A good compromise and one that is not without precedent in mass effect may be to have dual protagonists in ME4 and have Shepard be out of the fight some of the time. Mass Effect 2 had dual protagonists when we spent a minute as Joker. It is bad for drama and conflict for SHepard to get through the whole trilogy relativey undamaged, and I believe the destroy ending is one of those things that should take a long time to recover from both physically and mentally to a point that Shepard is able to fight again.

Sorry to say, I don't care for the idea of split protagonists. I didn't like shambling through Normandy as Joker, and I liked switching between the Master Chief and Arbiter even less.

If Shepherd isn't dead in ME4, I'm not playing it. I'm ready to move on. I'm even tired of the N7 logo at this point. I'd rather roleplay a pigeon-brained vorcha than have to see that logo one more time, or heaven forbid, be forced to spend hours looking at a red stripe on my character's arm.

Originally posted by Scuba Steve:

Sorry to say, I don't care for the idea of split protagonists. I didn't like shambling through Normandy as Joker, and I liked switching between the Master Chief and Arbiter even less.

If Shepherd isn't dead in ME4, I'm not playing it. I'm ready to move on. I'm even tired of the N7 logo at this point. I'd rather roleplay a pigeon-brained vorcha than have to see that logo one more time, or heaven forbid, be forced to spend hours looking at a red stripe on my character's arm.

i know what you mean but....you can change armor lol

Originally posted by Andination:

Originally posted by Scuba Steve:

Sorry to say, I don't care for the idea of split protagonists. I didn't like shambling through Normandy as Joker, and I liked switching between the Master Chief and Arbiter even less.

If Shepherd isn't dead in ME4, I'm not playing it. I'm ready to move on. I'm even tired of the N7 logo at this point. I'd rather roleplay a pigeon-brained vorcha than have to see that logo one more time, or heaven forbid, be forced to spend hours looking at a red stripe on my character's arm.

i know what you mean but....you can change armor lol

In Mass Effect 2 and 3 that stripe is built into most of the arm and shoulder mods. You can change its color and try to cover it up, but it's still there, staring at you, reminding you what it is. It takes hours of gameplay to unlock cosmetic replacements that meet my own particular (and admittedly peculiar) standards of acceptability.

It's not even confirmed that we're playing as Shepard yet though, right?

Shepard is dead, there is simply no way around it; other than Neo-BioWare to re-make the ME trilogy again or choose to make "FanFic" "Breathe" Destroy ending canon!
And of course, both of those choices are bad and/or lazy, IMHO!

People are already taking for granted that Shepard will return.

When they finally end up not getting what they deem to be assured, they will blame the company of having lied to them.

What we saw is just a teaser trailer, that could be entirely symbolic, about Mass Effect being rediscovered. The end game may bare zero resemblance to what we saw in the trailer.

Originally posted by Scuba Steve:

Sorry to say, I don't care for the idea of split protagonists. I didn't like shambling through Normandy as Joker, and I liked switching between the Master Chief and Arbiter even less.

If Shepherd isn't dead in ME4, I'm not playing it. I'm ready to move on. I'm even tired of the N7 logo at this point. I'd rather roleplay a pigeon-brained vorcha than have to see that logo one more time, or heaven forbid, be forced to spend hours looking at a red stripe on my character's arm.

Shepard should definitely return, but as a NPC and there should be a twist about halfway through me4 where you find out it's another clone like the one in citadel dlc.