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

Thanks for looking up the word Meaningless and show I'm not wrong about what it means... I guess 

Yes, the Reapers are merely boasting, but they get the point well across about what they're supposed to be (in ME1) and what they represent (cycle of life and death on a larger scale). Now imagine if after Sovereign's speech Ashley goes "That ship, what it said... I think it told us something important!" now that would be in line with how I find some of those lines I've put into question in ME3. We KNOW they're significant and arrogant and they're gonna kick our ass, we don't need a redundant line of dialogue to meander that point across.

And that's what I feel ME3 does too often. "There'll be blood. Real blood" is a line said by the Primarch... like, what does that even mean? "real blood" as opposed to fake blood? Shepard going "You either understand what you have to do or you don't!" to EDI and I don't get why he says that. He goes "You're either with me or against me, there's nothing grey about that!" to TIM, and that's pointless to say too, it just makes him sound like a fool. TIM talking about how EDI taking control of EVA is the same as him trying to control the Reapers saying it's necessary... so, why is it necessary to control Reapers again? There's just so much dialogue where there's put zero thought into it.

Examples of bad dialogue in ME1 would be how Anderson and Shepard both assume too much about Saren and the Reapers. They say "they'll think I'm crazy" but then still go "My vision has shown me the truth! The Reapers are out there, I know it!" and that's bad dialogue and bad logic. I fail to remember any point with pointless dialogue though, aside from singular comments by squadmates that never fit the context anyway. There are bad lines that fail to reflect what happens logiclaly in the plot, like a few details of Vigil's conversation, some of the logic of Saren using the Conduit to get to the Citadel when he's already answering to the council, but there's none of that "we fight or we die!" or "I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain" kind of dialogue.

Last example for this post:
"We have to stand together -- this isn't about strategy or tactics, this is about survival! We fight or we die!". How is that line as good as Sovereign's speech for example, now that you claim ME3 is on the same overall level as ME1? I would argue Sovereign's speech at least has coherence. It's not meandering becuase it's the first bit of direct representation for the Reapers we experience and serves the purpose of characterizing one of them. It's not faulty logic, it's just boastful ominous sounding platitudes, but at least it's not dialogue that's in service of nothing.

Not at all.

I think the dialogue improved throughout the three games, with ME3 being the series' highpoint and Mass Effect 1 being it's lowest.

I just played through ME1 again recently and much of the dialogue is awful. Tali and Liara are walking codex entries whose word budget was spent near entirely on info dumps about their species (Tali being the worst offender, she's a snooze fest in ME1), Garrus has almost none of his later personality, and Kaidan varies from whiny to boring. All of the romance arcs feel rushed and don't progress naturally. Characters also stand ramrod still during conversations, making the conversation scenes far less natural or cinematic than they were in the third game.

"You're just a machine, and machines can be broken!" ME1 Shep auto-dialogue.

See? You can cherrypick vapid lines from all the games.

ME3's dialogue was, simply, cr*p.

I barely got any options on what to say, and when I did there was typically only two options:  sad or p*ssed off.  This might make the conversations feel more "natural" (I'm sure the conversations flow much better when there are only red and blue channels to account for) but it certainly doesn't feel  much like an RPG.  More like a shooter with dialogue options.

Wait you mean a literal apocalypse happening as we speak. Millions of people being killed entire platoons being wiped out in single attacks. And the conversation is suppose to be light hearted and cheerful?

Yes.  That's exactly what i said.  

Yes.  That's exactly what i said.