Agreed. Drew Karpyshyn was the Lead writer for ME 1 & 2. When Mac Walters took there was a quality drop.
Example: the Dark Matter plot line was dropped and, I seem to recall, this was meant to be the motivation behind the reapers. Creating a psychic species that could control dark matter.
ME books story series also crashed once Drew Karpyshyn left.
To be fair, it can’t be easy finishing off someone else’s work.
Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge’s_law_of_headlines