Paragon and renegade were obvious stand ins for the two major sides of US politics, liberal democrat and liberal conservative, even being coded as red and blue for good measure.
Like with US capitalist "democracy", your choices are aesthetic and the results will always be disappointing and shallow, because they change reality of the story and the ending very little. The sides of paragon and renegade end up just being two sides of the same shit sandwich.
And just like in liberal politics, wishing for anything better is treated as not an option.
that tracks, because I looked at how Mass Effect 1 tried to portray and weird civilization of comparable power but unknown motives as evil purely for the sake of evil and your hyper-fascist space cop as the only one who could save the universe using the power of racism and said "Fuck this this sucks I'm going to go play something else.