Dune (which was based on the concept of a hydraulic empire)

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it." - Frank Herbert, Dune

The writers were big Sci-Fi fans. The Asari were heavily influenced by the Minbari of Babylon 5. There are lots of other callouts to classic Sci-Fi in the series.

The bones of the setting and plot, the tone, plus lots of details, are so heavily borrowed from B5 that it's practically a kind of remix.

Not complaining, though, since [heresy incoming] they seem to have said "what if we took B5's setting but tweaked it to make it better" and then did it.

That ending tho. Unforgivable.

I will always be mad about the ME3 ending. If reincarnation is something that happens, my reincarnated self will be mad about the ME3 ending from birth.

What a godamn waste.

As someone who never played the games but has a rough idea of story and characters, what was wrong with the ending(s)?

The endings didn't take into account any of the choices you'd made up until that point. The endings were also a bit brief before the ending patch. I think those were people's biggest complaints, I could be misremembering.

Highly recommend the trilogy! Great story, amazing characters, pretty great gameplay (especially after #1), and overall an immersive journey. I wasn't bothered at all by the ending, personally.

The Reapers definitely fill a similar role as the Hegemony's TechnoCore, but the idea is so general: bigger, smarter entities leverage their natural advantage over smoller, dumber ones (who are sympathetic and protagonistic and somehow win love powers the universe shh it's ok).

Slightly different if you play renegade :)

[light spoilers]

In Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey", the alient Monoliths influenced human evolution and later decided to terminate the human race instead.

In Fredrick Pohl's Heechee series, humans stumble upon abandoned alien technology and use it without understanding how it works.