For me Mass Effect 1 presents what I wanted the most and considering that it had burden of being encyclopedia of the world, it did well. I liked some moments NPC banter, moments in the Citadel. Elcor and Hanar were good ideas for a chance. This is game, we can model stuff, so why have humans with different make up? Writing and voice directing (latter with also Prothean AI) was something they could had improved for ME2, but instead they dropped these Elcors and Hanar or made them comic reliefs (Volus).
Trivia: Mako sure divided players, but necessary planetary missions in ME1 actually take less time than planetary scanning in ME2, even with improved scanner.
Single type of planetary building did get old pretty fast.
Chris E'Toile wrote Ash, whom still is the best attempt at writing 3 dimensional character I have seen. He also wrote Geth, which were actually interesting and menacing in ME1. In ME2 Ash was dropped all together, Geth... Mac Walters didn't liked E'Toile's ideas there either.
There were good things in ME2 like about anything involving and happening around Mordin. For ideas and themes, identity, sexuality, self actualisation, they are worthy themes but Walters went so far with that he didn't even mind about the consistency of story and we ended with bunch of people with daddy issues, which watered the whole thing down.
Never learned to like ME2 popamole combat. ME1 was just fine if you learned to upgrade your companions. Killing machine cleaning left and right... In ME2 there were barriers / shields which just slowed combat down and unified cooldown system didn't helped any of it. Suicide mission was fine if you knew your builds but sequences could have been longer, especially when end boss was such... cheese.
Combat improved to ME3 but was still... I don't recall but two really good battle sequences from ME3 SP. The writing... Lot's of good writers did what they could. The tone, the build up at times, seeing how things influenced, it was IMO top notch. But like I said, I really felt it was all over the place. Characters, Ash was back but they turned her to... who? I don't know if BW knew themself. Player agency was compromised, like
Vorak mentioned.
For the ending I recall bleak research station and then TIM's hideout, which was practically empty and boring and final showdown with Kai Leng, whom was as lame as ever and of course there had to be cheesy cut scene even after you thought you finally get rid of him. Then the Earth where I didn't mind the bleakness but that there were but like one battle sequence that really worked out well, that really felt subbar. For me Star kid was just final insult to injury.
Lot of words has been written about BW and ME series in Codex, but it's worthy to sometimes revisit these things. It's not that I enjoy kicking them in the nuts when they are down, but that WHAT happened, HOW it happened, what were the CONSEQUENCES. Like messing up entire IP and practically burning the platform they had for their writing talents.
They had that chance to make a come back with Andromeda and they fucked up even worse. I think in the industry there are lot of ideas. But no small studio can take hit like that and get away with it. Maybe sometimes it would be good to stick with what you have and improve, not re-imagine.
