How do you feel about the premise not happening due to the Reaper invasion?

The proposed connecting route is in their mission statement, this is fact....so the intent is clear.
The building of the new relays is obviously speculation for everyone (me) lol, but it's one way that the space magic would work within the current lore.

Again, the eventual (yet I admit, hard to fathom right now) trade route is part of the program from the get-go, a lot of people like to pretend that's it's not stated in the first wave of media about AI for some reason.  They (MW residents post Reaper War) don't need a crystal ball to know that the AI intends on reconnecting with them at some point, it's in writing as of right now, clearly stated before the AI leaves in 2185.

If BioWare hadn't put that part in the mission statement, I would see this as crystal ball stuff, but it's right there for all to see

From the Mass Effect wiki:

The Initiative’s ultimate goal is to establish a permanent presence on the seemingly resource-rich frontier of Andromeda, and eventually create a reliable route between it and the Milky Way Galaxy.

I'm down with the 'Hoo lordy it's there, why not?" approach - aka exploration.....unless you were not directing that at me

Our discussion is based more on the sub-focus of the expedition, where I'm saying the AI has full intent (intent being the operative word) on reconnecting with the Milky Way at some stage, but that's a long way off; it's fun to speculate on how they would do that however (well, I find it fun lol).

The counterargument to this would be the Lazarus Project or just Cerberus in general, but to me saying "well they've alreay broken the rules once" is a terrible excuse for doing it twice. But again, I think most will just accept that the Milky Way universe lore is broken and once we get to Andromeda perhaps you can suspend disbelief again over new and hopefully more consistent lore.

I thinks it's fair to criticize Andromeda's premise for teh building of the Arks and (Expecially) the Nexus, since even the 9 years span of the project is not probably enough for that feat (I'm still waiting to know more before my final judgement, but I don't have high hopes. I do hope they'd at least try to explain it). My problem is, as you pointed out, with the people who think that the lore is thrown out of the airlock with Andromeda (or ME3) when things like that happened already in ME2. While Cerberus and Lazarus aren't a justification for having more stuff that goes against the lore in future games, it should be pointed out that it's something Bioware started to do long before ME3 and Andromeda.

Same goes for those that think the project should've started around ME3, or after ME. While it might make more sense that the Reaper threat caused the project, it has the problem of shortening the span of the Initiative to a ridiculous level.

The only way it'd make more sense at least for the timeline might be after the endings, but it wouldn't solve people's issue with exploring a new galaxy when the MW isn't fully explored, and Bioware clearly isn't willing to pick a ending, made a new one or left it vague.


 

Yes, a prequel would have worked, but as you said I doubt many among the fanbase would have liked them to go that way. And they like their big stakes, epic tales, and there would have been little room for such story in a prequel. A sequel, however, I don't know how could have worked without retconning the endings, either choosing a canon one or just changing them all, and scrapping refuse, or the lore as they are doing now. :/

On the bolded I couldn't agree more. There was no easy way out from the corner they had written themselves in.

I know I wasn't. The old Mass Effect framework is just as valid for more stories pre ME3 ending as The Last of Us's setting is for more stories that don't subvert or touch Joel and Ellie's plot. The problem with those examples is that the universe itself is no longer interesting but only as a context for another plot, but there's no longer the feeling that the universe itself may evolve, change or reveal its mysteries, and that would mean a huge aspect of why I personally got  so invested in the Trilogy would be lost.

Well, I should clarify with TLoU it would be more that I don't find the universe interesting at all, but I guess I used to before i realized it was just a macguffin for a very emotionally dissective story for the protagonists, and I feel by the time you get the idea of a narrative, which encapsulates setting, plot, characters and everything, then any minutiae or developments within that concept no longer interests me because I already get the point.

So if they were to make a prequel or sidequel for ME123-verse someday, it would only interest me as far as what the human drama would be. Any new lore would probably come across to me as contrived or meandering.

Side-note: Again, this is also where the trilogy failed/succeeded to me and why the ending was such a disappointment. The Reapers pretty much represented the ME universe as we know it; they created the Mass Effect Relays, the Citadel and everything that became the galactic civilization of the 2180s which we came to know, and the Reapers represented the mystery of the universe, so the notion of the ending being about the Reapers and revealing mysteries in some form was something I was 100% fine with even as I was playing, in fact I expected it and obviously the answers did not live up to what it could've been - it was just poorly executed really, extremely so, but the overall essence of the ending contained the notions I was looking forward to even before popping in ME3, because anything related to expanding or explaining the universe is what hooked me onto ME1 and 2 to begin with.

I'd prefer a retcon than a prequel, even though a Mass Effect game set before Shepard could be good, I find ME's backstory to be quite poor. Both the history of humanity and of the galaxy.

But I was hoping for a retcon that wouldn't be that terrible. They didn't even try to make it make sense.

I don't know. It's not easy.

First you cannot have any of the galaxy species building it, as we do not have the technology and it's financially impossible (both things are in the codex, this is not an opinion) and second you cannot be a known project, as such a project should have been mentioned in the trilogy.

The best explanation I could come up with is the Leviathans. They are the only species we've encounter with the technology to build such vessels and even come up with the resources necessary. They wouldn't build the Arks themselves, but would control the peopel who do (without they even knowing it). The 'why' I never came up with, but it stands to reason that the Leviathans would want to to Andromeda and space the Reapers and begin something new there. I mean, if it's so easy to go to Andromeda, why wouldn't they have gone already?

Since 2225 is 40 years from the time the ships have left for Andromeda, the reapers could still be harvesting the Milky Way, if Shepard refuses to choose red, green or blue. Even after the reapers complete their harvest, it would/could be thousands of years later that another species would discover the relays

Your scenario could work if green, blue or red is chosen.

Only thing that would make any kind of sense to me would be be if they had found the plans for the arks and Nexus a la the Crucible. A previous cycle's desperate attempt to evade the Reapers. Certainly doesn't explain away everything (especially the economics) but it would do for me.

Yes, because of change in scale yourself detected.

The kind of investments being made today are not prohibitive. They might be high, but not out of the real of what is possible. Elon Musk for example, whant to make it viable to go to Mars. Not to mention, they aren't nearly as risk nor is their profitas as far away as the AI's. 

If there is someone today investing some 10+ trillions dollars for a space voyage that will take a few centuries to Alpha Centauri then I'll change my mind and say it's not really that different.