I don't think it would ever happen, but a reboot would be pretty awesome to see. A great opportunity to spend more time with the species and characters we've come to love, as well as introduce several new ones. More missions, more possibilities, and a finish to the series that leaves the universe intact for a sequel (even if it is a changed galaxy). That's not the way Bioware is going to go, though. If we want a reboot, we'll have to write it ourselves, raise a bazillion dollars, and then get sued into obscurity by Bioware. Or skip those last two steps I suppose

Now I'm kind of upset that there weren't any big zero gravity moments in the games. Boarding a ship with no/variable gravity (like the ME2 Reaper) or fighting outside of a ship would have been extremely cool

There are a lot of possibilities for cool new squadmates. That's honestly not something I'm worried about for ME:Next; Mass Effect has always had awesome companions. I'd like to see a more diverse crew, but not the completely alien one some people seem to want. At least two human squadmates/romance options would generally help for those that either don't want to romance an alien or are a bit new to the universe.

I think it would be cool to have a romanceable EDI-style synthetic (male or female, doesn't really matter) just to explore human-synthetic relations from a more personal perspective. Seeing the unseen females of other races (Drell, Batarian, etc) would be great, along with new races like the Raloi, kirik, yahg, and virtual aliens. Even though characters like EDI, Wrex, Grunt, Liara, and Samara could all be alive well into the future, I'd rather leave them as NPCs if they appear at all.

The obvious solution for future games is not only to make every character a romance option, but also to include a mini-game where the protagonist can hook up their squadmates. MirandaxGrunt is the genetically perfect couple.

If I actually got to pick a few new love interests to add, Javik, Kal'Reegar, Joker, EDI, Joker+EDI, and Kasumi

Destroy killing all synthetics indiscriminately where Control is only ever explicitly shown to take control of the Reapers always seemed like just adding negativity to the obvious choice in order to make Control and Synthesis seem appealing. A more developed Crucible being able to specifically target the Reapers and spare other synthetics could not only be easily explained, but would be a fitting semi-canon ending that could be imported into future post-Reaper games in the series.

If Control and Synthesis are kept, they could also have endings depending on EMS. Not that EMS is a perfect system (Inquisition seems to have an interesting system worth looking at), but I'd leave coming up with alternatives to more creative writers. Low Control has Shepard become corrupted/indoctrinated and continue the cycle, Medium Control is essentially the same as before, and High Control would be a perfect upload and allow Shepard to either keep their body or download into a clone body whenever. Low Synthesis would turn everybody into husks, Medium Synthesis would be as in the game, but maybe make everybody sterile and unchanging, and High Synthesis would truly be an eternal utopia where Shepard lives and everything is totally rad and Javik names femShep his space empress.

Shepard's death also seems unnecessary in any of the endings (and you can tell that the Arthenn or whoever were stoned out of their minds when they decided that the Crucible should be activated by somebody jumping off of it).

Multiple endings is great, but not if they leave the galaxy too different for future games to handle. I'd love a Mass Effect with an unlimited budget and development time (without actually having to wait or pay for it all of course) that has different stories and characters based on every quest you do. Side with Cerberus and succesfully take over the Citadel, and humans are the Empire in ME4. Side with Cerberus and get beaten back by the Council races, and humanity is a client race of the turians with a Cerberus exile fleet plotting revenge from the Terminus. Big changes could work in a written document (though they would take more and more writing), but in an actual game it's better to stick with the Walking Dead approach of minor differences.

The Crucible fires (in a dark blue-purple eezo colored wave) and it disables Reaper shields, allowing the fleet to blow them up. Or maybe it destroys the Citadel, sealing the actual Reaper fleet in dark space to die off while the few that were brought into our galaxy by the Alpha Relay are defeated by the fleet. Anything is fine, but have it be variations on a singular clear ending that future projects can work off of. Shepard and the squad might survive or die during the Suicide Mission Mk2 that is the final battle (somebody get Dean the Young to write one up, he did a pretty stellar job on Renegade Reinterpretations' expanded suicide mission), but it's the difference between some dialogue and a memorial statue, instead of something impossible to handle like if there are Reapers flying around hugging people or still geth in the universe

The biggest butchering of Mass Effect by Cerberus is without a doubt the existence of Cord-Hislop Aerospace. I mean, why is not Core-Hislop? An early sign of indoctrination. Get it together Timmy.

They'd need to redo a bit more than the graphics. A full reboot would be cool, and I think any rewrite of the trilogy could benefit a lot from the foreknowledge of what characters will be introduced, what plotlines came into being over the years, and of course, the existence of Javik from the start.

Throw in some new squadmates and alien races, a bunch of new fun missions and choices, and an Engineer ability in which Shepard becomes Iron Man, and you've got yourself a winning formula that leaves the galaxy open to sequels beyond 'Alliance ship ends up in another galaxy' (though, who knows, maybe NotME4 will end up being pretty great)

Clearly the only choice ahead is for us all to collaborate in the writing of this revamped trilogy. I'll figure out when to insert the Miranda butt shots and come up with the big twists (the Reapers possess a flawed ideology, and the Crucible is the Qun)

We didn't wipe them out. In fact, all the evidence points to us coexisting with the neanderthals peacefully. They died out because they couldn't adapt to environmental changes as well as the humans.

And we snu-snued them out of existence. The snu-snu cannot be disregarded.

As for what I'd like to see in the next Mass Effect game/trilogy:

-New races. The alien cultures and histories are some of the most interesting parts of the Mass Effect universe, and it would be cool to see more of them.

-Continuation of the story. No more Genophage, geth-quarian problem resolved, Reapers all dealt with, let's move on to some new future problem that isn't retreading old ground.

-Race selection for characters, influencing stats, dialogue, and abilities. An equally diverse crew and squad that preferably is not military (Firefly-esque smugglers is a popular idea)

-Protheans.

Cerberus having a huge amount of resources isn't necessarily the problem. From what I remember, it was pretty clear in ME1 that corporations like Exogeni essentially owned the Alliance. Cerberus was a lot like Blue Sun from Firefly, a shady coalition of secret labs, military leaders, politicians, and elite operatives doing things the Alliance needed done unofficially. I think it would have been cool if it had stayed that way. Imagine ME2 if there were hints all throughout that, rather than the Alliance just allowing your actions, you had never actually stopped working for them. The human carry-over into the sequel trilogy (akin to the Genophage choice or Geth-Quarian peace) would be how you handled Cerberus (their continued presence/exposure/takeover changing both the reputation of humans in the galaxy and how we actually operate).

Instead they all turned evil in a quest to control the Reapers. No moral dilemmas, no shades of grey. If we had been allowed to agree with Cerberus then Control might not have seemed so out of nowhere.

That's actually exactly what I'm doing in my rewrite.

It's been a while since Praetor/Regenesis were publicly available, but I remember you had a lot of good ideas for missions and gameplay (there was a SPECIAL style system, cool new squadmate ideas, and missions for each background/squadmate in each game).

It's probably not close to finished yet, but have you considered making it public again? Peer review can always help, and it would be cool to see it again.

I didn't read the books, so I only heard of things like cerealgate through the forum, but I'd say everybody got a good impression of him from his email if not from his baffling plot-armor. In an ideal Mass Effect rewrite Kai Leng would be played entirely for laughs (a one-shot dead enemy in some minor side mission) or maybe a pro-Cerberus squadmate. There's room for an anti-Shepard (Dean the Young's Lanius rewrite does this well with the Butcher) as a human face for the enemy, but an absurd ninja with an inferiority complex ain't filling it.

Eh, I think I'm cool with it. Things like the ending have ruined any chance of me enjoying a replay of the trilogy, but I still remember the fun parts, the great characters, the interesting aliens and the great moral dilemmas of Mass Effect. I'm still getting Inquisition, and while I still think that ME as a series could have been done a lot better, I'm not that upset about it anymore.

Bring Down the Sky is the only DLC in ME1 worth getting. ME2 has Lair of the Shadow Broker (which is awesome), Arrival (kind of important for the story of ME3), Zaeed and Kasumi (new companions with their own missions), and Overlord (fun mission). For ME3 I would get Citadel, Leviathan, From Ashes, and the Extended Cut.

Pinnacle Station is a waste of time. Omega is kind of meh

I definitely agree. You really can't get much bigger than the Reapers (and I sincerely hope the Leviathans aren't going to be the new antagonist) and attempting to do so would be a mistake. I really would rather not get a prequel, but even if we do it would be better to explore the Mass Effect universe as something other than a soldier. The villain doesn't need to be some cosmic horror or an evil government or an evil species. Aspecific, well-developed antagonist that the player has personal motivation for fighting would be awesome.

Working with the Shadow Broker (while admittedly lacking some of the pro-human/coexistence dilemma that Cerberus had) would have the benefit of essentially working for yourself once you take down Kechlu and put Liara (or Miranda or whoever) in charge of the network. Even without that, it does seem like a more interesting fit, and would be an opportunity for more alien crew members on the Normandy (not just squadmates).

I agree that calling Cerberus the Sith Empire is a hyperbole, but I think the big problem with them as a faction is that their semi-inconsistent inclusion in so many missions takes away from the development of the Reapers. If that time had been spent better developing them as antagonists, they might have made sense instead of having a billion year old supercomputer acting largely illogically.

TIM was indoctrinated and we got to recruit the good people in Cerberus, but I feel as though we were missing some agency in the storyline (maybe an Alliance-Cerberus choice like the Krogan-Salarian choice).

Cerberus as a whole is pretty inconsistent, but then humanity as a species is definitely wanked up above most aliens. I agree 100% that it makes no sense for humanity's rise to power to occur in such a short period of time. Add another century between first contact and ME1. I think Cerberus could have worked great as more of an Alliance conspiracy that Renegade Shepard could support, instead of an all-power army of racism that are successfully causing more damage than the Reapers ever could dream of.

Not only is Cerberus portrayed in different ways between each game (small secret mad science -> infinite money anti-Reaper Machiavelli -> the Empire), but Shepard doesn't even get a chance to support them. Renegade Shepard's opposition to them doesn't even make sense.

Arcian, wasn't that the point of the Regenesis rewrite, fixing Mass Effect to get rid of humans are special, yo dawg Reapers, and other problems?