If conventional victory were possible, how would you do it?

Give me a Fleet of Space Marine ships and their whole Chapter and I will show you lots of dead Reapers.

Riiiight... I would honestly answer this but... I know how this will go, so nope!

I'd have to rewrite ME2 in order to set up a conventional victory. I would have the Council races work on reverse engineering the Conduit and then using that knowledge to manufacture their own mass relays. This second network would be kept secret and gradually expanded throughout Citadel Space. Meanwhile Shepard's team would study the Reaper IFF and figure out how to use it to influence existing mass relays, turning them against the Reapers. So the Reapers invade in ME3 but have to sweep over the galaxy in a straightforward manner, burning their engines and consuming their numbers in part to do so. Their goal is still the capture of the Citadel, which the allies allow them to capture after putting up moderate resistance. Once the Reapers have the Citadel they undo the tampering that had locked them out of the mass relays and instead deny them to the galaxy. Thinking they have won, they break off into smaller groups and begin harvesting the isolated systems... but then the allies strike from their hidden relay network, ambushing and destroying the smaller Reaper task groups. Eventually the Reapers are force to retreat to the Citadel once more and either destroyed completely or forced to retreat back into dark space, having been decimated.


That's the general outline I have anyway.

In rewriting ME2 I would be extending the time-frame of the trilogy in general. A span of 10 years at least, in total. Maybe even fifteen. (I'd have ME3 take place over several years with some time skips).

No, ME3 would be totally different in terms of its story, structure, and style.

Some time before ME3 came out, I developed a "we win" scenario that comes without superpowered AIs with pretensions to divinity. Here are the basic ideas:

(1) Reaper-tech devices spread across the galaxy have often facilitated communication with the Reapers. This is existing lore.
(2) It follows that there exists a communication net between the Reapers.
(3) It is plausible that the Reapers have a "home base" somewhere in intergalactic space, where they reside when "sleeping". If it exists, it it plausible that this base is accessible through a special mass relay - namely, that on the Citadel.
(4) Shepard and team lead a commando operation against that home base, using the Citadel relay, with the goal of entering a Reaper communications hub and delivering an incapacitating EMP-like strike through it to all Reapers, using the Reaper-devices mentioned in (1) as comm relays and the hub's status as a "safe source" to circumvent security measures. This strike is intended to make the Reapers' insurmountable shield temporarily inoperative and deliver a temporary mental stun.
(5) Leading up to that operation the location of all Reapers known was carefully noted, and a strike force assembled to attack them while they were under that temporary mental stun.

This scenario, as I see it, would have the advantage of using several pieces of established lore in order to create a strategically believable situation where the civilizations of Citadel space could win against the Reapers with no "divine intervention", and the further advantage that Shepard and their team could have a believable decisive role, *and* we would have epic space battles on top of it. I think most ME3 players would have liked that scenario.

This sounds just like the plot line for 2 Resistance video games. 1 and 3.

Oh I'm well aware it was a joke and a good one. Just up to that point you stayed withing the logic realm of both Doom and Mass Effect then suddenly a head appears out of a holographic construct. When as Doom 2016 shows he would just shoot, blow up and stomp the Catalyst apart.

You should have kept the original joke. Would have been better.

RedCaesar97 , You mentioned this

I'm happy conventional victory was ruled out. I never expected it before ME3 shipped, however i also didn't realize until soon before ship that 3 would actually make ALL Reapers arrive at the same time.

I thought maybe we would have a more isolated conflict of about, say, 100 sovereign Reapers across Earth and then we would have to haul ass in order to stop that and via some mysterious artefacts we would've then dealt the final blow that made sure no other Reaper could arrive in our galaxy or some sort of evacuation tactic that averted them, and it would've been very tragic but it would've also been believable.