I have assembled a crack team of writers for BioWare to hire for ME5

Not to get into this whole thing against but the no. 1 problem of the ending we got was how ostraziced the scenes were from the story. Nothing changes there if the story is just suddenly about Dark Energy with a flip switch. They just needed to pick an idea and find out how it related and resonated with Shepard's story and the player's story.

I noticed you glossed over the fact that Samara and Morinth have an honest-to-god DragonBall Z battle in that mission. "Let's discuss our feelings loudly while we try to kill each other!"

Nothing in MEA reaches that level of cringe.

Karpyshyn left before the end of ME2, no doubt due to the retarded focus on "cool" dictated from higher ups (possibly Hudson).

I'd also toss in Jack Campbell

I disagree. MEA is fine and the series will be as well.

Does anyone know if the writers for HK47 and Jolee Bindo are still around?

When he wrote a mysterious threat, he really should have internally gone a bit deeper into that threat before they started implementing the story. The writers should definitely have had the motivations of the antagonists down at the very early stages. In terms of the Reapers he did the easy part and stopped. At least the world building and galaxy history was deep and quite open ended.

Because for some people  the grass is always greener on the other side.

Get Drew back and keep him

From Eurogamer:
Drew Karpyshyn, ex-BioWare developer and lead writer of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, has revealed in detail how his original idea for the trilogy's ending could have played out.

The potential plot focused on the spread of Dark Energy - a fact alluded to by several characters in Mass Effect 2 but then never mentioned again.

Karpyshyn departed from the Mass Effect team shortly before the conclusion of Mass Effect 2 and was replaced by Mass Effect 3 lead writer Mac Walters.

Despite describing the plot thread as "something that wasn't super fleshed out", Karpyshyn was still able to give gaming radio show VGS a detailed summary of how the storyline might have developed.

Tali's recruitment mission in Mass Effect 2 centred on a star affected by Dark Energy.

"Dark Energy was something that only organics could access because of various techno-science magic reasons we hadn't decided on yet. Maybe using this Dark Energy was having a ripple effect on the space-time continuum.

"Maybe the Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics keep evolving to the state where they would use biotics and dark energy and that caused an entropic effect that would hasten the end of the universe. Being immortal beings, that's something they wouldn't want to see.

"Then we thought, let's take it to the next level. Maybe the Reapers are looking at a way to stop this. Maybe there's an inevitable descent into the opposite of the Big Bang (the Big Crunch) and the Reapers realise that the only way they can stop it is by using biotics, but since they can't use biotics they have to keep rebuilding society - as they try and find the perfect group to use biotics for this purpose. The asari were close but they weren't quite right, the Protheans were close as well.

"Again it's very vague and not fleshed out, it was something we considered but we ended up going in a different direction."

The plot thread has become popular among hardcore Mass Effect fans as an example of a better solution than the widely-derided original ending, championed by Walters, the series' new lead writer. But Karpyshyn was keen to point out that his idea would likely have displeased some fans too.

"At one point we thought that maybe Shepard could be an alien but didn't know it."
Drew Karpyshyn, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 lead writer
"I find it funny that fans end up hearing a couple things they like about it and in their minds they add in all the details they specifically want," he explained. "It's like vapourware - vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It's perfect until it comes out. I'm a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it probably wouldn't be what people want it to be."

Other ideas dropped earlier in the series included series hero Shepard turning out to be an alien, Karpyshyn continued.

"Some of the ideas were a little bit wacky and a little bit crazy. At one point we thought that maybe Shepard could be an alien but didn't know it. But we then thought that might be a little too close to [Knights of the Old Republic character] Revan."

Most intriguingly of all, Karpyshyn mentioned a discarded plot idea for the beginning of Mass Effect 2 that sounds similar to what Walters and the Mass Effect 3 team eventually chose for the trilogy's ending (er, spoilers):

"There was some ideas that maybe Shepard gets his essence transferred into some kind of machine, becoming a cyborg and becoming a bridge between synthetics and organics - which is a theme that does play up in the game," Karpyshyn concluded. "At one point we thought, maybe that's how he survives into Mass Effect 2."

It really works both ways here.  Its what I like to call execution.  There are 'bad stories' that can become great stories because of how well they are executed and how it uses all of its elements, and there are stories that while technically are 'good' they lack the execution to really make you care about the events of said story.  

However, in the case of MEA its a great story, with anything from amazing to just ok side stories, which is reasonably well executed.  I don't think the execution is perfect, but its solid. 

shots fired.