User blog comment:James12708/Possibility of a Mass Effect 4/@comment-5171916-20120720142959

Personally i feel that ME4 cannot go back in time simply because it would mess with the previous three games. Much of the mass effect universe is based around the past and this stuff comes up a lot in the games, for example, the krogan rebellions.

If players are allowed to make decisions that effect the consequences of the war then surely this will impact on certain features from the original trilogy and make it redundant. The genophage may never have happened and humans may never have been allowed to adapt due to krogan expansion.

For this reason i think that future games should be set in the future because it would be easier to implement the unique decision making facility that made mass effect popular in the first place because going to the past would cause a more linear storyline so that the events of Shepard's story could happen.