The litmus test

The extended cut endings contradict you since they show the mass relays being repaired. So if there is chaos in the sense you describe, it doesn't last very long. Particularly since the endings shows several our surviving human squadmates going on with their lives, which means the relays are repaired within a human lifetime. We don't see the quarians forced to live without their suits. We see humanity rebuilding and potentially either the krogans or rachni able to make it to Tuchanka. So I would say there is no post apocalyptic scenario. I don't expect to convince you that the Destroy ending is okay. But if we take the extended cut endings as canon, it's nowhere near as awful as you're trying to portray. You can think that's weak storytelling if you want. I certainly do with Synthesis.

And yeah you are making sweeping generalizations. If you don't see how saying that 99% of players choose destroy ending for a power fantasy happy ending is a generalization then I don't know how I can explain it to you.

The Reapers remove the right for those races to choose what happens to them. In the same instant Shepard removes those species right to choose what happens to them as well. Wipe them out without a care or second though to fix the problem in front of you. From a moral stand point the Reapers wipe out races for the benefit of all those that come after. And in the same moment you are equally wiping out all races for the benefit of those that come after.  The same thing. Massive death and destruction for the greater good of the galaxy.


Morality is always an interesting topic of discussion. Mostly I think because video games often show the villain mowing down waves after waves of people as bad. While the protagonist mows down wave after wave of people and is said to be a hero.  What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.

Okay so you think the destroy ending was poorly written. I prefer it to the others but we'll probably have to agree to disagree on that point. And what? When I'm talking about generalizations I'm talking about what you posted the previous page:

"But I'd say 90-99% of people who say they prefer destroy ending and would like the game to be destroy only aren't talking about that. What they want is Shepard giving the Finger to Catalyst before riding off on his magical space unicorn as the Crucible fires. Causing all the Reapers to just disappear all the people they killed appear alive again just in time for everyone to have a bitching week long party were the entire galaxy gets drunk and has tons of sex and all problems are now gone for every and ever."

If I misunderstood this feel free to clarify what you meant.

It could be so good if they didn't pull all the teeth out from it.

On old BSN forums, on reddit, in game MP chat and other media and real life I have talked about the ending with people. Of the people who prefer destroy but still don't like the ending I ask them how they would prefer it to end.  Their responds for the vast majority was the fairy tale ending set up. No Catalyst no questions, no choice just show up and blow up the Reapers and go home.

In fact there are a number of mods that I know of that were created by players to completely rewrite the endings to basically be that ending. With a number of people on here that I'm aware of preferring to use those mods over original ending.  Not really adding new content to the game or providing new skins to enemies or some of the odder stuff like Skyrim or Fallout can get. Completely cutting and editing of the ending to make it the simpler ending.

My post is only guilty of over exaggeration of what people want out of the ending. But not the fact they want the simplified Disney style ending.  I personally would have preferred the game to end at the beam run as Harbinger blows up the attack party, kills Shepard then gets several other Reapers to land and kill remaining ground troops before watching the Normandy being blow out of the air. With a montage of the Reapers harvesting the galaxy before the end of it showing the Reapers emerging from Dark Space at the Citadel to start the harvest of the next cycle.

Nah.  I wouldn't give a Nazi a pass because they were trying to make a more "pure" race.  I damn well won't give one to the Reapers, either.  But if you're going to go down the road of committing a "sin" to make things right...that's Destroy in perfection.  I think anyone who is under the delusion that war will end just because we've gone off to some techno-organic fairyland is seriously misguided.  I think you also need to revisit the actual task given to the Intelligence/Catalyst by the Leviathan: save the SLAVES from getting killed off so they can continue to be slaves.  That's the whole reason behind it all, the entire reason why the Leviathan chose to stay out of things and let the Reapers do their will.  They knew that, once the solution was found, they could return to dominate the galaxy.  Just because they're now techno-organic it doesn't change anything.  Stop pretending otherwise.  Synthesis is the solution sought by the Leviathan (though they didn't know how it was going to turn out).  We don't want that.  We want the one option that completely fucks over their plans.

A poster says there will be massive deaths and starvation when choosing destroy. Ok. How many is massive?

If ems is 2600 or higher, the relays don't explode. The Normandy is seen flying off the unknown planet. Doesn't matter what ending is chosen. The number of deaths depends on how quickly those people receive food, medicine and supplies. The ending has nothing to do with that.

If ems is 2000-2599, the relays explode, and the Normandy is stuck on the unknown planet. Red or blue was chosen. As above, the number of deaths depends how quickly those people get help. 

If ems is 1750-1999, Big Ben is destroyed and other buildings are seen being destroyed. Relays explode and the Normandy is stuck on the unknown planet. Red or blue was chosen. Same as before. The number of deaths depends how quickly the people get help.

Where the massive word fits is if ems is below 1750. Destroy scorches Earth, everyone on the Normandy are believed to be dead.

If blue was the only option, with ems below 1750, the number of deaths depends how quickly people receive help.

The same poster also said choosing destroy leads to the death of the quarians. The poster also said the extended cut is canon. Since the epilogue shows the quarians surviving when destroy is chosen, the poster is wrong.

The other point is that Synthesis treats evolution like a "goal" or "endpoint". That's not how evolution works. Therefore, I can only assume the Catalyst is lying to achieve its personal goal which, as we know, is to keep the slaves safe so they can serve the Leviathan.

The only one that is actually worthy of a Nazi comparison would be TIM as he is actually spouting the concept that one specific group deserves to be superior to all other different groups. The Reapers at best only admit facts that they are objectively superior life forms. Much in the same way a person is an objectively superior life form compared to a hamster.  But since you brought up Nazi's to beat them the Allies didn't take the moral high road or claim moral superiority to them. They forcibly conscripted teenagers and young adults into military service against their will threatening jail and worse if they didn't comply.  Would saturation bomb an entire town destroying any strategic military locations as well as killing hundreds to thousands of non combatants who's only crime is they were German and living in Germany who now live near a plane manufacturing plant that only exists because the Nazi government said it exists and enforced that at gun point with the civilians.  Stalin was the worse actually creating entire battalions out of prisoners ranging from those that deserved it to even political dissidents and putting them as the front line cannon fodder.  With the actual troops behind them ordered to shoot and kill any of those prisoners that tried to retreat.  The USA rounded up people who were new immigrants or only one generation removed from immigrants from Japan and threw them in their own concentration camps. Stripping them of all rights and basic decency on the slight off chance they might support Japan in the war.  And who can forget the USA dropping the two atomic bombs on Japan. Not just destroying a city but vaporizing people near the blast actually leaving shadow outlines on surviving building of the poor people who were in front of them at the time. Which also caused radiation fallout causing birth defects  and strange growths. Which at the time wasn't fully understood so those people that were effected by the radiation were outcast and shunned by the rest of the Japaneses public and treated as second class citizens.  The only thing that makes the Nazi's worse is the concentration camps and that wasn't found out until near the end of the war.

Destroy offers nothing of that. There is only mild inconvenience nothing more.  The Geth being wiped out? Make new ones. If the Catalyst is wrong as you seem to support building new Geth would be piss easy. All of their data bases would survive so all of their archived memories would exist. Create them and give access to the archives and they should come to similar solutions as the original.  In fact you could improve them and make them even better then the Geth were originally.  In fact for the loss of 1 synthetic race we could create 2 or 3 new ones.  It isn't even all that bad because the Geth if no other race would see the logic of their loss taking out the Reapers and being the only way would be acceptable losses and willingly let themselves be wiped out to stop them.  And the Geth even being there is optional.

So what was loss? Relays were damaged but some how going from not fully knowing them we know how to repair and reactivate them. Even though they are just as much Reaper tech as the Reapers themselves which would mean the entire system would be fired after the beam was fired.  They would have to be repaired from the ground up other wise the self repair capabilities the Reapers have would have been able to activate and repair them as well.

What would you say if your 12 year old child demanding you behave in a way they wanted? Demanded you stop drinking a specific beverage, that you stopped watching sports or playing games?  What would you say or due if they tried to enforce their wishes on your at gun point?  What about if he suddenly aged 20 years and was given the same knowledge and experience you have to realize trying to control another living being to suit your own personal will is asinine?

Yes the original idea behind the Catalyst was to protect slave races from their own slave races they created and rebelled.  See the thing is that Leviathan was following the same path.  The moment a thrall race was allowed to evolve to the same level as Leviathan and the moment they found a way to block the mental capabilities no doubt all the thralls would rise up in rebellion and killed them anyways.  The idea that only Leviathan would be capable of developing to that level is asinine as hell but logic that they would tell themselves as they keep their thralls suppressed and only growing and developing as they see fit.  You will notice this is the same basic mentality the Qurians had towards the Geth. If peace can not be created then you keep the galaxy in stasis. Repeating the same cycle over and over again preserving the essence of each new race to prevent the war and death that would wipe out all life for good.  Protheans and Krogan both show how easy it is for races of that technological level to render planets dead in the process of fighting a war.

See, I still disagree with you that it is a fairy tale ending. But I don't think we can continue without us both restating the same arguments at this point.

gothpunkboy89: I'm not going to quote your long-winded post that, frankly, fabricates ideas I haven't espoused. I don't fucking care if the geth get to be rebuilt or not. Is that clear enough for you? You're merging your responses to DIFFERENT PEOPLE and acting as though we've all said the same thing. It's why you can't be taken seriously.

I assure you I take you as seriously as any grown man would take a discussion about a video game.


Merging responds to different people is the point. I'm not doing it just to piss you off I'm doing it to prove a point.  If there is such a think as the lowest common denominator for complaints about Mass Effect 3's ending. A single common element in all the complaints I've seen. It would be player's rigidity to their own personal view. They are unwilling or unable to look at the ending from any perspective but their own. Be it logic or morality in nature.  This comes into conflict with the Reapers and Catalyst that were written to have a very different perspective and morality. The end result is the player ignoring or dismissing it or aspects of the ending that conflicts with their perspective. Their idea of what should happen and what really matters.  So the ending ends up looking like 2+5=3.

Your previous comment mentioned the Catalyst treating evolution like an end goal to serve it's own purpose to keep slave safe. That is the rigidity at work. Evolution is an end goal. It always has been. We evolve to meet requirements to survive. That is why great white sharks are grey on the top and white on the bottom. The end goal of that was making the shark more difficult to see when looking down above it or looking up under it in the water.  With the creation of synthetic life we are no longer top dog in the galaxy. We are now the 90 lbs asthmatic who eats glue. Evolution is how we correct that problem. But there are limits to what natural evolution can achieve. Thus synthesis is an artificial evolution to achieve a goal that improves the lives of everyone in the galaxy.  The end goal of every journey is the starting point of the next one.  Synthesis is the final evolution of life as we know it but then it begins evolution into forms we never thought possible.

But because the Catalyst's views and actions clash with your idea of what makes sense and is morally correct you dismiss all this off hand. Declaring the catalyst is nothing more then some moronic computer with a malfunction blindly following orders. Seemingly without even considering the concept that the Catalyst saw a problem beyond the original one it was designed to solve. I mean how could it when it is written to have such a different perspective and morality then you have?

This basic principle is echoed to greater or lesser extents with all complaints. Link for example kept trying to compare literary criticism and styles of novels to the game. A novel  isn't remotely the same as a choose your own adventure video game. And that was what I was trying to impress on them. But they were so rigid in their view that the idea that something that is not only a completely different media. But structured in a fundamentally different way so the old standards you would apply to a book like Queen of Sorcery. Simply can not be applied in the same way to a game with no clear motivation for character development and the ability for players to play a dozen times with a dozen unique dialogue choices with a dozen different reasons and consequences that they create.

That is why I often bring up context of actions that people use as proof of why the Catalyst is wrong or a sign of poor writing. Context is important and when it is ignored or down played because it doesn't fit your perspective it becomes a problem. It is how you end up with idiots in the wake of the school shooting in Florida saying that it isn't guns that kill people.  And not to get into that topic of gun control you still have to either be really stupid or willfully ignore the fact that he was able to kill those 20 people because he went out and bought a gun.  It was his chosen tool to take those people's lives and to say that it had no part to play in that shooting is asinine to the extreme.