By “favorite fictional character” I don’t mean “favorite character of your favorite fiction”, consider the media itself to be irrelevant.
Just consider the character itself and how it changes throughout whichever segments of its timeline, regardless of how the world moves around it (unless it’s relevant);
the show / book / comic / game / political campaign itself may be absolute trash, but you love some character from that more than any other character from anything at all.
Like Magnifico from Wish, or the driver from Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.
Mass effect had a good line up of really amazing characters.
Controversial opinion, but I feel that all games after the first one were only held up by the characters and worldbuilding - hell, ME2’s plot IS the characters
There’s a ton of worldbuilding and character development but the gameplay and exploration is cool as well.
Maybe it’s because I played them all several times (the original ones, not the LE), but the gunfight mechanics are extremely okay enough to me - oddly enough Andromeda was the one I most enjoyed shooting in (though I didn’t finish it due to hardware problems).
Exploration as in sightseeing, yes you’re right, I forgot about it - though I don’t remember there being much actual exploration in 2 and 3? Granted, I either missed some things in 2, or they were included with some DLCs I didn’t have at first.