The elephant in the room

REDREDREDREDRED. Kill those filthy rippah scum. If synthetics really need to take over we'll just build Legion 2.0 and put him in charge; at least then we'll only be forced to play FPSes for all eternity.

That is some aggressively biased wording you went with for that poll.

Blue is the ending I find most interesting for a Shepard of any alignment, whether they lean paragon or renegade. I vastly prefer the idea of my Shepard ascending to a higher plane of existence, especially considering the pattern of the story and the habit they have throughout of challenging our preconceptions about a species or group after setting us up to think about them in a certain way.

Even for my full renegade Shepard, becoming a galaxy controlling tyrant was a delightfully dark final chapter in his story.

 Gawd, I miss ending debates. Somebody fight me!! 

For the Shepard closest aligned with myself (happens to be my canon, but this is not always so), I chose Green/synthesis/space-magicks. ( !!!)

Different Shepards chose different endings that suited their persona/story-line, though (Erika "Angel of Death" --> Destroy; Abby "Troll!Shep" --> Control; Boss "Rocks Fall" --> Shot by TIM, back to main-menu; Marc "Coward!Shep" --> Destroy; Anne "Girl Scout" --> Control); all of them just had a particular ending that just fit and choosing any differently just did not feel right.


But as it relates to my canon Shep that went Green... I always fancied that particular Shepard as a "world-builder." Synthesis, in my mind, was the best match thematically. Control also worked here, theoretically, but not quite as... stylishly. B^)

When faced with:
Genocide
Slavery
Eugenics
Failure

I choose headcanon.

I choose to not make it to the end of the game.

blublublublublu

I feel like I don't need to explain why. Everyone has already heard the reasons and the people who disagree ain't gonna change their minds.

Ok.

Synthesis sucks! You chose the unicorn farts rainbows ending because everyone got brainwashed into getting along with the Reapers!!!

Feel better?

That's awesome dude.. you still went with Destroy.

Yeah, Legion is one of my favorites too. It's not like I enjoy doing this. He's kind of the Judas to my Shep's Space Jesus.

OMG!!  ENDING DEBATE!ENDING DEBATE!ENDING DEBATE!




I wouldn't say Control is "the means to survival" but there are examples in this series where control was the superior option to destruction. Case in point: Liara taking over the Shadow Broker's base of operations (Shepard can even float the idea of destroying the network, which Liara summarily dismisses as wasteful).

Same is true of the Reapers.




lol

This is literally the same thing (Reaper-ification) shown 10 times, and David Archer (David is actually the more compelling argument).

Reaper minions did not "go wrong," either, because they were not intended to be anything other than what they were -- tools of war. Even their hideousness is a feature (psychological warfare, as Kaidan says -- which is a canon line. You know what's not canon? Saren saying "the strengths of both, the weaknesses of either" -- it's possible for the final confrontation with him to play out without him saying that... so much for him symbolizing or forewarning Synthesis).

Oh, and I made a pic of my own in response to that one, with examples of successful unions of organics and tech.



Okay, two of those things (Shepard & Garrus/cybernetics) are redundant and should only count as 1, and you can also dismiss the center and center-right tiles as being too ambiguous and not count those either.

Still, 6 positives vs. 2 negatives...

Come to think of it, one of my examples branches off of the Overlord failure (bottom-center tile: trip into the geth consensus).

All in all, ...... HAH!!




Right, because nothing says "winning" like getting both arms and both legs chopped off (which, by definition, is actually losing, but never mind that). 

HYR :

- Controlling something is not quite the same as controlling someone. Attempts to control people have always gone hideously wrong in the MEU.

- The point of the synthesis pic is that these are all examples of synthesis we've seen so far in the story, and especially in relation to the Reapers. The point is that the proposed ideal 'solution' may not be quite as idealistic as it sounds and more of the kind we're more familiar with. Whereas in your picture most of the images are not examples we've encountered, but they're coming from an ending sequence that might as well be some kind of utopia inside a virtual reality, or images of hope of a dying Shepard, not necessarily real. Regardless of that though, those are images you're not familiar with at the moment you need to make your decision. You're familiar with the images in mine though.

- The point of the destroy picture is irony. This is supposedly the most victorious ending, but it ends with a body under a pile of rubble.

I don't find it ironic. It's typical in literature. Almost every writer knows of it... even Bioware. lol

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_Theory

Hemingway said that only the tip of the iceberg showed in fiction—your reader will see only what is above the water—but the knowledge that you have about your character that never makes it into the story acts as the bulk of the iceberg. And that is what gives your story weight and gravitas.

Hemingway's biographer Carlos Baker believed that as a writer of short stories Hemingway learned "how to get the most from the least, how to prune language and avoid waste motion, how to multiply intensities, and how to tell nothing but the truth in a way that allowed for telling more than the truth."[6] Baker also notes that in the writing style of the "iceberg theory" suggests that a stories narrative and nuanced complexities, complete with symbolism, operate under the surface of the story itself.


The only people who complain are those who want long, cheesy bed scenes like Frodo in Lord of the Rings. Look at MEHEM. That's pretty much what it is.