Mass Effect 2 or 3: Which is more beautiful?

I thought 3 looked better. Also, the lack of Kaidan in ME2 is what really made me not like it as much. I know it's sort of petty, but it was the romance with Kaidan that drew me into the MET in the first place. I only came to realize its overall awesomeness after the fact.

both games have its virtues, I am voting for ME2.

Neither can touch ME1 or MEA, but not to leave at that and answer actually ; ME3 has better lighting and almost zero of that "too compressed light probe banding" which happens a lot in ME2.

Honestly, I think ME1 is the superior game. I think the other two failed to live up to the storyline begun in the first game. Visually, it obviously got better as we went along.

I agree, but I can understand where people are coming from who say ME1 was also better aesthetically if they mean to say that it was the only one with a real "retro-80s-sci-fi" look because honestly it was. That was the direction they took then, then they got aboard EA or decided to get more pop-y by themselves and starting doing the Iron-Man suit thing with plated armor and "coolness" from ME2 and onwards.

Tbf, Hey, I like the coolness of 2. A fully consistent trilogy would've been better for everyone though, or so I like to believe, but for what it's worth I enjoyed 2's changes in the same way I enjoy some of the artistic changes made in DA2 and DA:I.

Also, Aesthetics: ME2 has an edge over 3 in terms of cinematic direction, as can already be seen in some screenshots. Both 2 and 3 had their moments of "jaarerkj" angles but ME2 gets really stylish and the action actually works. When I think of ME3's cinematography I think of the awkward choreography of Liara sticking her head almost underneath Shepard to get his attention when they're worried over Kaidan/Ashley post-Mars or when the Reapers is about to blow up the building with the kid in it and Shepard sorta slides down to the side, and towards the camera and it looks... painfully awkward as far as directed choreography goes. ME2's visual direction was so tight and clear in many places, it actually helped during action scenes because nothing was confusing to watch.

Also, super interesting comment I extracted from DGaider just yesterday regarding the non-cinematic convos from ME3 and DAI/MEA: He told me all the static looped-animation conversations are when there is more writing done than cine-designers available to work on, so it's entirely dependant on workload of cinematic designers and not necessarily related to the budget itself. ME2 had a rule of "everything must be touched by hand" and recent games do not. Gaider also conceded ME2 had less content due to this philosophy (although he didn't work on that game directly himself but he knows the process)

If BioWare were still making games like ME2 or ME3 the solution to one of my grievances would be to raise the salary for cinedesigners because it seems they used to have more of them and more talented ones whereas currently they just rely on a handful of longtimers who are loyal and junior ones.

ME3 has the best overall, but I prefer the faces from ME2, which despite having worse textures looks less weird to me for some reason.

Besides, I refuse to believe DAI or MEA is the best they can do with "non-touched sequences". Both Mass Effect 1 and Witcher 3 have plenty dialogues not touched by hand whatsoever but the devs systematized it from the beginning so a writer could just insert all the "Angry", "Camera focus: Player", "NPC points left" etc. cues themselves. It's not a frostbite issue though because this downward trend started with ME3 or arguably ME2's DLC but that was also after Armando Troisi had decided every scene in ME2 had to be touched by hand (The "Hand of God Principle" he called it) but then left between ME2 and ME3 and then started the regression of modern BioWare cinedesign.

The worst thing is, I think to some people at the company including guys like Patrick Weekes who seemed fond of the "dilemma" conversations on the Citadel in ME3 (--who also designed it!) they see the reduction of cinematics as a bonus. Mac Walters also commented on this in that N7-day livestream of Andromeda's conceptual stage where he said somethign about "avoiding an overabundance of cutscenes". The only pros I saw in reducing the amount of cinematic conversations to the static ones was in DA:I when you could always press exit in the middle of a line and walk away but even so the conversations themselves felt stilted and with the focus gone from "emotion" I actually started line-reading ahead of the voice talent which kept pulling me out of the experience, and in ME3 you couldn't even participate in these conversations anyway, it was all ambient with Shepard autodialoguing (the worst), but even in MEA you cannot even leave conversations and it's just un-cinematic to conserve the budget (also pretty bad!) but at least you can see the faces in Andromeda.

Mass Effect 3.

I would say ME3. There's a lot of impact from the background animation, not as static as ME2. Of course, there's a war going on so things can't just be standing still. I like that a better hardsuit design was put in later (I dislike booby hardsuits) that femShep can wear. The Alliance uniforms and body models were awful though, that's imo.

I'm with ME2 on this one, but it's a personal taste of mine.

The reason is the time you spent investigating space stations that were looted or abandoned. I always liked boarding Jarrahe Station and seeing that awesome Nebula outside.

Also, IDK if it's just me, but ME2 levels were more open, as in "you can see the sky and how it's different than other planets", things that ME3 didn't(Dunno if it's the camera angle or something). Most of the times (during secundary missions) you were fighting at closed facilities and didn't have that much of an "Wow" factor.

Of course, when doing the priority missions in ME3, they sure do have that awesome backdrop, like on Menae or Sur'Kesh. But here's the thing, on Sur'Kesh and many other planets you actually need to take a break to see it, since it all goes too fast. In ME2 it feels more "obvious" in a manner of speaking, so that's why it has my vote.

ME2 gets my vote but it is close. My biggest problem with 3 is a lot of faces look great from a side view but look off and for some way off when looking at them directly. For whatever reason I just can't make a female face that looks good with a frontal view, something off with the upper cheek bones and jaw bone. As far as the landscape goes on planets I would say that is pretty much a tie for me but ME3 UI is a lot better than 2.