Beyond the flawed logic of the Catalyst, why was this never explained?

Where are you going with this? It sounds to me like you're trying to establish a logical way to implement an awful idea.

Huh? Do you mean the pattern we see on the GM Vendetta shows to Shepard on Thessia? That pattern is not at all the same as in the ending.


It cannot be the crucible because it starts at several independent locations.
Also, it kinda starts on those points on the outer rim and moves towards the center, whereas the crucible starts at Earth, being sort of on the bottom end of the screen in their frame and is moving "up" through the image of the galaxy, as you would expect if it travels through the relay network.

The crucible however would have to start at one point and spread from there. I think it's much more likely, Vendetta's GM depicts where in the galaxy species might have developed spacefaring technology or something like that.

He says the Reapers are subservient to the patterns that supposedly supercede even them every cycle.

It's "Organics vs synthetics" and this problem is the "master" which also implies that the Catalyst is the master as a bit of foreshadowing.

The scene is meant to reinforce the erroneous notion that supposedly a synthetic singularity breaks out each cycle. Too bad John Dombrow and Mac Walters/Casey didn't see eye-to-eye on this one becuase John's writing here describes exactly the same problem that I have with the ending. It assumes we know and believe that synthetic singularity is going to happen and justifies the need for Reapers to save existence. It supports the face-value meaning of what the Catalyst talks about... but it never ever happens. There IS no singularity in Shepard's time. There is no link in the story that builds up the denoument created in the ending. This is where the narrative started to fall apart.

The statement from Mac Walters was "speculation for everyone."  One doesn't accomplish that "goal" by making everything definitively clear or by directing the ending towards a singular canon situation... but that's what the fans seem to repeatedly want to do with it here. 

For good or bad, I believe the writing style of the whole story is to allow us to go off on differing tangents of thought (it is an RPG after all).  They sniped in a little bit of this idea and a little bit of that idea and added in a little bit of contradiction and then bundled up in a whole of individual choices the players could make that could even lead them further towards making alternate conclusions about what everything means.  The characters in the game are constantly speculating ("man's inhumanity to man, does objecctive reality exist, whether there is a point in the universe where 1 + 1 = 3 or the idea that 1 < 2 and 2 < 3 are equally true statements and how that might cause individuals to reach different conclusions).

So, yeah, I think it's all about - to each his own head canon... and that's why we'll never get a canon ending out of Bioware.

I'm just trying to clarify that, when I introduce these ideas into a discussion, I'm not trying to describe or support a personal head canon nor do I actually have a singular head canon for any of the endings.  I'm all about finding ways to make each of my playthroughs different from the last, including finding different new ways to interpret the endings.  It's all food for thought only.

I'm also not trying to defend ME as any sort of masterful piece of writing... but neither do I agree with people here who clearly have an agenda to only run it into the ground as an abysmal piece of writing.  As a game, it was very successful overall.  Bioware experimented with different things in each one of the games... some worked, some didn't.  I'm glad they did that because I don't want to feel like I"m just playing a remake of the same game over and over and over again; and I hope they continue to experiment.  I will say that ME has held my interest longer than any other game... even ones that fans generally are of the opinion that the story was "better written" than this one.

As for guessing author's intent... I think my guess is as good as anyone elses... unless they can provide quotes that clearly show a different intent.

But the technology used to create the Crucible is the Catalyst and by extension Reaper technology.  What seems to be missed is how more advanced the Reapers are compared to races shown in the galaxy.  The Crucible is actually reaching their similar technological capabilities. Hence why we don't understand it but it is still capable of working within the Reaper build system.

Considering the entire video was set up  around the Prothean showing a video representation of how races develop in the same places again and again. Because again that is part of the Catalyst's plan using the Reapers. They only target advance life and leave planets still fertile and capable of producing life so there is always a new race(s) to develop on planets and the cycle continues.  The VI even mentions that the Reapers seem slaves to the pattern as if someone else is pulling the strings.  Which is the foreshadowing of the Catalyst existing and being the one truly in charge of the Reapers.

When you fight with kid's gloves you can't destroy every ant. It would be very easy to destroy every termite in your house if your burnt your house to the ground. But the action of attempting to kill them without destroying your house can leave a few. Difference between what the Reapers do compared to possible Destroy ending choice is the energy wave only effects technology allowing it to literally burn down the house.  While it is possible there are back up data some where out there back up data =/= extra Reapers. And to restart the cycle the Catalyst would have to create robots again to harvest the current cycle to create another Reaper to start the whole process again.

I'm not seeing where we necessarily disagree.  I've never said that I think it's great writing... in fact, I clearly said that I wasn't trying to defend ME as a "masterful piece of great writing"... yet, you seem to be continuing to put such words into my mouth. 

I don't think it's an abysmal failure in a "gaming" context... where part of the exercise is to facilitate people writing their own versions of the story.  Do you think it's an abysmal failure as a game overall?  If so, may I ask why do you play it?

For me, personally, I like the idea of taking information from the game and extrapolating on it.  It may be meaningless as far as creator intention goes, but it can make for some interesting roleplaying.

I never put those words into your mouth. I wrote that I would like to see a masterful piece of great writing there. Because believe me, I tried. I really wanted to find some deeper meaning in this ending. I just couldn't because - as I wrote earlier - the indications in the game are too much to the contrary.

As for assuming that we'd disagree on the point of how much interpretation about the actual plot good writing should allow, I concluded that from your previous comments, saying that you like to come up with a new scenario for every playthrough. But if I was wrong on that count, my bad (I was not entirely sure of it, which is why I did write that I "assumed"). If we can agree on it, all the better.



Obviously, I like the series, I'd go so far as to say I adore it. I love the characters, the setup of the universe, the underlying ideas of the plot and last but certainly not least the art style. It also helps that the gameplay itself is just some of the best and immersive I've seen to date. Why else would I have played the series (especially the first 2 games) countless times.
However, at times the series does frustrate me because while being overall great (certainly in the context of other games), the writing has a number of serious flaws that on their own wouldn't bother me so much but they do accumulate over the course of the games to a point where they are hard to overlook.
You might say that I absolutely love 90% of the series (fairly random number there but definitely it's the overwhelming part) but I also hate 10% and those 10% I hate with a passion (probably only because I do like the rest so much).

So is the entire thing an abysmal failure? No, certainly not but those 10% are, IMO. Now, that is really just me and how I personally;y feel about it but I do think, most of the "complainers" you still see on forums like this one probably feel similarly. Too attached to the good parts to leave well enough alone but also too annoyed by the bad parts every time we come back so that we need to comment about it when the conversation goes in that direction.

Who said the AI was a necessary component? The Prothean VI specifically says the Citadel is the final key. The Catalyst even directly says the Crucible was build to interact with the Citadel systems and by extensions the Relays.

You still have to be sure to hit absolutely every planet the life you're trying to exterminate exists on... and, as shown by the continued existence of Leviathan and 1 particular Prothean, it's something that the Reapers have failed to do twice.  Their weakness in this is that, as you say, they want to allow something to continue... so a simple way to ensure that some of the members of the targeted species survive would be to hide members in stasis on planets that the Reapers are simply unwilling to bombard.  You can burn the termites out of your house, but you haven't killed all the termites unless you burn down your neighbor's house too... and his neighbor's house, etc.  It's not an easy thing to do... and you said specifically that it was easy.

The post-EC dialogue is clearly "softer" on the issue of wiping out synthetics than the pre-EC one.
Shepard's doubts do matter to Shepard... who is the one making the decision.

I know. I wish I could turn that annoyed feeling off, but that doesn't work for me.


Constantly complaining is something I try not to do anymore. I only state my grievances if the discussion goes in that direction anyway. I will however not apologize for continuing to criticize the part of the series that I feel have some real problems. I will admit that repetition happens but I just think that's the nature of forums, where you often talk to different people who might or might not have read some earlier posts, so people reiterate their points, just to make sure they are being understood in that particular instance. That happens with all aspects, the good and the bad in a forum.
As for blaming BioWare staff, let alone suggesting to fire them, no, I generally don't do that and I am not for it. That wouldn't make sense as I see it. The entire lore of the ME universe was a team effort and I like most of it a lot, so I'd never suggest firing people that created this amazing universe, just because they messed up some stuff. I am not that malevolent. If anything, I regret certain people leaving, like e.g. Chris L'Etoille, who was one of my favorite writers on the ME team and I wish they'd hire someone, specifically a lore master, who's main job is to go through each and every writer's drafts and advise them on consistency errors to the established lore and suggest alterations accordingly.
As for EA, I don't think they were the responsible for these issues either (not the ending or any other flaws). At least not directly. I know the rumor mill says that everything was rushed and whatnot, but I actually don't think so. Also, the problems EA usually causes are not stemming from meddling too much but rather too little. There is an interesting article about this in a German games magazine about this btw. Not sure if google can translate it properly but they interviewed quite a few former heads of famous studios that were closed after being bought by EA and they basically conclude unanimously that the problem was basically getting too much money with too little oversight, growing like crazy and then running into a management crisis on their own. I do believe this partially happened to BW as well but that's got little to do with how the ME series went, so no blame on EA on that one, at least not by me.



As I said, since we have this rather blurry plot situation anyway, I think postulating different interpretations from our side now is great. Keep it going. It does give food for thought for sure. In fact, my first reply to you in this thread was not even meant to spark a discussion about this whole thing. It was just a remark on the specific theory you came up with about Vendetta showing the crucible wave (which I still don't quite see there btw ). Challenging your theory was not meant as a slight against the practice as a whole. I was just trying to give my view on that particular one. If that came out wrong, I do apologize.