True. I'm fine with Shep being dead but i like speculate

If there's no Tali and Garrus in the game, I want my Shepard nowhere near it.

I think if you choose one of the characters for the crew and he became a new specter, whatever if you choose liara, garus, Tali, kaidan, werx or Williams, he or she became a new Capitan of the Normandy.

The only way it would make sense shepard being alive is to make The Indoctrination Theory canon. Throw ME3 in the bag, it was just a bad dream.

If you watch the teaser closely you can see that liara has wrinkles around her eyes and her freckles are darker, hinting that the next Mass Effect will take place probably centuries after ME3.

One way that Shepard and the squadmates that don't live for centuries to be alive during Andromeda's timeline, would be that they are among the passengers of the "Ark 6" that is mentioned in the teaser trailer.

Perhaps Shepard and co. would lead a sixth ark to Andromeda, while Liara stays behind in the Milky Way, so that they can possibly link the two galaxies together with a mass relay or something?

Ideally, Shepard.

Realistically, Ryder.

Would be interesting if we had an entirely new protag though.

I would like to play Grunt if he survives or Peebee

A descendant of either Ryder or their sibling if you romanced someone Ryder couldn’t actually have children with. That or allow for adoption. This should also open the doors for non-human player characters (like Asari as children of PeeBee, an adopted Turian if you banged Vertrag, etc.) in a way that makes it more organic and relatable for the player, because they are raised by at least one human parent, and also allows for a connection to previous games while still giving a fresh start in a somewhat more developed world. Plus you could do an initial opening act as young versions of your character at various stages of life growing up on a homestead on Eos or Meridian somewhere for a nice bit of immersion and catch-up on the world around you in the beginning for the people that didn’t play Andromeda.

I’d say a Shep descendant but they usually don’t have any family and I doubt they survive in whatever canon is chosen for post ME3, though that would be great as well.

Ryder, easily. They still have a lot of story left to tell and with Liara being in the next game, I think it’d be really cool to see her become Ryder’s mentor/parent figure, like Anderson was to Shepard.