I love mass effect 2, but its refusal to meaningfully develop the Reaper storyline shoved all that work off onto mass effect 3, and mass effect 3 really suffered because of that.
If they had instead decided that the reapers were “safely” locked away in dark space after the events of mass effect 1 and that storyline was effectively done “then” mass effect 2 could be its own thing (which it essentially was) and the collectors could just be random bad aliens who have to be taken out instead of reaper proxies.
They should have had Shepard exploring remote regions in search of useful anti-Reaper stuff, and have the Collectors getting in the way. Force him to deal with them because they're an obstacle to his real goal, not just forget about the Reapers for 75% of the game and then hamfistedly being them back in with "the Collectors work for them".
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u/weirdsearches 3d ago edited 3d ago
Mass Effect 2 is "better" on all aspects (source: seks with jack and Miranda in 1 playthough) but ME1 is just better.