After much consideration, I would like to offer my own input here, for what little it will do to change the course of affairs regarding ME4's development. Although I, like many others, felt severely let down after the conclusion of the initial Mass Effect trilogy, I must say the original (non-extended cut) ending has grown on me over the years. Not because I like it, not because it's good, but because it was obviously what was intended all along and as bleak and unedifying as the conclusion might have been it was, at the least, a conclusion. Furthermore, the unadulterated and unedited conclusion of Commander Shepard's journey actually presents us with a fairly good opportunity to tell a new story - one that is fully removed from the past but inexorably altered by it.
In my view, and excluding the ramifications of synthesis (as I despise them), it would be not at all a bad idea to set the next installment of Mass Effect many centuries into the future. The story would unfold in a post-Citadel, post-Reaper galaxy; a galaxy that was left in ruins following the events of ME3. With the Mass Relays destroyed and supplies of food, fuel and consumables limited, millions die - former centers of civilization from Palaven to Sur'Kesh and Earth are reduced to little more than legends in living memory. The Yahg, spared the ravages of the war, are marauding across the galaxy occupying abandoned worlds and terrorizing small pockets of civilized society into submission. Within this maelstrom, the protagonist (human or alien) is placed in command of a prototype vessel that is capable of traveling between star clusters without the relays. Perhaps it uses similar technology on a smaller scale, the details are not relevant. In any case this ship is able to go back into the areas that had long been abandoned, encountering the Yahg and the permanently changed remnants of galactic society. You might run across Salarians who have adopted human customs, or Turians who have, by necessity, reverted to a preindustrial state. With every remnant population heretofore isolated and allowed to develop on its own, the possibilities for variation are endless.
At any rate, your small ship and crew might serve a purpose in uniting (regionally) a variety of disparate and potentially hostile factions into a kind of unified resistance to the Yahg's expansionism. The ship's new "hyperdrive" once proven to be successful could be replicated elsewhere and the rudiments of a New Order could arise from the ashes of the old. The Yahg, I should note, would not be some uber-villain bent on galactic subjugation. In fact I'd consider the scope of this story to be relatively limited - forced mainly on the formation of a regional coalition against a regionally hostile antagonist. To me, I think the primary thrust of the plot would be more exploration, uncovering the fate of the old long forgotten centers of Civilization and filling in the gaps as to what happened at (and after) the Battle of Earth. Consider that, without the relays it would be quite impossible for the isolated pockets of life to know what had happened to their counterparts or exactly how the war had ended. This would allow for (at least) the original destroy/control endings to be hand-waved away (again, excluding what was posited in the extended cut).
Well, that's my thoughts on the subject anyway. I could ramble on but I might as well keep things short and sweet at this point. I don't know what Bioware has planned but I hope they at least put some thought into what they're doing. And further that they do their best not to compound the mistakes that have already been made. Time will tell I suppose.
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