Continuing Mass Effect 1: Legendary, I just left the Citadel having exposed Saren. While the gameplay feels dated despite the improvements (and let's face it, it wasn't that great even on release), there is no doubt that Mass Effect has one of the deepest and best realized settings in gaming, and I find myself appreciating that fact more as time goes on. There's so much detail and lore even behind mundane and boring details. The soundtrack also still holds up damn well: the theme that plays in C-Sec has that comfy quality to it that I feel we don't often see.
I'm trying to go for a more Renegade-heavy route this time, but I still have trouble selecting some of the dialogue options. The difference in the believability of full Paragon and full Renegade Shepard is just too much to ignore: paragon Shep is an at times naive goody two-shoes doormat, but still comes across as sensible. Full paragon Shep is a sadistic, irresponsible, psychopathic jackass. And I guess people can have fun with that, but for me it just hurts the immersion when the game presents the dichotomy between them as somewhat equal. Playing renegade Shep feels sensible to me only in the scenario where I'm specifically trying to roleplay as a huge asshole with giant authority issues.
Edit: also something I've started unintentionally recognizing is how lopsided the alien race representation is in terms of gender. Do we ever see any clearly female-coded alien NPCs in the entire trilogy besides asari, quarians and that one female krogan in 3? It just makes me think of that point Yahtzee made years and years ago where male individuals of a species can be hideous malformed monstrosities, but the females are "basically just discolored human hotties with bad dentistry". Considering how many alien species there are (vorcha, batarians, elcor, hanar, salarians etc.) sure the writers could at least make a token effort to hide their barely disguised fetish tendencies (those hips on the female quarians, hot diggedy!) Of course you have the get out of jail free card of "well we don't really know if they conform to our understanding of gender", but come on. Nearly every species encountered in the trilogy abides to male presentation with voices, physiques and silhouettes. That is excluding the hanar which are just jellyfish-like blobs, and the faceless mook enemies of geth and the Collectors.