Mass Effect 3 Interview, Continued

PC Gamer has tossed us a few more morsels from their ongoing interview with Mass Effect 3 creative director Casey Hudson, with this latest batch of questions dealing with Shepard's involvement with Cerberus and the way in which ME2's Arrival DLC ended. Spoiler warning!
PC Gamer: I was going to ask you about killing the Batarians in The Arrival DLC am I right in saying that's not a choice?

Casey Hudson: That's right, yeah.

PC Gamer: That seems like quite a big one, given that a lot of people died.

Casey Hudson: Yeah, that was a big one. I can see how people would want us to be able to create like [an alternative]. People were even asking at the end of Mass Effect 2, (So if Shepard can die, after Shepard dies, then what happens in Mass Effect 3?) It's like, (Wow, OK. So we definitely can't build a game around a completely different character and Shepard.

Likewise, in Arrival, literally the all powerful beings that can destroy us are at the door, and there's really only one thing you can do to slam the door shut, and that was to destroy the Mass Relay. But it has this side effect of killing the Batarians. It ties into some of the stuff that we wanted to do at the beginning of Mass Effect 3 as well, and why Shepard returns to the Earth.