendliest kind.



I'd expect to see new homeworlds for all major MW species in MEA2. How BW will get to it is another question. Whether skip a lot of time or just say that they had millions of genetic samples and mass grew them to fully colonize a planet.

The Heleus Cluster is a single star cluster, so we're talking about a small stellar neighborhood for this game. (As if Mass Effect had been set entirely in the Hades Gamma cluster, for instance.) Obviously, the detail will be turned up to 10 11. This cluster is supposed to be on the fringes of Andromeda, I believe. So, as you said, we may not get a deep-dive into the state of the entire galaxy.

One thing I've mentioned before that no one seems to be talking about is the possibility that the species of the Heleus Cluster may not be acquainted with mass effect technology. Technology is not a straight line. It's not unreasonable to think that they may not have discovered a means to travel beyond their own local cluster, yet; and may use other means to achieve FTL travel. (This assumes some of them have achieved FTL travel, which seems a safe assumption, given our arms race with the Kett.) Our introducing mass effect technology to the Heleus Cluster could be a very big deal, if the writers chose to make it such.

I imagine any galactic secret, threat, or whatever that we discover will be linked to the Remnant, as they seem to be the "hyper-advanced species from the past". I have no idea where we will be centuries from now, though the intent of the Ai seems to be to connect Andromeda with the Milky Way, eventually. Perhaps future games, given enough time, would feature such a connected setting?

I'm thinking they might figure we'd let up on the ME3 endings, given enough time. That maybe even picking one would be okay? They could find all sorts of space magic/fancy remnant tech to aid in the construction of a relay. Mac said there'd be no communication with home "in this game". Maybe in the future, though, since they've had 600 years to advance as we've been sleeping, they could call, drop in, or who knows what?

Still, that was all mostly just playing along with the guy's/gal's post to whom I was replying. I agree with you that the writers should, and likely would, be in no hurry to return home to the Milky Way. Andromeda should suit there needs just fine for quite some time.

We're only visiting a single star cluster on the edge of the galaxy. Not having a functional relay network in the beginning of the game really controls the pace of discovery. Space is so huge, it's not really an issue, but it could feel like a big deal if and when we finally made it further into the galaxy.

I think it's problematic to develop anything while being frozen. If endings are to be retconed (somehow) there is no point to connect anything, just switch back to MW and that's it.