The Ending

Knowing how something is made and that some how reducing the intimidation of it really doesn't make any sense to me.  I know how a gun is created and that doesn't negate the intimation it has when one is pointed at you by a drunken jack ass who is trying to make a point that only works in their alcoholic imagination. We know how H-bombs work and that doesn't decrease the intimidation of what they could do to an entire city in the hands of complete idiots.

The point was your gold standard for their portray also happens to coincide with the worst portrayal of Reapers in the trilogy due to aforementioned incompetence of Sovereign.  In ME 2 at least the existence of Collectors give some credit to Reaper's potential and the surprise it was really Harbinger at the end at least showed how much of a threat they could be without even directly acting. ME 3 actually shows them bring that threat to flourish as they push the galaxy further and further back. Almost effortlessly taking over planets and colonies with very little to no losses.  With the galaxy literally fighting tooth and nail just so they can lose slightly slower.

I'd argue that they aren't just another rouge AI. But that tends to be pointless because people with that mentality tend to not like to debate that point. And it usually devolves to said person who thinks they are just rouge AI saying it is their opinion and I have to respect it.  Which is a cop-out of trying to prove why their logic makes sense. 

You have never dipped your toes into the pro/anti gun control debate in the US have you? Regularly portrayed as a tool people use to keep themselves safe. And yet consistently used by people to walk into a school or other populated location and shoot several innocent people.  Heck 2 weeks before I went on vacation the Fort Lauderdale Airport. The very airport I was going to fly out of was shot up by a guy who took his handgun into the bathroom after getting off a flight and shot several people before laying down and not resisting arrest.

They set them up but then treated them like bumbling idiots because they had to. That to me reduces the set up. Because I can easily claim I am a super star sports player. But the second I'm asked to show this I stumble and fall and flail around like an idiot. Kind of tarnishes my claim of how great I am.  It just doesn't support the claim and shroud they try to make them out to be.

It isn't that simple. There is a reason I asked you how to create everlasting peace in Middle East for a reason. A real world example of the organic vs synthetic conflict issues and how to solve it.  Catalyst attempted to solve the problem but it constantly failed. So it created the only solution that would work.

I've been contemplating lately on extracting the audio files when I get back and then list all the lines in the Citadel:The Return part, including the cut content such as Anderson talking about retreating with Hammer and then I wanna see how you could feasibly rearrange the ending to make it better.

Scenario A
I have a hunch that you could improve the ending by making Shepard come up first, then reach the console, cue Crucible docks, Anderson enters beam after Harbinger left the beam area (maybe Anderson crawls up from a pile of bodies or something, who knows?) enters the area Shepard is in while chatting.

Hackett tunes in, saying the Crucible isn't firing, then goes "commander..?" twice but turns out he's getting interfered, Anderson has arrived and does his boogey-dance and the screen is engulfed in oily veins as TIM comes out and most of the dialogue remains intact, but this time if possible, he makes it clear pretty early that he's going to use the Crucible to Control the Reapers (never properly communicated before IMO). This makes the confrontation slightly more dire, as it turns out TIM has used his Reaper control to interfere with the Crucible (or Citadel's?) functionality, thus making it not fire, and the standoff is to break free of his control and stop him from doing what he's about to do, or you can't and you let him do it.

If TIM wins he controls the Reapers and effectively ends the cycle but replaces it with one we can't know what will bring. If Shepard wins, TIM dies and we destroy the Reapers right as the Crucible richochets across the Relays.

That's my A scenario.

Scenario B
I'm thinking a B scenario would be interesting to explore too where either they both make it up to the Catalyst or the Catalyst scene is changed by rearranging the Kid's dialogue similarly. I don't think this would be possible using the files from the game though. The Catalyst explains what he is but I'll leave out the mention of "organics and synthetics" completely and instead something like

"I am the Catalyst. The Citadel is a part of me and embodies the collective intelligence of the Reapers, which I can control. The created will always rebel against their creators. Organics are a genetic mutation. Your existence and continued mutations would harm the existence of everything including your own, unless we interefered. Using my solution we've created the cycle that prevents further mutation than what is safe for you... But, the fact that you're here the first organic ever, proves that my solution won't work anymore. The Crucible changed me, created new possibilities, but I can't make them happen."

After showing his choices, you get to confront him about his solution, that is controlling organic civilization and their synthetic counterparts, not letting us grow further, asking what "mutations" he's talking about. Being the sentient AI he is, he'll agree if you have enough persuasion points where you can Intimidate him to make him self-aware of his inorganic thinking and prove to him that his solution might run wild too (or something derpy) one day, and he'll feel compelled to self-modify his thinking and disable the Reapers (and other things TBD). The persuade depends on your EMS like whether the Krogan are in check (if Wrex then yes, if Wreav and Eve then also yes, without Eve and no Wrex, no) and Rannoch is in check (Only Geth = no, only Quarians = neutral, both = yes) that Shepard's cycle is in no preliminary danger of either overpopulation or synthetic overgrowth, thereby no sign of the chaos the Reapers are programmed to hold back, he will turn off like in Refuse ending, after warning us that we are taking a tremendous risk and his alternative solutions are better options to which we can roll back or confirm out decision, but then it'll cut to the destroy ending shots of the Reapers falling but with the blast-effect taken out (which is impossible unless you're a pro at FX and editing).

Obviously I'd need to really look more through the admittedly shaky B scenario, but I personally believe in the idea of not using the Crucible to beat them as long as we have a scene where we talk down the collective intelligence of the Reapers. Sure his motivation and programming will make him adamant in what he's doing, but the point would be that using the proper amount of good arguments against him would make him come to a larger understanding, kinda like when EDI modifies according to Shepard's suggestions. All the other endings are left intact, and the hypothesis of organics and synthetics being the biggest threat is still a pressing issue but just one out of several that has caused the AI to be created and create the Reaper cycle to keep evolution and civilization in check.

The thing I can't decide yet is what should happen to Shepard and what would I do about the Anderson goodbye scene now that I've rearranged the TIM confrontation. Alternatively you could only focus on the end sequence with the child to change it. I plan on making a little picture series with the alternate dialogue to demonstrate it at some point. It's not really worth anything except maybe some modders would be clever enough to incorporate it and I liked the Ashley restored script with pictures strip and I'd like to see this as well.

...or I'll experiment and realize there's an inconsistency somewhere. There are certain things I need more time to think through if I had to make it consistent but overall I've always imagined something like this as a better overall direction. Biggest problem is honestly the Catalyst as a character. It's kinda implausible he'll just turn off even if he can see Shepard's point, because it would mean killing him. Alternatively he could simply refuse you but at least you would've made the point that I think is more akin to what the overall statement of ME3 is (that we've done so much we should earn our freedom)

My main drive for the change with TIM is that I think it makes the confrontation more real because you feel pretty intimidated at the fact that TIM really seems to be close to accomplish what he wants and it makes him a much smarter villain instead of an insane idiot.

Every time you involve Harbinger as a a character you're asking to redo the entire tone and style of ME3. I just cannot see Harbinger being in that game as a talking character unless they change the depiction of the Reapers somehow.

Yep, that's ME2. vastly more pulpy and caricatured in style than ME3 is. They shifted the direction ever so slightly in ME3, and it would've felt strange at the end of that game to suddenly have the cartoon villain Harbinger back in the midst of this hollywood-like, nitty gritty, militaristic finale.

Played the Suicide Mission last night and... what if, ME2 would have had a more standard ending and they used the Suicide Mission concept for the 3rd game's ending instead? Where you choose different roles for your squad and they are able to die off and such as they did in ME2. I really think the second game has the best ending.

Apologies for the late reply. I'm the same actually, I didn't play ME at all until 2014
Did it really misinterpret its programming though? I just posted in another thread that to me the Catalyst works with an axiom. If in all this time when it began its research it always witnesses organic extinction due to synthetics, it has the right to come to the conclusion that this always happens. It does not mean however we have to agree with it. Obviously the majority goes against this conclusion. I myself don't want to pick one side. I think the Catalyst could be right, but we do not know. To me, one truce between organics and synthetics doesn't prove much. It could still happen in the future that wars between different organics and synthetics break out again. And since synthetics do evolve and surpass organics easily at some point, I can see the Catalyst might be right. Of course, I'm aware this is all head-canon from individual players for their own world state after the ME3 ending. The game paints a happier end with the geth and quarians when the truce is achieved. But yeah, I just want to say that it could go both ways in the future.

I found the Legion quote again and I really think it fits so well with the Catalyst and our opinions about it:
"The heretics' conclusion is valid for them. Our conclusion is valid for us. Neither result is an error."
The Catalyst thinks it's right, while we mostly don't, but the truth is that both opinions are valid and we really don't know how the future will play out. It's simply something no one can know, thus I'm for destroying the Catalyst because things should develop on its own. Whatever happens, happens.

As for a different motivation for the cycles, I guess you've heard about the dark energy ending idea? With this the Reapers would've been actually saving the galaxy from what I know, and I'm quite sure it would've sit better with most people, but I prefer the ending we've got because it's so interesting to read the very different opinions on it. I enjoy to get behind why people hate the Catalyst so much

I agree with you the methods are babaric and I actually don't like them. It's still highly interesting to me why they do it. And ever since I read Karpyshyn's novel Retribution, I'm even more fascninated with the Reapers. They are very interested in knowledge, in preserving it, but are absolutely ruthless in achieving it. Maybe because they are machines and have no "heart" or compassion in that sense. They are clinical, methodical to me. If animals are killed for science, are the scientists evil? Or are they right to do it because they think it's the only way to achieve something good? Of course, the way how things go down might matter, but the end result still is the same - organics get killed for a 'good' reason without their consent.
And you are also right that the Catalyst could've chosen a slightly less barbaric way to slaughter organics, but the thing with individuals is that they think about their own best way. My idea of the best solution could differ from yours, yours differs from the next person and so on.

fraggle
they are ruthless in pursuit of knowledge to halt the spread of Dark Energy. Drew was in his Dark Energy mindset all whilist creating ME2. A shame it didn't become that just for the sake of consistency IMO. If he started building up to it in ME2 he would've surely used a lot more of ME3 to build up to it as well, so shame on him for leaving. On the flipside I think he's working on the new IP as a senior writer maybe or maybe he became Lead when David left BioWare, who knows?

He has been retweeting news about the game and he said earlier that he was working on something besides SWTOR and the way he put it it didn't strike me as him talking about his own work outside of BioWare.

Back to topic. I think with the way ME3 was foreshadowing "something" about the Reapers on Thessia and... sigh, on Rannoch I was hoping for a more general thing about Reapers imposing order on the chaos of organic evolution the way Sovereign put it because organics in general create things and not just synthetics but also war with each other, weapons technology, pollution etc. and they needed to be preserved as Reapers to not completely kill them (from the Reapers viewpoint) but to keep the universe clean of cancerous growth which organics are according to Reapers or "mutations" as Sovereign calls it.

I always thought the first half of the Catalyst's exposition was fine, where he talks about harvesting us and Created rebelling against creators because IDK, maybe we rebelled against god or whoever created us by causing all sorts of havoc as we grew as a species, as did previous species before they were wiped from the face of the galaxy. But alas, it's because some synthetics will destroy some organics and, no wait, it's always, all, everything all that stuff

The whole "organics v. Synthetics" concept is a tired, overplayed scifi trope that really didn't need to be made into the sole plot of the ME series. When Sovereign said that the Reapers' existence was beyond comprehension, I did not imagine it would something as simple and easily comprehensible as the "OvS" issue.

My Ending would require an entirely different premise for the Reapers, which would require some retcon to earlier dialogs and plots. First, the Reapers' purpose is truly incomprehesible in the sense that it is much more grand in scope than we could grasp.

Consider this:
The Reapers are in dark space holding back an extra-galactic threat, and every few thousand years they send in a scout or two to harvest several million of the organic species and build a new fleet of Reaper replacements.

The Reapers are still "protecting us by harvesting us" but the reason for it is different.

Boring??