User blog comment:James12708/What I expected The Reapers to be when I first started playing Mass Effect/@comment-4950455-20120719030015

when James Vega actually turned out to be a likeable character.

I was quite surprised by this as well. I'd thought he would be much more annoying, particularly since I still think his character - from an external standpoint - represented the sort of excessive catering to new players that hurt ME3.

For the *actual* biggest twist, it's basically a tie between either what the OP said - I would never have guessed that the ship was the villain - or everything we found out in ME2 about the geth.

The Collectors being what was left of the Protheans was also a pretty cool (and pretty disturbing) twist, but it didn't really matter that much in the long run, so I wouldn't count it.