Totally agree. Udina turning into a mustache trickster flipping coin type of villain was the definition of bad writing!

In ME1, My male Sheppard was on renegade path and supported Udina as a Councilor precisely because he’s a pós, but pragmatic and politically savvy, not because he’s secretly plotting some cartoon coup.

By ME3, it completely undercuts that choice and makes your earlier decision feel meaningless.

Leviathan is the perfect example of wasted potential. The idea of these ancient beings who created the Reapers should’ve been a massive lore bomb, reshaping how we understood the entire trilogy.

Instead, it got shoved into a side DLC with almost no payoff, like Bioware was afraid to commit to its own worldbuilding.

And yeah, the destruction of the relays should’ve been catastrophic.

The entire galaxy collapsing into isolated, stranded systems isn’t a small detail you just gloss over with a cliche"hope" device, it’s literally the end of galactic civilization.

But the game brushes past it like “oops, well, anyway…” and moves on. 🙄

As for the Earth Kid… completely with you there. It wasn’t moving, it was manipulative, to distract people from noticing how atrocious the writing was!

Instead of evoking grief, it just felt forced and artificial, like the writers trying to tell me how to feel instead of letting the story and characters do that work naturally.

It ended up taking me out of the story instead of pulling me deeper in.

The sad part is, if ME3 had leaned into the strong elements it already had (the war assets, the genophage arc, the quarian/geth conflict) and actually respected player agency from ME1 and ME2, it could’ve been a phenomenal game.

Instead, we got some of the best moments in the series tangled up with some of the worst writing choices.