So you want a game with a smaller threat and a regular joe character?
You should probably just play the multiplayer then. Minimal story, action, and you're just another one of the guys.
I just wanted ME2.. with fewer Reaper trappings.
Like, just being some dick in Omega who beats up batarians. Or Illium too. Any of the underworld stuff was fun. Saren also sounded like he'd be fun to play, in the books.
That's something I just can't stand in hollywood and western scifi. There's always a planet-wide or galaxy-wide threat, and we always follow a kind of "chosen-one" protagonist, the one who will save the planet/galaxy. There always has to be some kind of big "baddie". to fight against. What if instead, the conflict were not a big baddie but just the conflicts that arise through the exploring and colonizing of a new galaxy.
We could imagine a story of the Milky Way species coming together in the wake of the Reaper threat, and sending large groups of representatives of each species out to Andromeda on a sort of Noah's Ark as a last hope, in case the Reapers reap all the intelligent Milky Way species. These representatives know it's a one-way trip, no matter the outcome of the fight with the reapers in the Milky Way. Once in Andromeda, we follow these colonists as they explore and seek to colonize and establish themselves in Andromeda. Their encounters with local species, their search for resources, conflicts arising amongst the colonists (Do we stay here or do we keep searching) or between the colonists and the local species.
We could deal with heart-wrenching goodbyes as certain of the colonists decide to establish themselves on habitable planets, while the rest continue their trip, not really knowing where they're heading or where they'll stop. The protagonist, your character, could just be a leader, one tasked with doing everything to ensure the survival of the Milky Way species and the colonists. But just one amongst many.
Maybe I've watched too much Star Trek, Star Gate, or other episodic scifi where each episodes deal with just those things (exploring and stuff), but not every story need be against a huge threat. Small stories, those that as a whole end up constituting the story of a entire species or of an entire galaxy, can make for such powerful storylines. I tire of the sort of planet-wide or galaxy-wide conflicts or baddies. I think a more intimate, smaller scale story, would be so much more effective. Localized conflicts, emphasis on character and character development, on exploration and on meeting others, and simply on the most important - life. First contacts, first awkward steps, a seemingless limitless galaxy to explore.
The gameplay (since we're most likely going to get a third-party shooter) could revolve around fighting renegade groups of colonists who believe that they are free to take whatever they want, including planets on which intelligent but primitive species live. Or fighting against Andromeda species hostile to the arrival of the Milky Way galaxy species.
There is no need for a galaxy-wide baddie, such as the Reapers, the borg, the wraith, or any of the galaxy wide baddies of modern scifi. I guess, I would like a game more on exploring and less on combat and fighting a big baddie. Maybe that makes for boring gameplay, I don't know. But I know I dream of coming across such a game.
This is a BioWare game. When have they NOT done the whole "YOUR THE BIGGEST HERO EVER! WITHOUT YOU THE ENTIRE WORLD/UNIVERSE/GALAXY DIES" schtick in their games?
I think that's one of the faults with their writers. They need that hook for their stories because they don't know how to craft "small scale" stories.
One of DA2's complaints by BSN is that the story was too small in comparison to Origins.
Careful about what wish you for.
I never complained here. I found a good community of fellow fans.
Too bad we didn't ****** matter 
EA likes chasing people who don't even like them.
One of DA2's complaints by BSN was that scale-wise , the story was too small in comparison to Origins.
Careful about what wish you for.
The only one universal complain I hear everywhere is these two caves we run during entire game.
My personal favorite is cheap-ass graphics and designs they tried to cover with 'artistic vision', like anyone believed this, heh. I heard complains about this quite often too.
You know this is why i really like the witcher. You don't really care about the whole world saving part. In the first game you are simply after the stuff stolen from your castle and even when Vizima is burning around you, you can say, ahh hell with it. Let the nonhumans and knights sort it out among themselves. I'm just gonna grab my friends, stab the villain and go home. In the second you can chose to help the special forces, rescues princesses and generally just do everything to helo Temeria.
And then, after you saved Temeria from being torn apart by internal strife, the Empire moved in, at the end of Witcher 2. 
Quite a lot of people were annoyed that only a few of your choices were carried over and the big decisions were undone by forces outside of your control, but it has grown on me. You can try your best but sometimes/quite often it´s not enough.
While I would love to see a game with a smaller scale plot as the OP suggests, if we are going to the chosen one and last hope for the galaxy, at least make it so that we become the hero over the course of the game instead of having that role thrown on you in the first couple of hours of the game. Likewise, there shouldn't be a major threat right from the beginning, you should slowly uncover it as you play.
If we look at recent BW games, they've had a habit of making you the last hope from pretty early on - from ME having Shep as the only human spectre and the only person who can save humanity from Saren once you've spoken to the Council (even if the actual threat was bigger) [let alone what happens in the later games], to DA:O making you the last hope to stop the Darkspawn as early as Ostagar and of course DA:I giving you the glowy hand of power and a massive hole in the sky only you can stop in the prologue of all things - and while I enjoyed these stories, they all lack a degree of build up, development etc. They just throw you straight into the deep end and say "you're amazing, go save the world". For me at least, being the hero is a lot more satisfying if I've actually in some way earned it. If I've worked my way up to it. If I've discovered that my character is special, instead of just being told.
For an example of how I'd suggest it be done, well, we can stick to Bioware games actually: Baldur's Gate. By the end of the game, you discover that you are a demigod, and that you are the only person in a position to stop your half-brother (and fellow demigod) from conquering the region in which the game takes place and ultimately raising himself up as a full scale god. And yet, you don't know this until well into the game. The events of the end of the prologue hint that there's something special about you, but it's nothing more than hints, while the story for much of the game is pretty low key, with you following a trail of evidence through what appears to be some well organised bandits creating and then taking advantage of a shortage of good quality iron. Eventually though you start to uncover both the true goal of the people behind these bandits, and the truth about yourself. And finally, you go and save the day. By then end you are the big damn hero saving the day from the evil guy trying to become a god. But the game builds up to it so much better than much of Bioware's more recent work.
This kind of story actually fits what we know about ME:A pretty well, with the whole exploration of a new galaxy theme. At first, you think there's no big unified threat out there, and you're just investigating worlds find places for colonisation and so forth. You encounter small conflicts and isolated incidents. But as you start to uncover more clues across different worlds, a picture of something big out there which is a threat to us begins to emerge (these mysterious alien remnants likely). Likewise, the player doesn't begin as something special. We are one of many people sent out to explore Andromeda. But as a result of what we learn out there, we are the only person who is in a position to act, and thus we have to be the hero.
Have you ignoble mob ever seen "Seven Samurai"? Read the script, it's really worth checking.
This is a BioWare game. When have they NOT done the whole "YOUR THE BIGGEST HERO EVER! WITHOUT YOU THE ENTIRE WORLD/UNIVERSE/GALAXY DIES" schtick in their games?
I think that's one of the faults with their writers. They need that hook for their stories because they don't know how to craft "small scale" stories.
As mentioned by others, DA2 was a little deviation from the path in that sense. We all have examples of departure from cliche working wonderfully in fiction, I'm sure.
I don't feel it went particularly well in DA2, though, and I know I'm not alone in that. As I said in my previous post, if you make a total break from convention, do it sublimely well for things to work.
The BioWare writers are, I think, capable of that genius, but I don't feel DA2's story can have fired on all cylinders even at the start: As they progressed towards what we eventually got, they must have known it needed reams more work/throwing away.
Yes, that game obviously faced real resource constraints, but this one could, too, so I'm not holding out for BioWare to experiment with every cliche with the main story arc. There's plenty of room to break the mould in the smaller scope, and if it is hung on a good old chosen one saves the universe framework or whatever, so be it. I won't be baying for their blood.
I'm cool with the protagonist being the person mostly or solely responsible for saving the day, so long as that is an accident of fate. I'd rather the protagonist just happens to be in the right place at the wrong time and has the prerequisite job description, rather than being the only person in the galaxy with the 'Right Stuff' to get the job done.
At times the Shepard Trilogy leaned a little too far towards the latter and implied that the galaxy would be doomed if Shepard were killed-in-action. That shouldn't have been true after the Battle of the Citadel.
That's true in ME1, Shep is in the right place at the right time on Eden Prime.
But then coming back to life in ME2 was super frustrating. I just couldn't believe that with Shepard dead, the galaxy just shrugged their shoulders and didn't bother to do anything. I wanted dialogue where I could scream and rant at them all for burying their heads in the sand. It's ludicrous that the fate of the galaxy depends solely on the drive of one person.
Say what you want about Cerberus, but without the Lazarus Project there wouldn't have been any hope at all. Which is stupid.
Here's hoping the new game has more of a collaborative feel, where other crew mates genuinely have a big part to play.
One of DA2's complaints by BSN was that scale-wise , the story was too small in comparison to Origins.
Careful about what wish you for.
Scale was never one of my complaints with DA2 ... I'm fine with the smaller scale story; I'd actually prefer they'd stuck with it rather than bailing at the end and throwing an obligatory "Big Bad" end-game boss :\
One problem with lowering the stakes is that we're going to be shooting a whole lot of guys. Way more than virtually any protagonist in other mediums will be killing. You need a pretty big motivation, and probably something resembling a wartime scenario, or the protagonist can feel more like a butcher than a hero.
I mean, you don't need the whole galaxy to be at stake but at least something like a city or a colony or something is probably a good idea. And with the premise of the game it'd make sense if the settlers from the Milky Way are pretty vulnerable for a bit.
The thing is though, he didn't really write it. The plot was outlined and constrained by the Forerunner trilogy of Halo novels, and Bungie had already set up (from the legendary ending of 3) that Halo 4 would involve the chief going to Requiem. Combined with the Forerunner trilogy, which again he didn't write, this would mean that chief would go to Requiem and awaken the Ur-Didact who would then resume his quest to compose humanity.Halo 4's plot was atrocious.
I must say, I never understand how someone that claimed to love him just left him to be slowly burned to death instead of, say cut of his head? (I know, pis)
Stop it you guys have already ruined Legion's death for me with your logic and all.
Halo 4's plot was atrocious.
I suggest you don't play Halo 5 then.
The narrative of Halo 5; which I am sure is more of the same from Halo 4; didn't even come to mind for me. It was far outshined by the removal of split screen from a series that has had it since the original Xbox; all for the sake of more freaking FPS. 
That and the moronic micro-transactions for MP.
343 Industries and the remaining Bungie veterans working for them are no longer a developer I want to associate with or purchase from anymore. I was already losing interest in the franchise's narrative, but now I don't want anything else to do with the series, outside of maybe Halo Wars 2; and then only if it has co-op campaigns, as well as a Covenant campaign.
And then, after you saved Temeria from being torn apart by internal strife, the Empire moved in, at the end of Witcher 2.
Yeah save transfer didn't work. But the point is you could totally do your own personal story and not save the world. It would be nice to do a Saren vs Shepard part again, but with no Reapers behind the scene. Just one guy who doesn't like you for some reason. A big personal victory is still a victory. And it gives you an arc.
People really like to hate on SWTOR but it has very good clas stories and most of them are about settling personal scores.
That's because people decided that everything is a trope.
Well, they kind of are.
DA2's plot structure was terrific.So the DA2 argument again. The cycle repeats itself.
I suggest you don't play Halo 5 then.
This is a BioWare game. When have they NOT done the whole "YOUR THE BIGGEST HERO EVER! WITHOUT YOU THE ENTIRE WORLD/UNIVERSE/GALAXY DIES" schtick in their games?
Its how they rope your character into the story. Like with the Inquisitor. They don't want it, but because the Glowy hand they have no choice.
I don't want to be a Grey Warden. Too bad, right of Conscription.
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