The MEA game ratings thread (ESRB rating description)

You think?  I find ME1 to be the darkest of the trilogy, it has a grubbier look and feel to it and has that edgier soundtrack too.  Perhaps that's why I feel that way.  The use of red sand seems to be more prevalent in ME1 and the people seem somehow sadder and have less hope.  And of course the awful sex scene that seems so out of place, both Origin's and ME1's are cringeworthy.  There are blue bums and naked torsos, sideboobs and cleavage aplenty in ME1.  To me 2 and 3 have more of a slick, Hollywood action movie feel to them that glosses over many of those themes, making everything a little more shiny and a little less real.

I admit I haven't paid much attention to the f-words or the lack of them in the earlier games, I'll concede that point as you know more than me on that one.  To add them where they didn't exist before perhaps is a little jarring lore-wise.  But the nudity and drugs were, to me at least, definitely a feature of ME1 and DAO, to the point where they're just the same level in my mind as the subsequent games.