So... about Shepard?

Apparently according to IGN and Gamespot, your choice of gender has the following impact:

Choose Sheploo: forced to play the plastic haired manlet. Every one is greeted with "Yo, Brah" instead of their name. All female character's outfits have cleavage windows and bum cracks. The camera defaults to showing their arses during every cutscene. Ryder expresses no emotion apart from either stoic gazes or at best a single manly tear.

Choose Femshep: forced to play the ugly one. Everyone is greeted by their correct sexual orientation pronoun. Hot lesbian sex. New dialogue trees enabled exploring 'feelings'. Every inventory screen for armour require 6 confirmations for the selected armour before returning you back to the initial selection with the message 'are you sure? No it's fine, of course we have plenty of time why hurry it's not like we've been doing this for hours already'

Mass Effect: Andromeda is to introduce new people to the franchise. All games did this, of course, but it is much more important in MEA than it has been for ME2 and ME3.

Ryder, in fact, is our 'James'. The protagonist is now the newbie and we learn things through being them.

So we learn about Shepard's ME1 stuff and maybe ME2 rumors and ME3 hints.

Beyond that, dunno. But my point is that much of MEA is just there to get a new 'generation' of gamers interested and excited in the series. This means not necessitating knowledge of the past games, and not constantly relating to the past games, but ALSO reviewing and explaining and potentially even elaborating on past games.

Bioware can decide whether to revisit Milky Way, Shepard, whatever, in DLC or the next game. I'm not saying we will or won't see anything to do with them. I'm just saying that MEA is a fresh start and that means not necessitating knowledge of the past. But the good news is that MEA will absolutely review much of the trilogy for new players' sakes. It is clear that there's enough Mass Effect Trilogy-ing going on that its world mattered in the setting, even if it may not constantly matter a lot in this one game's plot (dunno about sideplots, DLC).

Would be cool if it was revealed that Alec Ryder was Shepard's instructor during N7 training.

Alec: "I wasn't surprised when I heard Shepard became humanity's first SpecTRe, (s)he was the best marine I ever trained."

Scott & Sarah:

That would be a clever tie-in. Alec Ryder is certainly old enough to have been Shepard's superior. They probably did know each other, given how exclusive the N7 Program is.

I imagine there may be a small reference or something similar to how we could visit the crash site of the first Normandy. Otherwise, the half a millennial jump into the future more or less makes Shepard's heroics a forgotten afterthought. I wouldn't even be surprised people in Andromeda thought Shepard's legacy was a myth in the same vein no one believed The Reapers existed.

Not only this, but it's likely Alec Ryder probably knew Shepard in some capacity. The arks leave between ME2 and ME3, so Shepard is already a galactic war hero by that time (whether they know Shepard is alive or dead at this point).

Sara: So, what was Commander Shepard like?

Alec: Shepard was quite a character. Shepard couldn't dance worth shit, but sure knew how to kill things, and Shepard always seemed to be able to convince people to do anything.

Sara: Ever heard of pronouns?

Alec: Ever heard of shut up? 

Maybe father Ryder is one of the people who trained Shepard and he'll talk about him/her?

How is this a troll thread?

OP made this thread because it was revealed that the CC in ME:A asks what gender Shepard was, obviously some people are wondering to what extent Shepard is going to be referenced in the game. You couldn't figure that out?

I didn't hear it from Giant Bomb, it was a video/article from Eurogamer on Thursday

Link?
I guess I am a little out of date.
Only seen three: Game Informer, AI Briefing and another one... don't remember title off top of head.