My biggest criticism is how Mass Effect (or just BioWare) sometimes feel like the voices of 6 different writers whose ideas aren't committed to in the central plot.

Take the Asari Government plot point in ME3. I think the ramifications and ideas of this was highly interesting but on some level also felt narratively unwarranted to me. You're on Thessia, and you learn that the Asari held important secrets and knew it, for millenia, in some type of "conspiracy" plot. Where does that take us? NOWHERE!

Seriously, nothing is done with this plot point other than perhaps reaffirm the theme of "Galactic Non-unity" to make Shepard's attempt to unite the galaxy all the more strong. But it feels like this was meant to- and could have been part of a more intricate plot of a third game. Imagine if the plot of 3 was reshuffled and the writers actually wrote Udina in a way where the Council is shocked and appalled by these news, and as in the beta of ME3 the Coup happens AFTER Thessia. You'd have 2-3 main plot missions after learning the secrets of Asari government, and start seeing some division among the Council, as they start distrusting each other, and there's more of a plot to Udina going isolationist against the other species, and not simply that "he's egotistical." or worse, "archetypally evil." which Udina really wasn't before.

There's a couple of different things in each game that's like "Wow, neat concept!" and it feels like a chekov's gun, and then it never amounts to anything. I sometimes feel like that's the detriment of the writing/story structure BIoWare has set up as a studio. They got one Lead Writer that tells people what the "gist" of the main story is -- in 3's case "It's total war" and "Shepard has left Earth to save it" and "Cerberus are everyone's enemy now." There are signs that the leadership at BioWare isn't transparent with the people on the ground level, not even with the story. For example on Andromeda the topic of "colonialism" came up as a concern among writers and designers of BioWare Montreal, but when they asked the Lead Writer strolling through the office they would say "We will answer it in a really clever way." and not divulge anything to the people working on the game.

Game developent is highly bureucratic on this AAA level, and it requires a lot of effort to even make these games. I get that. But I feel like this way of writing sometimes gets in the way of actually telling a narrative, and in its worst cases you can see the cracks starting to show, where story-writing almost feels artificial and strung together unnaturally.

This has honestly been a problem since Mass Effect 2. Although ME2 also has a big of a segmented approach I do still get a feeling that they at least revised everything an extra time after all was said and done. Especially with how the main plot can be done out of order and still accounts for itself.