User blog comment:The Milkman/BioWare's Lies/@comment-1732218-20120509231726/@comment-1388547-20120510061514

I did something similar, and am only now coming back to the single-player game. I finished my second playthrough this evening, and it wasn't as bad as the first time. Part of that was because I played a Renegade character, rather than the Paragon of my first playthrough -- the Renegade victory-at-all-costs, ends-justify-the-means attitude fits better with the desperate situation you're in, and many of the Paragon options were just too mopey for me. (Yes, the fighting looks hopeless and far too many have died. But if we stop fighting at our hardest the Reapers have already won, and it's foolish to waste time mourning the dead when there are still living people to save.)  Part of it was also that I knew the kind of BS I should expect from the ending, so I wasn't blindsided by bad writing.

One thing I really noticed on the second playthrough, sadly, was how linear the story was. Granted, I had a preferred order in which I liked to do the missions of ME1 and ME2 (though for ME2 that order varied by class, since different characters needed different weapons, upgrades, and squadmates). But in the first two games I always had a choice of what to do next -- there were usually several main plot quests available at any given time, plus a few open sidequests if I was in the mood for something quicker. In ME3 you have some leeway as to when you do the sidequests, but the main plot is completely linear.