While the whole Star Child/Crucible thing and the incredibly contrived logic behind the synthetics vs organics conflict that was revealed to be the Reapers' ultimate motivation was very dumb and that the original "dark energy from Mass Relays is ripping the galaxy apart" plotline would've probably been better, (and would've possibly had interesting parallels to air travel and shipping causing global warming real world) I don't think Bioware could've realistically cashed all the checks they'd been writing in thr first two games. Mass Effect 2 was already a marked tonal shift from the first one with the main plot taking some decidedly stupid and contrived turns, but those were easier to forgive given the fun characters, cool setpieces and the expectation that the last game was going to tie everything up neatly.
The trilogy is perfectly salvageable up until the last couple of scenes. Yeah there was some dumb stuff like that one cyborg samurai dude (the fuck was his name again?) and half of your choices ended up not mattering at all, but the good parts of ME3 were the high points of the entire series (see: Tuchanka) and all it needed to put a nice satisfying bow on the end of the trilogy was a scene of Shepherd powering up the crucible and blasting the shit out of hundreds of robots and winning the war. It would have been a cool inversion of the usual trope too - in Star Wars the rebels have to destroy the Death Star, but in Mass Effect you have to build the Death Star.
While the whole Star Child/Crucible thing and the incredibly contrived logic behind the synthetics vs organics conflict that was revealed to be the Reapers' ultimate motivation was very dumb and that the original "dark energy from Mass Relays is ripping the galaxy apart" plotline would've probably been better, (and would've possibly had interesting parallels to air travel and shipping causing global warming real world) I don't think Bioware could've realistically cashed all the checks they'd been writing in thr first two games. Mass Effect 2 was already a marked tonal shift from the first one with the main plot taking some decidedly stupid and contrived turns, but those were easier to forgive given the fun characters, cool setpieces and the expectation that the last game was going to tie everything up neatly.
Then 3 happened
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The trilogy is perfectly salvageable up until the last couple of scenes. Yeah there was some dumb stuff like that one cyborg samurai dude (the fuck was his name again?) and half of your choices ended up not mattering at all, but the good parts of ME3 were the high points of the entire series (see: Tuchanka) and all it needed to put a nice satisfying bow on the end of the trilogy was a scene of Shepherd powering up the crucible and blasting the shit out of hundreds of robots and winning the war. It would have been a cool inversion of the usual trope too - in Star Wars the rebels have to destroy the Death Star, but in Mass Effect you have to build the Death Star.