User blog comment:ExSturminator01/Mass Effect 3 Predictions based on ME2 hints/@comment-2006054-20100502122608

Problem is, Bioware must create a game that's equally rewarding to Paragon players, Renegade player, and new players that only come to the series in ME3. When I tried playing fresh in ME2 (not importing Shep from ME), Bioware decides that I did Renegade things in ME: killed Wrex, let the Council died, etc. I guess they will do the same in ME3 for new players, assuming that they did Renegade things in ME and ME2.

That would make new players to the game start without the rachni, the krogan, even maybe the geth (though what would happen to the geth if the heretics were destroyed is everybody's guess). Not fair for them. And surely Bioware wants to entice new comers to the series, to give them as satisfying experience as possible, in order to persuade them to also buy the first and second game.

The most problematic thing is that every squad mate CAN die in ME2. That would complicate things badly for Bioware as every player team composition must be different in ME3 if surviving squad mates are allowed to be in the team for the last installment. Nobody is immune to death in ME2, even Shep. I even found a way to kill Miranda, who refused to die in numerous other not optimal scenario I threw at her.

That IMHO would rule out returning squad mates. The only good ol' squaddies to certainly urvive ME2 are, ironically, those not participating in the Suicide Mission. Maybe Kaidan/Ashley or Liara will return. Surviving members of ME2 might make a return IMHO as NPCs. And I'm quite certain that again we will be presented with recruiting missions.

The climactic battle is a trope for any epic. So yes I think we will find them in ME3. And as I saved everyone (generally, I have one playthrough where I destroyed them just to have a different experience): the rachni, Wrex, rewrite the heretics... I want them in my armies in ME3. But I keep my fingers crossed.

And yeah, the virus scenario is pretty lame. I would like to see EDI finds a way to manipulate dark energy to defeat the Reaper. If it is like what I imagined from the hints from Haestrom and Giana Parasini, dark energy (probably also dark matter) will play a big role in ME3. Now that would be epic: Shep finds a way to a dark energy weapon, arrive late in the battle (riding in like the 7th Cavalry and the Alliance Fleet, pun intended) and deploy the BFG to the Reaper fleet, wiping out their millennia long existence.

But not before finding out what the Reapers really are. No epic closure of the game would be satisfying if we do not get to know our arch-enemy.