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[Pnx]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't have so many issues with the endings themselves, synthesis, destruction or control of the reapers are all fine endings, even if they might be a little simplistic for a game built on player choices all the way through. What I have a problem with is the herpa derp reason you are given for the reapers' existence:

'So we realized synthetics will always rebel against their creators and want to kill them' Didn't the game itself go to great lengths justifying the Geth rebellion as a war for survival, and how they specifically didn't want to destroy the Quarians?

They then continue with this gem: 'So we built a race of giant sentient (synthetic) spaceships that swoop in and kill all advanced organic life every 50 000 years, so that they can't build synthetics'. I mean come on! That's like if a UN peacekeeping mission was to completely wipe out both sides in a war so they'd stop killing each other ...

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A better example would be the UN using viral agents to prevent biological warfare from occurring.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

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'So we realized synthetics will always rebel against their creators and want to kill them' Didn't the game itself go to great lengths justifying the Geth rebellion as a war for survival, and how they specifically didn't want to destroy the Quarians?

They then continue with this gem: 'So we built a race of giant sentient (synthetic) spaceships that swoop in and kill all advanced organic life every 50 000 years, so that they can't build synthetics'. I mean come on! That's like if a UN peacekeeping mission was to completely wipe out both sides in a war so they'd stop killing each other

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Catalyst basically admits that Shepard building the Crucible and reaching it is proof that it's entire strategy to preserve both synthetic and organic life was wrong from the beginning. Hence why it allows Shepard to decide the new solution.

It's also not all about killing organics to keep them from building synthetics. The Catalyst says that it started the Reaper cycle so that it they take the organic species of a cycle and make them into more Reapers, allowing those species to be preserved so that new organics may develop and be preserved at the end of the next cycle.
It believes that conflicts of mutual destruction are the natural order between organics and the synthetics they create, so it tried to solve this through the Reapers.  The only issue is that, as before, it is wrong about this and basically gives up to Shepard's better judgement immediately. That Shepard can create peace between the Quarians and Geth is only further proof that the Catalyst was wrong all along.

That just leaves the question of what the new solution should be (Organics eliminate Synthetics, Organics dominate Synthetics, or Organics and Synthetics become one), which is why it's the ending choice.

[Darkmere]

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You get the same ending options whether or not you make peace between quarians/geth. That's proof that your decision is irrelevant to the final outcome. Shepard only makes it to the citadel because it's dragged into a war zone and plants a teleport beacon right in the middle of the fighting. This could have been avoided by... well pretty much any other choice. TIM also got there first, but he was a douchebag so he didn't get an ending. Oh right, and everyone else on the citadel who are... dead... I guess? Shame, I liked Dr. Michel and Bailey and Aria. In the end, the cutscene just replaces the reapers with what controls the reapers; you're still submitting to an unknowable machine that somehow pulled the image of that snot-nosed brat from your nightmares. Yep. You've gone from fighting unknowable machine-god-things to surrendering to an unknowable machine-god-thing. Unless you worked hard to get the Shepard lives ending, then all that presumably didn't happen, unless it did and you're undead again.

Sorry, there's still no justification for this mess.

Edit:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If that had been Harbinger at the end who said "hah, well ya got me. You win. How about you jump into this energy beam that'll totally kill you, but in a good way!" would you still have done it?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

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You get the same ending options whether or not you make peace between quarians/geth. That's proof that your decision is irrelevant to the final outcome.

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No, it really isn't. Making peace between the Quarians and Geth just happens to be an example of peace between synthetics and organics that the Catalyst believed impossible. It has nothing do with convincing it that it's wrong, that is all immediately proven to it when Shepard succeeds in creating the Crucible and reaching the Catalyst. It does provide for consistency in the notion that the Catalyst is incorrect, however.

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Oh right, and everyone else on the citadel who are... dead... I guess? Shame, I liked Dr. Michel and Bailey and Aria.

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The Citadel doesn't explode in the Control ending, and the Reapers would have little reason or time to hunt down everyone on the Citadel after moving it. That could come later, when Shepard isn't breathing down their necks with most of the armed forces in the Milky Way and the only object that could possibly stop them. And even if they are all killed by the Reapers or the Citadel explodes because of Shepard's choice, a big theme in ME3 is unavoidable losses in the course of warfare.

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In the end, the cutscene just replaces the reapers with what controls the reapers; you're still submitting to an unknowable machine that somehow pulled the image of that snot-nosed brat from your nightmares. Yep. You've gone from fighting unknowable machine-god-things to surrendering to an unknowable machine-god-thing. Unless you worked hard to get the Shepard lives ending, then all that presumably didn't happen, unless it did and you're undead again.

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Shepard isn't surrendering to the Catalyst. The Catalyst is surrendering to Shepard because he proved that it's solution was wrong. It outright says that Shepard is the only one who can decide what replaces the Reaper Cycle because of that. Shepard's endless will to fight back against the Reapers broke the Catalyst's untill-then apparently perfect solution to the organic-synthetic cycle.

What exactly did you expect Shepard to do, try to shoot at the billion year old godlike AI with no apparent physical form? The one who just put the fate of the entire galaxy in Shepard's hands, even allowing him (or in some cases, only allowing him) to destroy it if he/she believes it best? While Shepard him/herself is bleeding to death as a result of taking a direct hit from an anti-spaceship weapon belonging to the largest and oldest Reaper?

Shepard living in the Destroy ending requires a massive amount of war assets. The Citadel also happens to explode in the Destroy ending, and Shepard's not-dead body appears to be lying in very not-Citadel looking rubble, so we can assume he got off of the station by some means before that happens, likely succeeding because of how well-prepared Shepard's forces were.

I also feel the need to address that Shepard is only truly eliminated in the less than optimal version of the Destroy ending, likely due to the aforementioned exploding of the Citadel or being too critically wounded by Harbinger. In Control, Shepard explicitly survives as the overmind of the Reaper consciousness (much like that which belonged to the Geth) even if his human body is destroyed. In Synthesis, Shepard's nanotech is added to the Catalyst's and is disseminated amongst all sapient life, and thus still exists even if Shepard him/herself is gone for good.

[micelus]

Somewhat unrelated to the current discussion.

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In the Synthesis ending, are organics still able to breed? Or eat and drink for that matter?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

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In the Synthesis ending, are organics still able to breed? Or eat and drink for that matter?

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This is why there should have been an epilogue section, so lingering questions like that can be answered.

[Darkmere]

Sorry for wall of text, but I love literary criticism. I'll strive for more brevity from here on out, I promise.

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If there's no geth/quarian peace, there's no evidence the catalyst is wrong at all. You can get the same option even if you helped the geth wipe out the quarians, proving the catalyst right (also note this happens largely because the reapers interfered and upgraded the geth...). Shep's only at the citadel because Casper let him (see below), and yet the slaughter continues unabated until someone gets lucky and makes it into the suspiciously accessible teleport beam.

Shep didn't make the crucible, it was a hand-me-down from all the other organics from all the other cycles. We don't even know what it does, other than make a crap-ton of energy. You can't tell me that in all the other cycles, the reapers never noticed this thing. Then, again, the citadel gets taken to a war zone, with war happening, to... abduct humans with a teleporter... to... uh... to let Shepard aboard, I guess. All of Earth wasn't going to die right then. This cleansing was estimated to take a century to finish. What's the rush? Just wipe out the militaries first, harvest what's left at leisure.

None of any of that explains why Shepard would take what Casper says at face value. At the very least "Why should I trust you, when I know nothing at all about you?" Indoctrination specifically makes whatever the reapers want seem like a VERY good idea. Shepard wants to destroy the reapers, so the thing that made them (possibly also what came up with indoctrination in the first place) offers him that "chance". Any of the 3 options could have destroyed the crucible and lost everything. Shep doesn't think twice. Yeah, choosing to doubt the enemy you've been fighting while Hackett sends over a science team to find the "on" switch would be preferable to going along with that thing that's been slaughtering organics since time immemorial.

And yes, the destroy ending shows Shep getting caught in the terminal explosion, without armor, while bleeding to death. *poof* Now Shep's in rubble of a building (on Earth!), with armor on, and didn't bleed to death. Those seem like pretty opposite outcomes.

I can make a well-grounded argument that everything after firing the missiles at the reaper is a hallucination/indoctrination/dream sequence/acid trip. This seems to be backed up by the "best ending" bonus movie.

[Domenique]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the Synthesis ending, are organics still able to breed? Or eat and drink for that matter?

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This is why there should have been an epilogue section, so lingering questions like that can be answered.

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Because obviously these are the most important questions in the universe.

[thvaz]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the Synthesis ending, are organics still able to breed? Or eat and drink for that matter?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is why there should have been an epilogue section, so lingering questions like that can be answered.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because obviously these are the most important questions in the universe.

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Why do you see TIM and Anderson taking choices the Catalyst offered? Why the Normandy is seeing fleeing the war theathe, with your companions that should be dead healthy and alive? They may be not the most important questions in the universe, but they are pretty important to the players.

[Domenique]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the Synthesis ending, are organics still able to breed? Or eat and drink for that matter?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is why there should have been an epilogue section, so lingering questions like that can be answered.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because obviously these are the most important questions in the universe.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Why do you see TIM and Anderson taking choices the Catalyst offered? Why the Normandy is seeing fleeing the war theathe, with your companions that should be dead healthy and alive? They may be not the most important questions in the universe, but they are pretty important to the players.

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 Obviously it was to show that they would've taken those choices, nothing more. Normandy is fleeing because maybe it saw the imminent explosion and try to make a ebon hawk/millenium falcom-esque escape. Maybe EDI told joker that shit just hit the fan and they should get out of here. Maybe then Joker picked them up and got out? Either way, it is shown that they're alive, that's what matters, you can interpret as you wish what happened before.

[micelus]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the Synthesis ending, are organics still able to breed? Or eat and drink for that matter?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is why there should have been an epilogue section, so lingering questions like that can be answered.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because obviously these are the most important questions in the universe.

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Well obviously it's not the most important question about ME3, but its one of the things that's been bugging me since I got the ending. Even more than the endings themselves, which I believe are good enough endings, just needed some more explanation and presentation.

[Heliman]

I'd give my left dongle to have the OP just change the thread name to  Mass Effect 3: SPOILERS so we can stop doing this stupid spoiler malarkey.

[scriver]

No, then I wouldn't be able to read the thread for the other stuff.

[Domenique]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the Synthesis ending, are organics still able to breed? Or eat and drink for that matter?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is why there should have been an epilogue section, so lingering questions like that can be answered.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because obviously these are the most important questions in the universe.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well obviously it's not the most important question about ME3, but its one of the things that's been bugging me since I got the ending. Even more than the endings themselves, which I believe are good enough endings, just needed some more explanation and presentation.

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 I find myself bugged by lot's of things in other series of books, games, movies, sometimes it's just for interpretation. Like when Star Wars end, all we know about Luke is that he's the jedi guy, nothing more to add. Expanded universe showed more, but I never cared for it, so I left it for my own interpretation. In my opinion, not having closure is not a flaw but rather a choice of style.

[Pandarsenic]

scriver: what other stuff? <_<