What are your too ***SPICY*** to handle hot takes of the trilogy?

Not in any particular order;

- I never understood the notion some put out that Mass Effect 3 was good until the endings ruined it. Tuchanka and Rannoch were expertly done even by the entire trilogy's standards, but the rest of the game was some of the worst in the entire series. Cerberus as the main villains more than the Reapers the entire game, bad, boring side quests, the coup of the Citadel was riddled with plotholes and was horribly written, Kai Leng as a character, Thessia was done well below average compared to the aforementioned two good arcs and the player agency of choices was minimized more in this game than any other with the shrinking of the dialogue wheel yet again. The only redeeming factor that got me coming back to play more was the actual gameplay which was good, but other than that, playing ME3 leaves a bad taste in my mouth for more than just the ending. Also, Leviathan as a whole does not make sense and it was a clear way to explain their retconned, bad endings by creating an even more contrived former Apex predator to explain the current Apex predators.

- Andromeda should have never been made. Combat was good, that is it. Uninspiring dialogue, boring characters, no sense of true exploration despite the sales pitch, and they failed to bring a true "wow we are in a new area time to set up shop" by letting us drop in with shop already having been set up. The Kett were boring, nothing was truly learned about the Revenant's and there were barely any new races.

- Liara as a character (despite her formerly being the one I romanced the most) is boring, uninspired and forced down the throats of too many players during the trilogy. Her peak was LOTSB definitely, but she even came off kind of dumb even in ME1 and her motivations were lacking.

- ME2 despite being my favourite in the series by a longshot, did just as much damage as it did good. Character driven, memorable characters/dialogue, good arcs for the story and all, but the main plot was just a glorified side quest that DID NOTHING for the overall story and the whole Terminator Baby Reaper thing was as contrived as anything in the entire series. If there was some sort of payoff for ME2's story like actually thwarting the Reaper threat for years so the galaxy could prepare then sure. But arrival pushed that stupidity even further by saying the Reapers would just fly on in there in 6 months even after beating Harbinger controlled space bugs AND destroying the closest relay they could use. Just utterly stupid.

- Jack and Tali are arguably the best written females in the entire series with the former having the most clear cut motivations given her character backstory and the latter having an obvious excuse for the torment she feels about her family.

- Kasumi should have been a main game character since her introduction, should have been more back story in to what her and her former lover were actually doing and her DLC was one of the most interesting pieces of gameplay in the trilogy.

I think if anyone was going to rebuild Cerberus, it would be Miranda. She understands that Cerberus has good ideas, and was doing some good. She also knows the organization very well. That's what I headcanoned for her anyway. I always felt Miranda would rebuilt Cerberus, and she's the best fit for it.

Yeah the meters are a bad reflection many times as most of your points are gained from minor interactions. You can make every large decision point be renegade but unless you are rude quite often you will be more paragon than renegade.

Yeah and on the other side I've played an earthborn ruthless paragade who saved the Council, gains everyone's loyalty, destroys CB, cures genophage, gets geth/quarian peace but ends up 75% Renegade due to being slow to trust Aliens and AIs, a bit symapathetic to Cerberus (from a results perspective, if not agreeing with their methods) and being a hardass shoot first questions later type to NPCs all the time.

Pretty bizzare to get the Renegade control monologue with that character who was largely a Paragon everywhere it counted.

Nonetheless I enjoyed that character even though she made lots of decisions I personally wouldn't, and I never found her inconsistent.

I couldn't play a character like that in MEA. Can either be a jokey Paragon or a passive aggressive Paragon who gets told off by nobody NPCs either way.

Yes, exactly. Andromeda system wasn't bad, it just felt you only could play Ryder as a nice guy who never gets upset or do anything really extreme. Next system doesn't have to be paragon or renegade. But I'd like to have the options paragon and renegade presented.  

I think paragon/renegade wasn't much about the points it was about the underlying philosophies of by the book, or do the right thing/vs ruthless or pragmatic. No one needed or cared about the points its a dumb artifact from their star wars games. But being able to shake your core philosophies around these concepts worked and was more key to what mass effect was than its science or space magic.

Jack’s derision towards Femshep’s coquetry was a travesty. Her sexual proclivities alluded to in her dialogue were perfect for bisexual representation.

Sure, but the point I’m making is that you don’t need an alignment system for this to function, especially when you account for the interrupts, which in the trilogy were mostly vague and only seldom telegraphed the action. The idea of ruthlessness or pragmatism is something any dialogue system can implement without having to create a binary alignment system to tie each option to. 

I think we’ve all been fooled by BioWare’s implementation of this system into believing that this is even necessary to get more options. If BioWare wants players to have the ability to be more diplomatic or ruthless, they can write these options independent of a binary points system. The red and blue highlights are just visual indicators that serve no differently from tone icons, only there’s an occasional dialogue check attached to it. The interrupts can be written without tying it to either alignment, as proven by Andromeda. Like, when confronting the clan Weyrloc speaker in Mordin’s loyalty mission, the renegade interrupt to set him on fire can be changed to “shoot pipe” and nothing would change. 

If they have difficulty on focusing on tonal differences and reining in their dialogue structure, I don’t trust them to write anything at all. The range P/R provides is purely an illusion. It doesn’t do anything more than any other dialogue system’s ever provided. 

I dunno about all that...my Ryder was pretty secretly ruthless.  She told Liam and his Angaran friend to F off, told Drax to stuff it cause were saving the Pathfinder, let Sarissa keep her secret and stay pathfinder, killed the Roaker leader and dared Jaal to say something about it, killed Peebee ex without question, kept the Roaekar data on the virus just incase we need to use it against them, exiled countless people, chose Sloan and shot Reyes, let Drax drop that guy he was hanging upside down, started a colony on Voled without Angaran permission, and more things that I cant remember off the type of my head.  By end game, with her being the only one who knows the truth about the Initiative and the Milky Way...shes basically become the female Illusive Man.  Milky Way first