Mass Effect was one of the most beloved IPs from the last generation of consoles for a lot of reasons. Fun characters, sharp writing (mostly), a Star Trek-esque sense of discovery with large depth of worlds and alien species, and it gave player’s a lot of freedom to chose how to tackle their universe-saving adventure. Although it turns out with that last bit, most of those players kind of stayed on one path.
The Mass Effect games offered Paragon and Renegade choices throughout the series. They were basically the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guy options, which defined who your Shepard was. As former BioWare Cinematic Designer John Ebenger revealed, despite BioWare putting a lot of work into both, the vast majority of people just stuck with Paragon, 92% in fact decided they wanted to only play good cop.
The next Mass Effect game is rumored to be currently in development. Hopefully, that lack of commitment to the dark side won’t mean they cut out choices. I still want to play bad cop through the cosmos.