Wrong again about the vacuum.... See this article in the Scientific American. Google is your friend. While survival is possible it probably isn't to your liking. You really need a pressurized suit. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, pardon the pun.
The way the game is set up is that Mass Effect 3 is the best place to start. If you fail to kill The Illusive Man in the renegade scene, Shepard dies because The Illusive Man shoots her, and you get critical mission failure, the game ends, you need to reload from the previous autosave and redo the scene. Only the paragon scene has TIM kill himself.
Still, with Saren, we only have the cut scene to go by. You are going by head canon. Let's face the facts. In Drew Karpyshyn's own novels, kinetic barriers only work when he wants them to work. They don't work when he doesn't want them to work. Yet they are part of ME lore. They are plot devices and a game play mechanic. Nihlus is a case when the writer doesn't want them to work. The Illusive Man was another case where they it wasn't supposed to work. Also if you killed Mordin in ME3, it only took one bullet - his kinetic barrier didn't work via plot. Another death via plot was when the person closing the door in the Suicide Mission took one to the head - logic would dictate that they did not have their barrier turned off.
If you need a character to die, you don't go through all the details like barriers getting taken down. You write a good death scene. Thus, these things like kinetic barriers are a game play mechanic or plot device.
http://imagine.gsfc....ace_travel.html
The issues brought up in your link are directly related to lack of breathable air for the body(ies) during their time in a vacuum/near vacuum. With access to a source of oxygen like say a breather mask like it shows her having she would be able to survive out in a vacuum naked. Now would it be the most comfortable feeling? Probably not but there are people who regularly dive and swim in frozen ponds in only their swimming trunks and people who can sit in saunas for 5+ hours at a time and survive.
The issue which I pointed out would be ex poser to elements like UV radiation which would cook her like a microwave or toxic elements. For instance that what was it ammonia or chlorine based planet were you have at activate the beacons to find your way out. But a lot of that depends on if you consider side missions cannon or not. Because unless I've forgotten something in no mission in ME2 or ME3 for the main story line missions are any character save Shep exposed to a complete vacuum. First is during collector attack which again Shep in full hard suit. Second is when his suit is ruptured and he slowly dies of asphyxiation. The other when Shep again in full suit walked to the Geth Dreadnought. The rest of the main story missions take place in areas that have an atmosphere and are livable in term of exposer to elements.
And your statement is the same amount of head cannon as mine. When they work they clearly create an entire barrier when triggered by fast moving objects. The entire point of the barrier is to prevent someone from shooting at you. Gun fights rarely happen at near point blank range. Particularly military fights. Maybe I just didn't hear about it but I don't seem to remember any stories about insurgents in the Middle East running up and firing point blank on soldiers. Or waiting in door ways then shooting them just as they get next to them like you see in CoD. Same applies to Vietnam, Korea or WW II. Oh sure there were moments when storming bunkers and such. But that was because they bunkers were created to see and kill advancing enemies from a distance. And even then the more common method of clearing out bunkers were old fashion grenades or even flame throwers. But they were the exception rather then the rule.
Point blank range you wouldn't even need a future space gun to kill someone. A sharpened rock could kill someone unless they were fully armored. And then a knife towards the throat or other joints would allow you to do the job anyways. Those points being the weakest for needs of mobility.
Saren killing Niahlus was near point blank range his barrier wouldn't have activated in time this is echoed when Saren kills himself.
Mordin was ignored because the scene called or it. Just like every other book, TV show, Movie. And ignoring it and the over all scene it creates is well worth the temporary suspension of game physics.
TIM make sense as well. It was fairly obvious he was completely indoctrinated at that point. Like wise rather then leave Shepard to die of blood loss the AI wanted to talk to Shepard. Setting TIM up so he would be killed and controlling him to that point it all makes sense. The man thought he could control the Reapers. That he had the ultimate power in his hands. Why would you need a barrier with that kind of power? The first thing he does is take control of Shep and Anderson preventing them from doing anything. You seem to miss every point of context in that moment.
I tend to not take novels seriously when tied into games. More often then not they don't pay but lip service to the actual game(s). Runescape novels anything created for Halo after Bungie left.