>>536221549
Hm, that’s a surprisingly "new" take coming from a MEfag, assuming you are one, because it reflects how I used to view the game back when I was into it.
In terms of "culturally distinctive" alien species, only a few really stand out quarians (to an extent) and certainly the Elcor and Hanar. But the latter two have mostly been treated as comic relief rather than serious cultural entities. The major races don’t feel all that alien. They’re essentially humans with cosmetic differences. They create nerdy tabletop games, write love poetry, watch porn, and even salarians get underpaid. All of it is deeply human.
You could argue that these similarities are a result of convergent development, like organics interpreting the universe in similar ways which is true and therefore is a great explanation why they feel LIKE humans but the game never even addresses this line of reasoning, but still, every race is just a flavour of humanity with a quirky gimmick, basically.
Take Tali, for instance: is her worldview or cognitive style really that different from a human female's? Not really. Is Garrus' obsession with justice something uniquely Turian? No, it’s a human trait too.
It makes the whole galaxy feel familiar by being so human once you look past the codex entries.
Oddly enough, the most underdeveloped culture of all is mankind itself. BioWare gave humans no cultural identity, no music, no art, no ideology beyond Cerberus or biotic extremism. Beings from planet Earth exist mainly as a default species that colonise planets and get buttfucked by bad things, waiting for Shepard to save them. With such a blank slate as the standard, even mildly unique alien species seem diverse by comparison.
So for me, Mass Effect was never great because it created a rich and unique galaxy, it was great because it had strong characters and interesting story lines. Beyond that, it’s just your average sci-fi franchise.