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

Writers for Legion, Jack, Mordin and Samara are my top crew-writers - would love to have them back. Drew K making a return would be welcome. I think Mac did less writing for this game since he was project lead - so not sure what that means...

I'd put Cora's arc and mission right up there with Samara. Just better execution and Cora is an interesting character.

Yes, the huge plot hole I mentioned is the cause of the one you're stated: "if Sovereign's plan all along was to override the Citadel control and let the Reapers in, all Saren had to do was to go there while still a spectre by the start of the game and let the Geth attack the Citadel with Sovereign, easy win at the beginning of the game."
That's why it all turned to shit when they actually revealed at the end that Saren was planning to attack the Citadel when you meet the Council. WTF? It's never mentioned before, it's never even hinted and makes all that has happened before completely idiotic. 

Up until that point at the story, Saren is supposed to be trying to find the Conduit which is a way for the Reapers return to the galaxy, we don't know what it is, we don't know what kind of connection it has with these Reapers. We discover Sovereign is the mastermind later in the story, along with the location of the Conduit, which is on Ilos. But by that point, even after knowing that the Citadel and the relays were built by the Reapers instead of the Protheans, it was never stated that the Citadel was a giant mass relay, or that Sovereign's plan was to activate it. It was the MOST gigantic and embarassing plot hole in the entire game. It was ridiculous. 

But the story in ME1 could've easily worked out with a few tweaks, like not involving the Citadel, the place that their FREAKIN' spectre had access to. They were building their universe and lore in that game, and it was working relatively well up until that point, it was acceptable, had someone not decided make the whole thing absurd. 

Unstoppable means something is impossible to stop, and that depends what context you are considering. They are absurdly powerful, but in the greater sense, not unstoppable at all.
With each passing cycle, things were getting more difficult for them, the crucible was advancing in its design, organic species were getting more and more aware of their presence through the remains of civilizations that came before, it was just building up (how many species were able to prevent them from coming through the Citadel before the Protheans?). In fact, they are defeated eventually if our cycle fails, as one of the epilogues shows.

Up until our cycle, their supreme advantage was to catch everyone off guard, killing the galaxy's leadership and disabling the relay network. The story could have gone in many different ways, they just decided to create a deus ex machina in the last game. If you think about it, the only reasonable way to defeat them would have to be using their own technology. It should have just been better implemented across the trilogy, they got dumbed down in the third game to accommodate previous stupid writing.

Even without the Crucible in our cycle, we do make a dent in their army, making it easier for future cycles to fight them, and considering the Leviathan states only one is built in each cycle, they are not unstoppable, not when you consider time.

But if he wasn't sure why it failed, why not send his indoctrinated agents to verify it for him at the Citadel or go after the beacons before amassing an army of synthetics (that everyone in the galaxy considered hostile) and potentially being discovered? He should've just sent Saren alone, or others before him. As you said, Reapers are nothing if not patient.

They never justified the reason as to why Sovereign was after the Conduit before Saren got kicked out of the spectres, all the information we got in the beginning of the game was that Saren wanted the Conduit to bring back the Reapers. That was the whole mystery. We didn't even know Saren was planning to attack the Citadel until Shepard apparently discovered and warned the Council.

The point is, after we discovered that the way for the Reapers to return was the Citadel and not the Conduit, all the pursuit of Saren and Sovereign became horrifically stupid. Sovereign always knew where the Citadel was, the goal was always there, and he had the perfect agent to blend in, find out what happened and let him access it, invading with his army of geth and catching everyone off guard, quickly, precise and without any prothean data to temporarily corrupt his attempts.

On the other hand, if the Conduit was the real way, and the Protheans somehow messed it up or hid it, then the whole beacon thing would've made sense.

Would it even be possible to get these hypothetical writers working on ME5/ME:A2?

Agree with OP.
The time has come, some really talented writers should work on MEA sequel.
Like with new Star Wars - different movie - different director and different writers. This is the only way to keep things fresh.

That whole scene was setup for the itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie frigate to take the killshot. After Sovereign's shields were disabled, the thing still wasn't taking any damage. It was the SR1, with a fighter on each side, that destroyed the reaper. There could have been 1000, or 10 000 ships firing at the reaper. It didn't matter. Bioware wanted the frigate to destroy the reaper

 

BioWare could hire a great team of writers but if the next game is another re-hash of Mass Effect 1 even great writing will not save it.

Everyone has their favourites. Tastes differ.

I want either JE or DA2 writing and development teams back, because for my tastes they did the most things right as a stand-alone game. JE is ancient now, but DA2 is close enough.

The story-line development, and break-downof local issues, multiple antagonists, the protagonist, the team and its intergration into the plot, sensible romantic strategy, sensible fighting style and class buildups. Their only problem from my perspective was they did not have enough landscape/locale artists but they are no longer short-handed on that front.

I like how Andromeda did things in respect to storyline as much as DA2, but the DA2 protagonist's set up was a bit more flexible, and cast was tighter, and more focused, so I liked it more. Andromeda wins by a large margin in landscapes over DA2 though.

One thing that no other BioWare game of the past decade delivered, save for Andromeda, is a traditional honest to God happy ending. And you know, I appreciate it, as I am getting tired of my protagonist disabled, abandoned by lovers, cursed, or dead in every game I've played. I did not know how much I missed the Happy Ending till I actually had time to get over my surprise when Andromeda ended well...

Now, now. There's no need for that kind of sexism here.

Ooo! Ooo! Can we kidnap Diane Duane? She has a genius for making me cry like a big tittybaby, at least on the inside, and laugh like a complete idiot too. She's my new vote for dream author to steal. Maybe Garth Nix and Diane Duane's authorial brain-baby. I feel like that would be very, very Mass Effecty.

...And probably filled with random cats, but whatever.