This is confusing the scenario that was with some sort of inevitability. Cerberus as we knew it in ME2 was invented in ME2- it wasn't even a game in town at the ending of ME1. Anyone else could have been just as (re)invented- such as the Shadow Broker as a patron- or we could have had other reasons than total ignorance for why the Council can't help Shepard.
ME1 had a great big Geth invasion and war with the Alliance. That would be a perfectly acceptable distraction for the Alliance and Council while small and independent colonies go missing.
Since the Reaper's strength is arbitrary, this isn't an actual limitation. The Reaper invasion can be as strong as the writer wants to be no matter how well the galaxy is prepared. Moreover, ME2's endpoint is whatever the writers want... and could be such that the crisis is worse and more dire, rather than less. It could even end with a partial Reaper success, which would be an excellent bridging purpose of a mid-game.
Say the conflict of ME2 is with the war against the Heretic Geth rather than collectors. In the course of the war, the Geth (at the behest of the Reapers) make outreaches with the Terminus and anti-Council groups, risking a Terminus War that would divide the galaxy in time for the Reapers arrival, while building some gambit that could turn the war (say infecting the Dyson Sphere with the heretic virus).
Let the Suicide Mission be about breaching the Rannoch relay- suitably impossible for the setting. Let the character missions be about trying to put out the brush fires that could start the Terminus War. Let the subplots be about things and themes that will actually matter in ME3- of Synthetic-Organic conflicts, or Dark Energy, or whatever.
And then let Shepard return from the Suicide Mission, having saved the galaxy in the short term, to realize the Reapers have lit it aflame elsewhere. That the Batarian Rebellions have started, pitting Humans against Batarians, while a Krogan Civil War threatens to launch a new Krogan Rebellion. Let the Quarians- whether desperate or indoctrinated or both- launch a war against the Geth, regardless of the True Geth of Legion.
Let progress be made, and yet also a galaxy divided, so that Shepard's uniting of the galaxy come ME3 comes in the context of a galaxy that was already preparing for war.
The Collectors as a super-advanced minion were pitiful because they opened up multiple logic holes- starting with why they didn't help out Sovereign and Saren's goal in ME1 (where seeker swarm tech would have made capturing the Citadel a cakewalk), and moving on to why they were they acting at all.
There was never any point to the Human Reaper from the Reaper's ambitions- it was never going to be completed without Earth, and Earth was going to be blitzed from the start by the Reapers thus rendering the colonies irrelevant for havesting purposes.
The Collectors were also largely redundant, in that they thematically replicated what the Geth already were in ME1: a secretive, reclusive race behind relays that no one survives going past with extremely advanced technology and unknown intentions. If the Geth had done the harvesting at the Reaper's bidding, it'd make just as much sense.
You never had total control, though.
I know I never had total control, but I also knew that going into the game after playing Mass Effect 1, unlike a lot of other people it seems. So the narrative itself was always going to be "railroaded" a certain way for it to make sense in the context of the game and the plot.
Most of what you say about is still wishful thinking though, which is kind of irrelevant in the end. "What ifs?" never really pan out because we may see most of it as perfect or logical, but there will always be a problem somewhere.
Fact of the matter is any justification can be made for all of this, including what you said, what I said, what the others on here say, and so forth. Perhaps the Shadow Broker had a bigger role at one point. Perhaps the Geth conflict was going to be escalated (they hint at it in 2s opening), or perhaps the Dark Energy stuff might have been a good idea (I was never convinced it was, felt just as arbitrary as the reapers) but at the end of the day we can only go for what the developers thought would work. In the case of Mass Effect 2, it was always going to be a work; swap out Collectors for Geth, Cerberus for the Shadow Broker or Batarians or whoever it might be, would likely still follow the same narrative, and may or may not make any more or less sense than before.
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