The guiding considerations are building on existing lore (obviously) and not wanting to regress the "bigness" of the game. The second point is a tall order, since we already had ancient machines trying to exterminate advanced life across the galaxy.
For this reason I wouldn't set ME4 in the past. A First-Contact War game might be interesting, but it would be a huge step back in bigness. Additionally, you would probably have to do some retconning to fit your story in and keep it interesting/consistent with ME2+'s play style.
So if I were Bioware I would set ME4 in the future (i.e. after the events of ME3). I would probably declare Synthesis canon, since that's really want they really seem to want the player to pick and in light of Leviathan Synthesis makes the most sense (Please don't turn this into an ending debate, I just think it is necessary to pick a cannon ending to have any hope of writing a new story. Most of the content below could be adapted to any ending).
Several centuries into the future, in fact. New cast; a clean break except for historical references (perhaps with the exception of Matriarch Liara). Society is rebuilt and there has been plenty of time for new tensions to arise from the synthesis of biological and organic life. For starters, people are still uncomfortable with the Reapers, even though they rebuilt the mass relays and have been benign since the great synthesis.
Now we have a time; what about a plot device? The primary consideration here is drawing on existing lore. I postulate that the dark energy mystery from Haestrom in Mass Effect 2 is the most thoroughly unexplored problem in the ME universe (the tiny codex blob about developing missiles that use dark energy in ME3 is a joke).
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SETUP
So it's 2xxx, and more and more stars are dying prematurely. The dark energy situation is less of a novelty and more of a galactic crisis, as entire systems have to evacuated in order to flee stars dying a young death. Thanks to the tamed Reapers, technology has leapt ahead to the level the Leviathans were at when they created the Reaper, but no one knows why the stars are dying.
You play as special operative, Cmdr. Whatever. On some routine mission on your fancy Reaper-tech ship (perhaps it is a Reaper, since they are benign now). You encounter a massive alien machine impossibly close to a star, heavy with dark energy readings. Somehow scans show the machine is malfunctioning. You tractor-beam (future, remember) it away from the star examine it.
You detect an impossibly huge eezo core, much bigger than that of a relay. The suspiciously-prescient AI on your ship speculates that the entire machine may be capable of unlimited-range point-to-point jumps without an external relay, and comments that such is beyond even Reaper science. You order detailed scans and report back to command with the data. Before you can get a reply the machine powers up, tosses your Reaper-ship aside, does something violent to the star, and then disappears. After avoiding some kind of disaster regarding the trajectory the strange machine placed you on, you observe that the star the machine was hugging has advanced several stages and reeks of dark energy.
Cut ahead a few years (established practice at this point). Perhaps have an intervening mission where you accquire your "reputation" instead of a menu choice between sole survivor, war hero, and ruthless. Scientists have taken apart the scans you recovered and reverse-engineered the mechanism of the jump-machine. They calculated the range of the design, and concluded that the only galaxy within range big enough to meet the eezo requirements for the drive core is Andromeda. The machine couldn't have come from this galaxy because science. It was also unarmed, so no weapons-tech advances were developed.
The scientists also figured out what the alien machine's mission was: taint the star with dark energy, allowing the star to be remotely siphoned across vast distances for its energy. This is the only source of energy potent enough to power the jump-drive in the machine.
You are stationed on the first Milky-Way jump ship. It's much bigger than any existing ship; it dwarfs the Reapers and the Geth dreadnaught. In fact, the jump ship is a carrier the size of a large moon, carrying ships from every race in the galaxy, including several Reapers. Your post is on a human ship in the carrier, perhaps named Normandy SR3 as fan service.
The mission of the jump ship and the SR3 is to investigate the Andromeda Galaxy and stop the destruction of stars in the Milky Way. Several stars in vacant or undesirable systems are carefully chosen and sacrificed to power the jump to Andromeda. QEC's relay data back to the Milky Way at all times, meaning that from an R&D / research perspective the resources of the galaxy are available.
With great fanfare the jump ship is commissioned and jumps to Andromeda. A target location is selected that looks like a relay hub. There are a few minutes of calm before several unmanned vessels jump in and attack the jump ship.
Chaos, explosions, etc. Most of the ships in the carrier escape; a few explode in pretty colors. The captain on your ship bit the dust; Cmdr. Whatever is now in command. All the ships are scrambling and end up jumping out through different relays, scattering across the Andromeda galaxy.
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BODY OF THE GAMES
Communication lines are still open, but relays in this galaxy are not mapped. You have to collect the Milky Way forces that were scattered across Andromeda while figuring out what is going on in this galaxy, making allies among the AI factions fighting there, collecting squad mates, and collecting tech to upgrade your fleet to be able to take on advanced Andromeda ships in combat. Eventually you recover the star-sealing technology described in the next section and acquire another jump ship and go home as a hero to seal the stars in the Milky Way (perhaps conencted to how relays are sealed in ME 1-3). You might even bring about the fall of a particularly-nasty faction of AIs in the Andromeda galaxy. These events would be spread across three games, with appropriate intermediary challenges and victories. There is probably a threat from one or more factions of invading the Milky Way as well.
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MAJOR PLOT REVELATION
The situation in the Milky Way was one solution to the problem of organics creating synthetics that destroy them. In this case, the Apex race remained in power long enough to create a synthetic with the directive of preserving life. This led to the Reapers and ultimately Synthesis.
That's not what happened in Andromeda. Instead, various organics created synthetics with various other directives; all eventually destroyed their organic creators and evolved their technology continuously, ending up divided into powerful factions based on what the directive given them by their creators was. While the cycles in the Milky Way stagnated technology at the Reaper level for Eons, such was not the case in Andromeda. AI factions grew and eventually developed the ability to jump instantly to any point with energy taken from draining stars with dark energy. When factions entered conflicts it became common to target opponent's stars, so a technology was developed to "seal" as star against tampering. Over the course of time all of the stars in Andromeda were sealed or drained, so AI factions started draining stars from other nearby galaxies, such as the Milky Way by using their jump-ship technology.
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It is my opinion that this high-level plan flows quite naturally from the established Mass Effect universe, and manages to increase the stakes even further, while opening up new avenues to explore.
I'm sure you could somehow squeeze in another retconning of Cerberus somewhere too, since Bioware loves doing that so much.
Of course, this is all probably far too ambitious and the next Mass Effect game will be smaller in scale than ME3. Still, if I were tasked to make a new game in the ME universe of even grander scale this is what I would do.
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In the unlikely event that someone from Bioware reads this, feel free to rip this storyline off for a Mass Effect game, as long as you put my name in the credits somewhere.
(Originally Posted here www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/1uy87u/what_i_would_do_for_the_next_me_game/)
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