User blog comment:The Milkman/Mass Effect in Retrospect/@comment-3228423-20130417021124/@comment-3228423-20130417123501

Well, not exactly. Arrival merely shows how close the Reapers are to coming to the galaxy and what Shepard did gave it months to try to convince the galaxy that the Reapers are coming and they need to prepare (only to fail due to the overwhelming stupidity of the Council and Alliance leadership). The rest of ME2 brought the rest of the pieces into place for ME3: Maelon's genophage data, Tali's trial, attacking the Shadow Broker's base, etc.