A case for Destroy

Hm, your post actually made me question myself for a moment.

It is of course true that mankind, and probably all the intelligent races of the ME universe, are capable of great good and great evil, in various scales. The difference between them and the reapers, in my opinion, is that the reapers are incapable of doing good unless compelled to do so by an outside force, in this case the Shepard AI that takes control of them if you choose that ending.

Until that point, the reapers' evil seems to be absolute. I am not aware of a single case of a reaper even hesitating before continuing with its task of methodical, galaxy wide genocide. And reapers possess intellect, one greater than ours according to themselves, so they must be aware of the suffering they are causing, and yet they keep doing it. Even a derelict reaper's presence is harmful to organics, as if their desire to control and/or destroy them lingered even after "death" or deactivation.

This kinda makes me wonder in what state the reapers are in the Control ending. Do they lose their free will when they come under the command of the Shepard AI? Did they have it in the first place and do they even desire it? Do they silently rebel against the AI's will? I honestly have no idea. But an AI can fail, and in that case, for all we know the reapers might just resume their original plan of total eradication. And that possibility, as tiny as it might be, leads to such a terrible consequence that it cannot be allowed to exist.

Now, should Shepard be shot by my own logic? I don't think so because the situation is not quite the same. There was, as far as I remember, no moment when Shepard had the option to either end Cerberus for all time or attempt to redeem them by changing them into a force for good. No one knows TIM's hideout until the end of ME3, and then Shepard does go to Cronos station and kicks their asses. Even if that choice had been there, it wouldn't have been the same thing because Cerberus, for all its evil, is not made up of absolutely single minded individuals like the reapers are. At least before they all got reaperized, that is.

But is the synthetic singularity more than a theory at this point? Has it ever happened, not counting the reapers themselves? If the solution is to simply kill off all advanced organics before they start the synthetic singularity, then why not wait until they actually do that, if they do it at all? Why not give them the benefit of the doubt? If the singularity happens, the reapers could just kill all those synthetics afterwards and arrive at the same result - all advanced races are gone from the Milky Way. What they do instead is hand out punishment for a crime before it happens. And it's certainly not the same as hunting season to keep animals in check. Keeping animals in check is done to keep up the balance that was fucked up by removing the natural predators that kept them in check before. Reapers do not mean to preserve a balance, reapers mean to eradicate.


When I mentioned a possible AI failure I was referring to the Shepard AI from the control ending, not the catalyst AI. The Shepard AI is a new thing and we have no idea how reliable it is.
I assume that harvest is their default action because that is all I see them do. Their actions, repeated over countless cycles, speak for themselves. If a reaper has ever created or nurtured something, worked to make a situation better instead of worse then I'm not aware of it. On the other hand, why do the reapers assume that the synthetic singularity will happen? And which of those two assumptions is more supported by the galaxy's history so far?


Well, I remember that random NPC dialogue on the Citadel during ME3 where one young woman asks to not be transferred to troops that are sent to fight Cerberus because her brother joined them. At least some of them seem to be misguided individuals who believe they do something good for humanity. Just talk to the crew of ME2 - how many of them joined Cerberus to just kill every damn alien in the galaxy? Kill everything is what reapers do, while pre-reaperized Cerberus "only" (it's still very bad, it just pales in comparison) wants humanity to become the galaxy's most dominant species without caring about the means and how many corpses they have to stomp over for that. But total eradication is not their aim, and that alone makes them as a whole less single minded than the reapers. And because of that the reapers must be the primary target for Shepard while Cerberus is more of a target of opportunity. There is only one Normandy and crew and it can only be in one place at the same time, after all.
Good point about Miranda and EDI though. If there ever was a moment where Shepard could easily have stopped Cerberus and chose not to do it - without neglecting the duty of stopping the reapers, of course - then yes, that would make him/her somewhat guilty. But it would be nowhere as bad as not stopping the reapers because Cerberus only poses a fraction of that threat. They certainly wouldn't be able to murder the entire galaxy as the reapers can and are clearly the much lesser evil. They'd get annihilated if they showed up for a big showdown with all other races of the Milky Way like the reapers did.
Of course, Cerberus goes through a massive change between ME2 and ME3. In ME2, they are a mix of extremists and disgruntled ex-Alliance and apparently (because the plot wills it) Shepard's only way to get to the Collectors while the Alliance twiddles their thumbs. Joker and Dr. Chakwas were Cerberus. In ME3, they are basically reaperized humans and either total fanatics or just puppets that need to be put out of their misery. So I'd say in ME3 they're just as single minded as the reapers, but certainly not during ME2.

The Geth are an example of it. Created to be nothing more then tools to make the Quarian's life better all on their own they developed consciousness, developed far faster then the Quarians and won a decisive war that resulted in the surface of Rannoch no longer being habitable and nearly wiping out the entire Quarian race. And despite all their accomplishments and advances they are still the slow child of synthetic life.  It takes hundreds of Geth running together to equal the intelligence of human or asari.  Granted they are still advanced but it took over 1,000 Geth programs to show a mobile platform that is able to operate on the same scale as EDI.  Now picture over 1k EDI's working together what they could do.


As for why the Reapers attack before that point. Well it should be obvious because the more advance the races are the more they are able to fight back. The more they are able to fight back the more Reapers are destroyed and the more planets get damaged. As well as more of the intented harvested races would need to die. It would be an unsustainable system that would fail in only a couple of cycles. Going after then when they are less technologically advanced means less of a fight, less losses and faster harvesting creating a sustainable cycle.



The Catalyst and Shepard AI are one in the same being. It is a little more complicated but it is not much different then me erasing your saved data for Mass Effect and uploading my own data. Your hard drive is just as likely to fail with my saved data as with yours.

Because that is their plan. No more different then how we act repeating the same actions over and over again. Thousands of years of recorded civilization and yet we keep repeating the same actions over and over again with minor differences.  The Reapers leaving ME tech to find is a boon to any races that find it. The ability to expand beyond their home planet or system allows the resources of their planet or system to be extended because they don't have to pull every drop from it as they can explore the stars to find more. More planets and more colonies means over population is reduced and everyone having a better quality of life means for the most part people are better off.  There are always exceptions. It is also a fairly important part that the Relays the Reapers build is the one thing that saved the Quairans from being completely wiped out.

The flaw in the logic I see a lot of people doing is assuming the story of Shepard is some how impact or based on the story of the Reapers. Their data and conclusions were reached in ages long past threw long research. They have watched the patterns repeat themselves countless times. A pattern this cycle was shown to repeat as well.



Talavi's brother is not a good example



Joined an organization with good pay and benefits only to be turned into a husk for TIM's benefit.  The crew members are all the ME equivalent of red necks who hate foreigners. The only way the idea that humanity needs the help is if you think the new guy on the scene should instantly be running the show. They are spies, assassins and unethical scientist that would kill children by the score and mentally torture a small girl after taking her from her family all to make the "perfect" human biotic simply because the Asari are better ones due to the centuries of them being natural biotics.  So willing to get what they want that they are willing to subject their own brother to horrifying experiments then have TIM complain about how it will set that project back decades if Shepard frees David.  Resurrecting Shepard and helping with the Collectors are about the only objectively good thing Cerberus and it's staff have done. And even then it was all for TIM's end goal of getting access to the collector tech.

Yet in the opening and closing of ME 2 it is in the same spot. As it is in the same spot when the Alliance attacks it in ME 3.

To be fair about half way through ME 2 it should be abundantly clearly to the player that the crew isn't necessarily a good example of Cerberus's true self. A human supremacy group that has the majority of their strike team being non humans.  There are a few crew members who have mentalities like Ashley did or Presly in ME 1. Dislike any non humans because they have simply never been around them before. But spend time around them and you realize just because they are different doesn't mean they are bad.

Also I'm thinking it was more about the Collectors trapping them and nearly harvesting them to create the proto Reaper that might make them reconsider their employment.

According to one of the books, the station does move

AnDromedary, you are right about that within Retribution about Cerberus. This is just me and my opinion, if there is a soft reboot of ME3 or a Post Shepard Milk Way Mass effect game, that should be addressed within a Mass Effect game.

We as an audience are a lot of things including bat shit crazy at times and toxic but We are not stupid. then again, I might be bit Naivete on our collective intelligence at times. Also Species that Reapers harvested are long since dead as they were, so Destroy doesn't bother me at all. A part of me does like Control on princple.  Shepard as the God-Emperor of the Galaxy even if he is an A.I. is both scary and cool at the same time.