User blog comment:4Ferelden/A possible plotline for ME4./@comment-4319257-20121127090538/@comment-4721065-20121127102330

Thanks for your constructive criticism -Algol-, you raised some very valid points. I will try to address them to the best of my ability:

Endings: Well, the game IS going to be set 50-80 years in the future, so the Shepard will probably die about 30 years prior to the events, and 5-15 of those years will be on Earth, waiting for the Relays to get fixed. As such, there isn't much room for their influence. In the event of Control and Synthesis, there are many unknowns, but since weren't given much of a concrete answer, nothing really prevents Bioware from saying "no, this is how it was supposed to work all along".

Asari: Well, given how good Salarian intelligence is supposed to be, I'm very sure that they WILL find out about the asari heritage and blackmail them into surrendering their power or doing something else to that effect.

Quarians: Well, I'm always against retconning player choices, so we have to maintain the possibility that they were wiped out. It's true that they will gain a lot if they aren't, but I think that for this game, at least, they could do without the limelight.

Elcor/volus: Firstly, I don't remember openly fighting with chainguns and and Cains matching their ideals of resisting change, so the idea of them undergoing changes like those outlined above is plausible. Then, this is post-Reaper/Cerberus tech, researched and augmented by their volus friends, so it would make sense why they would use it and why the traditional tech counter-attacks aren't effective/overtly effective (before you ask, the existence of Reaper Blackstar proves that properly done Reaper-derived technology wouldn't carry a threat of indoctrination, and this would be even more true now that the Reapers have been destroyed/stopped being hostile.)

About volus, the Turian Hierarchy evidently didn't have enough power to stop them from developing their own biotics, even though they would be of far greater overall benefit to turian troops. Given that in any ending the Relays WILL be rendered inoperable and should take AT LEAST a decade to be rebuilt to resembling former capacity, this should address both the problems of trade and the keeping their technological developments in relative secrecy.

For the Isolationists and Council, I think that the situation would resemble the American Civil War: the Isolationists would want to separate due to the mentioned differences in culture, but they wouldn't want to be completely alone, because they recognise their individual weakness and the period of economic devastation that would have inevitably followed the Relays' shutdown would make them wary of such a thing. The Relays' disturbance would put a few forks into their unity at least for a time.

Finally, I would like to remind you of the few dramatic shifts in Mass Effect lore before:


 * In the original Mass Effect, we are told that none of the ships attempting to make contact with geth returned. This is dropped in the sequels and we are never given any indication that people on those ships weren't all slaughtered: we even get to go to Rannoch, yet no-one mentions any of those people. You can probably see that it REALLY doesn't match with the description of geth as a peaceful specie.


 * In Mass Effect, the attack on Eden Prime understandably causes investors to pull all funding for the Alliance colonies until there are more guarantees of stability. In the sequel, there are ENTIRE colonies dissapearing and no-one is even considering doing the same.


 * Cerberus evolves from being a relatively minor rogue military cell with little motivation given besides researching dangerous species to a galaxy-spanning organisation capable of luring Joker, Chakwas and many thers to their side despite the obvious repercussions to even larger and more powerful maniacs that have decided to implant everyone with Reaper tech despite considerable evidence as to what it does.