We could try to guesstimate the story with the little snippets of lore and narrative that we got so far. It's fun. I enjoyed trying to do the same with ME3 (I got some things right) and BP, and it's a good exercise in itself to bring those thoughts into words so we can see how wrong I (we?) were led astray after the fact.
There are some difficulties. Before ME3, I couldn't wrap my head around why were we fighting so
many cerberus troops, but I guesstimated that it would have do be about a race between Shepard and TIM towards the Big Solution Button that would solve everything. The problem though, is that it's quite difficult to piece the things together in order for them to make sense,
when it's quite likely those same pieces don't make any sense in the final product to begin with, thus distorting any guessing we could make.
Anyways, I like this kind of ****, so indulge me! I might spend several posts to do a sufficiently thorough analysis, and you can always add to it (or subtract).
1.
Worldbuilding. I've recently read that this is kinda important for Mass Effect
. What the **** is happening in Andromeda? Many things are possible. Here are some questions that have always itched me ever since the first reveal.
a)
What is the Fermi Paradox answer to Andromeda? The game
should not avoid this question. In Mass Effect 1, the game totally ignored it and pretended that all species were relatively the same with somewhat the same kind of technological evolution, somewhat ignoring the deep time questions (yes, Protheans, etc.), and we went along for the ride (because Star Trek!) until lo and behold,
there was actually a damned good reason why no one around was incredibly more advanced than the others. It just so happened that the Milky Way was rebooted every 50.000 years.
Now what the **** is going on in Andromeda? If there are no Reapers, shouldn't there be a species or two in there that would just dwarf anything you could comprehend? Wouldn't the "Problem" that the Catalyst tried to solve in the Milky Way exist in the same way in here?
I'm going to assume that the writers didn't merely handwave the problem away, which is probably the wrong assumption (90% chance, I'd say) and still try to match with what we see in the trailers and all the rest of the information we got.
What do we see?
We see some relatively advanced Andromedean species (Khet, Angara), we
know there are some pre-spacefaring species out there. We also see the
Remnant, ruins of an otherwise dead really advanced species (which apparently has a lot of Observers and Destroyers and whatevers still quite active). We also see a lot of really big thresher maw like metallic monsters and various other weird creatures.
One possibility is that the events that the Catalyst was built to prevent already happened in Andromeda, perhaps multiple times. It's clear that the whole Galaxy hasn't yet been turned into Computronium, but a lot of "wiping outs" could have happened. In this scenario, the "Remnant" could be the last generation of such a civilization ran amok which self-destructed with a bad singularity, and the local cluster is basically recovering from this holocaust, slowly, having to deal with the "remnants" of this civilization, AIs that have some programming left. These AIs programmings couldn't be so aggressive to wipe out everything new that would show up, but they could be sufficient aggressive or dangerous in some environmental level to pose a threat to organics.
In this scenario, the organics we encounter have to deal with the Remnants as environmental hazards pretty much like we do, and they are all natural to Andromeda.
In the same scenario, it's also possible that
some of the organics we find are not from Andromeda at all, and rather, much like we are, come from another galaxy (!). The eons do not match though. Neither the Keth nor the Angara strike me as a civilization that is at least 50k years old (in which case they could simply be races that were under the Prothean Empire that somehow managed to escape the culling of their cycle), their technology doesn't strike me as that good.
Another possiblity is that, much like the Reapers, the Remnants' own technology that is open to salvage is a sort of meta-strategy by superior intelligences in order to sway any new organics into their own technological path. Too many "rhymes" here? Sure. We can twist this. Imagine that instead of all this pointing towards a culling, the strategy is a Contact scenario, wherein all organics that can figure out how to fight self-defense remnant mechanisms and master the technology hidden in the vaults can be "lifted" towards some transcendental existence, or say, merely join the galactic super party of the up and ups. This also solves the Fermi Paradox in Andromeda (instead of being culled, they simply disappear from the map and join some kind of Matrioshka Brain hidden in the center of the galaxy, etc.).
b)
Milky Way species are the ****ing initial mystery here. Supposedly, they are already here for quite some time now before you actually wake up from your slumber. This means that a lot of colonies have been already established, but we don't exactly know in what conditions, if under some sort of emergency conditions (where everything was failing, and some kind of ThunderDome politics rose from harsh situations), or if under some relative good enough conditions. What are the current politics? Where is the NEXUS stationed? Is it under control or is it abandoned? Is it under construction or is it finished? What are the territories of the several council species? Do they already have several planets colonized?
Some things can be inferred, from gameplay or story telling necessities. First the NEXUS is going to be visitable, probably between the first and the second chapter. After hyping this megastructure for so long, it would be weird for them to simply put it like the ending purpose of the game. It will be much like the Citadel in ME1, therefore it does exist and it does have political power over the council species' several inhabited "golden" worlds.
The human colonies are a mystery so far. Most probably, the PEGASUS was ****ed up and managed to skip several years (while other council species colonized several golden worlds), so the humans are running with a time deficit against other species in colonizing worlds. But some branches start here. It could be that a few humans escaped the accident (I'm thinking Alec Ryder) who tried to bridge the gap between the PEGASUS and the NEXUS' diverging paths, or other pathfinder activities that were important, before the rest of the PEGASUS crew could wake up.
I have thought little about this chapter at all, so I will defer to the discussion.
c)
The Khet are really ****ing assholes, but why? Clearly, they want the same thing that we are after, regarding Remnant technology. We are in a
race with them (it's the obvious story arc, we'll get there when I develop this further), but I am interested here in asking how are they seeing Humans, Salarians, Turians and Asaris. An aggressive race, faced with a sudden invasion by 4 major species plus some Krogan, would not be in a good mood towards these. How many more are coming? What are these races' purposes? Are they an infection from the Milky Way? Are they here to gather the same thing from the Remnants that we are?
IF the writing is good, there is ample room for nuance in writing these antagonists, since it's quite obvious that all of the council races *could* be regarded as an invasion force, and trying to compete aggressively for the same things they want. OR, they could just go full JJ Abrams and design Archon like a stupid crazy nuStar Trekkian Nero (I have to admit, that trailer where Ryder faces Archon in their Trekkian screen gave me all the wrong vibes).
d)
Territory. This is also interesting. We are focused on a single cluster, given we lack Mass Relays to make us jump through diverse points in the galaxy, but there are a lot of stars in a small cluster. However, we see a black hole in the briefings, several times. I'm all for Interstellar-like Black Holes, but does it exist solely for us to marvel at its graphics, or is its existence an important strategic point, like a wormhole or some other interesting territorial aspect of it? No answers.
Given that the whole game takes place in a single small cluster within Andromeda, I have an intuition that at a certain later point in the game, we will be thrown off at some thousands of light years away from it, to retrieve or learn something important, relative to the Remnants. The last reveal, the Remnant final key could be related with some technology that would enable you to travel that far away, analogous to build a Mass Relay of your own, or to find a kind of a Mass Relay, connected with the remainder of the Galaxy, opening up new possibilities in the end, with the protags filled with wonder, imagining the marvels ahead of them to explore (fade to black, credits).
e)
Genophage. So apparently, there's a side mission that refers to "a future for the Krogan", captured in gameplay footage. Do the Krogans get the cure in here as well? Everybody hates repetitions, but it's an important question here.
f)
Cerberus. Everybody hates them, and probably everybody within Bioware as well, except perhaps Mac ****ing Walters. We've already wondered about Cory Harper and some weird issues with the AI named SAM. The very existence of an AI points to a less legal framework within the Initiative, possibly because they're going for the "New World" anyway, so why bother with stupid Milky Way laws that just impede "human development"?
It's quite easy to see how the human side of the Initiative could have been partially funded or helped by Cerberus, and that SAM could be a spinoff of EVE, from the Luna Base itself. It's also straightforward to see Cora Harper being a TIM relative. IF we are to have this thread in the game, I'd like it not to shadow anything in the main plotline, pretty please, ****ing please? So, a good compromise would be for it to be a Cora Harper Loyalty Mission. She has "issues" to deal with, and we slowly learn it has to do with his crazy uncle, mr TIM and the overall Cerberus intentions, which have some consequences here in Andromeda, but are nothing but a sideshow (given that TIM is way more concerned with the Reapers anwyay).
Ok, that's it for today. Your thoughts?
