Unpopular opinions

I play as an Infiltrator, my squadmates is primarily used as cannon fodders and Garrus is useless to me for that purpose. Since being a sniper is his claim to fame, I let him use that as a primary weapon and he is terrible at it. He took long breaks between shooting and he always misses, he lack any defensive until ME3 where he had shield boost, he's vulnerable to swarms, he hardly function as damage support and require the most micromanaging through the trilogy. The last two mechs in his loyalty mission ALWAYS kill him.

Tali is excellent for both ME1 and ME2 where you do deal with a lot of Geth and mechs and ME3 is a lot forgiving with tech bursts. She have Energy Drain which can function as her personal boost. She is primarily a shotgun user so I tweak her stats just so she could function as a mid-range fighter. Her drones as tanks and backup and her AI hacking helps a lot so I don't really have to watch her back. She's a mini engineer after all. 

What sniper to you give to Garrus? I've always given him at least in ME 2 and 3 snipers like M-97 Viper or M-29 Incisor and he would have a fairly decent fire rate. Using single round snipers does seem to dramatically increase the delay between fires. My first play though was as infiltrator and is one of my top two classes to play as tied with Vanguard. Rapid fire sniper + overload strips the shields and barriers of NPC fairly well. Leaving them wide open for my Mantis or Widow sniper to OHKO them. I will give you he seems to be a lot less capable using an assault rifle. Which is why I always kept him back with me. Also power combo incinerate with overload.

Loyalty missions I almost never have Garrus die by the Mech. My vanguard play though did get him killed but that was because I'm going full shotgun. But on all play thoughts with Tali and her loyalty mission she is constantly dying on me.  My play style she just isn't adequate enough to be used.  She doesn't have the range to be a useful barrier/shield stripper, but also doesn't have the ability to tank shots to be up close and personal the way Wrex, Grunt, James can do to make full use of shotgun. She always seems to exist in that middle ground between the two that render her useless for how I play.

You have your answer actually. Tali seems terrible for you because she is unbalanced to a Vanguard whereas she always paired well with an Infiltrator where she could be more effective with combo. And you wanted her to absorb a lot of damage but her skills made her useful as a crowd controller like Liara. She's a tactical fighter and best paired with another aggressive fighter who could help take the aggro for her.

If you want to be Vanguard and keep her, use a Sentinel as support.

I don't understand people who let 10min destroy three games for them, especially when they say they can't play the franchise anymore.

For some Mass Effect was tarnished the minute Mass Effect 2 came along and derailed everything with its plot that didn't actually go anywhere. Mass Effect 3 suffered the burden of having to do what ME2 didn't do, and tie up everything.

I love all three games. The endings were poor, but I look past them, since I loved the actual final mission on Earth preceding the beam run. And I just headcanon Citadel DLC ending as the trilogy ending, so I'm all good.

There should have been casualties in Shepard's inner circle in the finale of ME3. Not all of your current squadmates should have made it through unscathed.

If the victory is won conventionally in a fleet battle, Admiral Hackett is the true hero of the story, rather than Shepard.

ME1 is the weakest game of the trilogy, and has the largest plot hole in the series. The story does not make sense at all.

The Leviathan DLC was better than the Citadel DLC. Actually it was probably the best DLC of the series.

The Clone and Brooks should have been indoctrinated. Their motivations make zero sense otherwise.

Tali looking near exactly like a human is dumb. That popular fan art the Talimancers loved so much that was the obvious inspiration for her reveal was dumber.

Morinth should never have been a recruitable character. Options are great only when the options make sense. Recruiting a crazy person who wants to murder you, does not.

Sheploo looks better than 99% of all custom Sheps I've ever seen posted on the BSN.

Despite being a popular fan complaint, long hair & beard options did not make sense for Mass Effect's CC. Shepard was a Marine, not a some hipster who slings soy lattes for a living.

The Phoenix armor Ashley wears in ME1 is less tactical than the long hair in ME3 that the fans love to complain about.

I may not have explained myself well there. By some mandatory casualties in the finale, I wasn't thinking something similar to Anderson or Thane's deaths. I'd rather the finale of ME3 was a suicide mission with all hands on board (including surviving ME2 squadmates) and there would be some casualties, but who died would be determined by choices made either during the finale or the 30 or so hours that preceded it. I suppose Virmire would be the closest comparison, but I wouldn't want them all to boil down to Choose Between Squadmate A or Squadmate B. Rather most of your choices would have some unintended consequences that weren't immediately clear. A perfect run would be one in which you suffered the minimum amount of casualties (lets say 3 or 4 deaths, as an example), rather than a flawless victory.

I think that while Bioware had the right idea in aiming for a bittersweet finale for ME3, they didn't execute it well. A better way to have gone about it would be to have the bitter part of the ending come from the losses among Shepard's friends and allies, but the victory would feel overwhelming and complete. Instead Bioware rolled out an ending pre-EC where Shepard's inner circle made it through unscathed (unless you went Low EMS) but galactic civilization felt borked. They got it backwards.

A superweapon doesn't have to be a deus ex machina, so long as it is woven into the plot well. 

Shepard killing kilometer long starships is more plausible than him or her leaping from command of a frigate to command of an intergalactic armada over people like Hackett or Victus. He or she was too junior an officer for that to ever be believable. Mass Effect is also an RPG, not a RTS. I think even if Bioware were to completely abandon any attempt at giving the story some sense of verisimilitude in the execution of a conventional victory ending, the ending would feel out of place with the rest of the game if it involved Shepard making strategic and tactical decisions for grand fleets.

ME1 is one of my favorite games of all time, but some of its fans have a tendency to wear nostalgia goggles when comparing it to other games in the series. Saren attacking Eden Prime to obtain a Prothean beacon he already had (Virmire) to find the location of a backdoor onto the Citadel that he didn't need (Spectres and Asari commandos already have full access to the Presidium) was by far the biggest nonsensical plot element in the entire trilogy. Mass Effect was a fun ride, but it was despite the story, not because of it. The main plot made zero sense.

In retrospect I'm convinced that in am early draft Saren either must not have been a Spectre, or had his Spectre status previously revoked...perhaps in that earlier dust up with Anderson. Saren being barred from the Presidium would explain why he needed the Conduit, though there would still be the issue of duplicate beacons.

It just doesn't work for me. They, or Brooks at least, may have been racist but going after Shepard in the middle of the most destructive conflict in galactic history, while the survival of humanity is on the line, is flat out mad. I prefer indoctrination to crazy as character motivation.

Once Tali became a LI it was guaranteed that under the helmet she wouldn't be anything other than aesthetically pleasing, but that doesn't necessarily mean she had to look near exactly like a human. She could have used a few more alien features, since she was after all...an alien.

The Asari despite both being very humanoid, look alien compared to the Quarians. Yet you'll find no shortage of players who thought at least some of them were attractive. Thane had fans as well.

If it were up to me I'd have had Bioware reuse one of the unused concepts for the Drell for the Quarians:



Most of those are humanoid enough that no one would retch at the thought of Shepard being romantically involved with a Quarian, if one of those was used as a concept, but they also have just enough alien features that no one could ever mistake them for human.

There are some custom Sheps that look good, but they're a small minority. All custom Sheps also suffer from being far less detailed than the default, and looking more plastic.

Thankfully in Andromeda that probably won't be an issue, if DA:I is anything to go by.

I used to be in the military actually.

I'm not opposed to short beards, particularly since Joker firmly establishes them as being acceptable in Alliance regs. But I'm okay with Bioware not caving into the fans who wanted ZZ top beards and pink mohawks in the CC.

While in theory what someone else chooses in the CC shouldn't affect me, I have a feeling that any options that end up in a CC will also be used on NPCs in the game. Nothing would have killed my suspension of disbelief faster than having a crewman aboard the Normandy with a purple faux hawk, lip ring, and a Grizzly Adams beard.

A superweapon doesn't have to be a deus ex machina, so long as it is woven into the plot well.

Shepard killing kilometer long starships is more plausible than him or her leaping from command of a frigate to command of an intergalactic armada over people like Hackett or Victus. He or she was too junior an officer for that to ever be believable. Mass Effect is also an RPG, not a RTS. I think even if Bioware were to completely abandon any attempt at giving the story some sense of verisimilitude in the execution of a conventional victory ending, the ending would feel out of place with the rest of the game if it involved Shepard making strategic and tactical decisions for grand fleets.

ME1 is one of my favorite games of all time, but some of its fans have a tendency to wear nostalgia goggles when comparing it to other games in the series. Saren attacking Eden Prime to obtain a Prothean beacon he already had (Virmire) to find the location of a backdoor onto the Citadel that he didn't need (Spectres and Asari commandos already have full access to the Presidium) was by far the biggest nonsensical plot element in the entire trilogy. Mass Effect was a fun ride, but it was despite the story, not because of it. The main plot made zero sense.

In retrospect I'm convinced that in am early draft Saren either must not have been a Spectre, or had his Spectre status previously revoked...perhaps in that earlier dust up with Anderson. Saren being barred from the Presidium would explain why he needed the Conduit, though there would still be the issue of duplicate beacons.

It just doesn't work for me. They, or Brooks at least, may have been racist but going after Shepard in the middle of the most destructive conflict in galactic history, while the survival of humanity is on the line, is flat out mad. I prefer indoctrination to crazy as character motivation.

It contradicts main theme of trilogy and especially of the third game. Main theme was that coexistence is possible. That unity of different [species/life forms/individuals] brings results and can overcome much bigger threats than if standing by themselves.
And Catalysts speech t is just big gaudy sign: "Ah, yes, all that. We have dismissed that claim. We need some silly excuse for resolving the whole thing, because its scale kinda got out of control".

Who in ME2 recruits a team made up largely by aliens.

Another unpopular opinion : I really don't like Faunts music at the end of ME1 and ME3.

*waiting for pitchforks*