I have a feeling I know what the "save humanity" stuff is really about now.

I think you are not far from truth. We do see lil Ryder in awakening chamber (I'll be using fantasy terms for the lack of actual ones) when fire hits the fan. So it's the beginning of the game. We do see Ryder falling off some hangar door and then waking up on a crash site. We also have this

so Hyperion crashing on surface is practically given. But. Hyperion must turn into a pile of scrap from something like this.
You'd need to be a Reaper, Shepard or Shepard's Mako to be in one piece after orbital crash. How could frozen colonists on Hyperion not turn into fried ones is beyond me.
Unless they actually do. Then all what's left of humanity is Nexus personnel.

I agree that the "save humanity" bit applies once we arrive in Amdromeda. I think it's too early to assume we really know what happens to Ark Hyoerion, though.

As Ahriman says, that cover pic implies a horrible crash. That would pretty much be the end of humanity in Andromeda, unless they somehow escape the crash. (Implausible, but what else?) I don't think that works too well for the plot. The cleverly spliced scenes don't necessarily tell an accurate story, either. I've seen enough misleading previews and marketing to know that I should wait and see what happens.

We do know that Ark Hyperion finds the human "Golden World" is "not as expected", and that they encounter some serious problems, at some point. Whether the entire Ark is lost, who can say? That cover pic certainly seems to say it is. I don't think we will lose the greater number of humans on that Ark, though. If we did, there would be no humanity to save. I'm pretty sure the "save humanity" bit is tied to the urgent need to find humanity a suitable world as soon as possible, in view of Ark Hyperion's state.

I would like to correct you. It's not that BioWare has abandoned emplying logic, it's that all employees that employed logic has abandoned the company. Mac said they take the science of Andromeda very seriously and meanwhile he's retweeting SciencePorn trivia on Twitter, and either way, when Walters says that, it's not exactly reassuring anyway. The last publiziced work he did was Foundation, not that it was even attempting to be scientific, but it goes to say how much he has "improved" since ME3 if he even has that, and now he's the guy giving guidelines and the "go-ahead" when other writers need to come up with plausible scenarios. I mean, I'm excited to run around new planets and look at pretty graphics - it's always nice to play my own customized character as well, but there's really no incentive to trust where this story is headed from a standpoint of playing the game for its "quality writing".

Nah...it's pretty much just four or five people doing the same "loading the gun" as you said over and over.

Everyone else is pretty much cool so far.

I hope you're right!

I was worried about the plot of the game for a while when marketing kept repeating exploration and the frontier spirit like we're going on a fun little expedtion.
But now it seems humanity is actually in deep trouble and they're literally fighting for survival rather than establishing a cozy nice home in Andromeda and terrorizing the natives.

This shipwrecked theme is MUCH MORE to my liking. Maybe we'll get a counter like in BSG and if we mess up humanity starves to death and it's game over.
Of course this just proves how stupid it is to separate the races by ship. But we don't actually really know what the plan was. So maybe it will all make sense.

There goes my BSG scenario... *sigh*
Well, as long as the shipwreck theme is not resolved within two hours, I'm fine with a bit of both.

And now I wish Bioware would introduce playing different characters in an episodic parallel timeline story. I want to BE that awesome Salarian STG! I want each ark stranded someplace else with different problems to solve. And at some point all races find each other again and kick ass together.

So many possibilities for an awesome narrative. Please don't be lazy, Bioware. No cartoon villain this time. Give us some real survival suspense. The terror of the unknown, isolation and starvation. You can easily do that while exploring. I guess it would make for a nice progression to go from naked survival to building settlements and starting to enjoy the process of going on scavenger runs in the Nomad. And just as everything seems to be going well at last something bad needs to happen, of course.
So a classical three act story: Survival, expansion, conflict/resolution. If that's what Bioware has in mind, I'm ok with it.

I will also add the the smaller scope should capture the "feel" of ME1. Replaying it now feels like night and day from the later games. Yes there are still galactic consequences, but you're not Space Jesus, you're just a soldier on a mission, you have a ship, a crew including some quirkier but still subdued types and it's up to you to just get the job done. People also give Meer grief for his ME1 voicework but honestly, he sounds more like a SF soldier in the first game than he does in later games. Except when he's asking for details. Then it's a pretty robotic "tell me more about X". But that's more on the script.

Anyway, if they capture that same feeling, just a dude/lady on a mission with some people for backup, it'll go a long way.

Replace "Hyperion" with "Nexus." Does your theory still hold water?

Doesn't Jien Garson say all the AI Pathfinders will ride with her on the Nexus? Would Dad take a separate flight to Andromeda from his kids? Since the Nexus is pan-species, it would follow that all of the Pathfinders of all species are there also.

I'll grant that the trailer shows splosions and planetfall, but who knows what the circumstancs are? Could just be a shuttle. Also, we do know that something went wrong with the Hyperion. Finding out what went wrong could be the whole game. Could be lost from navigational error but in good shape, could be damaged, could be hijacked, could be completely destroyed. Wouldn't that be a kick to the balls, if humans didn't have a viable population to make it in Andromeda?

Nope. As shechinah says, I'm unaware of any mention of the Pathfinders being aboard the Nexus. They'd be better able to do their jobs aboard their respective Arks, no?

Her exact words in the Initiative vid are as follows (0:34-0:41): "Most of you will be aboard Ark Hyperion, (for?) the rest will travel on the Nexus, with me."

So what would be a natural division of who goes in which? How about Pathfinders and their teams on the Nexus, where Garson can conference and plan with them, while all the logistics crew are on the Arks. This is assuming the job of Pathfinders is to find safe "goldenworlds" for the Arks to park at and defrost their colonists.  What else is the Nexus for, if not leading the whole expedition, including path finding? I don't think any of that is unreasonable to assume.

She goes on to say (0:49-0:52), "Each Ark will be assigned it's own Pathfinder."

Not, "Each Ark will have a Pathfinder aboard" or "Each Ark carries it's own Pathfinder." Assigned doesn't necessarily mean aboard. 

Of course, it could be that "assigned" does mean"aboard" and I'm all wet, but I don't think there is anything in revealed lore so far that irrefutably contradicts my interpretation.

Interpreting the disaster pics in the other trailer, Dad takes junior along to go check out some presumably safe problem or maybe go find the missing Hyperion, departing from the Nexus using a smaller exploration ship, sibling to the Tempest. They are attacked. Dad sacrifices himself to save junior. Junior is later rescued by another team.

Tell me that doesn't have Bioware prologue story written all over it.

Where the Ark in flames on the Deluxe cover fits in, I don't know. It could still fit in my interpretation, but then is that a separate battle from the one I'm guessing, or the same? If the same, there's an Occam's Razor argument that everything just happens on the Hyperion and the Nexus is not involved at all -- though I still want to know what good it is if not giving Pathfinders missions.




P.S. She also says, "a major milestone for all of humanity, as well as every other species in the galaxy" ... Is that right? Including Vorcha? Batarians? Thresher Maws? 

PapaCharlie9 , the preliminary Golden World targets have already been identified. Missions are planned before launch, not upon arrival. It makes more sense for the Nexus to take up a central, accessible location. This puts Jien and the support staff in place where they can best support the Arks.

With initial targets already loaded and set as stop number one, the Pathfinders would need to be aboard their respective Arks and ready to begin their assignments upon arrival. If the Pathfinders weren't aboard their respective vessels, it would've made more sense for all 5 vessels to simply travel together to a central location, plan, and disperse. They don't do this because they wisely planned their search parameters ahead of time, saving valuable time and resources upon arrival by having each ark travel straight to an accessible golden target.

Ark Hyperion's running into trouble couldn't have been an unforeseeable outcome when traveling 600 FTL years into the unknown. That's all the more reason to have your best, your Pathfinder, aboard each ark. That leadership can save lives when issues arise.

Edit: This is probably one of the posts where I declare an opinion like it's a fact. It's a writing style, more than anything. It's good when you need to sell an idea, an I often fall into it when I'm forming thoughts or theories, almost like I'm selling myself on it as it forms.

I hope it doesn't come across as annoying or condescending. That's not the intent. I could be wide of the mark with any or all of my theories.

This is what I imagine too. I also think what follows will be us trying to get the other races/the "Council" on the Nexus to give Hyperion some resources to help us out. Naturally they're going to refuse to some degree to cause tension (and give us someone to "hang up" on, as was said). So our job will probably be traveling around Andromeda to find resources, planets to colonize (and choices to make if Andromeda races have laid claim to them), and maybe do favors so other races help us out. And along the way we'll encounter new races and, of course, run into an obstacle that is the Kett. Maybe whatever planet we crash on is one the Kett consider theirs, which causes more problems.

I also wonder if perhaps the Kett are the "dominant" race who has the majority of the Andromeda galaxy in their iron fist. This also has me wondering how any of the Arks could ever stand up to the Andromeda races who want them gone. We're in their house now. It's possible that, if the Kett are the "iron fist" of the galaxy, part of the story will be connecting with new Andromeda races by promising to help them overcome the Kett.