Uh, "bum-rushing the mass relay nobody has ever come back from" was the mission from the start. And dumb paragon/renegade option, dictating whether the game considers you good or bad" is basically Biowares trademark now.
Anyway, I basically had the opposite reaction you did. The story in the first game didn't really grab me, and has some pretty good holes in it. Plus Sovereign wasn't a very smart villain. (then there's the bad combat and vehicle controls, the shit menus, and micromanagement of equipment, which wouldn't have been so bad if it had been intuitive at all.)
The second one managed to draw me in and interest me. Hilariously though, the missions somehow seem more generic "Shoot things" than the first, but that's because there's no Mako segments.