Now we know exactly when Mass Effect Andromeda is set
It begins shortly after Mass Effect 2.
Mass Effect Andromeda's new Andromeda Initiative website has laid out exactly when the events of BioWare's new game take place - and how it skirts around that whole Mass Effect 3 ending.
Your new character Ryder will leave the Milky Way galaxy on their 600-year journey to Andromeda in 2185.
That's the year that Mass Effect 2's events conclude, and that game's Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC takes place.
The following year, 2186, is when Mass Effect 2's Arrival DLC is set, when the Reapers actually invade the Milky Way, and when Mass Effect 3 begins.
By the time this happens, your ark ship (and four others) is already on its way to Andromeda, and its crew is in cryo-sleep. Hence, your characters will not have seen the Reaper war or how you chose to conclude it.
Or, if they are somehow informed after they awake, it already took place 600 years ago and was already resolved. Handy!
This places the main action of Andromeda somewhere in the region of 2785.
BioWare's Andromeda Initiative website will include a series of training videos (only the first is currently viewable). Watching all of them will unlock a special helmet in Andromeda when it launches.
Previous dates in the website's timeline detail the events of Mass Effect 1 and the various prequel novels and comics - such as the First Contact War and humanity gaining its seat on the Citadel Council.
The website also has information on your in-game father, Alec Ryder, and his own personal history:
