Everything Wrong With Mass Effect 3 Redux by GCN

Only because we find a way to stop it which was the story of the trilogy. Nobod had befoe rthen the Catalyst knew it had been beaten so used the only option left to  it. Which was defer to Shepard.

The point is that a super efficient AI came up with this idea, when some backwater organic, from biutfick nowhere, came up with the Synthesis ray, that, essentially, renders the idea of the cycle obsolete and the organic/synthetic conflict is settle for good. In effect, super advanced and refined leviathan built AI < rando organic with only two electrons to rub together for a brain.

Even so, the efficiency of the original Reaper idea, is very counter productive when they can, effectively, police the galaxy from Synthetics, due to their numbers and brute fucking strength, while also being aided by organics in a fight against other synthetics, should the need for the to intervene ever arise.

In addition to that, their huge plan to preserve organics, also includes assisting synthetics (Geth) to wipe out organics (Quarians), which is very much so contradictory to their plan. At worst, the Reapers should have been impartial to that conflict, although that is not strictly adhering to their mission, but at least it isn't contradicting it, at best, the Reapers would have wiped out the Geth as their prerogative, because while the Reapers might eradicate 99% of the organic life in the galaxy, the Geth, if left unattended, could wipe out the remaining 1%, or, if the cycle left the Reapers victorious, but weakened, the Geth could, theoretically, pose a big enough threat to the Reapers themselves.

There isn't a single mistake that breaks the Reaper mission entirely and even so, it could be overlooked. But it fails at multiple levels to be consistent, impactful or even sound, even when leaving the morality of the logic out of the question.

Precisely.

Never understood (and it's seemingly never explained) why it takes Shepard disintegrating themselves and turning into an AI that controls all the Reapers for them to realize they can simply cull the advanced synthetics instead of the organics when the inevitable conflict arises. 

Also "preserving" civilzations of software entities is probably easier and on the whole more ethical than turning organics into slushie and calling it a success.

And yeah, intervening on the side of the losing geth in their war against the quarians only makes sense from a purely tactical perspective of keeping the latter out of the war. If the geth win, it seemingly goes against their supposed mandate (i.e. the quarians die off without being "preserved" in slushie form).

Because the Reapers are actually dumb. Even if you come to the conclusion that organics will inevitably create synthetics that will kill organics and the only solution to more synthetics being created is culling all organics, why have the cycle? Why engage in a war every 50k years, at great cost to your own population, to do the exact same thing in 50k years more? To preserve one race in slushie form? Why not preserve all the races of the first cycle, then go and destroy the Universe? Anything that could produce another organic gets pulverized to space dust. In fact, you don't even need to preserve the organic slush, because it's worthless. It's not going to grow, to advance, to develop a solution. It's a slush. Nor gathering more slushies per cycle will help. Because they're slushies, too. It's not going to happen and thinking otherwise doesn't change it. And if it does, somehow, magically, it is not conveyed in a well formed way to make it believable, said in game, in any form, at any point.

And speaking of Control and Synthesis. My God, I forgot how horrifying the prospect of living in either of those realities is. Getting policed by a robotic gestalt, made from the mind of one person? One person who might have been the cruelest, most ruthless fucker in the fucking galaxy? Just because he got the job done? Can you imagine the body count of such a Shepardocracy? How about Synthesis? Imagine being Joker's cap. Or a Banshee. Or an Overlord. Suicide rates would go the fuck up. Oh, and because we're all apparently interconnected in a single network, we'd all feel that insanity and pain. So these two choices are either "live in fear" or "live in a nightmare". And this all happens galaxy wide, from a magical energy that travels across every cluster and expands to everywhere, forever, but is somehow isolated in the Milky Way and doesn't move beyond that. It's just dumb. It's just fucking dumb.


Even on the tactical side, you are aiding and abetting a synthetic to harm an organic. This is literally against the principal of your original programming. You've just failed your prime directive right there. How can you be so bad at doing what you are programmed to do? You had one job. One job!

Were the reapers going to let the geth live? I haven't played ME3 in years so some of the details are a bit foggy...
If so, then yes that's dumb. If they used them merely as puppets for the cycle and were going to kill them off last, then it would still make sense.

The Jesus Shepard endings were the truly stupid part. No argument there. And considering that the indoctrination theory is not canon, I question Bioware's sanity in selling synthesis as the ideal solution...

I would think the reason the reapers didn't police synthetics instead of organics is that organics would prrrobably have a major issue with a scary powerful synthetic race policing ANYTHING and would try to kill them all the same. So wiping the slate clean of advanced organics ensures the cycle continues.

The cycle is really the least problematic part of the ending imo. I still don't see how it's illogical or stupid.

Questionable if synthetics would ever succeed in wiping out all organic life forever, and even if, maybe that's how it must end then. But that's beside the point.

The original destroy ending implied the total wiping out of all tech and the restarting of all life. The EC altered this so only the Reapers are wiped out and all other ships get slightly damaged. Though they didn't change the Catalyst's dialogue that still says Destroy will wipe out all tech and cost as many lives as have already been loss.  Destroy is painted as just as happy go lucky everything turns out just fine without any problems as the rest of the endings. Even showing the Relays being rebuild even though it is established this cycle doesn't understand how to build Relays.

While I appreciate your frustration - and you're right that we never see some of the results of our decisions play out (because the story ends), there are quite a few places where they allowed us to make choices that became pretty costly for them to support - but they did it, anyway.

That's especially true of various character deaths. The Virmire decision meant that Ashley and Kaidan played the same role for the rest of the trilogy and both were supported. Whether you saved the original Council or let them perish meant that they had to create an alternate council. Anderson or Udina was the Council member in ME2. Wrex or Wreave, Mordin or Wiks, Legion or Geth VI, Kirrahe, Fist, Helena Blake, Balak, who was recruited in ME2 and whether they survived... The first time I played ME2, I was shocked by the number of followers to recruit and didn't expect they'd all be supported in ME3, but they were. Plus the number and variety of LIs available. And the really silly side stuff, like if you'd completed a set of collections in ME1 you could get some additional war assets from Conrad Verner. They spent a lot of resources on character designs, dialogue, cutscenes, and voice sets to support all of those choices.

Although I have my own frustrations about how some things turned out, I'm willing to give credit where it's due. They spared nothing in fully supporting choices that resulted in character deaths - and there were quite a few of them.

People actually complain that dead Wrex is replaced by Wreave and dead Mordin by Wiks? News to me.