What really gets me is how the Reapers basically take over Earth in the 10 minutes you are watching the intro dialogue, yet you have a metric fuckton of time to go round people up to take it back? Do they take a really long teatime break or something?
I always wondered about this too. Obviously we are going to be open to fly around, but in the old game this made sense because the universe was, for the most part, at peace. Yes in the first game Saren was off being a douche, but his fight was mostly a shadow until the end when he finally attacked the Citadel. ME2 felt even more "peaceful" with us dealing mostly with mercs and such, going to places like Omega where people are just, again, living lives. The Collectors were the main bad guys, but they only appears now and then and it made sense to have gaps between when they took a colony and when they went home through the Omega Relay.
Will we not have this in ME3? I mean the Reapers are now in the galaxy and basically going nuts all over everyone. I just can't imagine people living normal lives on their planets while giant planet destroy robo-squids are about to cause a mass extinction. Will I not have wacky adventures abusing my name for local shopkeepers to give me discounts?