Absolutely. Mass Effect 1 and 2 work perfectly fine as games and stories regardless of what 3 did or didn't do
The Matrix, Jurassic Park, Die Hard, Alien, Star Wars, Terminator, and so on. The originals (and the good sequels) aren't somehow retroactively altered by the shit elements of their franchises. It's silly to suggest it's some constant that must happen. It really is only a thing if you decide to make it a thing
No, that's putting your category flags in the wrong places. Mass Effect 1-2-3 has elements to go between the games (the reapers, yes, but also the citadel, main characters, organizations, etc) and are clearly meant to back each other up as one holistic story, which it then spectacularly failed to do at the end, effectively making the whole investment not really worth it. You can pretend they're good as individual games, but you can't unthink that you know the story will suck at the end anyway, so what's the point of fooling yourself.
All the movies that you mentioned are made without a sequel in mind, and are diegetically closed, meaning that all elements are contained to just that one movie and the story is finished within that one products. Sequels may use elements from previous movies, but they are their own thing all the way, regardless of whether they are actually related to the "previous" movie or not.
For instance: I do not consider the Star Wars prequels to be actually related to the first three movies, because they were never meant to be, nor can they be because everything was closed of at the end of Jedi. However, Jedi could easily have become a "mass effect 3" to Empire since it left the door open for that sequel, similar to Matrix Revolutions to Matrix Reloaded. It's just that Empire is less obvious about that sequel hook, and it wasn't conventional to have one of that caliber at the time.
Nowadays however, that is unfortunately more common and it makes movies a lot shittier because now they're just ads for the sequel without an actual story. Because stories have a beginning, middle, and end, and are thereby closed.
Similarly, none of the first three alien movies are actually related to one another because all of them are closed off at the end. Resurrection is a weird one because if you're like me then you feel that that movie doesn't properly close at the end, considering it seems to end on a literal sequel hook. AvP is the schlock bonus round and I don't understand why people consider that anything other than that, as if the title would mean it's somehow in the same universe as the other movies... like, how?
Anyway, similarly, PREQUELS like Prometheus are products created by artificial pre-sequel hook, where the publisher pretends that there was something important -there isn't- about anything before another movie, as if they are totally related - they are not. It's nothing than an extremely silly marketing strategy of getting people to see a completely irrelevant movie for a story that doesn't fucking matter because nobody would reasonably have any reason to care about it. So basically Prometheus, Rogue One, Heart of the sea (or whatever that was called), Fantastic Beasts And Where To Conveniently Lose Them As An Excuse For Plot, and so on are all just more phantom menaces -pun intended- for the sake of being able to sell crap that is actually completely unrelated to the supposed 'sequel'. It's like releasing Mass Effect 2 after 3. As if you would give a fuck at that point.
And that's really what Prometheus is and why it's not just a crappy movie on its own (in which case it would probably be a 'Best of the Worst' winner on account of schlock value), but it also has the pretense of being actually related to something that does work, whereas it is neither related, wanted, or functional.
And that's pretty much the case for all prequels by the way. Imagine if EA made a 'Mass Effect 0' where they expect you to care about stuff that is now irrelevant, you'd feel the same way. Abandoning that universe in favor of a soft reboot was really the only option they had with Andromeda.
Btw, since most game stories do not actually close properly in favor of 'see you at the sequel' hooks, their stories can be insanely unrewarding or even delusional when you know five minutes in there's never going to be a sequel. (so like Prometheus, basically) Friendly advice for any would-be writing career: CLOSE THE DAMN STORY.
Speaking of writing, I've already made a long ass post on why Prometheus is not ambiguous but just confusing for confusion sake in the writing threads. So it's like I need to explain another goddamn time why it doesn't work. Oh right I just did. Again. Sigh.
#OMGsoELITIST
