SO just wanted to post this small comment to at least get something on record so I can go back and see how much I got wrong on hindsight when more things leak from the game (probably only on december when a new trailer comes up on the VGAs, or perhaps only next year around E3).
I imagine that Bioware will absolutely fail to provide good answers to the many questions that were either directly or indirectly made in the previous trilogy.
The first of these is about the Fermi paradox, to which Bioware answers with a very good answer arc in Mass Effect 1: First, you are made to believe that Fermi was somewhat right, the aliens are indeed everywhere, and they even have a central hub in the galaxy where the main issues are dealt with. This is taken a bit in a kind of a campy tone at first, where we just shut down our brains a little, pretend that this is a kind of satisfactory answer ala "Star Trek", that it's just a matter of certain hegemonies rising and falling through the eons (Protheans, etc.). Then we know the truth, the Reapers are actually harvesting every single intelligent species that crop up every 50k years, and that's why billions of years have passed without Earth being bothered that much by anyone else.
That is a fine answer. It is, at least, consistent, whole. We might have huge issues how it was dealt with afterwards, but it poses a very striking question: What is the Fermi Paradox situation in Andromeda? If we are to be consistent, there are only two possible answers here. Either an hegemony was enacted in Andromeda that prevents the Singularity horror (that the Reapers were designed to prevent here), or the Singularity horror has already occurred and we are arriving in a post-Singularity galaxy. The second is somewhat obscure, difficult to write and almost impossible to get away with and still have a "western like" exploration theme in it. At its simplest, everywhere you went, small machines would detect you, analyse you, render you still and turn you into computranion before you made any trouble. So I'm guessing the former. There's something that should be behaving in a similar sense to the Reapers in Andromeda galaxy that maintained it in a somewhat pristine manner. Never forget, Andromeda is bigger than the Milky Way.
But what is it, and how it functions? More to the point, will the writers be brave enough to write another massive antagonists that are like the Reapers but not quite?
And, what would happen if a rogue Reaper agent went "hidden" within our "Arc" to the Andromeda Galaxy, instalinked with the Reapers back home and tried to enact similar strategies in Andromeda, building its own Reaper here, and even confront the present hegemonic power? Clash of titans kinda theme. Imagine nu-Shepard making an Alliance with a Reaper against Andromeda's hegemon. Anything's possible here. No one wants to contribute with ever more crazy scenarios?
Sorry, I just like to brainstorm about silly things like these.