BioWare has all but confirmed that the next Mass Effect game (which I am calling Mass Effect: Epsilon for now) will not only be a sequel to the Original Trilogy but Mass Effect: Andromeda as well. For the longest time many, myself included, have assumed that there will be a 600 year time jump given that MEA takes place 600 years after the original game and the fact that Liara looks kinda older in the first trailer.
However, there's been a rumor circling around that there will, in fact, not be a time jump on the Milky Way side of things and that the next game will only take place a few years after the events of Mass Effect 3. So, how will this work? How can MEE be a sequel to both the Trilogy and MEA unless there is some kind of time jump and doesn't Liara looking older mean that this HAS to take place a few 100 years after the Original game given how slowly Asari age?
Well, the theory goes that there has to be a way to travel between both galaxies and given that travel between both galaxies is pretty much impossible without needing 600 years to travel between both galaxies that means there has to be something tying the two together. And there's really only one thing that could do that, a Wormhole. The idea being that the Wormhole is a link between the Milk Way and Andromeda but also skips through time as well as space. Meaning that for the people who traveled to Andromeda it really did take 600 years but this wormhole is a link to the past so for us it's only been a few years since the Andromeda Initiative left.
When I first heard this theory I was more then a little skeptical and even concerned as Mass Effect has never included time travel and this would be a rather huge inclusion that could mess up the lore of the series. However, with the idea this only skips 600 years and both galaxies being 600 years apart from each other then this would actually nicely avoid the trap of time travel. There's no way that anything that happens in one galaxy would affect the timeline of the other because, again, 600 year gap between the two galaxies by conventional means of space travel and since travel between the two galaxies via Wormhole would likely be instantaneous that means there would again be no real chance of the Milky Way risking the timeline of Andromeda.
However, I'm still not sold on the idea because that seems a bit cheap and would undercut Andromeda's mission, that the AI's mission to travel between galaxies would be rendered meaningless because there was a way to travel between the two that would take no time at all. On the other hand, as silly as this may sound, this could also mean we get Garrus and Tali back as squad mates and if that's the case I'm willing to put up with this silly idea just to continue to have my favorite characters around.
And a good way to get around the whole "The Andromeda Initiative Mission was Pointless" could only be done thanks to the Andromeda Initiative being in the other galaxy. Maybe the wormhole isn't big enough or something and it's only thanks to AI and the remnant tech they're managed to unlock that allows them to open the wormhole and stabilize it.
Could even make a major plot point suggesting that the Remnant created this Wormhole to come to the Milky Way and that ties directly to the events of MEE. Not sure what that implies but it could be interesting that the wormhole is not natural but, for lack of a better word, man made.
Thoughts?
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