Unpopular opinions

I meant mysteries in the sense of "we discover something new about the universe", not as in "we open a can and what comes out bites us in the ass". Many important advancements started with such mysteries, with, say, data that didn't want to fit however you adjusted the old theories.

I agree that Bioware has, so far, written its SF much as if it were fantasy, up to and including the original endings with its dark age of the galaxy and that damnable Garden Eden symbolism I found so enraging at the time. It's my main source of dissatisfaction with the ME trilogy. The EC attempted to mitigate that impression, though, and that's why I didn't have to disown the story completely.

Having said that, dealing with the past needn't be all bad. In fact, were we to explore the stars, I think it rather likely that we would encounter the remnants of past civilizations  before we ever met a live one. Also, we could learn from what we find there, since other civilization's past can still be more advanced than our civilization's future. Here on Earth, archaeology almost never finds anything we have yet to discover, but that could be different for the remnants of alien civilizations. So, if those discoveries about the past inspires that unlocking of potential you mentioned, then I'm perfectly fine with it. I wonder if they'll write things like this in MEA, or if they continue to pander to the technophobic spirit of the time.

Its part of worldbuilding and fairly a template for bioware games to have some advanced alien civilization in the past which was destroyed suddenly. TOR universe is basically this with Rakata. Elvhenan in DA verse.

I think a lot of BW writers have background in playing and writing tabletop RPGs and practically based their stories with fantasy framework. In fact, its one of the requirement to write for them too. Considering they're still doing it with Knights of the Fallen Empire, I'm not surprised we'll be space archeologist in MEA. 

I'm not criticizing this as such, except that a formula needs to be put aside once it has become stale. Rather, my primary point is this: In Bioware's SF, society is stagnant. There's really nothing that challenges the current state of the human condition, it's always assumed that things are more or less the same as they are today. Their stories feature some social issues, but apart from that they're deeply conservative, even reactionary at times. Those who would challenge the state of the human condition are usually portrayed as evil, or at the very least, misguided. That may be appropriate in fantasy, but it betrays the spirit of SF as I see it.

Yes, ME3's EC endings are most notably not like that (and that's why I like them in spite of everything), but it took an outcry from tens of thousands of players to portray a future not dominated by the dark age and the Garden Eden "let's return to a more innocent pre-technological time and start anew" symbolism, and many people have recognized the fact that the EC endings don't really fit the story that came before. Thus, I maintain my criticism. With ME1, the ME trilogy started ambivalently with regard to this and featured a spirit of exploration and advancement I found very appealing, but even there the roots of what was to come were laid, in things like Vigil's statement that we didn't need to understand the Reapers, just to stop them. ME2 went full retard with its aesthetics but retained some ambivalence in its treatment of some common SF themes, and I highly appreciated the portrayal of Legion and the geth as being different but equally valid, but the stupid handling of the Collector Base decision, the dreadful "I just want to be normal" message in Miranda's plot and Shepard's abysmally stupid dialogue with Harbinger in Arrival foreshadowed how everything would come to be measured by the current human norm in ME3. Real change? Real divergencve? Oh no, that would be against nature (see Padok Wiks in the genophage plot, another mind-numbing stupidity I can't rant about enough). I might have appreciated the story for what it was had there been some in-depth handling of its themes, but instead everything was simplified to the point of stupidity. ME3's main message appeared to be "Yes, I'm stupid, but it doesn't matter because I'm human like you all are, and that's the greatest thing in the universe." *scoffs*

OK, this has veered off course a little. Sorry about the rant, but here's the essence of it, another unpopular opinion: "The ME trilogy is reactionary and militaristic".

Edit:
As a little hint of what might have been, read this. Well, the "higher-paid" decided they wanted the MET to be more like fantasy, and so we ended up with a story that works on some levels and doesn't work on others, but which is definitely not good SF according to my standards.

I can't speak for those Garrus fans on those other forums. I can say I'd disagree with handwaving off his flaws and mistakes just as I disagree with your statement about a fanbase that has various individuals with different motivations and reasons to like him. If you wish, you can discuss him on his thread just as Kaidan fans were able to discuss with others about their frustrations with Kaidan.
As for the rest, I've made no such claims about his comments towards Wrex and Tali being non-canon. We have discussed a great deal of this before (except for Omega) and I've pointed out in game evidence that he grows and has awareness of the consequences of his actions. We can discuss it further in a more related thread if you'd like.
While I do support people having a choice in keeping him off their team in ME1 and ME3, I don't agree with judging an entire fanbase by saying you know how they are about their character's flaws. If I said something like, "I know there's a lot of Kaidanmancers who simply headcanon it out from their games and simply laugh it off as him being "Just Kaidan" and worship him as Mr Awkwardly Wonderful" wouldn't you be annoyed?

Oleg Petrovsky would make for a better leader than Hackett
I agree with Shepard saying Have the asari ever won a war?
Zaeed has the best epilogue scene. I don't believe that's an unpopular opinion

Both squadmates should've died on the beam run no matter what the ems

I do appreciate that you take it upon yourself to defend your fandom. However, I am not a Garrus fan nor I wish to hijack your beloved appreciation threads with salty overcritical things. But I just wrote a length about a character's penchant for casual murder, entitlement over lesser species, racism, genocide... and even you simply accept all these as just "flaws and mistakes" because its a character you're a fan of.

This is exactly why this is in an unpopular opinion thread.

"Kaiden is boring. Kaiden is unloyal. Kaiden is uninteresting. Kaiden is annoying. Kaiden is whiny. Kaiden accused me of cheating on him but we broke up on Horizon. Kaiden deserve to die. Kaidan is a bitch."
Trust me, I've been here long enough to see this is a very very popular opinion. Kaidan is just as universally hated as Jacob.

Well when you put it that way...that does sound like I'm speaking on behalf of them! I can't say what they think about him, all I can say is that no, I am not one of those fans that is ok with Garrus making insensitive comments back in ME1. Even said, "Seriously?! Not cool, Garrus, not cool!" When he spoke to Tali that way. That's why I explicitly remember that apology, because it was a long time coming. The entire recruitment mission had me going, "We REALLY need to have a discussion on what this Shepard spoke to you about back in ME1!".
I'm fine with people hating him. I even am glad they have the option to keep him permanently off the team. But I will debate if I disagree with a specific reasoning.
And one of those is that I disagree that Kaidan is hated as much as Jacob. Kaidan's popularity jumped high in ME3. His content outshines an unromanced Ashley. And Thane. And most ME2 romances in the vanilla game before Citadel came out. I've seen just as much often people say they left Ashley on Virmire because she's racist. Regardless of popularity, I still like the guy no matter what fans say about him and I wish to be respectful to the fans as well. So thank you as well for the courtesy.

Well, I don't like the quest very much. But it helped some of us who missed ME2 characters.

I don't know what the hell they were thinking.. trying to make the last game an ME1 throwback or something. It should've been a culmination of everything, like Citadel somewhat attempted.

Wait, what's this about Padok and Synthesis?

He was actually in my first ME3 run, but I forgot a lot about him.


edit: LOL Damn the quoting on this board.

You'll have to wait a bit. Stuck at Uni pretty much all day today, and I lost all of the posts I'd archived at BSN (quite a few of which covered this topic).

It was my first ME3 ending too. It goes fully into Matrix Revolution territory and I'm not worthy enough to understand.

That's why I said Synthesis betrays the spirit of its main theme even as it intends to embrace it. I attempted to mitigate that in my interpretations, but while I like the future it presents, how we got there leaves a bad taste in my mouth.