The elephant in the room

That's why I usually RP that the Catalyst is a blood loss-induced hallucination and that there was only ever one real option.  Alternatively, MEHEM.

Destroy the Citadel how?  As it is the Reapers are tearing apart the fleets in orbit and completely routed the troops on the ground. Shepard might have opened the Citadel but nothing would stop the Keepers or even a Reaper Trooper from closing it again. And you don't understand the size and scale of the Citadel as even Harbinger is dwarfed into insignificance in comparison to it.

Kamikaze attacks with capital ships would be a massive waste compared to gain. The time it takes to build a capital ship would be weeks of work before the Reapers attacked. You would burn though every Capital ship in the galaxy before you could build a single new one and the end result would be a few Reapers down but thousands more to go.

Blowing up Mass Relays only delays the Reapers for at best a few months. While at the same time trapping races within the star system and destroying all habitable worlds afterwards. Doing nothing to actually stop the Reapers no doing anything to prevent the cycle from continuing.

If Leviathan could control a Reaper ship they wouldn't be in hiding. They would have risen up and reclaimed their rightful place (in their mind) as the Apex race of this galaxy and reestablished their dominion.

It would do damage but it would be ultimately insignificant to the Reapers and wouldn't prevent them from continuing the harvest. Eden Prime was a Prothean City 50,000 years ago now it was a garden world with rolling green hills and crystal clear lakes.

I know that literature, movies and such like to romanticism the last stand were the good guy fights to the last breath before being killed. They make it seem so noble and important but they ignore the fact all it means is the good guy loses and the bad guy wins and gets to continue on doing the bad guy things anyways.  Ultimately everything you do is meaningless and the Reapers continue on their task yet again.

The ending wasn't bad at all. There are always ways to improve stuff so saying it is perfect is a bit of a stretch. That being said you already played 2 games of magical Mac Guffin steps in at the last minute to allow you to win the day. After ME 1 and ME 2 you can't complain that the 3rd game does the same thing.

destroying the Citadel? The Citadel has engines. Shepard gets in the drivers seat. Turns the key. The engine starts. Shepard puts it in drive and presses the accelerator. Shepard drives the Citadel to the sun. There you go. Citadel destroyed.

I meant they are unable to choose Synthesis for themselves.

EDIT: I still don't care for Synthesis.  And, no, you're still not changing my mind.  The more you push the less interested I am.

No, the free will aspect was that the people of the galaxy get no choice.  Perhaps I worded it poorly but that's it.

Fine, raise all the questions you want in your mind. 

Not to mention that human Reaper was the only human that the Reapers feared, sounds like a pretty big win for the Reapers imo. I totally agree about the Green ending, it was 'happy' enough, but in that slightly off Stepford-Wives/Twilight Zone way... can't help but wonder what sinister truths are being hidden behind this new Utopian way of life(On top of the disregard for free will).

I have always chosen red in the past. Planning blue in my current playthrough.

Funny thought: before today, I had never saved the Collector Base, I always destroyed it (red explosion). When I didn't destroy it, and set off the alternate explosion that left the base intact, the explosion color was blue. Interesting...

In the final TIM conversation of ME2, the star in the background is blue if you destroyed the base and red if you kept it. And you get a few lines of different dialogue. That's it.

This is worse than ME3 actually. In ME3, it's easy to decide for one ending based on what your favourite colour is, and it even rewards you with a green option if you played well (yay!). In ME2 you get either a blue explosion and a red star or a red explosion and a blue star. That's fucked up isn't it, how am I supposed to make a sound decision on such grounds?

My last Shep chose Refuse. Let another idiot pick one of those horrible endings.

Lol.

That happening. For example, after.....I do not know, 70 hours with one of my Shepards, I totally lost the connection with him, after failing to save the Geth. I think I've deleted that save.

do you know what is funny? I have no problem choosing Red at the end. What the eyes do not see, the heart does not feel.

In so many of the different responses I have read about people endings and choice and why they chose what they did over the years, I find it really fascinating that often people cite not choosing destroy because it would destroy edi and the geth as well as they thought it might destroy Shepard (despite the ending) because the kids says or implies it will. And  yet when I think back to my game, EDI chooses for herself that no cost is too high including her own life. I think it might be around the conversation about the people held in camps that would not help and she didn't understand why they wouldn't when it could have saved them. As for the geth, they wanted the reapers destroyed as well. No, they did not realize that in doing so that would destroy them, but Legion was one of them though he had evolved, and he sacrificed himself to give the code to them IIRC. Now they all joined to fight the reapers and the plan was destroy. If it came down to it, I think they would choose to allow their end to end the reapers just as legion accepted his fate to improve the geth. And just as my shepard was not sure if he would survive but the plan was to destroy the reapers and he was sticking with that.

Regardless of what the kid says. I think there are many we meet in the game that would never choose this option but there are those who do. Grunt and Mordin will choose to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Probably others that I don't remember. It goes back to the Renegade statements Shepard makes. Survive at any cost. Not specifically this or that one surviving but that all had to be willing to do whatever it takes. Ironically, it comes off as renegade only because paragon is so much softer but within those renegade options it feels like there is a lot more paragon - almost an idealist willing to die for their ideals. The at all costs part makes it renegade, but only just by a hair. Whatever it takes has been considered the renegade option (Ruthless) but when it is the survival of a whole galaxy of species and you would gladly sacrifice yourself to save them and believe others have to be willing to do the same, I think it's more paragon really at its core and I think most would accept that even if they would prefer not to. 

Back in ME1 you can choose to sacrifice Alliance to save the council. That's paragon. Okay, maybe they were military and know they signed up that possibility. Ash/Kaiden will accept their fate knowing it was for a greater good. The suicide mission is all about knowing you have next to no chance to survive but doing it because it's the thing you deem worthy of doing. This theme carries across all games and what you consistently see is that people are willing to do it when they believe the cause is just. And everyone agreed that destroying the reapers was the plan. All were willing to die for it by choosing to fight. Just because it's a funny colored beam that will do it and take their race, I don't think that really matters. They signed on, one face after another. The end goal to all was to end the reapers and have the galaxy survive this time around.