Shepard's dream in ME3

Right.  I do the party just before Cronos Station in order to have the most options available, even if it's as few as I've seen you do.

No, I meant that I do everything up to Cronos then do the majority of the Citadel DLC. That ends with the party and the "final goodbye" at the Normandy as the final scene for me. Then I do not continue afterwards. I feel that makes a much better and emotional ending for the trilogy, then leaves the "actual" ending alone. I did the endings enough times before Citadel came out that I can head-canon how that Shepard playthrough would end, without the irritating mess of having to do it.

I know it's not actually an end for the trilogy. I just feel that it is a better note to end the trilogy on at times, and it's just my personal preference to end there sometimes.

As I stated, I've finished the games enough times to go through, this Shepard did this and these squaddies died; this other Shepard did this and these other squaddies died.


I'm not saying that it should be the ending or that everyone should do it that way, just that it is what I do when I don't want to go through starkid and the Crucible/ space magic stuff.

You are correct, a lot of the ending (whichever one) can be interpreted differently. I was merely stating my opinion on where I like to end my PTs at times.

As for the dreams, I go with PTSD and it's coping mechanism for the stress. Maybe some IT is in it, maybe not. Everyone would deal with that stress differently and Bioware was probably trying to keep it dark, but a little generic, while showing that not everyone can be saved (the kid, if you go with that idea).

I don't think the Reapers are older than a billion years. Can't remember where I got that number so I could be making it up. In any case, the Crucible was allegedly built by some prior civilizations as they became aware of the Reaper threat. I think it was Vendetta who said it. Then later civilizations built upon it.

Personally, I never bought into that as being true. We have Vendetta, who pretty much would have no idea what happened multiple cycles prior, and the Leviathan, who are about as trustworthy as a mass murderer saying he won't hurt just you. My pet theory is that the Catalyst created it as the true means to find the solution it was seeking. The Reapers were only meant to be a temporary solution until the real solution was found. Otherwise, how could the Catalyst not only be the final component for the Crucible, but also have some level of control over the outcome? Am I supposed to believe any civilization on the brink of destruction was able to come up with something that can cause changes like a person uploading his or her consciousness to take control of the Reapers, or something that can destroy all Reaper tech everywhere, potentially including the mass relays themselves? Considering the Catalyst outright says that to Crucible was what could make its perfect solution happen, I have to conclude that it was the original creator. That is, it made the first iteration, dropped some blueprints for a race to find, and then it got passed down across the cycles until the time of the Reaper War.

I actually like this interpretation. It even makes control and synthesis a bit more palatable as options,** whereas otherwise they both feel like you're putting a leash on a mass murderer and forcing the rest of the neighborhood to give him chores to do.


**A bit. I still don't want to do them 

Vendetta doesn't know what happened but the scientists might have extrapolated information from the plans they found.

Fully built no but we did nothing saying others didnt come close

Remember Vendetta says the catalyst is the Citadel. It had no idea that the hologram child was the catalyst. What I like to know is was it coincidence that the group building the crucible in their cycle called the Citadel catalyst without knowing the Citadel wasn't the catalyst? What is odd about that is Javik, a prothean, calls the Citadel, Citadel. Does that mean the group that were building the crucible in their time used the code word catalyst to represent the Citadel?

The Catalyst is also the Intelligence.  Does that mean that the Leviathan created the Citadel, which was or housed the Intelligence/Catalyst?  That means the Citadel itself would have the power to take down the Leviathan.  Then the Citadel actually churned out Harbinger, the first Reaper.

No one knew that until Shepard talked with catalyst after completing Leviathan dlc.
No. The intelligence instructed the reapers to build the relays. There's nothing saying what built the Citadel, but I would say the catalyst instructed the reapers to build it to house the master switch to operate the relay network.
You mean the first harvest? If that's the case, then the crucible was never needed. Just do a sweep of the Citadel to find the take down button. I mean, if it can take down Leviathan, as you say, wouldn't it be able to take down the reapers as well?