>>718820765
>Then it was massively successful so they felt the need to cobble together some quit story as fast as they could for a sequel
It was always meant as a trilogy straight from the beginning. One of the main gimmicks of the series was the promise it would remember your decisions and then bring them forward into the sequels. Which to it's credit it did a decent job at since a decision you made in the first one still affects the story in the third one, to the point you can have a completely different companion with a bunch of different conversations and dialogue options.

Compare that to a game like the Walking Dead. It gets annoying when it gives you the choice on which of two characters to save because you know it means BOTH of them will end up dead soon so they can railroad everyone's story into the same path. They simply didn't have the resources like Bioware to make your choices matter much in the long run.