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

Probably, Angry was one of the ones who led the charge on getting us the Extended Cut, think I remember them getting banned for no reason too.

People don't answer questions because they're not here for your amusement. I post all over this forum. I post about lots of gameplay related stuff here and in the MEA section. I post because I come here to enjoy myself. I'm not here to answer your questions. Nor is anyone else. No one is required to do your bidding regardless of how you feel about it or them.

I actually have not complained about any of the endings. I've only ever stated why I don't choose them. I love ME3. It's my favorite of the four ME games published to date. I don't even dislike the endings (well, I don't like Refuse). However, I only choose one ending. I have varied reasons why that is the case that I've stated at multiple times in multiple threads. My reasons for doing so are good enough for me. I don't begrudge anyone their own ending. I think, for example, RobtheRobber is amusing with his Control and harvest any bad guys ending but it's not of interest to me. Whenever I'm pushed to explain more reasons for why I don't care for an ending, I end up pulling out largely insignificant reasons that I don't care about so much and then my justifications for them end up being weak. In the end, I like Destroy. I like the Reapers gone. I like my Shepard to live. It's an emotional response but I'm completely okay with that because I'm human and have emotions. Also, it's a video game and not real life so that makes it even easier to be content with it.

Hi, sorry I'm late, what did I miss?... Oh.

I still say destroy because Shepard lives. On my last playthrough, however, I chose green and thought it fit really well.

I think it'll be a mistake to revisit Shepard post-Reaper. I think there could be a game around the First Contact War, or maybe a game around Anderson and the Alliance holding Earth, but Shepard's story is done. It's impossible to do another Shepard story without it feeling like a shameless cash grab, even if it is actually good.

 It could be good if you set it just far enough ahead in time and only allow existing characters to do cameo roles. Think how Legend of Korra handled the original Last Air Bender cast. They all had their appearances but they were never major characters.  Also Shepard should be dead.

That could work as well.

That is very easily done with a line or two of dialogue: the green glow could be described as something akin to a scar that healed over time as life adjusted to its new state.

Another option is to treat the glow as a visual metaphor rather than something that was ever literally there.

Really doesn't seem like it.
The reason that organic life has continued to exist is because the Reapers only harvest advanced species, while leaving the lesser species completely alone. This allows the younger species to survive until the next Cycle rolls around and they've developed enough to become a threat.
Not really.... not because we don't understand what you're saying, but because it's an exceptionally bad analogy.

When it comes to farming, sometimes farmers have to cull a herd in order to keep them from overpopulating, to stop the spread of disease or to meet food requirements. Even so, despite a single herd being culled, that doesn't wipe out the entire species of animals involved, nor affect the sheep, chickens, pigs or other farm animals. Whereas the Reapers wipe out all species in the galaxy for no other reason than they might create synthetic life that could destroy them.

This disproportionate response also fails to take into account the myriad of other solutions they could have employed. Why not make their presence known as the watchdogs who enforce the ban on synthetics, keeping species in line by showing that anyone who breaks this rule will be deemed a legitimate target? We saw from the Geth revolt that the rest of the galaxy quickly implemented strict AI bans, so why wouldn't the Reapers serve as even more of an effective deterrent to force species to follow the rules?

Or rather than culling entire species once they're on the verge of creating synthetics, why not set back their technological development by bombing them back into their respective Stone Ages? The Krogan did this to themselves after they nuked themselves in a series of wars, slowing their development down until the Salarians showed up to reintroduce them to advanced technology once more.

The Catalyst is implied to have tried other solutions prior to establishing the Cycle of Harvests, but why couldn't it have take a few seconds more to explain to Shepard why some of the other solutions failed? Or if the writers had the Catalyst even admit that the Harvest is an inherently flawed solution, but was the deemed the best option out of a series of even worst ones that it tried to employ? Would definitely have solved the issue of it's flawed logic and insistence that the Cycle is necessary, when it really isn't.
Except that this isn't a black and white issue, or even morally grey.

The Reapers are inherently destructive machines meant for solely one purpose, to bring about the harvest of species by systematically purging them from every corner of the galaxy. To quote a very applicable line from the Terminator, which very much sums up the Reapers in a nutshell;

"It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!"

That why the Reapers can be considered an evil construct, regardless of whether or not they see themselves as "preserving" life. That was what they were created for and what they were made to do. Even if Control or Synthetics "reprograms" them into obedient slaves, that doesn't mean they still aren't the same machines that carried out galactic genocide, nor were built to function as weapons of war.

Also, as other have brought up... you seem to act like anyone who doesn't agree with you is a child and simple. Odd, considering that you're the one who has repeatedly been spouting childish insults when called out on it.
Since the situation isn't the same, then your point isn't really applicable.

And kindly stop accusing people who don't agree with you as being "simplistic".
I concur, just because you plant some trees or burn some pig-muck in Africa, isn't actually negating that you're trashing your own country. You can't make up for your own pollution by outsourcing environmentally friendly methods elsewhere, that's ridiculous.

Although this is pretty irrelevant since it has nothing to do with either the Reapers or answers the point being addressed.
Isn't that how the Reapers began in the first place?

But if you mean, what if the Reapers let another synthetic race wipe out their creators on even footing, I suppose that would be one way to end the organic-synthetic conflict, since they'd have no reason to be at war since their creators are no longer around.

Would synthetics need to target other forms of organic life in the galaxy however? What would be the point if they didn't pose any threat? The main reason we've seen AI become hostile tends to be in response to people trying to destroy them, or the fear that this will happen if they'd discovered.

If an organic species posed no threat or capacity to harm them, wouldn't that put them beneath their notice? Even the Heretic Geth didn't waste their time shooting up the Gas Bags on Eden Prime, since they posed zero threat to them, unlike the human colonists.

But what reason would they have for needing to kill the synthetic race first? Most AI we've seen want to be left alone to do their own thing, rather than fight with organics. It's only when the organics force a fight, or the AI feel backed into a corner that relations break down.

According to the gambling AI in ME1, it's sole plan was to upload itself into a ship and find the Geth. The only reason it became hostile was because it didn't believe Shepard to keep their word if they offered to let it go. In the same manner, Legion revealed that the Geth (both heretic and true) intended to recuse themselves from galatic affairs entirely to go hang out in their own Dyson Sphere, where they'd not bother anyone. It was only the Quarian's foolish decision to blow it up that forced the Geth consensus to vote on a defensive war.

If the Reapers were to resurrect a fallen species at a primitive level, that would make them no longer a threat to synthetics whatsoever.  That'd leave the galaxy with thousands of years of relative peace, before a synthetic race would have to worry about organics even being capable of leaving the planet they were on.

Of course, this might very well end up to another version of the Harvest being employed, where it becomes necessary to wipe out a species once they reached space-flight capability, in order to "reset" them back to square one once more. While still rather abhorrent, that option would be less destructive because it'd limit the destruction to only a single planet for each species, rather than being on a galactic scale. And rather than forcing entire species to become extinct for good, the Reapers merely presiding over their death/rebirth cycle.

(Halo actually toyed with a similar idea as this in it's background lore, revealing that Ancient Humaninty were once a species capable of interstellar travel, but had been regressed both biologically and technologically after they were deemed a threat)

Such as solution still wouldn't make the Reapers "good", but it would limit their destruction and ensure that all species could continue to live on, rather than forced to be pulped down to add to the Reaper fleet / collection of their former victims.
So you're saying that you think that Control is preferable, where the Reapers can be used as attack dogs if people don't toe the line? Sounds like you'd be in favour of building a Death Star as well, since you're basically advocating the same point of view as Krennic in Rogue One;

Krennic: We were this close to providing peace and security for the galaxy.
Galen: You're confusing peace for terror.
How is this headcanon?

The Catalyst makes it clear that the pulse will fry anything with Reaper technology, which would mean that their databases would most likely not survive in this outcome. However, we don't actually need to use their databases to be able to reverse-engineer any of the technology or weaponry from the wreckage, since the physical remains of the Reaper are still present and available for study. You don't need a database to be able to take things apart to understand how something works.
I don't know where you're getting the ridiculous notion that this is "divine judgement" mentality, simply because I suggested that keeping the Reapers around is a betrayal of and spitting on the memory of the fallen who died at their hands. At no point have I suggested that there is a supreme intelligence that serves as the end-all, be-all of moral arbitration in the universe, nor would be in any way displeased by the death-toll that the Reapers have accumulated.

My point was that as human beings, it falls within our basic sense of morality and empathy to view it as the only ethical choice to destroy the Reapers, given the destruction they've caused and the lives they have taken. It doesn't bring back the dead, nor avenge them (if you even believe in an afterlife), but it would give closure and peace of mind to the survivors, who would desperately need it after witnessing much death and destruction.

I mean, think about how life is going to be in the other endings? If you've witnessed a Reaper mowing down people indiscriminately with their laser cannon, you're probably going to suffer from severe PTSD to see one again, regardless of whether it's been reprogrammed to serve you now. And what about all the husks in Synthesis, are they self-aware now? How do you handle seeing robot zombies of your former friends running around?
But you're forgetting that people aren't born as soldiers. They weren't born with a gun in their hand or as an instrument of destruction. Most people (barring child soldiers or those illegally conscripted) had a choice to join the armed forces, remain so or leave after their term of service is up. Even in country that have a mandatory national service, they don't (normally) force people to remain in the army against their will afterwards.

The difference with a Reaper is that they were specifically constructed to seek and destroy life during the Harvest, armed to the teeth and with the ability to passively mindscrew anyone who spends too long near them, forcing them to become their thrall.

Even if you reprogrammed them, they are still instruments of war and geared for only destruction. Even if we see them rebuilding in the Control and Synthesis ending, what's the point of keeping them around to serve as fancy construction equipment, when we already have stuff like this already?

And besides, we're not talking about whether or not a AI built for war can decide to change it's nature. This is not a case like in the Iron Giant where one of them turned around and declared that "I am not a gun!" At no point have we seen any Reaper question what they do and why they do it.

The Reapers didn't stop the Cycle and Harvest because they decided it was wrong or chose not to do it anymore. Instead they were simply reprogrammed not to, after Shepard had to go into flip their switch from "Evil" to "Good". It wasn't a decision the Reapers arrived at by themselves or as a result of a choice they made.

Hence the difference.
So, rather than address my point, on how the Reaper's presence may effectively create a system of control and reliance on them to provide the heavy lifting, security and technological innovations for society... you instead decided to talk about video game violence and hippies? Not only does your own premise for questioning the logic not really work, but it doesn't even logically make sense itself.

If the use of the Reapers provides a convenience that people would prefer to use over other means, then that creates an unfortunate reliance on the Reapers. I mean, how often do you bother to look up information in a reference book, when you can use a search engine which is quicker?

Why RTFM, when you can JFGI?

After all, one of the criticisms for MEA was how much Ryder relied on SAM to provide them with answers and technical solutions. Same with Shepard before them, where EDI pretty much served that role from ME2 onwards.
And what's to stop the Krogan from rebelling in the Synthesis Ending? Or Humans getting into a tussle with the Geth? Or the Salarians fighting the Turians? Just because they're now all techno-organic does not eliminate the potential for conflict from still occurring?

Organics are perfectly fine with killing each other, as are synthetics it seems, based on the schism between the true Geth and the Heretics. Peace is not so simply as simply making everyone in the galaxy the same "race", because members of the same race kill each other all the friggin' time!
Except the Reapers solution is to wipe out both the ants and the plant.

Also the rest of that sentence quickly devolved into utter incoherence...
Yes, I know that humanity exploit a loophole in the Treaty of Farixen by building carriers to make up for the restrictions on Dreadnoughts. You missed the point I was making, that humanity were the ones to introduce the concept of the carrier to the galaxy. It was something that had never been considered by any race prior.

That sort of shows that space-combat in the ME universe hasn't really developed in centuries, because surely someone should have come up with the idea of a carrier and using fighter-craft before humanity showed up? It's not a difficult concept.

I mean, you could theorise that the humanity only came up with them because our planet is mostly covered in water? We needed to develop them as mobile platforms for our aircraft to refuel and land on, whereas the Turians would not want to avoid fighting aerial battles over water (since they can't swim).
The sheer technical obstacles that needed to be overcome is why stealth technology is suggested not to have been cracked until the Turians/Humans worked together to build the Normandy. Otherwise the technology would be far more widespread before ME1, rather than gradually shown to becoming more common afterwards. This also fits with how throughout ME1 the ship is described as being a "revolutionary" for having a stealth drive, as well as the brand new Tantalus drive core, which allows it to move without using normal thrusters, which would give it's position away.

While stealth is a useful system to have, it's obvious why some in the Alliance feel the Normandy is a boondoggle and was not worth the cost to build. It wouldn't be useful in space battles at all, because the excess build of heat generated in combat would quickly end up outpacing the ship's ability to store it via heatsinks.

As Shepard can point out in the first game, it's only real advantage is to be able to loiter in an system, scout the enemy and perform covert drops. A hit-and-run style attack would only work if you could manage and hide the power increase from bringing the weapons online, but would likely cost you your position after the first shot was fired.

Attempting the "Picard maneuver" by dropping out of FTL onto an enemy is also out of the question, because the game establishes that the stealth drive cannot mask a ship travelling at FTL speeds.

Stealth seems to be far more viable on smaller ships, such as the Kodiak shuttles, Tempest and Normandy. Even if it wouldn't be extremely difficult to try to implement a stealth system on anything larger than a frigate, it'd be pointless to do so as it's better suited for other things.
As we saw in ME2, the technology gathered from Sovereign and the Geth lead to several breakthroughs in the two years between games, such as the reverse-engineered Thanix cannon, the development of new armour and shields, as well as the switchover to thermal clips.

This development was spurred on by the fact that they needed to play catch-up, after having been caught short by a far superior enemy.
Javik states that the Prothean's helped Asari's early development and left them the Beacon with the sole intention of giving them a headstart, so that they could have a better chance tackling the Reapers in the next Cycle.

We hear some of this if you bring Javik to Thessia;


He also explains the Protheans intentions for the Asari in the subsequent conversation back on the ship.


As we can see, Javik clearly spells out why the Asari squandered their potential, despite all the help they were given.
Why shouldn't they?

The reason why Citadel species refuse to travel through dormant Relays is because they don't know where they lead to, as well as what what dangers might lie on the other side? If they built their own network, they could chose where they placed them and in secure locations. Establishing your own, more direct route between point A-B, would cut down on having to go the long way around through several Relays, if there wasn't a direct route in the existing network.

As for the Asari being stagnant as a race, one of the most commonly cited problems about the Asari in the games is that their longevity means they're less inclined to take immediate, decisive action, preferring to adopt a policy of "let's wait and see".

When you can live for over a thousand years, you have the luxury of a lot of time on your hands. Some Asari are willing to spend centuries having fun on their equivalent of a college "gap year", working as mercs or as dancers in seedy bars? If they want to settle down with a family, earn a degree, enter politics, they can easily get around to all that in a century or two? What's the rush, right?

A lack of a sense of urgency is one of the reasons why the Humans and Turians are the first two to respond when the Reapers show up in ME3, because they recognise that it's an immediately concern that cannot be put off, whereas the Asari respond by sitting on their hands.

Though I've said that, it's not even close to my main reason why I don't like Control.  I think the whole idea of becoming a Reaper is creepy.  Also, it leaves Reapers around and I don't like it.

Also even if the new Reaper MCP is based on Shepard's mind, that doesn't mean they're actually  "Shepard".

One of the main issues that Cerberus faced when bringing back Shepard was to try to restore them as they were before, with their personality completely intact. If the Reaper AI bases itself on the basic core tenets of Shepard's personality (Paragon or Renegade), they'd miss a lot of the actual rationale and contest for why  Shepard acted the way they did and made the decisions they made.

Would a Reaper Shepard who desires to "protect the many" necessarily have chosen to cure the Krogan from the Genophage? The Krogan do pose a potential threat, not only from their tendency to fight amongst themselves, but from unchecked population growth (when not on hostile words such as Tuchanka). A machine that wishes to "protect the many" might have chosen not to cure them, whereas Shepard as a human did.

One of the issues regarding AI - which even the Catalyst suffers from - is that synthetics tend to operate from a point of view of cold, hard logic and make their determinations based on evidence and available data.

Shepard choosing to cure the Krogan is predicated on the hope that they will make a better go of it this time around and learn from their past mistakes, but hope is not a quantifiable variable for a machine operating on logic. That's why you cannot convince the Catalyst to stand down by arguing that organics don't have to fight synthetics, because simple belief or hope that this won't come to pass is not enough to sway it.

Not to mention, what role does a human subconscious play when it comes to determining the course of actions that a Reaper might decide upon? We all have thoughts that aren't necessarily things that we'll chose to act upon, but would the Reaper AI know the difference between what Shepard might think of doing and what they would actually do?

If we go by the interrupts as representing Shepard's decision making process, any renegade option is Shepard's more impulsive or ruthless thoughts coming to the surface. Having those thoughts does not mean Shepard would carry them out however. One danger of Control is that if Shepard's thoughts guide the Reapers, they might mistake those subconscious impulses for actual decisions that Shepard would have made, since why would they have thought about making them?

That's one of the issues with Control, because it relies on the God AI version of Shepard being infallible, which Shepard most definitely is not. If the Catalyst itself corrupted it's core directives of trying to protect life and ensure peace between organics and synthetics, transforming seemingly good intentions into something abhorrent and gaudy, what's to stop the Reaper Shepard from doing the same?

Even if you assert that "Shepard wouldn't do that!", this machine entity is not Shepard anymore. Even if it's intentions are meant to be benevolent, that doesn't mean it won't act in a manner that goes against the wishes of the galactic population that it's supposedly trying to protect and serve.

After all, there's nothing like a good cause to bring out the worst in people.

With cryo, not all the characters in MEA would (edit:  would not) have to be dead for a return Voyage to the Milky Way to occur more than 600 years later as long as they don't have a working Mass Effect Relay in the Andromeda Galaxy... as to why they might undertake a long return voyage to the Milky Way under cryo sleep would be a whole other debate.

Regardless, my preference is they leave the endings alone at this point... what was done is done.  No group of fans who favor one ending over another should be pandered to by Bioware over other fans who favored the other endings.

That means finding a way to get back to the Milky Way without voiding any of the ME3 endings... and the easiest way to do that is to set the return far enough into the future that some other disaster in the Milky Way eliminates the traces of the effects of those endings... and that means that everyone in the Milky Way at the time Shepard triggered the Crucible and any of their descendants who might bear the effects of a synthesis choice would have to be extinct.  As for backstory filler... yeah, they could put in a keep that changes 1 or 2 bits of dialogue or TW3 style causes a change in a textual entry... but what's the point really.  I know the choices I made and know what I prefer and can always replay the Trilogy if I want to experience Shepard again.  I'd be more interested in carrying on now with the Andromeda story to see where it leads.

BTW... the canon/no canon poll has already been done... multiple times.  Over the years, IMO, the whole issue has become less about the endings themselves than the fact that some people just don't want to give up on bullying Bioware into doing whatever they themselves want.