If Bioware ever decides to choose a canon ending for Mass Effect 3, which one would you prefer?

Except that the Reapers are responsible for (apparently) a billion years of systematic genocide in the Milky Way.

Even though Control puts a leash around them, that outcome still lets them off the hook for all the countless innocent lives they've taken. Whereas Synthesis effectively rewards them for this by giving them precisely what the Catalyst wanted.

Rebuilding using the Reapers in both those outcomes means that the survivors of this Cycle are profiting off the deaths and destruction of not only those lost in the current Cycle, but all the victims of every Cycle that came before them. The destruction of the Reapers is the only solution that comes across as ethically sound, because otherwise you're simply ignoring their crimes or justifying what they did as being necessary.

The Reapers were created for the sole purpose of harvesting all life in the galaxy, they even take their form from the first race they butchered. As we learned in ME2, at the the heart of every Reaper is a civilisation they pulped to make more of themselves. Even if you reprogrammed them, you cannot change that they are machines designed to bring about death and created from the remains of their victims.

Hence destroy is the only real option here.

My understanding is that the Reapers are controlled by the Catalyst. They didn't ask to be created through turning billions of people into genetic paste, and they don't have the ability to reject the Catalyst's direction. Many legal systems in the world will not prosecute a person who is deemed to not be in rational control of their actions, such as mentally ill people. It's the Catalyst who chose to comit multiple genocides. Destroy also means we are committing genocide ourselves. Can it be justified?

With Control, the Catalyst is killed, and Shepard takes its place. The Reapers can be given as much or as little freedom as AI Shep believes is appropriate. They at least get to survive either way. The downside is that AI Shepard has to be trusted not to misuse the power s/he has. I'm prepared to take that chance with my Shepard, but I understand why others wouldn't be.

Synthesis... The Catalyst doesn't have to face any consequences, and like others, I think the "inevitability" of AI and organics merging is debatable. Plus I believe it's wrong to force that decision on everyone in the galaxy. Though the Reapers at least get to become fully independent so far as we know. If the Genophage isn't cured beforehand, Synthesis can apparently do it as well.

All of these solutions have problems, but also an upside. There is no clear right answer. Control to me is the middle ground between Destroy and Synthesis, and the least shitty option. I could live with Destroy being canonised, so long as EDI and the Geth get to live. Synthesis is the one I really would prefer not be canonised, but it happens to be the one Mac Walters most prefers. I would still rather have Synthesis forced on me than never be able to return to the Milky Way after ME3 again. Just so long as Bioware learns from the mistakes of Andromeda.

Control. No good. Sure the giant looking robots stop the harvest and help rebuild because they're now being controlled by the former human called Shepard. It still won't stop people from looking over their shoulder wondering when/if they will fire their beam of doom. What guarantee does the galaxy have the thing won't start the harvest again?

Destroy. Its very easy. Shoot tube. See. That wasn't too hard. Sure its stupid walking towards something while shooting it instead of shooting from a distance, but the reapers will be destroyed. The galaxy will thank you. They have no interest in controlling the robots. They have no interest in having green crap illuminating from their skin. They saw their families, their friends, their homes destroyed. Destroying the robots won't bring all that back, but its a start.

With that said. Everyone go out there and destroy the reapers.

Don't misunderstand me, I understand that the Reapers have a wealth of knowledge of accumulated knowledge at their disposal, but can we really use that knowledge knowing that it came from the eradication of countless civilisations over billions of years?

ME2 even brings up this issue if you chose the Paragon option, when discussing whether to keep the Collector base or not.

Shepard: They liquefied people. Turned them into something horrible. We have to destroy the base.
TIM: Don't we short-sighted. Our best chance against the Reapers is to turn their own resources against them.
Miranda: I'm not so sure. Seeing it firsthand... using anything in this base seems like a betrayal.

For those who're saying it's foolish to not use the Reapers, you're actually saying that we should ignore that the Reapers are built from the pulped and pureed remains of their victims, who as we saw in ME2, spend their last moments in fear and agony?

Sure, let's keep their murders around to do our heavy lifting, simply because it's more convenient? Despite how the Extended Cut shows that civilisation is perfectly capable of rebuilding by itself without the Reapers assistance, it simply takes a while longer.

As for whether the Reapers are mindless or in control of their own faculties, even if the Catalyst is the MCP responsible for their directives, we've seen Sovereign and Harbinger both showing a degree of independent thought and autonomy. Sovereign even claimed that each Reaper is a nation unto themselves, where each Reaper shell houses a collection of AI who operate under a single identity.

Harbinger likewise demonstrated a unique personality and strange fixation on Shepard, which even the Reaper on Rannoch commented on ("Harbinger speaks of you"). It was Harbinger who ordered the Collectors to try to acquires Shepard's body for experimentation, something that was attempted both following their death and brought up when fighting Harbinger, that he wants Shepard's body preserved if possible.

Harbinger's interest in Shepard even extends to those close to them, something that TIM used in ME2 when leaking that Kaidan/Ashley would be on Horizon, leading the Collectors to launch an attack on the colony. If Harbinger was truly a slave to his programming, why would he bother wasting time on Shepard (despite them being "a nuisance"), rather than focus on abducting colonists to build a replacement for Sovereign, as well as preparing for the imminent Harvest?

We're told in Leviathan that Harbinger was the first Reaper. It might be that due to having been around so long, that he's evolved past some of his original programming much in the same way that the Keepers had, where (even prior to the Prothean tampering) they'd adapted to only respond to signals from the Citadel.

That might also explain why Harbinger has personality quirks not shared by other Reapers like Sovereign, who was more straight-foward and dismissive of organic life. As well as why Harbinger shares the Leviathan tendency to create thralls, such as the Collectors and other husk creations.

Even if the Reapers do believe that they are "helping", they still show enough self-awareness that they understand what it is that they do, they simply don't care. That's why they don't mind collateral damage when eradicating entire worlds, which should go against their supposed prime directive of preserving life at all costs? Nor does it make sense to waste resources by turning them into husks, which are left to usually die out following the Harvest's completion.
I'm well aware that WW2 lead to a lot of technological development, due to either advancements made as necessity to gain victory or as a result of captured technology or scientists. No-one is saying that rocket propulsion and captured/defected Nazi scientists didn't eventually help put man on the moon.

Likewise, we can't deny that reverse-engineered technology from Sovereign did help augment weapons and defenses in the years after ME1. But the common assumption at the time was Sovereign was was merely an advanced "Geth" ship, so no-one had a clue about the horrors that went into actually creating it. Backwards engineering some new guns based on intact wreckage is a lot different that having a fully-functional Reaper at your beck and call.

When it comes to research or knowledge that can be gained from the Reapers, it should probably be treated in the same vein as research gathered by Nazi scientists during the Holocaust. Even if some of the information was conducted scientifically and provides some benefit or practical application that could help people, does that make it still ethical to use it when it was derived from suffering and wholesale slaughter? There's a reason why this is such a highly controversial topic and presents an ethical dilemma when it comes to discussions about using this data to help with scientific and medical breakthroughs.

That's why it strikes me as being highly unethical to allow the Reapers to continue to exist and (pardon the expression) reap the benefits of using their technology to advance the surviving Milky Way species. Even though keep the Reapers would be the pragmatic thing to do (something I'm usually all for), it doesn't seem like in this instance it would be the moral thing to do.

Going back to what Miranda said... it feels like a betrayal.

Sure, well, Destroy usually just shows Reapers falling over. They're there for study if desired. Doesn't mean we have to keeping them up and running.

Simple. I decided the fate of the galaxy anyway, and now I have the chance to control the Reapers for whatever purpose. With no other ending I have the chance to do so much good. On top of that, if baddies (or opposition) should rise, I'll just harvest them and everything's fine.

I was going to offer answers to the user Sifr, but user gothpunkboy89 really said it all. I could not put it any better than he already did, so I will only congratulate him for what was a very balanced and unpassionate exposition of history, politics and science.

There is not much that needs to be said after what gothpunky already explained. Only that using technology or any kind of knowledge obtained through questionable or even clearly reproachable means is not by any way an endorsing of such practices. It is only taking advantage of something that is not tainted, pure knowledge, already available. If it requires any more inhuman testing, torture, kidnaping, then it is off limits. It it is fully available, however, only a fool, a passionate, irrational, misguided, warped fool would refrain from using it and doing good with it despite the fact that it was obtained through evil means.

Even if we take for granted that AIs are alive and entitled to the same rights and guarantees that an organic has (and even legion questions this notion in his loyalty mission), they would be more akin to a person who underwent a severe brainwashing like the ones whe hear about in conspiracy theories.

Harbinger and Sovereign are in reality your xbox. Or your playstation. Or your gaming laptop or desktop pc. Their voices and personalities are programmed. If your game fails or bugs, you do not blame the game and put it on trial. You deem the people who created it responsible. Or maybe the people who developed the platform running it.

And in the case of the reapers, they do not act out of free will, they do not do what they do for malice. They are not in error, having a defective behavior. They are doing what is hard-coded in that programming, something they have no means of supplanting by themselves. It is not only hard to blame them for their actions, but totally unfair. They dont choose to do it, they dont necessarily like what they are doing, they take no pleasure in doing it. They simply do it because they dont know any better. they are being forced to do it.

I could not, in good conscience, hold someone responsible for an act when such person has no free will, no sense of governance over such actions. If there was a way to "cure" such individual from this condition and rehabilitate him I would certainly take this option. And if, when reviewing such persons actions I happened to discover that he or she made a breakthrough in one area or another, I would definitely take advantage of such discovery. I do not care if it was discovered during a kidnaping, a torture session, a rape, a murder, a cannibalistic ritual... The information itself is not evil. It cant be. We can apply morals over individuals and actions, not over information in its pure form.

As for the collector base, the risk, at least for me, in capturing it, would be the possibility of indoctrination. Take the "dead" reaper from the iff mission as an example. It was dormant (or so the illusive man and his team thought) for 50 thousand years and was still capable of manipulating people.

If they were simply being emotional about atrocities committed while they were there then they themselves are suspect of indoctrination and collaborating with the enemy. Destroying evidence is what criminals do when they realize it is purely a matter of time till they get caught. It was nazis did when they erased records as the allied forces pressed in and were getting close. They destroy information that can aid the enemy and incriminate themselves.

If a concentration/annihilation camp happened to be captured, a general that decided to blow things up because "horrible things happened there" would be immediately relieved of duty on the grounds of being mentally unbalanced, and would have to face an accusation of trying to cover up crimes committed on the part of the enemy. If terrible things happened at a certain place then it is all the more reason to preserve that particular place and try to learn as much as it is possible in order to determine what happened, how it happened, why, and who did it. This is purely basic common sense. To destroy the place would serve no purpose other than cover up any criminal actions that could have taken place there. A complete mistake when there is info to be retrieve, actions that need to be known and understood, and also a place that is not evil, and can be utilized for other means.

Those who deserve it?  So the galaxy will live in fear. Glad my Shepard chooses destroy

Which is probably why I stated somewhere in this thread (or another one also discussing this) that I don't necessarily trust Shepard running things.  I can't see an upside to harvesting.  Just seems evil to me.  I don't want to get into the real world parallels but I don't think any one person is qualified to decide that a group of people ought to be harvested.  I mean, Miranda worked for Cerberus but changed her tune to join Shepard.  Zaeed would probably fit most people's definition of "bad".  So would Aria.  And for all that he was a shithead who ended up indoctrinated, TIM would have been harvested before he got a chance to throw massive resources at Shepard.  Hell, for that matter, Shepard might have been part of the Tenth Street Reds.  S/he would almost certainly have been harvested before getting the opportunity to join the Alliance and become something better.

Who decides who lives and dies now?

How is that system any better?

That might be what you are getting but that isn't what people are saying. There is a big difference between supporting something and making use of it. The fact you can't tell the difference is all that needs to be known and basically renders all that I reply to after this as fairly pointless.



When that Civilization has been murdering around as much as they possibly can the only limitation being the time it took for them to evolve into that point. Fairly moot point. But beyond that the Reapers "purge" the galaxy for selfless reasons while humans kill each other for selfish reasons. Both involve mass death but one is at least trying to do good be it in an odd way the other is humanity.




This is the emotional aspect taking control again. The concept of if you use something you validate it is so simple and child like in quality. You use technology right? Smart phone, PC, Tablets, Laptop? Well guess what 90% chance that the whole thing if not parts were assembled in a factor that treats people more like slaves then like people. Do you wear cloths bought from stores? Well guess what the clothing chain you got them from most likely contracts a company to make it who then contracts another company that is a sweat shop having 8 year olds work 12 hour days for pocket change. Politics? And that is all that needs to be said on that issue. I assume you don't support any of those yet you make use of products created with those actions.

Not to mention the Reapers don't need organic life to validate their actions as they were already validated enough to harvest and store advanced life already. That is like saying a serial killer only kills so the police will like him.

Such a simple black and white view of the world is one reserved for the young. The fact is the world is far more grey then black and white. And trying to force the world into a simple black and white view only holds society back.



Someone who would agree with that action. Death is only a punishment if you believe there is some form of life after death for divine punishment to be given out. And the Reapers certainly weren't created by any divine being. Just beings who thought of themselves as divine. Killing someone doesn't change what happened. It doesn't bring the lives they have taken away back. It doesn't for fill some superstitious fantasy that it some how avenges them and their spirits can now rest in peace.

Eliminating something that can be used to help so many improve their lives so much to for fill some superstitious fantasy is well....









And what is to say that Humanity wouldn't one day go all bloody dictator on the rest of the galaxy and wipe out a race or two? What would stop the Council from leading a bloody conflict taking over the respective race's governments and becoming the only ruling body in the galaxy? Slippery slope logic works against you just as much as you think it works for you. Particularly when you are pulling information out of a hat.




Because for every 1 fat guy who sits around all day playing with their omni tool and playing on their PlayStation 55 there is also another person interested in finding out why something does something. Because curiosity is a fundamental aspect of several race's mentality. And while the Reapers know a lot they do not know everything in the universe and a single person asking why is all that is needed to spur research and development.

This also contradicts your earlier statement. If they know all then they are already validated in everything they have done. There is no good or evil to bring into the equation because they know it is the best action. So any attempt to complain or dislike what they have done is instantly rendered a moot point to their superior knowledge.




We have been using the same weapons technology since 850 AD. Refined how it works but the over all basis of the gun has remained the same for thousands of years. What exactly are you expecting them to have advanced on? Once you master technology that allows you to accelerate a 5 lbs slug of tungsten to 1/4th the speed of light you can't really advanced more beyond that. Any speed increases would be pointless because no extra damage would be done.

What proof do you have to show the Asari stagnated their cultures due to the Protehan Computer? Taken credit for data gained from it and declaring they invented it by plagiarizing the hell out of it yes. Cultural Stagnation your going to have to show some proof. Because the Matriarchs laughing at Liara's "father" for suggesting they build up their military more and start building their own mass relays. Not really the same as cultural stagnation.

I think you're been misunderstanding my point.

I've not been saying that we should put a blanket ban on all Reaper technology. My argument has been that it's wrong to use the Reapers as a tool given what they represent, as well as being ethically questionable to use aspects of their knowledge given how it was acquired... not that we should throw all the Reaper shells into the heart of the sun without bothering to study them first.

As DMC correctly pointed out, we don't need the Reapers active to study and attempt to replicate their technology.
What selfless reasons have the Reapers got for purging the galaxy? They're core directives were written by a broken AI stuck in a programming loop, unable to come up with a way to prevent organic/synthetic that didn't involve killing organics for "their own good", ironically with the same type of synthetics it was trying to stop them going to war with.
D'ya mind not going for casual insults, it kinda invalidates your argument slightly.
This is not the same thing as using technology fostered by over a billion years of galactic genocide.
Which is absolutely nonsense.

If the Reapers really wanted to preserve life as was their mandate, there are better ways for them to go about it that don't involve purging the galaxy of all life. Why not simply store each civilisation's DNA, download their cultural libraries and back up the data? That way if they should fall to synthetics or go extinct by other means, nothing is lost and they could potentially be resurrected? The Reapers definitely have the capacity and technology to bring back a dead species if they were so inclined.
As someone who usually argues for pragmatic and morally grey choices, I am well aware that black and white distinctions make things very limited. That still doesn't mean it's not ethically wrong to keep the Reapers around, with the sole intention of exploiting their technology and various bits of knowledge for our own personal benefit.

Do the Reapers have some knowledge that could be potentially useful? Obviously they do.

If we learned how to construct Relays and better FTL drives as a result, as well as the Reaper's advanced knowledge of genetics to help cure diseases, then there is nothing inherently wrong about wanting to use that information, because such knowledge would help society and could be used to benefit people.

But do we need the medical knowledge that lets us know how to turn people into husks, indoctrinate people or combine a Turian with a Krogan for no other reason than "For Science" though? And do we need to use the Reapers as our own personal bodyguards to keep us safe, as the "Shepard AI" wants to do in the Control Ending? We don't and hence my argument that it'd be wrong to use it, given it's purpose and where it derived from.

We could easily acquire all the technology we need from the Reaper's by reverse engineering their wreckage. This is why Destroy seems the better (and less morally dubious) option, because we're not forced to keep the Reapers around if we want the parts of their technology that would actually benefit society.

It's probably my fault for not being clearer earlier. I didn't mean to suggest that all Reaper tech was bad and not usable, only question the ethical ramifications of using the Reapers themselves and certain aspects of their technology, most of which were derived from and related to the exploitation and eradication of life on a galactic scale.
Why do you assume that I'm talking about some divine judgment when I'm speaking of destroying the Reapers for the sake of their victims? Just because it won't bring the dead back and they can't object to it, doesn't mean that their memory should be spat on by allowing the Reapers to continue to exist.

The Reapers don't even need to exist anymore now the Cycle has ended, so they can and should be switched off.
What are you even talking about?

My point was that creating a reliance and dependence on the Reapers to serve as both "Google" and an enforcer to keep the peace, essentially creates another system of control. Even though the Reapers are now working for us, they still are defining what course our societal evolution will take as before.

As for information being "pulled out of a hat", I was pointing out that the Synthesis ending simply does not give us any clear answers to what the Reapers intentions are in this ending. Unlike Control, there is no definitive proof they've been reprogrammed, only that they for some reason they decide to stop their attack and begin to aid in reconstruction efforts.

There's a ton of unanswered questions, such as whether they're still individual/autonomous machines and if so, what changed their minds from wanting to eradicate all life to deciding to help us out and replace their divot? Was the sole change that once everyone became techno-organic, they registered as a friendly on the Reaper IFF?

Likewise with Control, we have to assume that the "Shepard" AI will continue to remain benevolent and acting in everyone's best interests, which we cannot know for certain. After all, the Shepard AI is simply replacing the Catalyst, who itself believed that it was doing the "right" thing by creating the Reapers and the Cycle.

What's to stop "Shepard 2.0" from deciding that one race may end up posing a threat to galactic stability and either wipe them out for the greater good, or using the Reaper fleet to quarantine them on a planet like the Council did with the Yahg?

There's no definitive evidence that the Control Ending will lead to any of these possibilities (ominous word choices and music aside), but it does effectively put the galaxy in the hands of an all-powerful AI, which is precisely what was the case before?

Destroy is the only outcome that really does sever the chain and break the Cycle for good, by removing the Reapers and Catalyst from interfering and influencing the development of species within the Milky Way.
Except that even with scientists still obviously doing research and developing new technology, that doesn't mean the overall development of the races in the Mass Effect universe hasn't effectively slowed down and leave them barely more advanced than they were a thousand years ago. The Reapers entire plan hinges on them being content with their fancy toys to remain at a relatively base level and not go any further, making it easier for them to Harvest when the next Cycle comes around.

Even if you assume the Reapers have "superior knowledge", that doesn't stop them from doing things that are wrong or can be considered evil, nor does it validate their actions. Humans have more superior knowledge than ants, but that doesn't make it "good" if we light them on fire with a magnifying glass.

It might have been better to use the example of a sword, which we have had for thousands of years and refined over that time. Guns have only been around for a few centuries and even the earliest example of a proto-gun from just over a thousand years ago was a "firelance" and more akin to a flamethrower (at first).

As for why their appears to be a distinct lack of technical innovation in the setting, no other race had even considered using carriers until humanity showed up, stealth was considered "impossible" until a joint Human-Turian effort to crack it by simply expanding on pre-existing heatsink technology, while the lack of anyone having developed plasma based technology meant the Alliance had to quickly play catch up when the Geth were discovered to use that tech.

That's why we saw a ton of technological development in ME2 in the mere two years between Shepard's resurrection and Sovereign's attack. Even without the technology garnered from it's wreckage, the prospect of facing more ships like it spurred the races out of of their indolence for the first time in a millennia. Since the Krogan rebellions, the races had been effectively coasting on because they didn't need to advance to meet any threats, as they were all relatively the same level.

Sovereign showing up was a major wake-up call in that regard and necessitated them to develop more rapidly to meet the threat. In some ways it was actually better that they mistook Sovereign for a "Geth" ship, because the idea of the Geth advancing that quickly in only 300 years meant they were even more behind.
ME3 made it clear that the Asari have been wasting their potential, due to their reliance on datamining the Beacon for new technology.

Javik reveals that the early Asari were guided by the Protheans and left behind the beacon to boost their progress in the next Cycle, so they'd have a chance to defeat the Reapers. Instead the Asari only used the beacon to keep themselves one step ahead of the other races, while stifling their own independent technological advancement as a result.

As for the example of Aethyta, the way she talks about constructing their own Relays suggests that the Asari are capable of doing so if they were so inclined. The Protheans themselves had managed to crack the technology prior to the Reaper invasion, since they'd already demonstrated it by building the Conduit.

(We know that the Conduit existed on the Citadel prior to the Reaper invasion, because Javik tells us that the station fell during the first wave of the invasion. It can't have been built afterwards, because otherwise the Prothean scientists on Ilos would have not been able to use it as a backdoor to sneak aboard.)

The following is only speculation and not supported by anything in-game, but based on Aethyta's certainty that the Asari could build Relays, makes it possible that the construction knowledge may have been left behind in the data-cache on Thessia.

After all, it would have been rather tactical for the Protheans to have given the Asari this particular knowledge as it would take them "off-the-grid" from the regular Network, effectively switching tracks from the path the Reapers wanted them to take. Building their own Relays might also prevent them from affected if/when the Reapers shut down the network, which is what happened to the Protheans during their Cycle.