Loving the history talk and looking at parallels from history that could be incorporated into ME:A.
I'm going to dive in and put an idea out there, that, initially (from looking at what alot of folks are posting throughtout the forums) might make some people feel abit uncomfortable at first glance. But bare with me, once I get to the point i'm hoping, you might look at the the possibilities for Andromeda a little differently.
So. First off. I suspect that should Andromeda be successful at launch, it will inevitably recieve atleast one sequel and this idea kind of depends on that being the case, to work.
For ME:A I would like to see the Citadel races, taking up the mantle of desperate, almost imperialst invaders. This is a group of people for whom it's survival or extinction. To start off with, it's a great chance for BW to give players the chance to play the bad guy. Not the moustache twirling, black hat, genocide is fun, round 'em up on mass and feed 'em to the krogan for giggles bad guy. But the, desperate, Us or them, we have no choice because the cost of failure means DEATH, irrevocable and permenant death type. It would really put alot of players outside of our comfort zones, I like the idea of paragon-esque Ryder, fighting a losing battle as the sole voice of reason amidst the desperate and aggressive panic of the majority of the expedition and despite some success at holding back the worst excesses of the expedition, meeting with only limited success. On the other side you get the renegade, who leads the charge, not brutality for brutalities sake, but relying heavily on the us or them mentality, gunship diplomacy, strong arm tactics and remorseless decisiveness.
This scenario would really give people a chance to gauge for themselves in an interactive way, the justifications (no matter how ill concieved) that people use to validate their actions. After all, even the alien races are, in truth, representations of human characteristics and social mores. An honest look at and analysis of such, I think would be really great from that perspective! I would also love to play a PC that didn't necessarily always succeed at every effort they undertake. It would be fresh and unique. It also sets the stage for a "taking account and facing the consequence of our choices" scenario in the sequel.
Now if I haven't lost too many readers to outrage at the prospect of being the conqueroring invader.
The sequel(s) could then be set years or even a generation or two down the line, placing the PC, either a Ryder or descendant thereof (opens possibilities of spawn making an appearance, possibly as the PC) Would then have to contend with the fall out of the methods employed by the initial expedition and looking at issues of owning responsibility and either working to put right those wrongs, in the case of a paragon, or re-affirming the need for decisive action in the name of survival. The actual morals could be left sufficiently vague on BW's part to allow players to make those kinds of judgements for themselves. Have character interations and world state reflection to express the views of the in-game species. As a baseline from which players could make such choices, all of this with a backdrop of whatever galactic threat that BW is bound to come up with and you start to get something really different and nuanced. That really asks players to think differently while also opening up the chance for some great story telling and alot of action packed fun along the way.
Now I very much doubt that BW would employ such an approach, but i just wanted to put this out there, as a counter point to all those posts about, well, using the same old approach as can already be seen, and IMHO, that has alredy been done to death in just about every other game and genre already.
Sometimes taking risks can pay off.
Surely i'm not the only person that would relish the chance to give a game like that go?
EDIT: spelling and such, I really need to read my posts properly before presssing that button!
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