165 réponses à ce sujet

[fyz306903]

The second pic seems to have a large shoot of garbage flying out the back. Meaning it's occupied-by trash making species. It could be our station. But a station that may also be capable of some kinda ftl travel? That orb there reminds me of the relay orbs.

 

The top pic...idk, it also makes me think...prison planet. Something being built. Those pyramid things look like they should be "on", but they're not.

 

Also remind me of a power plant. An engine core...to something.

 

Anyway, it may not necessarily be the antagonists as much as an antagonistic place. Like Omega on steroids. A criminal like station.

 

But it also reminds me of something. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something about this place.....

What if the top picture isn't a planet at all and shows the inside of the space station?

[PinkysPain]

Setting ME Next in another galaxy doesn't diminish the magnitude of the choice that Shepard had to make, which irrevocably changed the Milky Way. We just probably won't ever see the Milky Way again, in that scenario.

 

It just makes all the choices objectively morally wrong (within the context of the ME universe). Now I'm sure some people made choices because they hated synthetics or were singularity lovers, but I'm pretty sure that's the minority. The starchilds justifications are the only thing making the decisions in any way palatable. Without his justifications we're just enacting a Saw movie.

[PinkysPain]

 

There is no canon in Bioware's games, period.

 

Leliana got better.

[ZipZap2000]

And Udina got a new job.

[Tonymac]

And Udina got a new job.

 

Udina got shot - or so I heard.  Or was it promoted to full dead?

[wunjilau]

It's irrelevant that 99% of the galaxy is unexplored.

 

100% of the galaxy is affected by whatever choice Shepard made at the end of ME3.

 

Unless they handwave it or retcon it, which would be terrible, it's impossible to set anything after ME3 because the state of the galaxy is so different. 

 

You can't seriously suggest that Destroy and Synthesis would look the same after 100 years, or 1000? How do they deal with those outcomes without making three different games?

 

Could still work. There's plenty we still don't know about how the galaxy works in the ME universe; we know what the Reapers know, which is actually, in the timeline of the galaxy, pretty recent and limited stuff. Leviathan reveals very little about what came before its race, and even after the Cycles begin, there are many other possibilities for other cycles to have escaped the Reapers (the Protheans can't have been the only ones to try the Frozen Disney approach, and surely some were successful). All we see in the ending is a third-person, omniscient-narrator view of red/green/blue lines spreading over about 14 or so relays across the galaxy; there's no confirmation anywhere that the RGB effect actually reaches any more than just the Citadel civilization worlds (i.e., the worlds the Reapers care about). One possible driving plot point of ME4 might be, in fact, to determine how much, if any, effect the Reaper Wars had on the 99.999% of the galaxy we haven't seen yet; setting the game on an ark-style colony ship would allow the story to maintain links to old characters without having to spend much, if any, time back in old Citadel space. Same deal with a Deep-Space-9-style wormhole, a bottleneck leading to a whole slew of new worlds and lost civilizations.  

 

Regarding Citadel space, there are three possibilities, none of which preclude further storytelling (if they go the direction of setting ME4 after ME3, say, 50 or 100 years):

1) All synthetic life in Citadel civilizations is destroyed. Elsewhere in galaxy, other synthetic life exists, comes out of hiding, is created, etc. When past ME3 characters are encountered, no synthetic characters are there, and conversation options mention lack of synthetics in Citadel space, and maybe how tough life has been, trying to rebuild and quash rebellions and unrest. Throughout ME4-6, people act surprised and suspicious when new synthetics are encountered, affecting reputation requirements for conversation options.

2) Reapers are controlled. Elsewhere in galaxy, no one cares, since the Reapers didn't use the dormant relays, and the new ShepReapers go and hide until "the day they are needed blah blah", showing up in ME6 as a war resource. When past ME3 characters are encountered, conversations mention how Reapers helped everyone rebuild faster and prevent civil wars and famine. Few or no synthetic characters need to be present; they all went off with ShepReaper or live on Rannoch. Couple of geth NPCs and maybe a cameo from a now-friendly, hilariously apologetic Harbinger. 

3) Green synthesis. Citadel races all have green skin, everyone gets along, rebuilds, and are basically a Star Trek Federation, all wealthy and happy. No real synthetic characters, just lots of green people who talk about being "new" and "enlightened". Character creation allows for cosmetic change to keep/remove green skin, and maybe a few skill changes (Sabotage in place of Dominate, for example). EDI makes a cameo somewhere. As ME4-6 progress, comments are made about the plentiful resources the Citadel worlds can send to help the colony.   

 

Setting a new game in Citadel space would indeed be impossible (or at least extremely expensive), but there's no reason to do so, when it's pretty unlikely that the RGB ending affected more than just a few million stars, at most (I'd actually find an overall effect of a few hundred thousand stars to be more than enough). 

[wunjilau]

It would be hard to write a story like this though, as any contact with a new super-advanced race would hardly go unnoticed by the rest of the galaxy at large. And then there is always the constant overshadowing threat of the Reapers.

If they do something similar to this as a midiquel, I think it will most likely be a "stranger in a strange land" sort of story. It's too predictable for Bioware not to go that route, to be honest.

 

Actually, that'd be pretty easy. In the planet notes during exploration, there are already mentions of highly advanced technology that Citadel races know next to nothing about. The Reapers themselves manage to do their thing precisely because it's easy for them to hide their existence for 49,990 years at a time. The Rachni also remained completely hidden from both the Protheans and the current cycle until just a few thousand years ago. 

The threat of the Reapers can't possibly be galaxy-wide. It strains credulity to think there are more than a few thousand large Reapers; if there were millions, enough to travel to every star in the galaxy to check for advanced life and destroy it, then Earth should have been wiped out in the first five minutes of ME3. More likely that, though the Reapers are the worst thing the Citadel races have ever seen, the galaxy as a whole kind of sees them as one of many spacefaring powers. After all, if a race of primates barely old enough to develop space travel manage to defeat them, they can't be all that bad. In the end, for all the hype, the Reapers are a human-level enemy, with human-level weaknesses of arrogance, inefficiency, and sentiment, all of which Shepard used against them.

[JeffZero]

A Destroy canon would be very hard for me to come to grips with, but if it needs to happen then so be it, I suppose. I'll live.

[SolNebula]

The ideal setting for me would a game set after the HIGH EMS Destroy ending with the retcon of not having Shepard back.

[NM_Che56]

More speculation: the following two images are related to the same species and will constitute the main adversary in ME4.
 

 


They show the same style: very angular with many flat planes. I'm guessing the species will also seem rather mechanical or angular in appearance.

 

Possibilities (ignore the being "wiped out" part):

 

http://masseffect.wi...ackground_Races

[Mcfly616]

snip

 

 

Actually, the energy from the Crucible hits all active relays in the network throughout the galaxy. There are active relays in non Citadel space, the Terminus Systems. Furthermore, just because a system doesn't have a relay, doesn't mean it is beyond reach of the Crucible's energy. As a relay overloads, the energy is released and spread out for hundreds, maybe thousands of light years. Covering all surrounding systems within the blast radius.

[K2LU533]

http://masseffect.wi...com/wiki/Armeni

Tomb planet?

[Han Shot First]

I'm almost certain this game isn't a sequel. And by sequel I mean a direct continuation of the Shepard trilogy set in Citadel or Terminus space. It may be that this game is set after ME3 in the timeline, but I have feeling it is going to be set well outside the regions previously explored in prior games.

 

Having said that I think Bioware does have a decent option for eventually crafting a direct sequel to the Shepard trilogy. Attempting to account for the all varying end states of ME3 in a single sequel may very well be impossible. On that note I think the best bet for Bioware would be to just select only one of the High EMS variants of those three endings to craft a sequel from. One way to sidestep controversy in not carrying over all three choices would be allow the fanbase to vote on which ending they'd most like to see a sequel based on, much like how they allowed the fanbase to vote on FemShep's default character model for ME3. The fourth option on the poll could be to not craft a direct sequel to the Shepard trilogy at all. Bioware could then claim, with justification, that whatever game they craft after that poll is the game that the fans wanted.

 

Also to further sidestep controversy if fans elect to play a sequel crafted from one of the three endings to Mass Effect 3, Bioware could make it clear that it does not render the other two choices non-canon. The sequel just explores the results of one of them without saying the other two choices didn't happen on alternate timelines.

[Mcfly616]

Snip

Polls aren't reliable. Many people vote based on what they're hoping to see, but have no idea what they're getting on the whole.

 

 

Remember Gamble's poll on the Retake site prior to EC's release? "Do you believe in indoctrination theory, yes or no?". Over 80% said "Yes". Which, we all know that 80% of the fanbase didn't believe that to be true. Presumably the vote was so high in favor of it because players thought it would actually provide an entirely new ending. So people voting on it with those hopes ruined it for the rest of us who only wanted to see their Shepard stand up out of the rubble. Instead, they cut it off at the breathe scene just the same, in order to not completely dismantle a theory that a portion of the fanbase believed in. 

 

As for the FemShep default appearance vote went, it was cool. But it's not relatable to voting on the setting of an entire game that everybody plays. You could change FemSheps appearance. However, the setting isn't optional. 

 

Personally, I wish devs would do away with polls and just make the games they want to make. Fan service is a detriment to creativity.

[wunjilau]

Actually, the energy from the Crucible hits all active relays in the network throughout the galaxy. There are active relays in non Citadel space, the Terminus Systems. Furthermore, just because a system doesn't have a relay, doesn't mean it is beyond reach of the Crucible's energy. As a relay overloads, the energy is released and spread out for hundreds, maybe thousands of light years. Covering all surrounding systems within the blast radius.

 

That's never shown. Watch the ending. All we see are a few red dots, lines, and graphical shockwaves, none of which can be taken to be "actual" views, since the viewpoint is from outside the galaxy, and those waves would, if the image is in realtime, be traveling at tens of thousands of light years a second. 

 

We never see or are told that "all active relays" are hit; we just are told later that relays are "severely damaged". The only relay we actually see breaking apart is the Sol relay. Until something specific is said, it's perfectly logical to keep the numbers reasonable and assume that the RGB Ending is limited to the extent of current Citadel civilization and Reaper targets.

 

Also, as I keep pointing out, even accounting for relays in non-Citadel space, the remaining amount of space in the galaxy is VAST. The galaxy is 120,000 light years across, with hundreds of billions of stars. The Reapers and Citadel races cover, at most, 0.001% of that, and that's giving them credit for fully exploring and cataloging over a million star systems in the space of a thousand years or so of exploration (and, in the case of the Reapers, establishing "farmland" over the course of a few million years). Note that in the actual game, we see even less; even in the few dozen systems we explore, we're often told that they're incompletely explored, sometimes with mysterious and unexplained alien artifacts beyond the reach of current technology. Galactic culture is shown to be centered around a few trillion people, a few major races, and five major capital planets. Assuming that's the extent of the entirety of galactic civlization is like meeting your neighbor's two cats and assuming that they represent all life and culture on Earth.  

 

Edit: I realize that there's the fourth "no choice" ending, where the cycle continues. That would, in fact, completely mess up any ME4 plot set after ME3, but I think it's pretty safe to assume that, like the "bad" endings of the old Wing Commander games, that it's specifically not intended to be a canon option. 

[Mcfly616]

That's never shown. Watch the ending. All we see are a few red dots, lines, and graphical shockwaves, none of which can be taken to be "actual" views, since the viewpoint is from outside the galaxy, and those waves would, if the image is in realtime, be traveling at tens of thousands of light years a second. 

 

We never see or are told that "all active relays" are hit; we just are told later that relays are "severely damaged". The only relay we actually see breaking apart is the Sol relay. Until something specific is said, it's perfectly logical to keep the numbers reasonable and assume that the RGB Ending is limited to the extent of current Citadel civilization and Reaper targets.

 

Also, as I keep pointing out, even accounting for relays in non-Citadel space, the remaining amount of space in the galaxy is VAST. The galaxy is 120,000 light years across, with hundreds of billions of stars. The Reapers and Citadel races cover, at most, 0.001% of that, and that's giving them credit for fully exploring and cataloging over a million star systems in the space of a thousand years or so of exploration (and, in the case of the Reapers, establishing "farmland" over the course of a few million years). Note that in the actual game, we see even less; even in the few dozen systems we explore, we're often told that they're incompletely explored, sometimes with mysterious and unexplained alien artifacts beyond the reach of current technology. Galactic culture is shown to be centered around a few trillion people, a few major races, and five major capital planets. Assuming that's the extent of the entirety of galactic civlization is like meeting your neighbor's two cats and assuming that they represent all life and culture on Earth.  

 

 

It's closer to 100,000 light years across (but what's another 20k). I don't need to watch the ending I've played through it and experienced it over 25 times. It is exactly what is happening. Once the Crucible energy beam starts ping ponging to 14 consecutive relays and cuts to the next scene, that's because the viewer can extrapolate that it's hitting all the active relays in the network. You really didn't expect that one scene to go on for a full 2-3 minutes so you could observe it hit every relay, did you? 

 

And as far as the "shockwaves" go, that is the Crucible's energy being emitted into the surrounding systems. It's  clearly demonstrated after the Crucible fires and the ball of energy is emitted within the Sol System, cut to the   galaxy wide view to see it happening in every other system with a Mass Relay. How fast it's traveling is  irrelevant. It's covering the area the shockwaves pass through.

 

 

And as far as your miniscule percentage of how much of the galaxy Citadel space covers.....keep in mind you're speaking of the current cycles "Citadel space". Whereas the space the Reapers have been harvesting for the past 37 million years(atleast), consists of the entire galaxy. The civilizations that came up with the Crucible were from all over. They did not just hail from the same systems as our current cycle. So, know that the Crucible's reach is not limited to the fraction of space the current cycle has explored. 

[Probe Away]

Snip

 

Also to further sidestep controversy if fans elect to play a sequel crafted from one of the three endings to Mass Effect 3, Bioware could make it clear that it does not render the other two choices non-canon. The sequel just explores the results of one of them without saying the other two choices didn't happen on alternate timelines.

 

This.

 

It doesn't have to be 'destroy is canon'; it could easily be 'we are making a MEU adventure set in a timeline where Shepard destroyed the Reapers (and cured the genophage, etc)'.  I'm not suggesting that they get mired in the concept of alternate realities but focusing on one potential outcome provides a way to move forward into the next game(s) without any handwaving regarding major choices.

 

No doubt some people will see this as an arbitrary distinction.  However, I didn't pick control but I would still be ok with a control timeline if that's what Bioware decided.  As long as the ShepReapers aren't involved.  I could even stomach a synthesis timeline if BW didn't use it as an excuse to wave the 'organics are synthetics are organics' concept in my face.

[goishen]

It's either that or they'll make it not matter.

 

For example :

 

If they set it 100 years in the future after ME. 

 

• Destroy :  You destroy them, but your kids and their kids starting programming AI's at a faster rate than ever before
• Control : Too much use of the Reapers has caused them to break down by rebuilding the mass relays and rebuilding planets.
• Synthesis : Short termed AI programming unable to comply with how the races of galaxy would react.  Races of the galaxy started a search for the purest of their race.   Started mating along these lines, as well.

Something like that.   It won't really matter what we chose.  Therefore, nothing has to be canon.

[wunjilau]

It's closer to 100,000 light years across (but what's another 20k). I don't need to watch the ending I've played through it and experienced it over 25 times. It is exactly what is happening. Once the Crucible energy beam starts ping ponging to 14 consecutive relays and cuts to the next scene, that's because the viewer can extrapolate that it's hitting all the active relays in the network. You really didn't expect that one scene to go on for a full 2-3 minutes so you could observe it hit every relay, did you? 

 

And as far as the "shockwaves" go, that is the Crucible's energy being emitted into the surrounding systems. It's  clearly demonstrated after the Crucible fires and the ball of energy is emitted within the Sol System, cut to the   galaxy wide view to see it happening in every other system with a Mass Relay. How fast it's traveling is  irrelevant. It's covering the area the shockwaves pass through.

 

 

And as far as your miniscule percentage of how much of the galaxy Citadel space covers.....keep in mind you're speaking of the current cycles "Citadel space". Whereas the space the Reapers have been harvesting for the past 37 million years(atleast), consists of the entire galaxy. The civilizations that came up with the Crucible were from all over. They did not just hail from the same systems as our current cycle. So, know that the Crucible's reach is not limited to the fraction of space the current cycle has explored. 

Actually, the range is around 100k to 140k ly, depending on what arbitrary factors you choose in include. We're still talking the same order of magnitude, though, but if you want to nitpick, then fine, we'll go with 100k. 

 

Yes, you can claim an expectation of extrapolation and inference, but that goes both ways. You can assume that the links go from 14 relays to millions, whereas I find it more sensible to think they go from 14 to a couple of hundred. I don't expect it to show every relay being hit, but if we are to infer that every single relay is hit, I expect to be told that; else, it's open for narrative development. 

 

The speed of the waves is extremely relevant; if that's truly a "God's eye" view of the galaxy, you're seeing a sight that no one in the story, even the Reapers, have ever seen; that shot is taken from deep in intergalactic space. At that point, it's fair to ask what timeframe the shot exists in. Are the waves moving at the speed of light? If so, and we're seeing thousands of years going by, then most of the galaxy will remain unaffected for quite some time. If, as you believe, we're seeing this happen in real time, and a magical wave of energy rewrites the entire galaxy in a matter of moments, well, then anything is possible, because that kind of event is Godlike in power. If humans truly built a machine that instantly rebuilds a galaxy's worth of life, there are essentially no limits to ME4. It's far better to view that shot as a representation drawn by the Normandy's galaxy map, showing propagation but overemphasizing impact. 

 

Finally, when I say "minuscule", perhaps more clarification is needed. First off, all the civilizations have been centered on the Citadel, limiting them in galactic geography to the same capital, every single time. We know there's lots of overlap in civilizations, because old artifacts (and dead Reapers) turn up in Citadel space. We also know that many star systems are visited but not explored, and that exploration is limited by available mass relays; as an example, in order for the current cycle to explore a million stars before being Reaped, the Citadel Council would have to visit 400 new stars every year for its entire 2500-year history. Also, there's no guarantee that all cycles are 50,000 years; early cycles might have been 500,000 years long, or millions of years long, however long it took that cycle to get around to finding the Citadel (and certainly they were longer before the Reapers constructed the Citadel and relays).

 

BUT, let's be really generous, and say that every cycle is only 50,000 years long and takes place in a new part of the galaxy. Let's say the Reapers have been around for roughly (judging by the estimated age of the Leviathan of Dis) a billion years (you said 37 million, so I'm giving you a free 963 million years of bonus Reaping time). Even then:

 

That's 20,000 cycles of Reaping, one every 50,000 years. Even assuming each cycle develops a civilization that explores a million completely unique stars, with no star ever being visited twice, that's still only 20 billion stars...leaving 90% of the galaxy still completely untouched by anyone we know of.

 

P.S. - Yes, I know there are conventional FTL options that allow reasonably fast  travel, but even then, I think I've adequately illustrated how very little of the galaxy the fictional lore has truly explored. Leviathan probably has more stories to tell, though...

[ZipZap2000]

@wunjilau If it weren't happening in real time the Quarians, Asari, Turians and Krogan would all be dead. They aren't you see them in the ending.

 

Edit: Impressive argument nonetheless.

[Shermos]

As I said in the Legend of Shepard thread, the main character could be the kid we saw at the end of ME3 when s/he is grown up. I could stomach a canon ending being chosen, even if it was the one I really dislike, destroy. But I could also live with the consequences of each choice being made roughly convergent. 

 

The main problem the trilogy dealt with is the potential conflict between organics and synthetics. ME Next just needs to have the conflict resolved, regardless of the choice Shepard made. Choice in Mass Effect has always been about morality more than the actual consequences themselves.

 

Edited to correct my crappy typing.

[T-Raks]

I think many of us are looking wrong at the endings of ME3 in the sense, that when making the choice we rationalize why it is the best solution in our opinion.

 

For example I take destroy, because I'm not sure if I (my Shep) can control the Reapers forever (so there is a possibility of them becoming the deadly threat they are again) and I would never force a DNA change on the galactic community. So of course I think of future scenarios that are totally different in all three scenarios.

 

Going forward in the ME universe that might not be though what Bioware is doing. They might say: all three endings are valid solutions to the Reaper threat. That means what they have in common is that the Reaper problem is solved.

 

1) In Destroy there are no Reapers anymore.

2) In Control the Reapers have vanished.

3) In Synthesis the Reapers have fulfilled their purpose and will for example be deactivated (maybe they even self-deactivate after their mission was successful, i don't know).

 

Ok, so Reapers are no more. For the survivors destroy and control are the same, the only difference initially might be that there are no Geth (though as machines they could be rebuilt) or that the Quarians are low in the numbers (even if you side with the Geth, not all Quarians are with the Flotilla and not all Quarians would die if they lose the war with the Geth anyways).

 

So what does that mean for the next Mass Effect game? That Geth and Quarians won't play a central part. Nothing more. Doesn't even mean that you can't have squadmates from these races, just that they are not central to the plot as a whole race.

 

Genophage cured or not? Even simpler. Just because your Shepard decides not to cure the Genophage, doesn't mean that the Krogan don't succeed with their main goal later. Yes, I know, Mordin thinks that "someone else might have gotten it wrong", but that doesn't mean that the writers can't come up with another crazy good scientist finding a solution later on.

 

Ok, so the major differences are no problem going forward if we think of destroy and control at first. Remains synthesis as a possibility. Though I think of it as raping the galactic community to say it clear, that again (and the epilogue for that ending suggest otherwise) might not be how Mass Effects writers see it. To come up with a solution for this they could for example say: if you choose synthesis as starting point going forward, the races get powers they hadn't before, because now they are "half man, half amazing" - I mean "half man, half machine". So when customizing your new hero you could probably choose from a wider set of powers than when you choose destroy or control. I still wouldn't choose it, but hey, that would even underscore their intention of synthesis being the best and inevitable solution.

 

Being green you say? Could be a side effect that wears off or not, shouldn't be too hard to implement in the game. A non-factor when you wear your armor and just green eyes for everyone in cut scenes if it doesn't wear off.

 

Alright, Reapers are gone, every choice at the end of ME3 is valid going forward and has nothing to do with the new conflict.

 

So here we go: setting? To me from the concept art and other info (new races will be discovered) it looks like it is after ME3s ending, but not too far ahead because of the return of the Mako. We heard that it will be a hero's journey, so we will start at an earlier point in a career path than we did with Shepard. The conflict might arise with at least one of the two new races, obviously it is likely with the one with that dark, mysterious hub.

 

An early guess: "After the Reaper threat was solved, the galactic community explores not seen before regions in the Galaxy to get new resources for the rebuilding effort. And they thought they where safe..."

[wunjilau]

@wunjilau If it weren't happening in real time the Quarians, Asari, Turians and Krogan would all be dead. They aren't you see them in the ending.

 

Edit: Impressive argument nonetheless.

Thanks. And yeah, that's why I concluded the most reasonable perception of that shot is as a graphical representation on a holo-table; the RGB magic waves make absolutely no sense otherwise. 

[Mcfly616]

 

 

The speed of the waves is extremely relevant; if that's truly a "God's eye" view of the galaxy, you're seeing a sight that no one in the story, even the Reapers, have ever seen; that shot is taken from deep in intergalactic space. At that point, it's fair to ask what timeframe the shot exists in. Are the waves moving at the speed of light? If so, and we're seeing thousands of years going by, then most of the galaxy will remain unaffected for quite some time. If, as you believe, we're seeing this happen in real time, and a magical wave of energy rewrites the entire galaxy in a matter of moments, well, then anything is possible, because that kind of event is Godlike in power. If humans truly built a machine that instantly rebuilds a galaxy's worth of life, there are essentially no limits to ME4. It's far better to view that shot as a representation drawn by the Normandy's galaxy map, showing propagation but overemphasizing impact. 

 

 

 The time frame is real time. You see on Tuchanka, and Palavens moon and Thessia. They're all fighting for survival against the Reapers until suddenly the Crucible's wave of energy (godlike in power) arrives and changes everything. These battles were taking place while the Crucible was being activated. The relay network propels it at FTL speeds. The battles didn't last for light years. They lasted basically until Shep activates the Crucible and for a short time after (until the energy reaches them).

 

And yes, humans did "build" the Crucible along with all the other beings of the galaxy. However, this cycle was not its designers. Credit goes to all the past cycles who had a hand in coming up with the concept, the blueprints and refining it. We stood on the shoulders of giants. If not for them, we would've never achieved this galaxy changing event.

 

You say it's "far better" to view the scene as the galaxy map. But it's not the galaxy map. It is the actual view of the galaxy. But if make believing it's the map makes things more convenient for you, go ahead.

[Mcfly616]

As I said in the Legend of Shepard thread, the main character could be the kid we saw at the end of ME3 when s/he is grown up. I could stomach a canon ending being chosen, even if it was the one I really dislike, destroy. But I could also live with the consequences of each choice being made roughly convergent. 

 

The main problem the trilogy dealt with is the potential conflict between organics and synthetics. ME Next just needs to have the conflict resolved, regardless of the choice Shepard made. Choice in Mass Effect has always been about morality more than the actual consequences themselves.

 

Edited to correct my crappy typing.

Problem is the eternal conflict can't be resolved without achieving synthesis. It can't be held at bay without Reapers around. So, to converge all ME3 endings moving forward and just say "oh everything is cool", wouldn't work.