Anyone else feel the dialogue was just generally more believable or interesting before ME3 and futur

I don't see the issue you bring up.

VS knew you died and seeing Shepard alive again and working for Cerberus is a legitimate question about how the hell Shepard managed to show up. This is carried over to the start of ME 3 when they are very suspicious that you are the real Shepard.

Of course Crucible is a Deus Ex Machina. But it is kind of needed because since ME 1 the Reapers were basically displayed as Gods vs mortals. And how does a mortal kill a god? By using the magical plot device.

Well, in ME2 Shepard WAS a bystander in many regards. The vast majority of plot related missions are squadmates recruitment and loyalty missions, with 2-3 collector attacks/dead reapers in the middle.

I didn't notice that in ME3 at all, but there IS a lot more text dependance in this game - a lot of the time the conversations revolve around stuff that reached your private terminal (much more than in ME2), so it seems like a conversation starts mid way, but it doesn't really. It's like continuing a conversation that started in WhatsApp.

No, it's true Shepard was more just the player proxy in ME2 even though he's also just a static brick protagonist in ME1 and a Mary Sue in ME3, but at least it felt like he was a central figure in those.

The reason for that is Armando Troisi I believe; their narrative cinematic director on that game. He had certain rules for the game and one was "always give choices the player would want" so even though certain things are hardlocked like joining Cerberus, generally they went with the approach of trying to empathise with different sorts of players per dialogue wheel in that game, and honestly I like it that way as a player - it arguably made me invest much more in the story because the game was able to pull me in by making me feel a part of it, but on the flipside it made Shepard himself a blank slate, or just one I was free to determine in my own head but it never really shows in the story what kind of character he is becuase there's no throughline between all his flip-flopping viewpoints or mood shifts as I play as him.

So I think you're right that Shepard is more passive in conversations in ME2 which makes ME3 better in the sense that Shepard felt like he was just as much of a character as the other main characters in ME3 because he has his own agency, defined by the writers, but it's besides the issue.

Maybe the example of Ash/Kaidan was just me. I still think it's reaching for drama that's not really necessary and mostly because the arguments are somewhat stupid like Ashley asking if Shepard has become huskified - maybe this is an issue for me because ME2 has a bad plot and they never addressed how Shepard actually changed or isn't technically the same Shepard after being revived with cybernetics.

The issue I was pointing out was still that the writing in its dialogue and attention to detail fell off a cliff from ME3 and onwards for all BioWare series, except maybe certain SWTOR plots ironically. Even as a passive participant in ME2 the people Shepard talk to are discussing things with specific details in mind and not talking about vague concepts we can't grasp like "The scientists told us the Crucible was elegant, massive in scope yet strangely simple as well" which Hackett says in, I guess, an attempt to make you believe the Crucible is possible but it's just an absolute waste of writing because it doesn't say anything in itself except "something something, the Crucible is an impressive project" and you can't make out what the "something something" is even though you need to in order to resonate with what is going on in the script. The dialogue by large has just gotten incredibly vague in more recent BioWare games.

No, I don't think so. ME3 had more protracted cutscenes compared to the earlier games. It also had a stronger central story-line as opposite to basically compartmentalized short stories about each of the crewmates. But the dialogue imo was not really disparate qualitatively, each games had its highs and lows. Quantitatively, I feel ME3 was, yes, wordier.

I think all three had examples of great dialogue, and cases of just empty hollowness and cringe worthy cheesiness.

Even if some of the delivery in ME1 was poor, I felt that the world building and expository dialogue was still good in ME1, but as it was the first entry, I felt that there was a LOT of world building and exposition, more so when you return to it with all the knowledge about the Mass Effect universe, it gets tedious.

BUT, ME1 had Sovereign's speech. And the dialogue in specific missions like Noveria and Virmire were good as well. Notably lower in others, for me at least, like Eden Prime and Feros.

ME2 also had some great dialogue, but a lot of it was personal to the squadmates and personal interaction, which was refreshing from the heavy exposition in ME1, but like ME1, some squadmates dialogue was better than others. And maybe it was his delivery, but I thought the Illusive Man's lines were well written as well.

I see that there is a divide between the opinion that ME3 had the overall best.

In my opinion, it did, for me. Yes, there were moments of cringe and just plain awfulness (Kai Leng), but there were plenty of moments like that in the other two (Therum in particular had some stinkers). But I also felt ME3 just had so many memorable conversations between characters, that weren't just self centered on the characters themselves, but on other aspects as well. It took the exposition and world building from ME1, the personal side from ME2, and kind of fused it all with the themes of war and the Reaper conflict into influencing a lot of the great conversations in the game.

That's just my view.

As to the OP, I feel that the dialogue has remained believable and interesting, that this trend didn't stop at ME3, and that Andromeda will likely continue it (with some stinkers for good measure).

Define matters?

too bad there wasn't an option to push him over the edge into the water. excellent

I brought it as an opposite example to the OC
If you read my first post, you'd see I disagree with the OP and think the writing is awesome
This scene is an example. It made me blind from over exposure to pure awesomeness!

This is exactly what I meant, DragonEffect. Yes, timing, context and detail. ME3 has so much dialogue that just doesn't need to be there because you learn nothing from it, neither the characters's motivations or about what they're describing. It's hard to pinpoint becuase we're talking about a LOT of dialogue, and I agree it shines in many places like the bottle-shooting scene and other moments that are effective, but it used to be top-notch in ME2 so there were hardly redundant or meandering dialogue. Even the bad writing, the "ah yes, The Reapers... ah, we have dismissed that claim!" has a narrative function in that it's expository and you learn something about the galaxy believes. You may have called that "bad writing" because you disliked the development and because it's a slight retcon (or huge, whatever you may think) but it's not useless, it's actually important in establishing what is going on.

ME3 has a plot but it was vague as fuck. Earth faces the brunt of the Reaper invasion, and being with the Alliance it makes sense Shepard is about humanity's interests again, except weren't we supposed to be on the council with the other races (potentially?) and also, when we fail to get the Catalyst on Thessia, everyone acts as if "oh no, it's the end of Thessia!" except haven't Earth been under siege for way longer and yet we're still fighting to retake that? So what changed here? Everything in the game feels like this. There's really a lack of information somewhere within the text and half of it comes from the character dialogue being so incredibly vague half the time.

"The Crucible is capable of releasing large amounts of energy" -  "it's elegant. Massive in scope yet strangely simple as well". "It's killing me about Earth." Like, all of those lines contain problems in how they miss out on details. HOW does the Crucible work? No, I'm not interested in knowing it can house energy, what do the blueprints say about the firing mechanism? Why do they keep referring flipflopping about whether it's "a weapon that might kill the Reapers!" and "We don't know how it works/can't describe it adequately". Why is Earth so important to everyone just because they're human? The entire existence of everything they know, including space colonies, other homeworlds and the Citadel is going under at the same time. What's going on here? It's akin to DA:I where near the end of the game when you get access to Leliana's Companion Quest she talks about how looking up at "the big hole in the sky" you can see mirror-like reflections in the heaven... but we sealed the Breach in act 1, and this happens multiple times where the writing fails to account for the continuity or confusedly describes something that either hasn't happened yet or did happen but is no longer, as if it's in the present. It's a mix of things that makes the writing sucky. There's the plot-confusion like the bipolar beliefs about the function of the Crucible or what we're even fighting against in DA:I after the threat of the all-consuming Breach disappears, and then there's all the terrible filler-dialogue.

I was also playing more DA:I today as my replay. I'm enjoying it and it has moments, but yet another good example popped up when I got Varric's final companion scene, where the whole gang plays Wicked Grace. The camera passes by each character who makes a stock comment on something related to playing cards and then it fades to black and fades in at the end of someone telling a story. We get from this that the gang is bonding and having a good time. We have no idea how exactly this bond is formed as we know nothing of the conversations they're having, only the notion of one. Then another fade to black happens right as either Inquisitor or Varric starts telling a story: "I had this one time back in Kirkwall... it always started with a trap..." *FADE TO BLACK* "...and that's how I ended up being the Thief of the tavern!" *EVERYBODY LAUGHS*. Great scene? Nah, I couldn't care less when I'm excluded from the context all the time, and this has been a writing practice especially since ME3 and not exclusive to any one series; just something that has changed at BioWare I feel.

New BioWare games have way too much of THIS:



AKA talking a LOT without really saying anything with it.

Bonus:
Liara: "Those are some of the prothean artifacts they unearthed at the digsite."
Shepard: "What did they learn?"
LIara: "More than I can describe in a short conversation... And they've only scratched the surface."

That's also in ME3. Don't write shit that ends up wasting your time and insults your intelligence. Anyone with a brain can tell whoever wrote that had no idea what knowledge those artifacts conatained themselves. 

No, no and no, my criticism doesn't dictate that they should only talk when they can spout information like a writer's mouthpiece, it's that they're not saying anything of relevance too many times. They can have casual dialogue, but not if you can't even take anything from it like Liara saying she knows of prothean artifacts but then fails to describe them. You take literally nothing from that conversation but the stub of the script. It's like you can tell the writers jotted down some notes: "Here Liara talks about prothean lore" and then when they have to write it they go "Yeah, nah... I can't come up with anything right now."

It just feels lazy and unconstructive to the narrative. The filler dialogue, that is. Same with "god help us all" or "get to cover!" and other platitudes, it's just in the way of a good script IMO.

I completely get the concept of the Crucible. I just think it was handled poorly. You can make an unknown device like that work, like they did in Contact for example which I believe was the source inspiration for it, but there just has to be more to it than "we have to build it, it might kill the Reapers!". It's just not believable without any theorizing but we get none of that. They could've explained how it might be able to interact with Mass Effect Relays or maybe they could've speculated it was a Mass Effect Relay Canon blueprint in itself, just anything but nothing and vague "It's energy and stuff, it's kinda huge but also pretty cool". It's nothing but a waste of time that shows whoever wrote it didn't have any clue what to write. Even Kai Leng eating Cereal contributed more to its respective scene than Hackett talking about "energy and stuff" or Liara going "It's prothean stuff, and I have no time to explain why I don't have time to explain".

You also completely glossed over my issue with Thessia. It's dramatized and that sucks, yes, we agree, but I was talking about how it made no sense for us or Shepard to go "OH NO, THESSIA IS DOOMED!!11" just because we didn't get the Catalyst there, because it was hit later than Earth, Earth faces the brunt of the attack according to Udina, and our war summit mostly launches towards the end of the game. It just doesn't establish very well how well the various planets are doing. It just says Thessia is lost... "because!". Compared to what's going on at Earth and how they're apparently holding out it should be the same situation but earlier, but everyone acts as if Thessia is done for. It made no sense and again, it was too vague to really grasp as a player.

Well that is my point every example you have brought up seems to fit with my statement. They actually talk fairly similar to how normal people talk. Their dialogue goes beyond simply being a plot mouth piece. They give a bit of plot related conversation and then they move on to be more then simply mouth pieces for the plot. To actually talk and interact like real people do.

Well that is the point they explain the Crucible. It stores and releases massive amounts of energy far beyond comprehension. They had no idea that it would connect to the Mass Relay. They are just blindly following the plans and making educated guess to what it really does.  That is why Liara makes the off hand comment about being willing to trade the last 200 years of her life to resurrect 1 Prothean scientist so they could explain the Crucible to them.

Actually I thought I explained it rather well. It isn't about who got hit the hardest. It is about a planet that has been a symbol of what every race should strive to achive being attacked and decimated by the Reapers.  It isn't a dong measuring contest were who ever got hit hardest wins. It is about what each loss means. And the Asari and Thessia by extension have been the back bone of the galaxy for thousands of years. The lose of Thessia showed no one is safe and even the most cultured, developed, technologically advanced planet in the Milky Way is not out of the Reaper's grasp. And if Thessia can fall then that means any planet can fall and that there is no true safe place from the Reapers.

The squad banter while walking through combat areas (even if some of it didn't present an earth-shattering revelation to the player) did make the game feel livelier than having the squad mates say nothing or, if clicked on, just say "I'm on it." or "Let's move" or "On your order." - which was the case in ME1.  Having the squad behind me discussing "meaningless things" WAS more believable to me than the situation in ME1 and ME2 and at least some of that squad banter had a lot of relevance to the game. (e.g. when Garrus and James discuss the issues between the Krogan and the Turians while walking on Palaven.)  On Therum, there was some meaningless squad banter about the heat on the planet that you could access if you thought to click on your squad mates.  For example, Ashley would indicate that they thought her eyeballs had dried out and Garrus would tell everyone to stay hydrated.  Those comments were totally irrelevant to the game since Therum had no Hazard meter and the "heat" was not affecting the player in any way.  The only real difference between those statements and Liara's comment in ME3 was that the player did not have to actually click on the squad mates to find out if there was some "meaningless" banter recorded.  Some automatic meaningless banter would also occur in ME1... like on Therum where Ashley will dare Kaidan to "spit over the side" or when Kaidan indicates that the tiles in the ruins remind him of a bathroom floor.

As for insulting our intelligence with statements that imply there's more out there than we can know... what about "Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding." followed by "There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign." followed by "My kind transcends your very understanding." followed by "You cannot grasp the nature of our existence."

Talk about repetitive ways to insult our intelligence and not really say anything at all... ME1 was littered with them too.  OP - you really need to take off those rose-colored glasses you sport and take a good objective look at ME1 before you can even start to say that ME3 was so much worse than ME1.  As best I can tell - the writing between the two was on about the same level... certainly not Shakespeare in either case.