You're telling me that the game series where you become a member of the spectres which is basically the Space CIA who have the ability to act with total impunity under the law and is portrayed purely positively might have some problematic elements?

Good points. Mass Effect felt dated pretty quickly imo, it's a great reflection of it's time/society in that way, though. Very chauvinistic and individualistic.

I've always felt that stories with more limited scope are far better than grand scale stories, and I think the difficulty of writing materialism in an engaging way is likely related. The grand scale stories feel hollow when the story format demands to be told through a handful of characters (low key why I felt the ending of the Dune Part 2 movie was sorta hollow)

I've never engaged in fan discussions, but I enjoy how you've utilized them to back the assertion that Dragon Age is overall better based on the greater depth and nuance of its debates.

In ME's defence, the overarching Reaper and Council storyline will always be about spineless libs refusing to do anything about an impending civilization-wide disaster despite all the evidence because they don't want to rock the boat. Doesn't matter which lib you put on the Council, libs gonna lib.

I fell off bioware pretty hard after Mass Effect 2. Your post makes me feel like I should try to pick Dragon Age Inquisition up

I think the main difference is how they were written. In ME everything is written with Shepard becoming the big goddamn hero as the core, everything else kind of came afterwards. In DA the writers were a lot more interested in the setting or Thedas (The Dragon Age Setting, in case you were wondering where they got the name from). They also wanted to deal with subjects like racism and bigotry, which is something that ME is either uninterested in or slightly supportive of. Also that DA was very influenced by the "grey" morality that was incredibly popular in Fantasy writing at the time, this was the heyday of ASOIAF.

I don't think the spectres themselves is what put me off ME though, it is the uncritical portrayal of a very American-style military organisation overruling the ~~UN~~ council about the ~~weapons of mass destruction~~ Reapers who the ~~UN~~ council were doubting them about.

As lib and somewhat incurious as Mass Effect 1 was, I really loved the setting and was super disappointed that 2 and 3 ended up as generic 7th gen third person shooters with a bit more story than the usual ones

Like there were little pockets of cool ideas and fun world building sprinkled in, and I would have loved to see them expand on it in a more story based way than just shooting everything and everyone. Things like Turians and Quarians having a wildly different physiology from most other species, making even things like food incompatible. And I'm a sucker for a good space opera

But then we got whatever the fuck ME3 was

I haven't played Dragon Age but this summarizes why Mass Effect is pretty shit and looks worse with every passing year. I didn't play 3 but the first two were cool for a bit and then the monotony set in and I couldn't wait for them to be over. I think I only finished them due to them being the in cultural zeitgeist of the time. I have never had the desire to play them again.

I think Mass Effect, especially the original, is a reflection of Bush era . Don't know how much people have thought about this before, but to me it seems pretty obvious.

I started playing the Legendary Edition, but the whole "We need a hard man/woman to make hard decisions without the stupid chiefs in the Council messing it up! Stupid reporters trying to question me, I should just punch them!" vibe was too much.

All characters that are apart of your "squad" are meant to be likeable or at least the kind of person their players would respect. Dragon age release characters also in your "squad" like Sera and Vivienne knowing that tons of their players will hate them.

Counterpoint: literally everybody hates James. Seriously though, I think this is just due to Inquisition being a more recent game than ME3; IIRC chuds also hate a lot of the Andromeda characters for being POC or LGBT. I'll definitely concede that IIRC there are no trans characters in ME which is kind of odd. As for the gender distribution between the two franchises, toxicity is definitely a major factor, but I wonder how much also has to do how the franchises were structured. ME was a complete series that started in '07, which was prime Gamer^tm^ time, and jumping in at 2 or 3 wouldn't make much sense. DA started in '09, but the next two games were totally unrelated meaning people could jump in wherever, and over time it has become more socially acceptable for women to play "real games". In both franchises you more or less play unaccountable secret agents working with a ragtag team of weirdos to commit mass murder, so it's not like the tone is that different. Maybe also something about genre, with fewer women wanting to play a TPS?

I disagree that DA is more about societal problems rather than individual ones. Maybe it's just because I played Origins the most (2 was okay, Inquisition was garbage), but I remember having to choose between "good and evil leader" in the dwarf quests or "evil elves and good werewolves" in the elf quests, for instance. Both games have the same core problem: they're made by liberals and so usually have one obviously better solution (though occasionally there will be a secret third option, typically based on compromise, that was actually the best choice all along!). I think the biggest difference is the paragon/renegade system: there was never a time where just doing the paragon thing wasn't the best option, and that drastically limits how they can write stories. Whereas the dwarf quest has "the nice traditionalist and the asshole reformer", and you can make arguments for both sides, Mass Effect has "cure the genophage or don't because lol lmao".

Anyway, the most important thing here is clearly ranking the different games were: ME1>DA:O>>ME2>DA2>>>DA:I>>>>>>>>>>>>>ME3

This is official and definitely has nothing to do with nostalgia.

Dragon age origins was such a good game too. The different starts, the factions. I even liked the deep roads, they were kinda cool. I missed the origins fighting system even though it was clunky. Sten was fucking rad too.
Its been so long that I can't remember if Morgan was actually nuanced or she was just a failed attempt at nuance. The chantry mission rocked.

Theres a FtM guy whos literally just the coolest fighty bro and his dudes respect him.

CHAIR BOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!
(we need a Krem standing on chair emoji)

like Sera and Vivienne knowing that tons of their players will hate them.

I will fight anybody who hates Sera 😠
only thing wrong with her is she's in the wrong game, like imagine the fucking chaos of having her hang out in Kirkwall lmfao

Also on a more serious note, I do think the thing about the subreddits at least is a somewhat more recent development, at least in my experience. Like r/dragonage is quite chill now, but I have multiple times in the past left the subreddit due to toxicity (r/masseffect has always been a cesspit tho)

Having played all the ME games, DA:O, and only the demo for DA2, I no longer acknowledge that there are any sequels to ME and DA:O, my headcanon is they're standalone games. That said, I like them both pretty much equally and only wish there could be sequels from a universe where joss whedon and capitalism is dead

Mass effect's story is also about exceptional individuals overcoming impossible odds, which lands way better with men, in general, than women, in general.

I think this claim could use some supporting evidence. I'll take your word that the female nation likes one game more than the other, but my understanding was that both games were pretty popular with women (and nearly every subreddit skews male anyway).