Just started replaying Mass Effect 1 with a new game, but same Shepard.  Karpyshyn and his team did it right.  Why, oh why didn’t the producers in the third game pay attention?  This is a great example of how to start any work of fiction be it game, movie or book.

The irony is that you are maybe 10 minutes into the first game when you see a picture of this huge, squid-like spaceship.  It’s creepy as hell, and later you learn that you have been shown the ultimate villain of the first game.

Contrast that with the third game where ten minutes from the end a brand new villain — not just to the third game, but to the entire series is pulled out of thin air.  And they wonder why people were upset by the conclusion.  *sigh*

They had the villain.  It was Harbinger.  As I recall, he is mentioned at the end of ME1.  He threatens you constantly in ME2.  He turns up in ME3, and is referred to, although he seems to have gone mute in the third game.  The Illusive Man and Harbinger were your antagonists in that third game.  Not the pulled-out-of-somebody’s-ass-Star Child.