My view on the ending morality

ME2 also rewrote Cerberus. Names aside, the writers of ME2 were kind of like "fuck it" on several things regarding continuity. Vanguards did get an awesome upgrade though.

Apart from ME3's ending, my main problem was with ME2, in which I was forced to join TIM, who was portrayed as a ME1 supremacy villain. The whole Collector thingy didn't advance the story. Nothing was done in ME2, except for the pointless suicide mission.

In ME1 there was a mystery to discover. To me, that made the story interesting. There was none of that in ME2.

In ME3 the story picks up with getting ready for the final, but we already knew that conventional war wouldn't be the answer. Although Leviathan puts the ending somewhat in perspective, the ending was written by an amateur, who forgot what ME was about.

To get back on topic: In ME3 the ending was a moral decision. However, for me there was no real choice, because a galaxy without the reapers was the only viable solution. Controlling or joining a race who committed cyclical genocide as an eugenics experiment is disturbing.

Even though I've said if a remake were to happen, I would stick with the order the games were made. But as time passes by, I'm leaning more and more to having ME2 be the first game. Here's one way that could happen

i have this vague memory within the codex for Machine cults

I think it was actually a UNC mission in ME1. Shepard encountered members of a machine cult who had been transformed into husks.

In my opinion, although ME1 didn't age very well from a technical point of view, I think it still has the best story. So, I like to keep ME1 as the first game.

We have played the games a lot (at least I did), so many people replay the games for the best outcome. However, I am not a fan of meta-gaming.

I make the decisions based on the order of the events presented in the games. That leads me to moral problems in the ending. The most prominent one is the fate of the non-heretic geth. I favor peace between the quarians and the geth, but the geth won't survive the destroy ending. I rationalize that the geth have only one mind, so (in the geth's case) only one life will be lost. And of course there is EDI.

There’s a difference between forgiving and committing a genocide on innocents in order to kill them.

You say that the Reapers actions are unforgivable, and yet everyone who chooses Destroy applies the exact same logic they did. And yet like them, you see when you do it it’s fine. You become more like the Reapers than Control or Synthesis do.

My fourth option was a mod. Without that mod the geth are toast. 

The conclusion is flawed anyway. "Final end of evolution" or however they said it. Ridiculous. Evolution isn't a goal or destination. It's all based on environmental pressures. It's evolve or die. If we're not evolving...well, the Catalyst said it and I'm sure after a billion years it understands evolution.

Agreed.

The Leviathans had one goal in mind: "Tribute does not flow from a dead race".

The Intelligence had a similar goal. It made sure that only those races, who had something to contribute, were harvested. Something to do with the knowledge of the species to be unified with the reapers. So promising races were elevated. It is much like the cyclical genocide was an eugenics experiment.

There are so many things wrong with the idea that it is even a moral dilemma. It is a logical dilemma.
The Reapers will kill people. They will kill any and all people. It is in their programming, it is inevitable. They will not discriminate, they will not pause.
What happens with the implications of the Synthesis ending.
The moment anyone that was not present to experience Synthesis, is not a Reaper. Anyone that's not a Reaper is to be eradicated. We've changed nothing in their programming, so that means anyone outside of the Milky Way is a threat and, if we're to take the Initiative as an example, contact with civilizations from other galaxies, is something that will come sooner, rather than later. Meaning that every other sentient organism in the universe, wherever that may be, is an enemy for the Reapers and they will try to eradicate it, once discovered. Whether that is Andromeda, the Sombrero galaxy, or Canis Major. Doesn't really matter. In the end, the Milky Way is now the villains.

What about Control.
The same thing as the original programming of the Catalyst. The AI produced will keep working to its programming, trying to find solutions to the same problem as before, asking the same questions, going down the path to the same answers, eventually viewing the Cycle as the best solution to the same problem again, eventually leaving you with the same end option; destroy the Reapers. As you set out to do in the first place. The "Shepard morality app", even depending on the nature of Shepard's morality altogether, will either change nothing, or make for an even more aggressive eradicator of all organic life.

What about Refuse.
Congratulations, you played yourself. The cycle continues, infinite more lives will be harvested, for however long, until someone shows up and finally puts a boot down on the Reapers.

What about Destroy.
The lives lost, have been lost. What Synthetics get damaged can get a system restore to a pre-Reaper status, the only correct state for them. With the only possible casualty being EDI.

Even then, you have to take the Catalyst's word as a given, that the problem it had to solve, was an inevitability and eradication of organics by synthetics is unavoidable, when the only case in favour of that, was the misstreatment of organics by the Leviathans, during their reign of the Milky Way and their subsequent fuckup of failing to handle that problem, then creating an AI that failed at handling that problem and making it an even greater problem. With the only thing that you can take for granted out of that, is that the Leviathans became incredibly incompetent.

Whether conflict is an inevitability altogether, that is another question and, as exhibited, by the Krogan and the milky Way races, the Rachni and the Milky Way races, the Humans and the Turians, the Humans and the Batarians, the Quarians and the Geth is that at some point, some factions will go into conflict with other factions. And that is true. At some point one civilization will go to war with a neighbouring civilization. If your wish is to eradicate the potential of conflict forever, the only solution to that is to prevent the big bang from ever occurring, or collapsing the universe and all that inhabit it, because the only way to prevent conflict, until we all reach that pinnacle of evolution that move beyond that, through greater understanding and knowledge, is to prevent all of existence interacting with itself.

Some civilizations will fail, some will collapse and their people will become extinct. That is a fact, regardless of what the Synthetic vs Organic non-dilemma dictates. Therefore, in an infinite universe, of infinite civilizations, this is not something that should concern you, or anyone. It is impossible for everyone to die, it is impossible for everyone to survive. This conflict is forced upon us from an AI that basically broke itself, through its bad programming and the failures of its own creators from installing failsafes and limiting its range of "solutions". And even then, if you take the Destroy option as a solution, it is a sign that organics can and, eventually, will prevail over synthetics. Synthetics losing to organics is an inevitability, just as much as the opposite. At some point, both sides will realize that co-existence is the only solution. The Reapers are just dumb.

Yes, and I address that later in the post.