The Problem With Earth

The Catalyst isn't anywhere in ME1 or ME2.  It's not foreshadowed in the writing of the first two games, likely because it just wasn't part of the original concept for the story.  So, if we're doing an entire rewrite of ME3, we can just leave the Catalyst out of the story completely.  ME3's story takes an entirely different line.  What I"m saying is destroying the central seat of government for the Milky Way leaves an interesting problem (IMHO at least) for Shepard... how to bring a galaxy of different races together to fight a common enemy when there is no longer a Citadel or Citadel Council and fractured lines of communication throughout the former empire.  This is the problem Javik indicates that the Protheans faced... and they lost the war.

You all can get hung up on continuing to try to reconcile the Catalyst into the current ME3 story... but that was NOT the direction I was intending at all with my post.  As you all know, I'm perfectly OK with the ORIGINAL endings (pre-EC).  I do see descrepancies and plot holes, but they honestly do not bother me.  I can interpret all the endings in a variety of ways depending on how I want to roleplay Shepard.  The endings work OK for me.

IF they do a reboot, my preference is to see a reboot story that is almost unrecognizable from the first.  As I've said many, many times - The last thing I want is a canon ME3 ending chosen.

Same sort of thing as Shepard dying reaching for the console as Hackett indicates it's not firing and everything after that point is the hallucination of a dying person (a personal and private end of life reconciliation).  Only difference is Shepard living in yours and Shepard giving his life for the cause in mine.  In either case, Hackett must ultimately figure it out and get the Crucible to fire.  What it actually does, no one really knows for sure... because not really knowing what it does IS absolutely a canon concept introduced in ME3.

... and it STILL doesn't resolve "The Problem with Earth."

Since when are the War Assets allocated to earth?  They are being allocated to the Crucible, which is not designated to protect or defend earth only but is being built to attack the reapers and prevent them from harvesting all intelligent life in the galaxy.  Where it is to be eventually deployed is unknown by anyone until Vendetta reveals that the Crucible needs to be connected to the Citadel and the Reapers have moved the Citadel to the Sol system.

When Shepard first goes to the Council, he/she believes that earth was among the first planets hit.  Over the course of the game, he/she becomes aware that the Khar'shan was hit before earth.  Palaven was probably under attack, but the Turian Councillor remains strangely silent about that during that first meeting... allowing Udina to blatantly tell him that earth was the first Council world hit... so it either had not been hit yet at that point or the Turian councillor was unaware of it during the meeting.  The Asari and Salarian worlds had not yet been hit since the Asari Councillor indicates that the Reapers were only "pressing on" the borders of their space.  Shepard is merely trying to raise a quick response in order to try to thwart the attack BEFORE those other worlds were hit.  It's an aggressive approach - hit them hard before they can get a foothold.  What would you propose, send all the assets away to the farthest, safest reaches of the galaxy and wait for the reapers to spread their attack there?  It's only since Shepard is unable to get the others to commit to a quick response, the attack spreads to the other planets over the course of the game.  No emotional attachment to earth is required really.  It's not like Shepherd goes on about being born on earth (that's Anderson's role).. but at least the Earthborn background is available if the player wants to give their Shepard some sort of emotional attachment to earth.

What you initially stated was:

and I still disagree with that statement. As I said initially, you can select dialogue in ME1 that indicates Shepard left earth because he/she didn't like it there; but you don't have to select that dialogue and, therefore, you can role play as a Shepard who is fond of earth.