Who would have preferred that they leave the reapers alien and mysterious rather then try to explain

I think they did a good job. People's total rejection of the possiblity the Catalyst is doing something good and necessary shows they are beyond and unknowable.

Yeah. I would have preferred a mystery than a cliche we are a AI with broken logic. Watch I robot and countless other movies, shows for yet another bad take on this.

To be fair though I actually felt this way before ME3 came out. That was before I knew about the space kid

I still think that Leviathan gave a great explanation of why the Intelligence was created and the history of Harbingers origin, but I feel it should've been added as a core storyline in the main game and, also, it should've been a bias account of why it all happened, with the true history being revealed during the Catalyst conversation. I've long felt that it should've been Harbinger who started the cycle, not the Intelligence.

I feel the Intelligence should have identified the cause of the synthetic rebellions as being the Leviathans themselves (which the Leviathans conveniently neglect to reveal). Their god-like dominance over their 'thrall species' lead these slaves to create their own pawns, these synthetics were then mistreated and so they rebelled. Organic thralls creating synthetic slaves. When the Intelligence determined that the Leviathans are the source of the conflict, it moved against them but knew that it could not eradicate them as it was programmed to preserve organic life. To preserve their lives, the Intelligence ascends the Leviathans into a synthetic form, the entire species uploaded into a gestalt consciousness that preserves the collective knowledge of the entire species. Harbingers construction was the completion of the Intelligence's work, there should not be a cycle as the source of the issue had been removed.

Obviously this went wrong. Any race as egotistical and dominating as the Leviathans would never stay passive, and this wasn't something that the Intelligence anticipated. Harbinger, created from the merged minds of almost every Leviathan in the galaxy, rebels and leaves the Intelligence powerless against it. Harbinger establishes the Cycle. Its reasons and motivations are unknown, but it is made clear to Shepard that Harbinger controls the Reapers. To attempt to correct its mistake, the Intelligence draws up the first Crucible design and seeds this to successive Cycles, updating the design after each war.

I feel this would feel truer to the Reapers we saw in ME1/2; we saw them act in horrendous ways (as a slavemaster/Leviathan would, with Harbinger in control this makes sense, controlling pawns and corrupting their minds and bodies), their motivations remain mysterious while giving us a true account of their origin, and it avoids the whole "killing organics to save organics" line of thought that feels incompatible with everything we see. Also, we have an answer for how the Crucible design exists and why the Intelligence/Catalyst is required to use it.

Though this would probably require different options on the Catalyst scene to work right.

I do totally reject the Catalyst but I see the point.  It's a super-intelligent AI that's been around for a billion years, doubtless evaluating things on a continue basis.  That should, in theory, means it has calculated all possible outcomes and only the ones presented were workable.  At least, that's the theory.  In practice I would in no way trust the thing (thanks themikefest for giving me that perfect description) to do right by me and mine.  I toast that fucker with no reservations.

I think most people like to have resolutions to mysteries, at least in time.

We have potentially around 160-to-180 hours of gameplay where The Reapers truly are unknowable and mysterious... until we eventually launch the DLC (if you're anything like me you'll do it late-game, probably after Priority:Thessia).


it's not too bad to get some answers after so long in the dark.

I wish that Bioware had a better idea of what the Reapers were and their motivations were to be BEFORE they started writing a Trilogy about them.  They were unknowable in ME1 because Bioware themselves didn't know what they wanted to do with them... and that weakens the story right from the outset... and left it open to be weakened further by their ever-changing ideas about the Reapers.  Furthermore, IMO, "unknowable" does not equal "alien" or "mysterious."  Sovereign did nothing in ME1 that could actually be considered mysterious.  They were first presented as "sentient machines"; which is essentially AI (so it's really not surprising that, in the end, they tried to circle back to that idea with the Catalyst after leading us on a merry chase of other "half-thought out ideas about them).  Sovereign was also initially reduced to being Saren's ship and Saren was the antagonist with the mysterious motivations... and that impression was left in place for most of ME1's story.  Sovereign was only revealed as being sentient on Virmire with a few scant details about the nature of the harvest being provided only by Vigil at the very end of the game.