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

I like the idea of giving the finger to all the endings in Mass Effect 3 and have people boarding The Citadel at the start of the game finding a recording of Shepard hallucinating as they bled out next to Anderson and something completely different actually happened.  That way you avoid all the "favorite ending" and "galaxy changed" issues while keeping the majority of the lore in place.  Now I really don't care one way or the other about leaving the Milky Way since it isn't going to be a surprise since they have been saying this one plot point for years, I think it would have been different if they didn't say anything and when I play the game for the first time that is the first time I learn of it.

Just an aside I think remaking the trilogy would have been a bad choice because of how people would have expectations of what should be focused on, changed, or improved upon and that would just have created a more negative bubble around the game.  Maybe they can go back in a few more years and try then, but right now I think too many people would be looking for a way to proclaim its failure before it even has a chance.

That's the thing I absolutely adore about Indoctrination Theory, to me, it enhances the current endings to the point where there is still mystery and wonder in their seemingly absolute directions.

I really like how you've highlighted the 600 years as a pivotal factor in the fate of the Milky Way: I like to RP that after that length of time, communication (a new form of QEC perhaps?) will make a link between Galaxies eventually possible, and no matter what ending we chose: somehow a connect can happen at the conclusion of the Andromeda series of games.

I would love for Humanity to be flourishing in both galaxies and an eventual re-connect with our long recovering cousins in the Milky Way being possible. Obviously, I'm theorycrafting up a storm and headcanonning the frak out of all this, but one can dream....

In my opinion knowledge about The Reapers will depend greatly on when the Initiative leaves, for it is formed prior to Mass Effect 1 so the reasoning at least at the very start won't have anything to do with The Reapers and their actions.  Now if they do leave prior to Mass Effect 2 which I am thinking might be the case since they have the sendoff 2015 N7 Day video where Shepard sends them off, I would think The Reapers would have been thought of differently then what will have happened if they left at the time of Mass Effect 3.

The way I look at returning to the Milky Way is that it will be based more on mission protocols or technology limitations such as damage then the possibility of extinction in the Milky Way.

I guess I'm repeating myself, but I'm not buying this 1200 years long investment into mining andromedian Palladium thing. Just read it, it's gibberish and they even managed to write three sentences with two of them contradicting each other.

That's not entirely true even if word "Reapers" isn't used until 2185. We have 50k+ and older Prothean ruins, the fact of their sudden disappearance is widely known in-game long before First Contact.
Now the only thing they need to start drawing conclusions is to discover 100k+ years old advanced civilization.
Or someone to discover functioning Beacon before Shepard. If they Shepard could saw something from it then someone else could do it as well. Even better if that early found Beacon was somehow mentioned in-game, then there would be even less stuff to retcon.

I was talking about the npcs we're going to talk to rather than the PC. When we talk to them about why they came to andromeda they'll have lots of different reasons, not just "we had to flee the reapers".

A lot of people were complaining that the time and resources weren't available to create these arks in response to a Reaper invasion. Now that's set aside.

Based on the maps we've seen, it looks like the entire Milky Way Galaxy is basically explored and still would have been in 2176. (I think that's the date I remember hearing for when the project was started.) Sure, it's not all colonized but it's pretty well known. Andromeda is something else. It allows us to explore beyond the boundaries of the mass effect relays.

So, say, an interested group of investors decided this was a great idea. They got things rolling, knowing it would take decades to launch. And when they did finally launch - well, didn't one of the trailers have Shepard giving them a goodbye or something like that? Maybe that meant they launched earlier than expected so that the various races could survive in the event that the Reapers won. Or not. Whatever. I'm all for the spirit of adventure. If we had more of that in the real world we might already be on other planets.

There's another initiation video? Urgh. I signed up for the stupid Initiative but haven't gotten anything since that first email (and the introduction of Jian).

No, not yet. I think felipejiraya is just referring to the videos in general although I'll note that videos to come are basically training information like how colonies will be established, weapons and first contact protocol.

One word: relieved.

As others have said, so far we have only seen AI recruitment and they aren't going to tell Joe Public anything that isn't shiny and positive. We can't take that at face value, so we still don't know why the ships are going, only the information/motivations the people on the ships have for going.

I've said it before, but I think the Ark project started as a much smaller exploration idea, once ME1 happens (and Shep secretly believed) that private project is co-op'd by the council and the AI in its final form is born.

As akward the ending of ME3 was I do not want one word or reapers mentioned in this new game.

Curious what's out there so a bunch of humans and aliens want to explore is good enough for me.

Encountering enemies and other problems can't be to difficult for Bioware writers to produce.

Was not keen on a reboot thru exploring a far away universe but Bioware chose that route they should stick with it.

Dunno why but it reminded me of this