Mass Effect 1, for all its faults, kicks things off very well and if he's going to dive headfirst into PC games, then I don't think you need to worry about ME1 having a slow start.
The real problem will come in when he's wondering where to go next, what to do with all these menus, where he should be putting his points (or even how to level up in the first place), and how to take advantage of his teammates. I know ME1 has its fans, but that game just doesn't balance out the RPG and the shooter aspects well at all and both wind up coming across as messy and badly designed. Not to mention the clusterfuck that is inventory management.
It sounds to me like your dad hasn't played many video games, so giving him Mass Effect 1 just sounds like throwing a man who has never seen a deep body of water into the deep end of an Olympic swimming pool.
Mechanically, Mass Effect 2 is way better, although it only gets there because Bioware dropped most of the RPG part and leaned heavily into the shooter part. Whatever you may think of that decision, it does make for an easier game to get into for someone who is new to video games (it's more like throwing the aforementioned man into the deep end of an average swimming pool). On the other hand, the story - the primary reason for playing these games - might be confusing for someone who hasn't played the original. Reapers? What are those and why should I care? Garrus? Who the hell is Garrus, and why is it taking him so long to calibrate things?
Mass Effect 2 will have two things for a new gamer to be mildly confused about - story and gameplay - as opposed to Mass Effect 1 having one thing for a new gamer to be pretty confused about - just gameplay. If he latches onto the story in Mass Effect 1, then that might be enough to get him used to the gameplay.
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