Headscratchers / Mass Effect 3 Ending

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Destruction of the relays

• Why are people complaining about how the destruction of the relays means the end of galactic civilization? The FTL communications network is separate from the relays, so people will at least be able to talk to each other across the galaxy; everyone still possesses mass effect technology, so even though inter-stellar travel will be slower without the relays it should still be possible; and of course they could always build more relays, especially if the Reapers decide to help rebuild the galaxy in the synthesis ending.
  • Comm buoys were destroyed by the Reapers, only QEC could be used. You also vastly underestimate the size of the galaxy. The Normandy couldn't even traverse a cluster without stopping to top off, and the garden worlds are so far away that galactic civilization wasn't feasible without mass relays.
  • Actually the comm buoys that where destroyed/lost only happened in Batarian/Human space, no evidence has been shown to say that the galaxy wouldn't be able to communicate, aside from the Batarians, which, lets face it, the only ones left are outside Batarian space anyway, because by all logic, they should all be dead.
  • At the time, only Earth and Batarian space had been attacked. You think they wouldn't destroy the comm buoys in Asari space once they enter Asari space? And by the end, the Reapers are in every system with a mass relay. If they took pot-shots at Bekenstein, surely they would take pot shots at the comm buoys.
  • Without the Mass Relays, we've gone from 20th century mass transport with relays able to take you anywhere in the galaxy within a couple of days, most of which is spending waiting your turn at the relay, to 19th century slow communication, ships taking weeks to cross the Atlantic. Galactic civilisation will no doubt need to adjust, but it can recover from this - not to mention that relays can be rebuilt!
  • Once again with the vastly underestimating the scales involved. The Normandy can't even cross a cluster without refueling, and these are just within tens of light-years of mass relays. The galaxy is 100,000 lightyears across, and the races are spread out in little clusters across the entirety of that 39,000,000,000,000 cubic lightyears. Unless Bioware says that standard FTL can travel at hundreds of thousands of times the speed of light, "weeks" won't cover it. Say my Asari war assets want to get home. From the positions on the galaxy map of Thessia compared to Earth, and given the size of the galaxy, I'd estimate at least 25,000 lightyears. To do that in 3 weeks, you would have to travel at a staggering 470,000,000,000,000 km/h, or 435,000 times the speed of light. For comparison, at those speeds I could hop out to Alpha Centauri in 5 minutes (not counting acceleration and deceleration, but the Normandy appears to hit max speed pretty quickly in its intra-cluster FTL jaunts), or Mars in 1-3 milliseconds (depending on which side of the sun it's on relative to Earth).
  • Further, it took the reapers 6 months at FTL to get from the Bahak system (Alpha Relay) to Earth by going to the nearest relay and then using it to get travel quickly to Earth. Even considering that they probably stopped off to harvest the Batarians, most of that time still had to have been transit otherwise someone would have wondered, "Why have the Batarians been out of contact for a month?" If the Reapers, far more advanced in FTL than the citadel races, took even 4 months just to get from one relay to the next closest, the Citadel races have no hope of seeing home again before their fuel and supplies run out.
  • One more point: The Codex for the Mass Relays notes that "[Mass Relays allow] instantaneous transit between locations separated by years or even centuries of travel using conventional FTL drives." This should be sufficient in-universe lore to show that "we've gone from 20th century mass transport" to "amoebas attempting to swim against the current from Cuba to Africa."
  • Actually, FTL comms is made possible by the Mass Relays for communication beyond the cluster. Link if you doubt me. Since Sol is the only system that uses the Charon Relay, the only way to get a signal from Earth to basically anywhere else in the Galaxy is with a QEC. Too bad that two of the half pairs on Earth now lead to nowhere, since they were probably destroyed in the Normandy crash, along with lord knows how many other half pairs. Also, it's too bad that QEC's are expensive and rare and most likely limited to military vessels - a good chunk of whom were destroyed trying to retake Earth. Long story short: you might be able to phone up someone the next system over, a few parsecs max, but anything further will effectively be snail mail.

Catalyst appearance

• Why does the Catalyst look like the ghost of Disappeared Kid?
  • A Form You Are Comfortable With. Considering the nature of the Catalyst, it likely did something similar to what Javik does to analyze the mind. The "less" advanced Protheans could do something similar with their beacons. It likely appeared as the child to further galvanize Shepard into making the decisive decision.
  • What kid? Nobody else hears him, hears the conversations Shepard has with him, looks at him, or helps him into the shuttle. He's a figment of Shepard's (hacked) imagination, to wear her down.
    • No. Hacked by what? To wear Shepard down for what? Don't bring that "theory" up without solid evidence. The only other person around was Anderson, and he'd moved farther into the next room, far enough to not hear the kid. The kid then disappears until the shuttle, where people aren't willing to expose themselves to Reapers. War Is Hell, remember. Evidence is that the catalyst doesn't control the Reapers directly, only indirectly. If the catalyst did control the Reapers directly, it could simply make them turn off all by itself, but it needs Shepard's choice. The catalyst took that form because it scanned Shepard's mind and presented itself in a non-threatening hologram so it could talk. As above, A Form You Are Comfortable With.

Bigger fleet

• How does having a bigger fleet affect what setting off The Device does?
  • More war assets likely mean that Shepard suffers less of an overall beating while getting to the Catalyst in the first place. Also keep in mind that the Catalyst is offering these options freely as solutions because organic life fought hard enough to get to that point. Presumably, it tailored the solutions to reflect that.
  • What needs to be considered is that many war assets contribute towards the development of That Device. This would be the logical reason as to why.
  • Also, you would need an enormous fleet to protect the Crucible from damages from the even more enormous Reaper fleet. Even if they secretly wants it deployed, they don't act like it, and prioritizes it as a target. They can't shoot it down if there are ships in the way.
  • Your EMS number is actually the Damage Protection rating for the Catalyst.

Shepard and synthetics vs organics

• Why does Shepard not argue about the inevitability of a synthetic war even after siding with the Geth or forging a lasting peace? It fits with ideas from the first game about coexistence being impossible, but Legion convincingly argued against that in the second. Every violent AI in the series other than the Catalyst itself was driven to it by panicking organics trying a first strike on the assumption it would rebel, even when it just tried to ask questions.
  • There's not really a point to arguing about why. There's a battle raging right outside. Maybe if Shepard was just sitting down with the catalyst AI at a card table, they could argue the merits of its viewpoint, but as it is, Shepard really doesn't have time to debate the finer points of synthetic/organic relations when every second s/he spends jabbering with the Catalyst is another ten thousand or so people dying while fighting the Reapers. Philosophy and motivation can go out the airlock; Shepard has a job to do.
  • Yes, the moment when the fate of the galaxy is being decided is clearly not the right time to make sure that all the options have been considered so the right choice can be made.
  • At this point in time though, the "right choice" is about which way is the best way to beat the Reapers there and then. the wider philosophical reasonings as to why synthetic life forms will always turn on their organic masters will not affect this decision
  • Shepard ALWAYS takes time to stop and argue all through the trilogy.
  • Not really. Shepard only takes the time to stop and argue when s/he needs information from the person s/he is arguing with, or if s/he needs to stall for time, or if there's no harm in stopping briefly to try to convince someone to change their opinions. Both his/her arguments with Saren and Harbinger were due to waiting for the Normandy to pick him/her up, while the argument with Saren at the end of the first game was to cut short a confrontation. The Catalyst is different. Arguing with it won't get anywhere, especially when thousands of people are dying every second to give Shepard this chance. Victory is right there in front of Shepard.
  • Really? There's no reason to try to talk around the guiding intellect behind the Reapers, to attempt to convince him to call them off, especially when he's so obviously wrong it hurts?
  • In case you did not notice: Shepard is bleeding to death: s/he managed to survive a direct hit from Harbinger, to succesfully reject the indoctrination process during the showdown with the illusive man, all of which is very impressive, but that's it: Shep's plot armor is gone and s/he's living their last minutes. In fact, it's quite clear that Shepard was about to lose consciousness for good after the last dialogue with Anderson: sure, an healthy Shep may have started a debate with the catalyst, maybe even reached a compromise, something like "leave now, come back next cycle and see if we managed to destroy ourselves during your 50.000 years interegnum''. The problem is, Shepard is at this point dying and in no state to do anything but to choose one of the catalyst solutions and limp toward it.
  • Its a millions-years old AI on an implacable, unstoppable fleet of super warships. It is also offering you a solution to the entire mess, no strings attached. Shepard doesn't need to argue with it, as s/he's already won, Shepard just needs to choose how to win.
  • You call that "winning"? Seemed like a lose/lose/ fucking lose scenario to me. You wanna talk about picking how to win? How about pointing to the Geth and Qurians co-existing, something I worked my ass off and sacrificed a friend to make possible, and saying to that fucking Catalyst "you're wrong, fuck you."
  • He is wrong! He comes just short of outright admitting he's wrong! That's why he's standing to the side instead of fighting you!. There is no other way to win, because the Reapers won't stop until you activate the Crucible! Welcome to war, the winner is the side is less devastated!
  • I'd wager a few Shepards would rather fight this forced-attempt-to-appeal-to-sympathy character avatar one-on-one (ala Gurren Lagann) or engage it in a battle of wills than being constrained to three choices that change the colour of the ending cutscene. At least it'd be a path they choose for themselves, not handed to them by this "Catalyst" as an illusion of choice (besides, it'd feel oh so satisfying proving it wrong by actually managing to beat the Reapers conventionally anyway despite all odds). We already have a grim depiction of the brutalities of conflict in the form of Dragon Age II, MW and DE:HR, do we really need to have it shoved down our throats here too?
  • To add to the above post about defeating the Reapers conventionally, it was always my understanding that the main reason the Reapers always curbstomped the galaxy in every cycle was because they divided and conquered, by way of shutting down the relay network and picking of system by system, since the races wouldn't be able to call for reinforcements, and would have few ships and or military personnel in each single system/cluster. The Reapers may be many, but the "lesser" races are more. I doubt the Protheans had anything akin to the Treaty of Farixen. It is mentioned several times during the trilogy that a united galaxy would be a serious issue for the Reapers. Also, considering the fact that the minimum war assets needed to challenge the Reapers is pretty low, I think it's a pretty cheap cop-out that you can't barely defeat them if you manage to do everything right. At least the ones at Earth.
  • It was an all-way lose to me, too. Fridge Logic just tells me that if the Relays exploded then a lot of homeworlds just got wiped out. Including Earth. Normandy, being the fastest non-Reaper ship, was probably the only ship able to escape the blast relatively intact, thus giving the "best" ending of synthesis where Joker and EDI can be together. Yay. Never mind all those other people, they're all dead, go meet Garrus at the bar. Of course, then there's the Kill The Reapers Ultimate version where Shepard apparently somehow survives, so maybe Earth didn't get wiped out (but then why is Normandy escaping random blast?). I don't know, none of it made a lot of sense to me. It felt almost like Catalyst had just concluded an utterly insane The Plan in which Shepard always loses. The best Shepard could do was make sure some people survived, but ultimately every solution would end with the complete collapse of galactic society. Heck, I shot the conduit out just because I felt after all the crap the Reapers have pulled in their Evil Plan it was the only sensible thing to do (Like the illusion that the Reapers can be controlled to create infighting and the subtlety of indoctrination, Mass Relays to force technology along a certain line, etc. Like everything they give you that you think might help you win against them is just another part of their plan to destroy you). Even this felt like a loss because of the Geth and, presumably, EDI (not to mention sweeping parts of the galaxy potentially).
  • To me, what it boils down to is that you can argue with a gun all you want, but even assuming the gun can argue back, there's a limit to what it can do; fire. Any argument Shepard can throw at the catalyst is countered by "Look. These are the options. It isn't a philosophical debate, this is what is physically possible for the crucible to do. Pick one and run with it." It's better explained in the original script which included more exposition, where the Catalyst explains that the crucible altered it's function to the point that it no longer has direct control over the reapers.
  • Satisfying though it may be to beat the Reapers conventionally, if that were actually a possibility, the Crucible wouldn't have been necessary in the first place. More often than not, the odds being stacked against you doesn't mean "heroic victory at the last moment," it means "You lose hard because it's unwinnable". As I saw it, the Catalyst was offering a gun, and as others have mentioned, Shepard was awfully busy dying at the moment to really be in a good place to argue about whether or not it's the best solution they can put together. Shepard had two options: 1) fire the gun, destroy/control/synthesize the Reapers, and let galactic civilization pull itself back together from the ruins if it's capable of, or not if it's not, or 2) do not fire the gun, finish dying pointlessly right there on the Catalyst's nice, clean floor, and let everyone be wiped out by the Reapers.
  • Also, he's talking about the inevitability of the the war happening, the war started 300 years ago. Admittedly, he is wrong about the result. (depending on your choices) There's also the part where the geth refused to wipeout the quarians long ago.
  • It should also be noted that the moment to argue with the Catalyst would be when it first explains its reasoning. This happens before the choices are presented. Prior to the choices being presented, all Shepard knows is that the Catalyst controls the Reapers, and that it believes war between organics and synthetics is inevitable. And Shepard . . . lets that go. S/He makes no attempt to convince the Catalyst otherwise. Or s/he makes some comment about choice, but that has nothing to do with what the Catalyst has just told you. It's an incredibly weak appeal to emotion that even most real people wouldn't find all that compelling, never mind the logic-driven being s/he's talking to. So Shepard absolutely should be arguing that the war isn't inevitable. The inability to do so is simply ridiculous. All the arguments about why Shepard doesn't do so fail to take into consideration that, at the point where disagreeing with it would make sense, Shepard has no reason to believe convincing the Catalyst of the error of its ways isn't the only option available.
  • Because Shepard, for the hell, isn't stupid. If he would point that Geth and Quarians have lasting peace, Catalyst have a perfect retort "...for less then a month!". I mean, would this peace last for year? For hundred years? For thousand years? How long it would take for geth to stop helping and starting to "guide creaters evolution", and then to hijack body reactions, body control, thoughts?

Intelligence on the Citadel

• If the controlling intelligence for the Reapers was always on the citadel, why did it need Sovereign and the Keepers to set off the invasion? Why not just set off the cycle itself?
  • Because the Reapers are an independent mechanism of the Catalyst. The catalyst set the cycle in motion and the Reapers carry it out, but it is willing to allow organics the chance to at least fight back, judging by its behavior. The fact that Shepard got that far and that it was perfectly willing to help Shepard make the decision at to what to do indicates as much.
  • But it doesn't really answer the question of why the Catalyst wouldn't install some measure to start the cycle himself. His whole main agenda is to keep the cycle going, yet to start it requires a convoluted system with components that can relatively easily be discovered and sabotaged.
  • It explicitly states that it controls the Reapers. If it only started the cycle, as soon as they knew the Crucible was built and ready to kill/destroy/whatever them, they should have just blown it up, because then they win. Whether the reapers are independent or not makes no difference to the plot of ME1. Sovereign was meant to send a signal to the keepers who then turn on the giant relay of the Citadel. If it was sentient, it could have done it itself when the time was up. So basically the existence of the Catalyst mostly renders the first game's plot a waste of time.
  • Because Protheans, that's why. The Protheans sabotaged the signal preventing the Keepers from activating the Citadel Relay. This was the last act of their dying race, after the Reapers had left the system. Now bear in mind the timeline here: for this to have been their final act, it would have to have come after their attempt at building the Crucible. Now, the Prothean VI on Thessia seemed to know an awful lot about the Catalyst, enough to explicitly state that the Protheans were well aware of how important the Citadel was to the Reapers. When the last Protheans made their kamikaze jump through the Conduit, they would have done so armed with the knowledge that the calls are coming from inside the house, so to speak, and would have engineered their solution to the extinction cycle accordingly.
  • In the Extended Cut, the Catalyst does say the Reapers have tried to destroy the plans for the Crucible whenever it's popped up, but that organic life is more clever than they thought.
  • More clever than The Reapers? The Catalyst said that The Crucible is "a little more than a power source" Basically, a Duracell in SPACE. Reapers got an eternity to make one and yet, when The Catalyst says that Synthesis is the ideal solution to his problem, he opts with destroying it. Why? it will solve the problem he wants on the spot. Oh, and by the way, The Catalyst BUILT the Reapers and made them part of him, thus the line "I embody the collective intelligence of all Reapers". So if he can do that then why not something as simple as, you know, repairing the master console to shut down the Relay Network or readjust the Keepers back?
  • It's implied that its because he wants someone to come along that can prove they can stop the Reapers and the cycle. Remember that if the Catalyst didn't want Shepard there to stop the cycle, it could have just not turned the elevator on.
  • Implication becomes outright statement in the Leviathan DLC. Leviathan itself states that the intelligence controlling the Reapers is conducting the cycle because it is searching for something among the cycles of genocide. Apparently, that "something" is a galaxy united enough to fight the Reapers and build the Crucible. I mean, if the Catalyst didn't want Shepard to bring the Crucible into the Citadel and fire it, it wouldn't have allowed the arms to open or let Shepard into its core.

Synthesis meaning

• What does merging organics and synthetics into "a new DNA" even mean? An established part of the setting is that different races use different amino acids so there's no way they all have similar DNA, and synthetics are said to be hostile to organics because they think differently, not their physical state.
  • Merging synthetic and organic would create an entirely new lifeform, with entirely new thought processes and bio-synthetic makeup.
  • That doesn't mean anything. It's Artistic License – Biology, which the rest of the trilogy avoids.
  • Check Joker's appearance. Notice any similarities to a certain Cerberus leader? Odds are, he meant merging organic life with Reaper bio-metal, which is an explicit ability of the Reapers. It's how they make more Reapers, after all.
  • He looks normal in my playthrough while running from the green if that's what you mean. It cut to black when the door opens so no idea if that's accurate.
  • Watched on youtube(got the destruction ending in my playthrough) and he looks normal after the door opens except his eyes are faintly glowing green and he has a geth-like code shimmering over his body like Shepard in project overlord.
  • Probably something like nanomachines were used to make the change. When most if not all species in the galaxy that are or were part of the community likely have omni tools, it's not hard to figure out the how. Medigel/Omnigel would probably be best to facilitate the change, not that that makes the whole thing better of course, just makes a little more sense. Considering that there's a lot of life without such things, even that sense is lost.

Stranded

• Shepard just blew up every single last relay in existence. Not only does this strand everyone on specific worlds, with their brightest and best stuck on earth, and caused the collapse of all galactic civilisation, but hasn't he just done the Reapers' job for them? We know blowing up a relay will destroy the solar system it is in, so every single one of those relays detonating has just wiped out countless trillions of organics in moments. Has the conclusion of Mass Effect 3 just railroaded the player into becoming the single biggest mass murderer in the history of Mass Effect?
  • There's no evidence that destroying the relays via the Crucible and Catalyst would trigger supernovas. We can presume that the Catalyst, being the one who built the relays, is smart enough that it could devise a means by which to destroy a relay without triggering unnecessary destruction. Its purpose is to preserve, after all, in its own twisted way. You can step down a nuclear reactor without causing a meltdown, after all, and the Crucible/Catalyst action was very much a controlled act of destruction. It is quite clear that the Catalyst prepared for this eventuality, so any destruction of the mass relays was factored into its plans, and none of those plans call for the mass destruction of hundreds or thousands of populated star systems.
  • There's no evidence that it wouldn't either, indeed given the Catalyst's motivations it would be surprising if it didn't cause the destruction of all the systems with a mass relay in it. The most of galactic civilization lives in the same system of an active relay, blowing up the relays at once will effectively do the same thing as the reapers, except not quite as thorough, organic life will still live on in systems without relays, but it would take a very long time for it to recover. As you can see it would be a very effective last ditch plan for the catalyst.
  • The Catalyst's motivations is to preserve organic life before their creations destroy them. Its solution was twisted, sure, but it "preserved" organics "in reaper form". Now, if you watch a recording of the endings, you will see that the glow in the gyroscope completely dissipates when it shoots an energy pulse at the next mass relay. In the red and green endings, the relay then lets out the energy pulse and a small explosion. In the blue ending, it doesn't even explode, just breaks up. When you watch Arrival, you will notice that the glow in the gyroscopes becomes bigger and then explodes in a positively massive explosion that completely whites out the screen. The little bursts you see in the galaxy map are only the energy bursts, not the explosions.
  • BioWare didn't help themselves by depicting the relay network's destruction as a series of massive explosions all over the galaxy map.
  • This troper figured they were depicting the radiation being dispersed to synthesize/control reapers/destroy synthetics, and not supernovas.
  • It's also bothering that, even if destroying the relays doesn't cause supernovas, Shepard doesn't know that. He knows exactly, what the hologram tells him and it doesn't say anything that may suggest, that the relays will blow in different manner this time. When the kid tells him that firing the crucible will destroy the relays, instead of saying: "What!? Won't that cause an armageddon?", he / she goes like: "Uh, ok, nevermind.". It is especially jarring after reading the codex - it says that the council races considered the destruction of relays in order to stop the reapers, but they concluded that there would be too many casualties and the cost is too high.
  • As of the Extended Cut, the destruction of the relays is made much less dramatic. They break apart, but they're not exploding, and we see a scene of a relay being repaired, either by various ships, or by Reapers.
  • Presumably, the energy that would normally be released in an uncontrolled fashion and tear the system apart is instead being used to fuel the Space Magic Colour Pulse.

Normandy jump

• How/when/why was the Normandy making a jump when the citadel went all glowing-boom on everyone? The Normandy was on Earth at least in time to pick up Shepard's squadmates who got left behind in the charge. Shepard was known to be alive right up until the blast. Why are they abandoning the commander and trying to outrun the glowing light?
  • What's more, why are they trying to "outrun" something at FTL speeds and Joker just looks over his shoulder while doing so, as if it was just some car chace where that would actually let him see what he's running from? Also, are we to assume that joker was in the middle of a relay jump when that happened? That's an extremely small timeframe and a major coincidence. And if that was just traditional FTL and not a relay jump then why did the explosion affect the Normandy at all? Did the crucible affect ALL ships in the galaxy like that? So all the fleets got wrecked when it fired?
  • There were no "massive explosions" around the galaxy. Those are quite obviously the spread of the energy to do whatever Shepard decides to do. The only destruction that happens in the process is the collapse of the Mass Relays. And what is Joker trying to outrun? Again obvious: the collapse of the Relay Network. The Normandy is inside the negative mass tunnel when it begins to collapse, and it is this that Joker is trying to avoid.
  • In the "destroy" ending we do actually see a massive blast wave coming from the relay as it collapses after firing.
  • As to the question of why it affected the Normandy the way it did, remember that the Normandy was reconstructed with Reaper tech after the Collector Ship destroyed it. Presumably, every ship with Reaper hardware faced similar problems, but not every ship in all the fleets in the galaxy.
  • The Extended Cut includes a scene of Hackett ordering all ships out of the area once the Crucible starts preparing to fire.

Control after death

• The Catalyst says that if Shepard chooses to control the Reapers, he / she will die. So... if Shepard is dead, how can he / she control them? Will they summon Shepard's ghost, or what?
  • Mind uploading. The body is dead, but Shepard's mind controls the Reapers.
  • Doesn't that ending contradict itself though? The Citadel isn't destroyed in that ending, and it seems that Shepard now has control over it, as it closes by itself when the reapers leave. Can't really point to the Crucible because nobody knew what it was going to do, just that it was going to be big and/or powerful. Anyway, if the Citadel is now under 'Controller Shepard's' control, then that means that the Catalyst was in control of the citadel the whole time, disregarding the whole 'the Crucible changed me' bit, even moreso negating ME 1 like mentioned above.

Normandy's escape

• As far as I understand, Normandy was hit by a shockwave from an exploding relay. So, assuming that at the moment of explosion Normandy was at Earth (because why would they be anywhere else?): to escape from the shockwave, they activated their FTL drive. Before the hit, they managed to reach another star system (the planet they crashed on is clearly not from ours). The closest star system to Sun is 4 light years away. This means, that the shockwave from the exploding relay managed to cripple heavy armored frigate after travelling at least 4 light years. So how powerful was this blast when it reached Earth? Did anyone on the surface of the planet survived? Did Shepard accidentally kill all the remaining humans on Earth?
  • You can see human Marines fighting on the surface and surviving when the blast sweeps over them. Reach you own conclusion.
  • Well, we see what happens on Earth when the energy burst passes by, and the humans are untouched and in fact stand up to cheer. The Normandy appears to be travelling in a Mass Relay corridor (not standard FTL), and since the relays were in the process of being destroyed, the corridors were collapsing as well, and it is the destruction of negative mass space while traveling FTL that damaged the Normandy.
  • One important thing to note is that Mass Relay travel is instantaneous. There are no " mass relay corridors" for the Normandy to be traveling through. It's just travelling at typical FTL speeds, for some reason.
  • You're half right, from the Codex: "...[Mass Relays] can create corridors of virtually mass-free space allowing instantaneous transit...". You are correct in that transit ought to be instant but wrong in that there are "mass relay corridors". The blast wave appears to propagate around in a cylinder around the Normandy, however, as you can see a circle of black space behind the corridor. Perhaps this is yet another case of the Codex being an Unreliable Narrator, or maybe it's a "who knows what affect the crucible/energy wave has on the mass relays".
  • Actually, transit isn't instantaneous. There's a couple scenes in the games where it takes time to go through a relay jump. It seems more like near-instantaneous transit, meaning it only takes a couple minutes rather than a couple centuries.
  • More-over, the scene takes place directly after the blast from the crucible is directed at the mass relay, after the initial explosion has dissipated. Assuming they wanted to give the impression that Normandy wasn't in a relay jump, they did a poor job of it simply through the timing of that shot. Also, why the hell was Joker looking over his shoulder like there was a damn rear-view window?
  • Because all the piloting skills in the world don't tell you what to do when you're being chased by a collapsing wormhole. He's running for his life - I'd look over my shoulder in a ship too, because there was nowhere in my training manual that told me what to do in case the Mass Relays begin collapsing en masse while I'm in mid-transit.
  • First, the Crucible fires some red / blue / green sphere. We see, that it doesn't hurt humans on Earth. After that, it fires another beam, that destroys the relays. I assumed that the Normandy was damaged by the relay explosion. We don't see how it affects Earth. Perhaps it's true that Normandy was in the middle of the relay jump at the moment, but seriously, what the hell were they doing out there? They were on the most important mission in history. They knew that Shepard is still alive (Hackett evidently knew it). 10 minutes earlier EDI saved the day, by helping Shepard to aim the missiles. It was entirely possible that they would need her help again. So what, did they suddenly decide: "Screw Shepard and this war, we are going on vacation"?
  • Shepard was still in communication with Hackett in the Citadel: Hackett may have heard the final conversation with the catalyst and realizing that the war is over but the Mass Relays are minutes away to be blown up, ordered the Normandy to lead the combined fleets away from Earth in order to diminish the number of troops stranded on a ruined world where feeding them would be problematic.
  • The Extended Cut includes a brief scene of Hackett ordering all ships to leave as the Crucible powers up.

Definition of synthetics

• This is mostly a nagging curiosity, but what exactly constitutes a synthetic as far as the Crucible's red wave is concerned? Were Vigil, Mouse's VI Shepard, the Hammerhead VI, Avina, etc, destroyed? If not, would the Geth have been spared if they hadn't had Reaper code uploaded? After all, they were designed as V Is that could share experience, and it was only in this sharing that they became A.I.s.
  • It doesn't go into specifics, but in the Extended Cut, the Catalyst mentions that the wave will destroy some non-sentient computer technology as well (likely referring to the VI's). It also reassures Shepard that the damage won't be too severe, and organic civilization can rebuild from it.

Shockwave

• Seriously, WHAT WAS WITH THE SHOCKWAVE? I see multiple discussions of it, here, and no one seems entirely sure what it was. Was it from the relay blowing up? Then why didn't it hurt the soldiers on Earth? Was it the "shut down/destroy all synthetic life" wave? Then why did it show up in the Paragon ending? And even in the Renegade ending, why would Joker know to run from it? And why would it destroy the Normandy, rather than just making EDI go offline? And...argh! I can grudgingly forgive the lack of a decent choice, I can accept that Shepard might have been too close to death to debate philosophy with the Catalyst, but the shockwave makes no sense and it's driving me crazy!
  • The shockwave is the spread of the energy of the Crucible that spreads throughout the Mass Relay Network. The Normandy is right in the middle of a jump through the Mass Relays when the network begins to collapse, and this destruction is what Joker is trying to escape. How are people still missing the simple and the obvious?
  • The problem is that it simply isn't that obvious, hence all the questions about it. You could ask 10 different players and get 10 different opinions on what happened.
  • Hell, even if it was more obvious...why the hell is Joker taking the Normandy through a relay? As I said above, he had no way of knowing what it would do to EDI, and even if he did, would he really run away without knowing whether or not Shepard was okay? Hell, would EDI let him? Again: no friggin' sense.
  • The Extended Cut now includes a scene of Hackett ordering all ships to leave the area as the Crucible powers up.

Legend

• The after-credits scene implies that Shepard's story has become a legend passed down through many generations, and that the entire series was being told by an old man to his grandson. If this is the case, then how could the scene in the Citadel be part of the legend, if Shepard doesn't survive to tell about it?
  • There's no actual indication that the old man knew the exact details about what happened. More likely, they pieced together the truth after a long period of analyzing the wreckage. Hell, the old man could have made up some of that entire scene.
  • The most egregious part of the old man scene is that it happens in ALL endings no matter what you choose. Kind of makes the whole point moot if all but the bad endings lead to the same conclusion.
  • If the entire series was an old man's bedtime story, it does make the sex scenes that much more hilarious.
  • There's no indication that the whole series was just his story (his 100+ hour story featuring regular "planet scanning" scenes). It could just as easily be argued that what you see is what really happened and the final scene is just showing that Shepard is still remembered long into the future.

Synthesis more technology

• So the Catalyst says that if all life is turned into organic-synthetic hybrids then the universe will be saved. For sake of argument, I'll take him at his word that this will avert a organic/synthetic war. However, for the Destroy option he clearly states that people would inevitably create more synthetics in the future... what exactly stops them from doing that in the Synthesis ending? The technology for creating synthetics is still going to be around, and people are going to want to keep making them for all of the same reasons, in addition to researching the biological and technological miracle that just affected the entire universe. My point is, what's to stop a organic-synthetic/synthetic war in the Synthesis ending? Did that green energy wave rewrite everything to the point where all synthetic production now produces organic-synthetics? But the parts you would use to build a synthetic are just parts, they're not "alive" until you put them together... or are all the metals and microchips organic-synthetic too?
  • There's nothing to prevent such war, but it may not matter to the Catalyst. It was created to stop organic/synthetic conflicts, and by some twisted, literal-minded logic decided that eradicating all organic and synthetic life before such conflicts can get out of hand is the best idea. By such reasoning, the point of the synthesis ending may be that since all organics will be part synthetic, no conflict will count as purely organic/synthetic, therefore the Catalyst has fulfilled its purpose.
  • More than anything, it removes the fundamental conflict between Organic and Synthetic life. That of understanding. What drove each of the major wars between the two that we've seen? Fear and misunderstanding. From here on out, Organics have the modular and repairable nature of Synthetics, and Synthetics have the perspective and thoughts of Organics. Neither side will have the fear and mistrust that plagued them before. Additionally, there will no longer need to be new Synthetics built. Organics have the capability to do what they once needed Synthetics for.
  • But now the combined life forms have to do what Organics created Synthetics in order to avoid; grunt work. We make screwdriver machines because humans find doing the same thing over and over boring. It's possible/probable that a lot of these things are now obviated due to the Synthesis ending changing basic organic tendencies, but that's not explicitly explained.
    • The main thing is that now, organic and synthetic life can fully understand each other and cooperate. The machines aren't alien to us, nor us to them. Maybe they can link processes to allow rote precision like a machine, while freeing up organic imagination.
    • In addition to the above, one of the montage slides in the Synthesis ending shows a highly futuristic spaceship whose sections aren't physically connected to each other, something that no other ending ever implies the galaxy was able to technologically progress to. Likely with organics and machines no longer experiencing active "boredom" by things such as the downtime that inevitably comes with advanced research and grunt work, they were able to make massive scientific leaps that they otherwise couldn't be bothered with.

Synthetics becoming organic

• Did EDI spontaneously grow a vagina in the Synthesis ending? It's a valid question.
  • Are you asking if EDI became part organic along with all the organics become part machine? Interesting question, but we only see them on the crash-landed planet briefly so we aren't given time to dwell on it.
  • Not quite. It's stated that all synthetic beings will become part-organic as part of the Synthesis ending. But if all organics and synthetics become the same universally compatible "race", does that mean that EDI suddenly grows reproductive organs that were not part of her original design? If not, then doesn't it undermine the concept of Synthesis as a method of eliminating discrimination between synthetics and organics?
  • The Extended Cut elaborates a little more. The Catalyst says that synthetics will gain an understanding of organics, because of organics becoming partially synthetic. Though EDI's epilogue narration does suggest that she's now a living being. So who knows.
  • EDI's body is that of Dr. Eva Core, the Replacement Goldfish for Jack Harper's Lost Lenore. There was probably no "growing" necessary.

Synthesis reapers

• In the synthesis ending, the Reapers start helping rebuild when the Catalyst goes off. But it's explicitly stated that they're doing this of their own free will, and not some sort of mind control like in the control ending. But... Harbinger and the rest would never agree to do that. It would just be out of character. They've spent all of two games explaining how they think all other races are inferior and must be harvested. It would be like if the Daleks randomly decided to become friendly. And come to think of it, would the surviving organics agree to let the Eldritch Abominations who have been laying siege to the galaxy, turning their loved ones into zombies, blowing things up, and generally threatening the very existence of intelligent life, assist them in rebuilding?
  • The Reapers' mandate was to harvest and "preserve" organic civilizations to prevent wars between them and synthetic races. When "synthesis" occurred, there were no more organics or synthetics as they understood them: only a new hybrid form of life. Therefore the Reapers' purpose is now moot. The reason they'd been harvesting organics no longer exists. So, they needed to choose a new path. It also appears that they themselves were altered by synthesis: they're glowing green like everyone else in the ending images. Perhaps that changed their perspective. As for why the previously-organic species accept their help, the Reapers have the most advanced tech and the wisdom of millions of civilizations. If they are willing to help, it would be foolish to turn them down.
  • But even with the Synthesis ending, there is still an obvious distinction between synthetic and organic life, as in, geth are still made of metal, humans/krogan/asari are still made of flesh, etc. The Reapers were never shown to be cold and logical with their harvesting, they have always been much more "human" than, say, the geth. The Reapers wouldn't just stop their assault. It's completely out of character even after Synthesis. And even if it wasn't, the galaxy would not accept their help, no matter how foolish it would be not to. Imagine if, in the middle of WWII, Nazi Germany suddenly said "hey, were going to stop the war, stop killing people, and help you rebuild. So don't attack us any more." Do you think anyone would believe them? Now imagine that instead of murdering millions of people, the Nazis had killed billions and were trying to kill everything. Also imagine that everyone they killed comes back to life as a undead abomination. And if you still aren't convinced, imagine each Nazi is a massive, metal space Cthulhu which can control your mind and destroy as easily as you could an ant.
  • Godwin's Law aside, the degree of self-determination the Reapers have is never made clear, so it is entirely possible that the Reapers would stop thanks to Synthesis, especially considering the galactic nature of the ending. Synthesis likely includes a general "Okay, stop it guys, we're done" order from the Catalyst. As for the galaxy "accepting" the Reapers' help in rebuilding, I don't think that the galaxy would either be willing or even able to object. When the titanic god-machines suddenly decide to stop shooting and start rebuilding, the various species across the galaxy are in no shape to stop them, and they're not so terminally retarded as to start shooting at them while they rebuild.
  • This comes up a lot. "Why would galactic civilization accept the help of the Reapers?" The answer remains the same: because they don't have a lot of other options. The galaxy was losing its war hard. This is repeatedly stated. Like all cycles before, galactic civilization was being slowly and methodically exterminated. The Reapers are an enemy that could not be defeated by military strength. With the Crucible fired and, under Control or Synthesis, the Reapers having stopped their genocide and begun helping to rebuild, the galaxy accepts the Reapers' help because what else are they going to do? Yes, there will be plenty of hostile feelings towards the Reapers, but the Reapers still hold all the power they did before, enough power to exterminate all life in the galaxy if they decide to. If they want to help, what other choice is there than to let them?
  • It occured to me while looking at other points throughout the lore (Quarian ancestor V Is, the virtual aliens, the organometallic alloy of the reaper core in the second game, the fact that the derelict — in spite of being supposedly brain dead — is still giving off the indoctrination signal while essentially in low-power standby mode with no functional directive program running) that possibly the reapers don't just indoctrinate other beings in their vicinity, but in fact a secondary purpose of the indoctrination field is to keep the reapers from acting truly independently. Each individual reaper is an independent collection of uploaded minds from whatever civilization was the basis of their body, just brainwashed the same way Saren was by Sovereign. Part of their core gives off an indoctrination field to make those minds all agree that the cycle is necessary. Potentially, the reapers are all transceivers rather than transmitters, they receive and broadcast a signal from the Intelligence in the Citadel, which means that if you change the parameters of the cycle, the indoctrination signal changes, which is what gives the reapers their core directives. In short: you change the base program with either Control or Synthesis and the reapers have their behavioural shackles adjusted to match the new program.

Origin of the Catalyst

• Where did this thing come from? Mass Effect is known for having a game changing plot twist about halfway through the game, but this guy shows up right at the end, and we're just expected to accept it. When they revealed the Reapers in ME 1, we could go along with that because these guys were Robot Space Old Ones right out of Lovecraft, and when you replayed the game it actually subtly built up to that unveiling in a way you only notice the second time around. In ME 2 the Collectors being genetically modified Protheans also made since because it was a possibly Red Herring for what galactic civilizations fate at the hands of the Reapers might be, and it solved the problem of the Collectors being this new race that was never spoken of before; because they were spoken of before, we just didn't know they and the Protheans weren't one in the same. The Catalyst? Literally comes out of no where with no build up or explanation. Some might argue that's the point of a plot twist, but to paraphrase a certain internet reviewer: "Yeah but that's like saying Mrs. Brisby was broccoli the whole time. Yeah you didn't see it coming, that doesn't mean it makes sense."
  • What Mass Effect games have you been playing? Mass Effect games have always had a big reveal right at the end. Remember the Citadel being the trap? Remember the Human Reaper? And while the exact form of the Catalyst was not foreshadowed, its existence was stated right at the beginning of the game when Liara explained the Crucible, and the Catalyst being the Citadel was brought up when you attacked the Cerberus base before the climax. The Prothean VI on the Cerberus base even confirms that the Reapers were part of a larger plan by something else that instigated the cycles all along, which was also hinted at by Javik. So nope, this assertion that either the Catalyst breaking from the previous pattern of ME games or that the Catalyst was not foreshadowed is flat-out wrong.
  • None of that is foreshadowing the nature of the Catalyst. At all. Foreshadowing means that someone could potentially look at various clues and make an educated guess at where they're building to. No one could guess that the Catalyst was an AI living on the Citadel. There's no way to see the Catalyst and say, "Ah, yes, that actually does make total sense based on what came before." The Catalyst was a twist for the sake of a twist.
    • This troper certainly wasn't surprised when there was a twist to reveal a driving force behind the 'pattern', as noted by Vendetta. It outright says that the Reaper cycles follow patterns and that by following the patterns, the Reapers show themselves as part of it rather than the architects of the whole thing. In other words, the Reapers are just the tools, and something else is behind their actions (probably not literally using them as tools, rather something set the Reapers in motion).
  • The closest thing to foreshadowing would be the established fact that the Citadel and the Reapers were connected; previously established as "Reapers built the Citadel". It isn't that surprising that the citadel had some other purpose in the reaper's plan beyond a model to guide galactic technological development.
  • Actually the other purpose was already established since ME1: "The Citadel is in reality a gigantic Mass Relay that summons the reapers back to galaxy".
  • It was vaguely alluded to when the Reaper you take down on Rannoch tells you that the Reapers aren't the ones who created the cycle.

Catalyst motivation

• His motivation makes no sense. We're lead to believe every cycle has had its version of the Geth being created and inevitably realizing they are superior to their creators, or something along the lines of what happened to the Quarians happens and they attack, whatever the case: war breaks out. Lets put aside the fact that this thing is, by definition, a synthetic itself, so is it just a maverick defector from decadence who wants to save organic life from his own kin? I might buy that, sure, but it still doesn't make any sense. Lets say the first time this happened in the first cycle he considers it a fluke, and just puts his Reapers on reserve juuuuust in case. Once bitten, twice shy, I'll give him that. Then it happens again and well now he's justified, in his mindset, to enact his plan of preserving organic life once more. Then we're lead to believe this exact case of organic civilization threatening war with synthetics happened OVER SEVEN HUNDRED TIMES!? And THIS was the one time it didn't go the way it always had? THAT is a statistical IMPOSSIBILITY! Writers Cannot Do Math on an unforgivable scale!
  • It appears that the 50,000 year cycle is intended to "nip the problem in the bud", to prevent an advanced civilization from producing synthetics that would then rise up against their creators. That didn't work for this cycle because the Protheans blocked the control signal to the Keepers centuries ago—Sovereign's previous attempt at bypassing the keepers was the Rachni wars in 300 CE, well before the Geth Morning War in 1895 CE. Thus, without the scheduled culling, synthetics like the Geth and EDI/The Luna AI were allowed to rise. My guess is that the catalyst/reapers make the assumption that all created will rise against their creators and produced the solution without testing their assumption against other synthetics, and so made a wrong assumption that resulted in millions of years of galactic genocide to prevent synthetics from even being created in the first place.
  • From what we know it's apparent that the cycles don't always go off cleanly; the protheans apparently dealt with the A.I. problem fairly early on in their cycle, as well as the protheans managing to throw quite a few wrenches in the reaper's gears.
  • Conflict between synthetics and organics stretches back to the first game. The "signal tracking" mission AI says that organics always have to enslave or destroy synthetics, Tali says organics can't negotiate with synthetics because there's nothing organics have that they want. The second game establishes this paranoia deeply in overlord and the EDI mission, and Javik says about the same thing in the third game. That Shepard has temporarily managed to negotiate a treaty between geth and quarians (and that's a pretty tall order in itself) very well may be the first time it's been done in the game universe's history, and demonstrating that you've been able to temporarily stop a 300 year war before Admiral Xen starts randomly dissecting geth again isn't the strongest counterargument to the catalyst's experience.
  • It should be enough that any reasonable being should pause and say "Let's see how this goes. I'll give you another century, and if the Geth and Quarians are still working together we can talk about ending the cycles."
  • What's most appalling about the motivation is that there's an obvious one that makes far more sense presented through the game. If the Reapers hadn't wiped out the Protheans, humanity (and all of the other advanced races) would have either been enslaved or obliterated by the Protheans. This makes far more sense as the purpose of the Reapers as 'salvation' through destruction: the Reapers exist to allow for new sentient life to flourish, while saving previous civilizations for posterity. This also makes the decision to stop the Reapers a bit more grey: destroying them saves humanity and the other current races, but essentially destroys or limits the possibilities for any future races (e.g. yagh).
  • Whoa, that just blew my mind. That would have been totally logical and fit with the previous games' established themes/continuity too. Also see Aborted Arc in the main entry for the original motivation that Bioware came up with in game 2 but abandoned.
  • Leviathan finally makes it abundantly clear. The synthetics ultimately disrupt the organic's ability to pay tribute to the Leviathans (the race ultimately responsible for the Reapers). In their minds, even the best case scenario for the Quarian/Geth conflict would not be satisfactory. If a tribute race was ejected from their own homeworld and turned into galactic scavengers by machines of their own creation, the Leviathans would find this annoying. The Dominate ability also doesn't work on machines with no organic bits, so the pesky uppity synthetics would be that much more annoying for the Leviathan to potentially have to deal with. It also helps explain why the Leviathan were seeing a cycle in the first place. These tribute races would have wanted to be able to prosper while still paying their "tithe" to their overlords but that extra burden would create that much more pressure to turn to robotic labor for help.

Synthetics in the cycles

• Where did the 700+ synthetic races go? It melts organic life down into Reaper goo to preserve them because synthetic life is inevitably going to win, or something, ok. So where the hell did the synthetic life go? They didn't melt the Prothean's version of Geth down into Reaper goo, so where did they all go? Did they just genocide the synthetic life as soon as they made the new Reaper and go back to sleep waiting for the next 100% assured organic v.s. synthetic life war to break out? Doesn't that make this thing a hypocrite? Not saying we wont buy the genocidal villain being a hypocrite, but it still seems rather... logicless? Anti-logic?.... Stupid, that's the word I'm looking for.
  • "No. We harvest advanced civilizations." They don't kill all organics, they harvest all advanced civilizations, which would imply the synthetics are destroyed as well.
  • No, they don't. They say they harvest every advanced civilization and "save them", but that is contradicted by the fact that they only harvest humans. Why not "save" the other species? All the talk about genetic diversity and other being genetically inferior or something shouldn't matter if the Reapers cared about saving them. The asari, turians and salarians (maybe the quarians too) are still more advanced than the humans.
  • No, they're harvesting everyone. Species deemed "worthy" get turned into Reaper capital ships, while "lesser" species get turned into destroyers. Humans were going to be turned into capital ships, while the other species were going to be turned into destroyers.
  • It's implied pretty clearly in Mass Effect 2 that the Protheans were not worthy of being made into a Reaper at all, generally pointing to no species in that period becoming a reaper. (Humans being genetically diverse and varied enough that they made good 'material'.) Rather the Protheans being repurposed into the Collectors being the 'ideal' solution. Even if nothing is said of the other 'Prothean' species, the implication still stands, that the Reapers simply culled that whole civilization, sans Collectors. (Can't forget that another writer was brought in late in the game, which explains such incongruities.)
  • Then they are not saving the other species, as they give them weaker armor. Would make more sense to harvest many destroyed and use normal machines as destroyers. Basically, they use lesser species as fodder that, while hard to beat, it much easier than a Capital ship to beat. Shepard downed one with a single Cain shot.
  • No, s/he didn't. S/he took down a Reaper anti-"air" cannon with a Cain, which is visually distinct from a Destroyer. There is no evidence that Destroyer have weaker armor than Capital-class Reaper, and seeing how it took the mother of all Thresher Maws/ the entire Migrant Fleet/ several Thanix missiles aiming squarely for their weak point to destroy one, uh, Destroyer, it's rather unlikely that their armor is that much weaker.

Timing of the cycles

• At what point do they consider organic life a lost cause and start the harvesting process? Because if we are supposed to believe this is all to preserve organic life because they'll lose against their own synthetic creation, then when do they start the invasion? This is asked because for this current cycle, that war is with the Geth. So, was it as soon as the Geth were made they started their plans for genocidal reproduction? (heh, Reaperoduction) or did they wait till the war with the Geth vs the Quarians to break out, or wait for the Quarians to get kicked off their home planet? Well, we know for a fact they didn't wait until the Geth actually started a war against all organic life to emerge the superior life forms, because the Geth DIDN'T START A WAR AND JUST STAYED IN GETH SPACE AND LEFT EVERYONE ALONE! The ONLY antagonist Geth in the series were controlled by the Reapers! Oh, hello there, giant contradiction: the Reapers invade because synthetic life threatens organic life, and yet the only reason the Geth threatened organics was because the Reapers were starting their invasion. Whaaaaa?
  • As noted above, the scheduled culling was well before the Geth came into existence (Due to the Rachni wars being the first occurrence of Reaper involvement in this civilization cycle), so the decision on when to attack isn't based on the state of the galaxy, just when the timer goes off. It didn't work this cycle because the car keys didn't work when Sovereign decided to go pick up his friends in response to the alarm clock.

Synthetic threat

• Wrong, wrong, wrong! The Catalyst is WRONG. Synthetic life WASN'T threatening Organic life, at least not during this cycle, at least not yet. We saw evidence of that in, again, the friggen Geth minding their own damn business unless someone screwed with/indoctrinated them, and in EDI being pretty cool and nice and stuff to say the least. I'll forgive the fact they jumped the gun a little considering they're Well Intentioned Extremists to the max long since gone off the Moral Event Horizon, but the fact you can't use this argument against it at the end is just dumb. You can't use LOGIC and RATIONAL and PHYSICAL EVIDENCE against an emotionless machine? Really? You have no choice but to go along with the DeusExMachinas BS brigade and presented with the Endingtron 9000 to make a completely binary choice to decide the ending of the game that completely rips off Deus Ex: Human Revolution and yet somehow manages to be even more disappointing? How the endings are pretty weak for various reasons is better detailed in the folder above this one, but EVEN if you wanna argue that was the point, that the writers wanted this jerk to come off as hopelessly and pointlessly wrong and so stuck in its own ways it has completely ignored the fact his own stated motivations don't apply anymore, the fact they expect you to just go along with it instead of being allowed to call him on it is just awful, and makes it come across from a narrative standpoint as if we are meant to take everything he says at face value.
  • Yes, let's use logic. Logically, the Geth have committed near-GENOCIDE by reducing the previously booming Quarian spacefaring culture down to a population that three centuries later is barely holding at a level that wouldn't fill many Earth cities. That's an entire race down to the same population, roughly, as the current 21st-Century city of Chongqing in China. Only a few million more than live in Los Angeles. Now, if this happened to humanity (six BILLION down to 17 MILLION), this would be classed as genocide. Systematic killing designed to reduce the enemy's base population.

Whether the Geth INTENDED to do this or not, the numbers are irrefutable. The Geth have already done exactly what the Catalyst was created to prevent. They destroyed Quarian society, massacred its people...and many Mass Effect 3 detractors think they should be sympathised with. The Quarian-Geth conflict is one where neither side is 'right' or 'wrong'. Like a few people mention in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, the important thing that needs to happen is some kind of peace, an end to the bloodshed. Only then can the two sides understand each other.

• No, the Catalyst is not wrong. You have to look at the time scales involved. And read about the paperclip maximizer. Maybe the Geth are completely benign. Maybe neither the Geth nor EDI will pose any threat. But there are billions of star systems, and during millions of years it is very probable that SOMEONE, somewhere, by mistake, will create an AI which will just turn the whole universe into grey goo. Besides this, the creator of the Catalyst and of the Reapers in the first place was an AI acting as a literal genie. The Leviathan civilization wanted organic life to not die out, and the most optimal solution for this problem was to destroy every organic life which became too intelligent, leaving the undeveloped species to evolve. Maybe not moral by our standards, but neither the Leviathans nor the AI they created were humans.
• This one is made worse by the Illusive Man, especially as a full Paragon. Shepard just talked a completely indoctrinated maniac into accepting that his entire reasons for everything he has done is wrong and convinced him to kill himself to prevent causing further damage. AGAIN. Then a few minutes later he doesn't even make the attempt to reason with the being of pure logic, he just takes what it says on faith.
• Well, there is some justification for this. The reason Sheppard can't really argue with the Catalyst is because at the end of the day the Crucible still has to be fired, which will invariably destroy the mass relay network. The Catalyst itself has no direct power over the Reapers, as they are it's autonomous creations, so even if Sheppard managed to convince it that it's logic is flawed he would still have to choose in what way to fire the Crucible. Also, the Catalyst already realized that it's logic no longer applies when the first organic ever reached it, marking an unprecedented occurrence in the Cycle. The Catalyst is not omnipotent and the crappy options that Sheppard is presented with are the only ones that were within the Catalyst's immediate capabilities to offer. Why the writers thought that setting up a situation like this is a good idea, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely...
• Correction: The Catalyst decided its solution no longer applied.
• Not sure where the idea that he created the reapers and they are autonomous comes from, the only explanation he gives for his identity is "I control the Reapers."
• It says it created the cycle so, by extension, we can assume that it created the agents that perpetuate the cycle.
• It still stands that he flat out states that he controls the Reapers, so he should be able to just stop them, or blow them up, or make them kill each other. He probably does give them the ability to work by themselves, while the final decision on things is up to him. No real explanation is given to why he is being such a Jerkass. It also still stands that if the citadel is sentient, why he didn't just do Sovereign's job for him.
• About this sixth objection, your problem is that you're looking at the situation too narrowly, as EDI explains. Regarding the Geth rebellion, she says that drawing conclusions from it is unwise because you only have a sample size of one society, and you cannot draw a general conclusion from that, period. Shepard didn't argue against the Catalyst using the Geth as an example because Shepard already knew that this principle would be the rebuttal. The Catalyst never claimed that the Geth would bring devastation to organic life in the galaxy, only that some synthetic race would eventually do it.

Delayed cycle

• If there was an entity that controlled the reapers and was aware of the outside world, then how was the cycle delayed? Wouldn't it be aware to that something had gone wrong and do the things Sovereign couldn't do in Mass Effect 1? And by extension, if the Catalyst controlled the Reapers then what was the need for them to be sentient and autonomous?
  • Fail safe so that if the citadel was ever tampered with (which it was) they'd carry out the cycles anyway.
  • The Catalyst also points out, (and this goes for other questions that boil down to "why didn't the Catalyst just solve all the Reaper's problems in the games) that it's not married to the Reaper "solution." It simply wants to find one. The Reapers have worked so far, but if it constantly has to clean up their messes, then it's not a viable solution. The Reapers should be capable of solving their own difficulties if they are the solution it's been looking for. If not, then it'll come up with a new one.
  • In addition to being a Perfect Solution Fallacy, that's not consistent with everything else it does. The Reapers may not be a flawless solution, but they're by far more efficient than everything else the Catalyst has tried aside from synthesis. And synthesis, apparently, wouldn't have worked unless organics were "ready" for it. However, it never explains what the criteria for readiness are, and remember that the entire point of the cycle was so that no civilisation could grow inherently more powerful or advanced than the ones before them. And despite the Catalyst saying that this cycle, for some inexplicable reason, is "ready" for synthesis, it wasn't even going to try the solution until we forced it to with the Crucible.
  • We actually do know the Catalyst's criteria. The Catalyst defines organic life as being "ready" for synthesis when it becomes strong/intelligent/diverse/united/etc. enough that it can overcome the Reapers enough to dock the Crucible with the Citadel and fire it. The extinction cycle itself is the test; he explicitly states that a new solution is now an option because Shepard is standing there talking to him, rather than galactic life being wiped out effortlessly and the next cycle beginning. That entire conversation is the Catalyst saying, "Congratulations, you have passed the test. Let me explain to you the problem that I made the Reapers to solve. Then I will explain to you the solutions I have conceived of for that problem. Because you have passed the test, you have earned the right to select a solution to replace mine." He's not saying, "The galaxy is ready for Synthesis, so now that you're here, I'm going to chuck you into the Magic Synthesis Machine and do Synthesis." He's passing the torch to Shepard, which means it's Shepard's choice to decide if the galaxy is ready for Synthesis or not, or even if it ever should be. The Catalyst thinks yes because Shepard was able to be standing there in the room talking to him, and was able to do so while defending the Crucible against the overwhelming might of the Reapers well enough and long enough that it managed to dock with all its functionality intact, but it's still up to Shepard to actually decide the fate of the galaxy.
  • The Leviathan DLC all but outright says that the Catalyst is looking for something in its cycles, and that it won't stop the cycle until it finds it. Considering that the Catalyst allows Shepard three options to stop the cycle when Shepard reaches it, it is pretty clear that Shepard managed to fulfil some sort of criteria to be allowed to talk to it. If the Catalyst just wanted to stop Shepard, all it had to do was just not turn the elevator on in the first place. Most likely, destroying - or attempting to destroy - the Crucible is just a standard part of the cycle. it fits with the behaviour pattern of the Catalyst.
  • Why does the Catalyst think that organics are ready for synthesis? Maybe because the organic synthetic hybrid standing before him. You know...Shepard.

Definition of synthetic life

• In one of the three endings all synthetic life in the galaxy is destroyed. The problem is, how do you define "synthetic life" as a concept? The Reapers function in a manner extremely different from the geth, and both bear only passing resemblance to EDI's architecture. So are we to infer that this ending destroys, not just A.I.s, but also V Is, computers, pocket calculators and coffee makers? The Catalyst may be hyperintelligent, but it's doubtful it can direct the signal individually to every sentient synthetic in existence; there must be collateral damage.
  • Not only that, but if the Catalyst could target any synthetic life-form, why couldn't Shepard brow-beat it into targeting the Reapers and only the Reapers, making the "Destroy" option much more appealing?
  • Brow beat it how? The Catalyst holds the cards, and it knows that. It wants Shepard to destroy all synthetic life. Its in a dominant position and is no more susceptible to persuasion than any Reaper.
  • How about the fact he wouldn't need to brow beat it, since the Reapers have been established to have their own unique code then any other synthetic life thus far. It's like comparing a cell phone from today to the very first cell phone ever created, the Reapers are just a super duper advanced computer program. But a distinctly different program from all others none the less. This has been established so many times throughout the series it isn't even funny how huge a plot hole it rips open in these endings. If this Catalyst has the ability to rewrite DNA, it can specifically target Reaper code instead of just a broad sweeping encompass of all synthetic life! This is especially glaring considering that if you don't have enough war assets, it ends up wiping out organic AND synthetic life, meaning apparently if you have enough war points the thing could be specific enough to only target synthetic life, but you'll never have enough to only target the Reapers. In a word: Bullshit!
  • You're missing the point. Yes, the Cataylst can be that specific. But it doesn't have to, and it doesn't need to. Its pretty much in complete control of the situation. Shepard has to play its game, and as annoying as that is, that's the situation Shepard is in at that point.
  • The Catalyst never gave off the impression that it was attempting to be that controlling - rather it more or less said "Hey, here are your options. Pick." and left it at that (Yes, Shepard could have enquired further and gotten more out of it but that's a whole other issue). At that point, the Catalyst very much seemed like it'd do whatever Shepard asked, up to and including having the Reapers bugger off and letting life continue, potential-future-synthetic-war and all (the complete opposite of its dedicated function) as it fully admitted its way wasn't going to work anymore. So if as you say it could be that specific, there's no reason to see why it wouldn't have been.
  • The Catalyst isn't trying to save humanity; it's trying to find a new solution to the problem it was created to solve, preserving organic life from destruction by synthetic life. Its goals and Shepards goals match that far, at least, but they are not the same. Destroying the Reapers alone wouldn't progress towards its goal of preserving organic life in the least, so it's not an option it will pursue.
  • Well, all synthetic life in this cycle seems to have a "touch" of Reaper anyways. EDI was made by improving the Luna AI with Reaper tech, the Geth get Reaper upgrades... I wouldn't be surprised if even Shepard had a little Reaper tech in him, from the Lazarus Project.
  • And yet Shepard can survive. Insert sarcastic remark here.
  • Shepard can survive because s/he's organic. The synthetics Miranda stuck in him/her were put there to get his/her systems running and stable again. Well, s/he's up and stable again, EDI will even mention his/her brain is entirely organic and Dr. Chakwas never mentions any of his/her internal organs being reliant on the implants. They enhance him, s/he's no longer dependant on them.
  • "A stubborn enough person can survive just about anything."
  • The Catalyst can control the Reapers; we know that because he says it and you take control of them in the "Control" ending. If having some Reaper code made you the same as the Reapers, then he should be able to control the Geth and EDI as well. As he can't (and Shepard doesn't, in "Control"), we know that there is something differentiating the various synthetics. So how exactly does unleashing the Catalyst destroy all synthetics? It isn't some sort of EMP wave, because non-sentient technology—even that influenced by Reaper tech, like the Normandy—is just fine. Either the Catalyst can differentiate between synthetics but just doesn't (possible, but frustrating as Shepard can't even try and argue the point), or else this is just forced into the "Destroy" ending to make it seem less obviously the correct choice. I'm going with the latter.
  • You aren't flipping a switch or pulling a trigger; the destruction ending is shooting a pipe and blowing something up. You are causing a catastrophic failure in the catalyst/cruicible; what you're doing is not an intended design mechanism. The fact that it is as targeted as it is (synthetics) is nothing short of a miracle.
  • The Extended Cut makes it more clear: the Catalyst cannot specifically target the Reapers and only the Reapers. Not "will not", "can not". The Catalyst also notes that there will indeed be collateral damage from the pulse: VI's and non-sentient computer equipment will be affected as well, at least to some extent. The Catalyst does reassure Shepard that although the damage will be widespread, organic civilisation is at a point now where they can rebuild and recover from that relatively easily.
  • But the Crucible itself has Assets TELLING YOU that were designed to identify Reapers to the point of being able to know where they are in real time. http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/War_Assets/Crucible Search in "Interferometric Array". So if the Crucible KNOWS what is a Reaper or not, how come The Catalyst don't? or how come that even with this asset the Crucible STILL kills all other synthetic life with the Reapers included? Shouldn't the writers have made a scene or show on gameplay how, along the Reapers, EDI and the GETH are shown on the map in real time? after all, they have Reaper Code in them, and that would have warned us about the possibility of the Crucible killing our friends. Hell, if there was a moment in the game where we could have discussed with our synthetic friends about the possibility of being destroyed by the Crucible BECAUSE of their Reaper code, that would have prepared the audience for the endings.
  • The unfortunate fact (and the Catalyst even says as much) is that something was screwed up in the building of the Crucible which meant it would not distinguish between Reaper Synthetics and Non-Reaper Synthetics. It would target every synthetic lifeform. And at that point, it was a bit too late to fix that unfortunate problem.

Leviathan DLC

• From a storytelling perspective, what I don't understand is why Leviathan was DLC instead of being in the core game? I know they wanted to get as much money from this game as possible. But in all fairness, the DLC foreshadows a nice bit of the ending. Might have made things a bit more bearable when we reached the end, Bioware...
  • Leviathan really isn't necessary. It gives us a bit more detail on the big picture but we already had that picture from the endings. It was left out for the same reason the Extended Cut had to be made, because they underestimated how much explanation we needed to be satisfied with the story. What do we even learn that's new? We already knew the Reapers were created to preserve organic life from synthetics, we already knew they were controlled by the Catalyst and we already knew things had gone differently than the original creators intended. Leviathan is nothing more than flavouring, pleasant but unnecessary.
  • Leviathan was DLC because DLC generally tends to be content that is developed during the regular development process but is not ready to be attached to the finished product by content release dates - dates which are usually out of the development studio's role. It would have been nice if Leviathan was a clean component of the core game, but Bioware had to release the game without it and finish it up post-release.
  • PROTIP: DLC written after the release of the base game isn't foreshadowing. It's just retroactive plotting, especially in an instance such as this. Not only that, but it unintentionally makes the ending out to be even more silly by implying that the Catalyst is just a flawed AI that's a stopgap solution which doesn't really work. In light of that information, Shepard's refusal or unwillingness (regardless of his/her blood loss and circumstances) to call it out on its faulty logic becomes even more absurd.
    • 'Faulty logic' is continually cited by people that don't seem to actually understand that logic has no emotional connection. It's also explained in Leviathan that the Catalyst was programmed with a couple of truths: that conflict between Synthetics and Organics was not just bad, but INEVITABLE, and that IT needed to find a solution to this inevitable situation. One of its first conclusions on analysing the problem and the galaxy is: Remove the current empire, who are still not taking active steps to prevent the conflict; they are delegating the decision rather than trying to come up with solutions. They must, therefore, be removed from the equation.' The Catalyst then comes to the conclusion that they must also be preserved, and creates a Reaper to do just that. Later, it would devise methods (the Mass Relays, the Citadel, more Reapers) to accelerate the cycle in the hope that in one of them, a potential solution (other than the current Reaper cycles) would present itself.

None of that is faulty logic. The Catalyst is doing what it was programmed to do. It was given a terrible, potentially impossible job to do.Also, the Geth/Quarian peace does not 'prove' the Catalyst wrong. The conflict has already happened (and reduced the Quarians from a spacefaring population of billions to that of a large city). Making peace AFTER the machine uprising does not help solve the problem of the uprising HAPPENING IN THE FIRST PLACE.

• It seems that the game was pushed out early. Of course that raises plenty of questions about making people pay extra for content vital to figuring out what the heck is going on, but that's another matter.
• Well it was in no way vital, as stated above, we don't really learn anything new from the Leviathan DLC other than giant organic squids made the AI and Reapers are modelled from them.

Repairing the relays

• In the Control and Synthesis endings, the Reapers repair the damage to the mass relays. Makes sense. They built the things. But, in the Destroy ending, the other races of the galaxy do the job of repairing them instead. Um, how? The Codex clearly says that they do not completely know how the relays function, and they don't even know what the things are MADE of. It's like expecting a cave man to rebuild a Space Shuttle. How do they actually rebuild the relays when they know almost nothing about them?
  • Most of the reason nobody knows anything about the relays is because researching them (or interfering with them in any way beyond their intended use) is forbidden by Council law. Once they're damaged, one would imagine that law would get overturned in a hurry for the sake of repairing them. Furthermore, I think you are overestimating just how advanced the relays are. The Reapers move in to harvest once intelligent life progresses far enough that they have a chance at understanding the relays. The Protheans, in the previous cycle, built their own relay in the form of the Conduit. It would take a while longer while they researched, but there's no reason they couldn't rebuild the relays given sufficient time.
  • I think you're confusing the laws regarding interfering with the Keepers with interfering with the Relays. There's no law against researching or interfering with the operations of the relays. The reason why no one knows much about the Relays is because the Relays quantum-lock themselves to prevent damage, which also interferes with research.
  • The reason why no one ever seriously researched relays was because of an "it ain't broke so don't fix it" philosophy and just general complacency. Remember that Cool Old Lady Aethyta was laughed off Thessia for suggesting that the asari research mass relays and build new ones - that is how stuck in their ways everyone is. Now that the relays have been damaged, there is suddenly a great deal of incentive to learn how these things tick.

Hyperevolved races

• If you think about it, the Reapers are taking a huge gamble between cycles. There is always the possibility of a civilisation (or a combination of them) hyper-evolving to become powerful enough to actually destroy the Reapers in one fell swoop once they return to the galaxy, even without the use of the Crucible. If that happened, the Reapers would be pretty much screwed over. And of course, there's always the possibility of an invasion from another galaxy, which could completely take the Reapers by surprise as well. Hey, there are enough other galaxies to go around for that scenario.
  • That's the entire reason why they have Sovereign present in the first place. In the event that a species is advancing faster than they expect, he can trigger the invasion early. 50,000 years isn't a hard-and-fast rule on the cycle. It's passing a particular technological milestone that triggers the reaping.
  • There's also the question of what exactly 'hyper-evolving' means. 50,000 years proscribes the time allotted to each galactic civilisation, and has been put in place along with the relays to move the development of those civilisations 'along the paths we desire'. There's probably not much chance of any Sufficiently Advanced technology being developed enough to challenge the Reapers, since said technology is based on theirs anyway. There are always aberrations - the species that destroyed the Reaper you visit in Mass Effect 2, for example.
  • If 'hyper-evolved' race would arise, being able to destroy full-scale Reaper invasion, without creating synthetic life and going into full-scale anti-synthetic war, it's not "Reapers screwed out". It's "mission accomplished, thanks to everybody, let's unlock archives to this guys and go to rest".
  • The Leviathans are depicted as having been that hyper-evolved race that can actually disable a Reaper capital ship with enough of them working together, and they still lost back in the first cycle. While the Catalyst did apparently have the element of surprise on its side, if even they couldn't beat it back when it was just using an army of grunt pawns rather than Reapers to fight, the odds of any species evolving enough in such a limited time window of 50,000 years to beat them now is statistically impossible.

Extended Cut space elevator

• So in the Extended Cut by the space elevator, we discover that your squad mates survive by you calling in the Normandy to pick them up. Well that's all well and good until you realise that Harbinger is just hovering there doing nothing. So why doesn't he take advantage of your ship, you and your crew, the very things that have been messing up the Reapers plans for years are just sitting there and attack it? The Normandy is there for more than enough time to blow it up, killing you and everyone else and guaranteeing Reaper victory. There is little logic in him doing nothing in this situation.
  • Looking closely reveals Harbinger's cannons are not visible. It was probably prioritising all the people making a mad dash to the conduit over the ship with both a state-of-the-art stealth drive and a Reaper IFF that wasn't actually attempting to make it to the conduit.
  • The reaper IFF is a really good point. When you're not making a spectacle of yourself (pinging planets), is there any time in Mass Effect 3 where the reapers actually shoot at the Normandy?
  • On the subject of the Normandy's pick-up, if you talk to EDI by the shuttle bay in the second game, she will say that the reason the SR-2 needs a shuttle is that it can't get as close to the surface of planets as the SR-1 could. But here, the ship practically touches down. (Also, if it could do that the whole time, why the heck did we have to make the trench run in the first place?!)
  • Perhaps it was a limitation of the technology of the time? The Normandy has been going through like 6 months of retrofits by that time.
  • The SR-2 massiveness makes it incapable of landing on high-gravity or small worlds, not any world. That's stated in the Codex. And did you forget that the Normandy was dry-docked on Earth for the retrofits, in first place? And that it literally comes guns-blazing to rescue you at the end of the prologue?

Destroy ending

• I have two problems with the Destroy ending:
  • Why does Shepard keep walking towards the obviously exploding capacitor-thing? The range isn't that bad on a pistol; s/he could have easily stood back a safe distance once it became apparent that it was going to explode and shot it from there.
  • It's implied at a couple of points that Shepard has developed some Death Seeker tendencies.
  • Death Seeker tendencies aside : just a few minutes before this Shepard was at least grazed by one of Harbinger's main cannons, shot by a Marauder, bounced around some steel walls upon landing in the Citadel, and had fallen unconscious from blood loss and various traumas. Also, do you remember just how difficult it was to take those last shots even before all that happened to the Commander? At that moment, Shepard is pretty much physically incapable of making a pistol shot at anything but point blank range.
  • Agreed, I have used a pistol myself at a target range; it is more difficult to consistently aim than it appears (and this was in ideal conditions and I was perfectly healthy). The Commander is injured/shot/exhausted, so holding the pistol properly AND accurately in those conditions would be quite difficult.
  • How exactly does the Crucible destroy all synthetic life? It makes sense that EDI would be affected seeing as she was partially built using Reaper tech and could conceivably be susceptible. And then there's the Catalyst's remark about Shepard being partly synthetic. No s/he's not. Unless all advanced technology is affected; in which case, all of galactic civilisation would have gone boom.
  • As pointed out in Brilliance Part 1, all synthetic life is built based on Reaper technology, however distant the apparent connection. As such, any true synthetic life will bear sufficient similarities to the Reapers to be affected as well.
  • No, Shepard is partially synthetic. The cybernetic parts that make up his/her body when she was rebuilt from the shattered remains of a chunk of burnt meat and tubes make him/her "partially" synthetic. The Destroy ending indicates that the Crucible is a targeted weapons system capable of freely discerning between definitions of "synthetic" and "organic" and between what is actually intelligent and what is simply machinery.
  • Is there something else than Fan Wank to back this up though?
  • Well we do know from the Catalyst that Shepard is "partly synthetic", which presumably means whatever the heck Cerberus did to bring Shepard back to life. For how the Crucible can tell the difference between machines and organic life and a synthetic life form... well space magic is unfortunately the only explanation since from what we saw the red wave of energy could somehow vaporise Husks while leaving humans and their equipment completely unharmed.
  • The extent to which the Crucible only destroys AI life vs destroying all technology is a function of your EMS number. The lower it is, the more damage the Crucible takes and the more indiscriminate it becomes. That also applies to Shepard's on-board cybernetics - a damaged Crucible fries all of them, killing Shepard, while a relatively undamaged Crucible only fries a few, allowing Shepard to survive. So presumably, while EDI is gone, Glyph is still functional with high enough EMS. The Geth are goners because they used Reaper code to upgrade from VI to AI, so it remains to be seen if they just devolved back to being pre-Morning War VI programs with high enough EMS.

Normandy Crew Memorial Scene

• Extended Cut adds a scene of the Normandy crew having a sort of impromptu memorial for Shepard, with their LI putting their nameplate on the memorial wall above Anderson's. However, the Normandy is currently stranded on some distant world, potentially with the mass relays destroyed (or at least damaged) and at least in the Destroy ending, communications between systems are down. So how did they know Anderson died in the first place? Now, consider the outcome where Shepard lives: choosing Destroy with a high enough EMS score. In this case, Shepard's LI chooses to hold onto the nameplate, implying they believe Shepard isn't really dead. They were about to put it up, though, which means crew isn't really sure either way. Let's say they do manage to communicate with the Alliance, who passes along the information that Anderson didn't make it—that means Anderson's body must have been recovered by the Alliance or some ally force. In that case, shouldn't they also have recovered Shepard, who wasn't too far away, and thus communicated that Shepard is still alive as well?
  • Most likely they were GUESSING that both Anderson and Shep had bit the dust at the same time. For sentimental reasons the crew figured if anyone was going to put Shepard's name on the wall it should be the LI since they'd miss Shepard the most.
  • It's also possible that the funeral scene takes place after the Normandy took off from the jungle planet and was just shown first, so the game could end on a nice shot of the Normandy flying away. This is backed up by the LI not putting Shepard's nameplate up if you pick Destroy and have a high enough EMS for Shepard to live. Likely they had the nameplates made at the same time, but received a message either from Shepard or someone who found them that they had survived the blast.
  • The radio link between Hackett and Shepard was still working moments before Shepard meets the Catalyst. So it's possible it was working throughout their conversation, and that everything that happened on the Citadel was recorded. Therefore the Alliance knows Anderson is dead, and if Shepard chose Control or Synthesis, they know that this lead to her/his physical death, as the recording has the Catalyst saying s/he would die. Once the Normandy gets its communications working, Hackett relays all this information to them, and they put the names of Anderson and Shepard on the memorial wall. With the Destroy ending, the recording doesn't confirm whether Shepard died or not... But if your War Asset rating is low enough, the Citadel gets so badly damaged that the LI knows Shepard couldn't have survived that, so s/he places Shepard's nameplate on the memorial wall. However with a high enough War Asset rating, the Citadel isn't as badly damaged, so the LI chooses to believe Shepard could have survived and refuses to put her/his name on the wall.

Reaper Archived Civilizations

So, the top EMS Synthetic ending states that the Reapers "now bring us the collective knowledge of the cultures that came before". While all we see of the Reapers during the post-Synthesis part of the ending is them tentacle legging around and repairing stuff, this brings up a lot of questions; what happens with those cultures? Aside from presumably technology and genetics, what did the Reapers archive about these culture? Art, habits, history, media, and other actual culture stuff? Do the Reapers recreate some of the individuals that made up a given culture? If so, as adults or infants to be raised with in the new galactic society? Were individual consciences preserved, and if so how messed up must they be since their last experience was getting harvested? Do they get to reclaim whatever is left of their home worlds/systems? Does the galactic community get answers to oddities like the Forbidden Planet Mass Effect?Was every Reaper killed a civilization lost? Or does it all stay in a given Reaper, a library rather than another shot at existing for those cultures?

How does synthesis bring about peace?

• So, do wars stop happening for reasons other than "We think at the speed of light and you don't?"
  • Supposedly, organics won't need to build A.I.s to think faster/better than they do, and synthetics will gain an "understanding" of synthetics. It's very vague and, if you ask me, outright impossible.
  • Synthesis brings peace between organics and synthetics, but it's just because now there are only hybrids. While hybrids can still go to war against themselves, after the Reaper War and with the Reapers helping everyone, it's doubtful there will be conflicts (provided that Wrev is dead) involving more than two races. After that, the Reapers will help ascend the galaxy with their information and stuff, so everyone supposedly culturally "evolves" beyond war after a while.
  • Synthesis won't bring about total peace, though being able to readily communicate will help avoid misunderstandings that lead to a lot of conflicts that ultimately lead to war. However, Synthesis will stop the Reapers from attacking and bring peace with them, which is the most relevant thing for Shepard at the moment.
  • Synthesis gives organics and synthetics an improved perspective on one another, a glimpse to how the other side thinks. But what really establishes the preventation of total war between synthetics and organics is that there is no absolute way to classify synthetic apart from organic, any more. Even if another Robot Rebellion does happen, the rebels won't perceive other species of the cosmos as the same as their former masters. None of this means that Synthesis brings an absolute peace, but it does prevent a galaxy-wide conflict from happening.
  • Synthetic life is simply any form of life that is artificially created. It's not just the geth, or even just robots. It's any machine, any clone, anything that can act semi-autonomously. The flaw with Synthesis is that it assumes that "synthetic life" is one race, but it's not. Understanding the way the geth think won't help you understand a new race of synthetics. And as long as every being in the universe isn't a god, they'll continue to create synthetics, as there will always be something you can build that does something you can't. In that respect, Synthesis completely fails to solve the problem. Just because everyone is glowing green now doesn't mean that they're automatically fully capable of doing anything. Who's to say that a new race of synthetics that these new synthetic/organic hybrids create will think differently? Will these new synthetics even be like the old synthetics in any way? Will they be completely understanding of organics too, even though they weren't around when the Crucible fired? None of it makes sense, and the only change that's actually made is that everyone's a cyborg now. But I think that's the point; remember, the only one who says Synthesis will bring peace is the Catalyst, the AI who thought that the Reapers were a viable solution, and the same AI who slaughtered his own creators and is the main villain.
  • The Catalyst's thinking (as he sort of explains it) seems to be this - synthetics never understand organics because organic species are naturally occurring 'flukes' in the universe, while synthetics are always created with an intent. Synthetics never wonder why they exist, so they rarely doubt themselves or their purposes in life. It doesn't make a lot of sense, because by that thinking, Grunt is psychologically synthetic. But running with this, it seems Catalyst believes that combining synthetics and organics will impart a synthetic sense of 'order' on the organics and remove the misunderstanding, while fulfilling its, uh, stated mission of 'preserving' organic life. It's a very flawed solution, just like the Reapers, but the Catalyst can't see it because it's got its holographic heart set on the idea that imposing synthetic order on organic chaos is the only way to end the ultimate destruction of all organic life at the hands of synthetics. I mean imagine if your enemies plugged in a device that could either destroy you, brainwash you, or do an incredibly seamless job of the work you've been attempting to perfect for millenia. Which option would you try and sell?

Why no first name in Shepard's memorial?

• This would have been a perfect opportunity to feature Shepard's first name on screen for the first time in the franchise, but for some reason it wasn't taken. Why, Bioware, why?
  • Because all of the ending cutscenes were premade. It's a technical issue.
  • I dunno, the memorial scene looks to be done in-engine (unlike the preceding cutscenes), so theoretically it would have possible. It seems like Bioware either got lazy about this little detail or, as the below troper said, went with the whole "Shepard is Shepard" thing (which is even lampshaded somewhat if you have the drink with Chakwas)
  • The entire franchise built up to Shepard being an almost religious figure to the point they actually named him Shepard. It isn't the memorial of John Shepard, Alliance Soldier, it's the memorial of the Shepard, savior of the galaxy.
  • Dr. Chakwas said it best: To refer to Shepard on a first name basis would be disrespectful of everything s/he is and everything s/he's done. Or it's just a woman's prerogative. Either way, Commander Shepard is, and always will be, never referred to as anyone but "Commander Shepard."
  • Yes, that cutscene is not pre-rendered, it's actually in-game. It was necessary so that it would accurately show your surviving squadmates and the names on the memorial plaques. The MEHEM developers actually took advantage of it to insert Shepard into that scene.
  • Easy solution: Name your Shepard Commander. This is a joke but I actually did do this. Obviously I'm not suggesting everyone do it.

How does Synthesis make any sense?

• I have several issues with Synthesis(including in the Extended Cut).
  • Just for starters is that Shepard must leap into a giant beam of energy. Why? Originally the Catalyst stated this was to create a new DNA, that was scrapped in favour of "spreading your energy." What the hell? What does that even mean? While DNA doesn't make any sense, at least it did not dive headlong into magic.
  • It splices Shepard's entire biology, including the synthetic components, into this one information burst. It's pretty clear that the Catalyst is trying to explain something absurdly complicated in a few minutes to someone with no understanding of the forces involved. Don't take it too literally.
  • Pretty big YMMV on that being "pretty clear". It seemed more like Bioware was banking on some hypothetical Clarke corollary, like "any insufficiently described magic in a scifi setting is maybe technology after all?"
  • Merging synthetics and organics. At the Cellular level. In one giant wave. All life. Doesn't that seem totally impossible, even by Reaper tech standards? If they had that kind of power, it seems kind of mundane to have guns that shoot metal at relativistic speeds. All life being different should be a problem too. In-universe humans are stated to be very diverse genetically, then you have at least a dozen other different types of spacefaring aliens, then animals, then things like plankton , then bacteria and every single one is morphed.
  • The Catalyst is even more advanced than the Reapers themselves. It has perfected energy-matter conversion. In Real Life various kinds of radiation affect physical matter in different ways. While it's extremely improbable and difficult to conceive, it can be imagined that a radiation could be attuned to to certain information-content that would alter matter in extremely specific way. Especially in a world like Mass Effect's, which frankly is not nearly as realistic as people seem to imagine. Space Magic started the very moment the Beacon on Eden Prime imprinted images into Shepard's mind.
  • "Space magic" technically started right when the Normandy reached the first Mass Relay. But that's sci-fi in general; no matter what name you pin to your sci-fi phlebotinum, it is for all intents and purposes "space magic." (this is why the cries of "space magic!" have always annoyed me; any sci-fi that isn't ultra-hard uses space magic, whether the fans admit it or not.)
  • That's entirely different. The ability to have FTL travel, high tech guns, etc. came from a phlebotinum, yes, but one that the entire series was built on. From the first game, the material 'mass effect' was shaping the way the galaxy worked. It was a major, if not the main, element in this universe. Synthesis, on the other hand, literally tells you in the last five minutes that you can individually rewrite the DNA of every single being in the galaxy, using technology that's never explained, comes out of nowhere, and was never seen before the last five minutes. That's why it's called "space magic".
  • Except that the Reapers and the technology surrounding them has also never been explained. How precisely the huskification process, indoctrination, and their power generation system operates, let alone how they're able to turn organics into Reapers, is never explained. It's just there in the setting. We've always known that their technology was so powerful that it was virtually magical even from the perspectives of the technologically-advanced societies of the setting. If one is willing to accept the Reapers' hyper-advanced technology, then I see no reason why one should object to the hyper-advanced technology of the Catalyst itself. It's all space magic.
  • Not to mention the Prothean Beacons, and the Protheans' ability to read their environments for past events, the rachni song and the Thorian's connection to its creepers reaching over interstellar distances faster than the speed of light (Samantha Traynor actually brings attention to the former), and a number of other things left almost or completely unexplained. They are supposed to signify that there are still unexplored mysteries in the cosmos, and give a sense of wonder to the player.
  • It doesn't matter how many unexplained mysteries you have in your story—all of it has to fit under Willing Suspension of Disbelief. When you're dealing with something important to the overall conflict of the story, you have to explain it.
  • The Prothean Beacon and the Prothean Cipher were vitally important parts to the series' plot. How many people are complaining that those never got explained?
  • That comparison doesn't work. The Prothean Beacons and Cipher do not resolve the entire conflict of the series. The Crucible does. What you're saying is that if Batman saves the day by suddenly jumping into the air and flying with no explanation, we should accept it because Superman can fly and it's never explained. That's ridiculous. The two situations are not the same.
  • If Shepard did not have the Prothean Cipher, the galaxy would have been doomed in the first game! It resolves the entire conflict in the first game of the series, which could have been the only one under different circumstances. The two situations are very much the same. And the Synthesis is still not unexplained; its details are just left deliberately mysterious to emphasize the power and intelligence that the Catalyst holds. It's in no way similar to your superhero argument; that could only apply if Batman was an entirely new character in the story whose abilities have never been explored or limited by previous stories.
  • It doesn't resolve the conflict. It only answers one question: what is Saren after. That's it. It doesn't get rid of Saren for you. It doesn't end the war with the Reapers. It doesn't create eternal life and fairy magic and all that other stuff like the Crucible does. And the Batman comparison still stands. Batman's entire schtick is that his money and training make him prepared for many unlikely events. Part of what makes him work is that not all of his achievements are explained. For example, Stealth Hi/Bye. How does he manage to sneak up on Superman or other characters with Super-Senses? Never explained. So by your logic, that makes it okay for for him to fly or suddenly appear on the moon without a spacesuit.
  • Crucible does not create "eternal life" or "fairy magic". Life-extension is something that people must discover for themselves; Synthesis only helps them to reach insight to this matter. The principles of Synthesis are already explained, if you don't accept the explanation, it's only your problem. And the Batman comparison does not stand at all because there is no "Batman" in the original example. There is no previously established power level for the Catalyst as you seem to be bent on insisting.
  • No kidding. The entire reason it's posted here is because if so many people can poke holes in its logic, it fails. If you don't think so, then that's your problem as well.
  • The Reapers morph too. The reapers have been stated several times to be synthetic and organic, the most notable occasion is at the end of Mass Effect 2, during The Reveal of the human Reaper. So how and why do they morph if they are already at that state, they're made out of organic beings, but synthetic enough to jack into the geth consensus and control them.
  • Because Synthesis doesn't just make life-forms half synthetic/organic. It imprints a part of Shepard's essence into them, and gives new perspectives to all life-forms, the Reapers included.
  • The Reapers do a full 180. Going directly from murdering everyone with giant laser beams to rebuilding everything and sharing their entire archive of collected knowledge. Why? It did not seem like they were ever what you would describe as "friendly", especially considering Sovereign and Harbinger.
  • They're not friendly or malevolent. They're stuck within certain parameters they've been programmed into. When the variables change, they are forced to draw new conclusions. Remember that their ultimate purpose is to preserve all life? They just alter the strategy to that end.
  • Everyone simply accepts the Reapers help. Even though just a short while ago they were annihilating everyone and performing horrible experiments on them, changing them into nightmarish creatures. Why would they simply say "Sure, help." I would expect a violent response, or at least a "Get the hell out of our galaxy." In the middle of world war 2, Hitler didn't suddenly stop everything and join up with everyone. Not a perfect example but i think you get my point.
  • Say they did say "get the hell out of our galaxy," and the Reapers say "no we will help fix the damage we caused," then what does the rest of the galaxy do then? A violent response is out of the question because the Reapers were annihilating them and no one would think it would be a good idea to restart a war right after it ended. The Reapers are still vastly more powerful than the rest of the galaxy, and if they want to help repair the damage they caused, let them do so. The most destructive war the entire cycle had ever seen just ended, I seriously doubt anyone would be stupid enough to restart it.
  • It helps that the Synthesis grants people that all-important expanded perspective. It becomes easier for people to understand that the Reapers don't act out of malice, as arrogant and self-assured as they act, but simply fulfill a purpose they were created for. And if Hitler suddenly had a change of heart in the middle of the WWII, and surrendered, he would have been expected to put the resources of his country to fix the damage he's done. From the perspective of conventional warfare the Reapers can be considered to be a nation that committed war-crimes, and must offer severe reparations to their victims because of them.
  • The Reapers ARE arrogant. Every single conversation with a reaper it has said how awesome and unstoppable they are. This "expanded perspective" doesn't really fit. You would not only have to physically alter every life form in the galaxy, but also change them psychologically, which makes synthesis seem vastly worse. You essentially brainwashed everyone, a bit like indoctrination, just en masse. This just makes it seem even more like you destroy what makes every race unique and make everyone the same. The krogan are brutish, the salarians analytical, the yahg...very angry. Perspective is great, but the whole "reapers as fire" is crap too. No one would buy that. Especially with their own personalities, Harbinger in particular seemed to enjoy his job.
  • But even if that isn't true, the Catalyst's logic still fails because it argues that the Reapers can't be held accountable for their actions because they're only doing what they were programmed to do. So, in other words, its defense is that they weren't killing organic lifeforms . . . they were just getting rid of their free will and forcing them to do what they were reprogrammed to do. That's even worse Insane Troll Logic than we started with!
  • Husks and the rest regain their minds. From the cutscenes, Husks go from mindless killing machines to regaining something of themselves. Shouldn't they all want to kill themselves? They're all horribly deformed monsters. But no one says anything regarding that.
  • Because Synthesis. Expanded perspectives. Also, there is no confirmation that the Husks would regain their old personalities, or even that they'd become sapient. They are just seen losing their aggression. Even if they become sapient, the Reaper alterations would most likely make them different persons entirely — some are even made out of more than one individual!
  • How come we never see any Cyborg Rachni? I wouldn't accept it if they were not shown at all in the ending...oh wait, they're not. Bloody hell, thats an important decision and it ends up equating to a number. I've seen exactly one epilogue slide with the Rachni and they take over tuchanka for some reason.
  • Because there's no reason to assume that they'd be any different from any other races. I didn't see hanar or elcor either, but that doesn't mean that they aren't accounted for.
  • Future races are not really considered, the hyper aggressive Yahg would start a war as soon as they got their hands on advanced technology. They make Krogan look gentle in comparison, being the same would not prevent a galactic war.
  • Everyone is still not the same. But as for the yagh, they're a story for another time. If you think that this was the end of the Mass Effect universe, think again.
  • If everyone isn't the same, then they would not accept the Reaper's help.
  • Exactly what is stopping anyone from making new Ais? The one person who knew the Reapers incredibly circular goal was Shepard. Shepard is dead. Even if the reapers inform everyone(which i doubt the galaxy would find as a good reason for killing all sparefaring races), that does not mean people wouldn't anyway. After all, the Geth happened after a No AI law was passed by the council.
  • Nothing. The Catalyst outright tells you that. What it has to do with Synthesis, I have no idea, however.
  • The creation of synthetics that eventually kill their masters is the sole purpose of using Synthesis in the first place. The Catalyst said that Synthesis made synthetics "understand" organics. But since that presumambly only applies to synthetics that were actually hit by that space magic beam that rewrote everyone's mind and DNA, the "new perspective" will be useless to any future synthetics people create. Which doesn't solve the problem. Who's to say that these new synthetics even think like the old ones? Synthetic is a broad term, and merely refers to anything that is artificially created. The Crucible can't possibly account for them all, including the ones that are made longer after Synthesis occurs.
  • Doesn't matter. Because there is no longer a quantifiable way to separate synthetics and organics from one another on cellular level, an AI may rebel against its masters, but it won't be able to classify all the other organic life into the same category, so there can be no galaxy-wide war of synthetics vs. organics. Not to mention that the Synthesized synthetic races can step in and mediate such a conflict.
  • Yes it does. Because as the Catalyst itself says, the problem isn't some arbitary "category"—it's that some being grow way more powerful than their creators. There's NOTHING stopping that from happening even after Synthesis. A galaxy-wide conflict isn't magically stopped just because everybody's part of the same race.
  • Everybody is still not the part of the same race. But the whole point between a galaxy-wide conflict between organics and synthetics was that one was always profoundly different and alien to the other. That problem has been removed; organics and synthetics are no longer alien to each other. That's why an all out war between the two is no longer a possibility. Also remember that the Catalyst explained that the conflict stemmed from the organics' drive to create something superior to themselves. There's no more fear of that, since Synthesis indicates a transhuman future where organics can be upgraded and altered just as synthetics can. So the synthetics won't surpass the organics in a manner that they would see as threatening, any more.
  • No, being "alien" had nothing to do with it. As the Catalyst said, the problem was about the Created that grew more powerful than their Creators. That has nothing to do with alienness or lack of understanding. And there's no longer anyone superior to anyone else? That also fails, because that would mean that everyone is God and has no weaknesses. Did you see Joker still limping after the Normandy crash like everybody else? That means he STILL has Vrolik's syndrome. Did you see the krogan having a baby in the EC stills? Then that means organics STILL have to go through childhood. So the whole "nobody is superior" argument is nonsense, because the ending itself PROVES that weaknesses still exist. And as long as weaknesses exist, people will need to build something superior to overcome them. So that logic doesn't work.
  • Remember EDI's narration, which states that all life may soon overcome the boundaries of mortality itself. Yes, weaknesses exist at the ending, for both organics and synthetics. But now they have the ability to overcome those weaknesses in ways they previously were not capable of. If you imagined that I claimed that Synthesis instantly made everybody into immortal superbeings, you were not paying much attention. No species is superior any more, because they all can be upgraded. For individuals, it's a matter of choice.
  • EDI's narration says a lot but says nothing at the same time. What does overcoming mortality even mean? "Mortality" is just a catch-all term for change. Does nothing ever change anymore? For example, they create a new SR 3 Normandy—does that mean the old Normandy is obsolete? And let's assume that they find a new energy source even more powerful than Element Zero. Does that mean all the tech that runs on eezo has to be decommissioned? If so, it's not immortal. It's incredibly vague and explains why the "can be upgraded" argument still fails. You know what else can be upgraded? All of these things. They're also "immortal" in the sense that with upkeep, they could potentially run forever. Does that mean they're all equally powerful, or that none of them have weaknesses? Of-freaking-course-not, because that's logically impossible unless you ham-fist it.
  • If organics can be upgraded just as easily as synthetics, then synthetics can no longer overcome organics with their superior ability of self-directed evolution, like they once could. See the principles of Transhumanism to find out more.
  • But that's again assuming fairy magic via Easy Logistics. Even synthetics cannot be upgraded "easily". Remember how hard it was for the geth to make one Legion? (To the point that it can't even be replaced if it died in ME2?) Remember how much time and effort it took the Alliance to upgrade the third incarnation of the Normandy? Transhumanism is a concept I'm very familiar with, and it always comes with its own set of problems, which is something that the Synthesis ending seems to forget. For example, you make a guy able to run faster, and you have to solve the problem of where he gets the energy from and how his body withstands the extra force. The entire PROBLEM with the ending is that it's like a child using the word "transhuman" without having a clue about it.
  • It isn't just a problem with A.I.s. That's the thing: Synthesis ultimately fails to actually resolve the problem it was created for. The problem, as stated, is "The created will always rebel against the creator". There are other reasons for such a rebellion than a simple "Organic and synthetic life are ultimately incompatible and doomed to war", and not all "created" are synthetic. Remember the Krogan Rebellions? The Salarians uplifted the Krogan and released them against the Rachni, and the Krogan later turned on the Salarians and declared war. Seems like a profound example of Created v. Creator that has absolutely nothing to do with AI whatsoever. What part of Synthesis prohibits the Krogan from doing this again? You can argue that the Krogan can be reasoned with under Synthesis and convinced not to go to war with the entire galaxy, but by all indications, Wrex was doing exactly that anyways, so Synthesis doesn't actually change the situation one way or the other. The same holds true for Geth and Quarian; just because they "understand each other" doesn't mean that they can't still harbor hurt feelings and mutual distrust that is potentially prone to exploding into violence at the slightest provocation, particularly on the Quarian side. Whether or not they understand where the Geth are coming from, the Quarians can still hate them for driving them from their home planet and forcing them to live in space for hundreds of years, synthesis be damned. The only way that Synthesis can prevent galactic conflict is if it strips emotion from all sapient beings, and from what we are shown, if anything, it actually GIVES emotion to synthetic beings; which means the Geth can now harbor resentment and hatred for the Quarians for their betrayal and their treatment by them, rather than simple logic-based curiosity. The ability for synthetics to react emotionally instead of logically, if anything, makes the possibility of Creator/Created war even MORE probable than before.
  • Holy shit, you mean to tell me that Synthesis is an inherently flawed ending, and the AI suggesting you go for it is wrong? It's almost like its an option being presented by an insane AI that's been destroying civilizations for millions of years on flimsy, inherently flawed logic. Maybe you shouldn't be considering the option that the crazy AI is most strongly suggesting.
  • Theres no indication he's crazy. He has processing power off the charts and the combined knowledge of thousands of civilizations. Either than his logic being bogus(which seems to stem more from bad writing than anything else) there is no indication that he's not doing exactly what he was meant to do, albeit horribly. He doesn't seem to have emotion either (except for the infamous "SO BE IT") he's trying to be logical, but ultimately fails. He says the Reapers are programmed, but the Reapers are complete AI's, even Legion, probably the most advanced Geth, could scarcely comprehend one. He's supposed to be millions(possibly billions) of years old, that should give him ample time to do anything, consider everything, implement whatever he wants. AI's are computers, so they think much faster than an "organic". He would have an eternity to think. However, from practically the beginning of his life he started the cycle, without changing anything. I must stress he IS an AI, he did override his initial programming, which was basically a negotiator and diplomat between organics and synthetics.

Why not just destroy any organic species before it becomes sentient?

• If the mission of the Reapers is to prevent war between organics and synthetics, why not just destroy organic life before it reaches sentience? It would entail a lot less suffering, not to mention the Reapers would encounter a lot less resistance.
  • Because the Catalyst ultimately wants to break the Cycle. And it can't do that if all sentient life is turned into goo before that can happen.
  • The entire point of the Reapers is to preserve organic species. Just killing them would be pointless and counterproductive.

The Catalyst and Mass Effect 1

• If the Catalyst is located on the Citadel, where it's able to see everything organics are doing and has access to the controls for the Citadel relay, then nothing Sovereign did makes any sense. Why even have the whole system with leaving a vanguard Reaper behind between cycles to watch over the galaxy in the first place, if the Catalyst can do that itself (and better) from the Citadel? The Catalyst is essentially employing a multi-step process — one that proves to be quite susceptible to outside interference — for seemingly no reason, as a simple and obvious one-step solution not only appears available, but seems easy to implement. Why did Sovereign have to go to such lengths to get to the Citadel and activate the relay function when the Catalyst is on the Citadel and can do that itself as well? Why did Sovereign need Saren to get backdoor access to the Citadel through the Conduit? Why can't the Catalyst just grant that access to Sovereign by itself? In fact, why didn't it just open the relay itself? Why didn't it do anything to stop the Prothean survivors who came from Ilos via the Conduit from reprogramming the Keepers so that they would disregard Sovereign's signal? How is it after 50,000 years, an AI that is over 1,000,000,000 years old couldn’t undo some reprogramming that took the Prothean survivors mere decades to figure out? If it somehow couldn't do this, then again why didn't it just open the relay itself? If it controls the Reapers, as it said at the end of Mass Effect 3, why did Sovereign say "We are each a nation, independent, free of all weakness." Finally, where was it during the battle of the Citadel at the end of Mass Effect 1, and why didn't it do anything to stop Shepard from taking control of the Citadel from Sovereign and letting the 5th fleet through?
  • As explained in the above entries, the Catalyst isn't exactly interested in galactic genocide, nor does it seem to care how organics subvert its cycles. All it wants is to find an optimal method to preserving life. From how the Leviathans and itself describe its thought processes, it has a very hands-off approach to harvesting. It gives the Reapers the general order of "Harvest all sufficiently advanced life," then it sits back and watches how exactly the Reapers and the galactic civilizations react to it. It's been trying to find a better solution than the Reapers for a billion years, and it directed them to create the mass relays because it hoped the shorter time there was between cycles, the sooner a civilization would come along that would find that better solution. It also mentioned that it tried imposing Synthesis multiple times in the past, but this is the first cycle where it wouldn't be rejected by organics. To summarize, it doesn't solve all its problems itself because it doesn't see them as problems but new evolutionary variables that could help it find a solution to life preservation; only the Reapers themselves see them as problems because they conflict with the general Harvest Order the Catalyst gave them.
  • Having just finished this game and exhausting every dialogue option with the Catalyst, I could find nothing where it so mush as suggests that it takes a "...hands-off approach to harvesting." Indeed, it says just the opposite: "I control the Reapers." No, a more likely explanation is that Casey Hudson and Mac Walters (the only people who were involved in writing this games’ ending) forgot all these details mentioned above and so didn't realize they were contradicting the previous games. They forgot far more recent details in this trilogy, since in the original (i.e., pre–Extended Cut) ending they forgot that destroying a Mass Relay results in an explosion that can destroy an entire star system, and we the fans had to remind them. If they can forget details like this from DLC that came out a mere year before this game released, they can certainly forget details from a game that came out five years before.
  • If you want to go super Doyalist, "This happened because the writers wrote it that way," that's not really the point of Headscratchers. Speaking from a Watsonian perspective, the Catalyst speaks in very offhand terms, comparing what it does to a fire clearing away overgrowth. It may control the Reapers, but from everything the Reapers have said, they seem to be more-or-less free to interpret those orders however they want. Sovereign's actions, for example, are distinct from what Harbinger or some random Destroyer would have done.

Crucible Precision

• How can the Crucible be so precise that it can non-invasively cyber augment every sapient in the galaxy with no negative effects and yet still be so imprecise that it can’t tell the difference between a Reaper and something that obviously isn’t a Reaper. Before anyone says it, yes, the Crucible does destroy EDI and the Geth in this ending, and no it is not because they have Reaper code. The Crucible did destroy them because the Geth are nowhere to be found in the epilogue (in contrast to Control and Synthesis where we do see them) and during the memorial service we can see EDI’s name has been added to the wall. It also can’t be because they have Reaper code, because Shepard’s own cybernetics are affected as well in all but the highest EMS scenarios.
  • It was most likely programmed to act in that manner during the course of the cycles in which it was refined. Remember that the Crucible is the end result of countless cycles of various species throughout millions of years improving upon and modifying the design. Likely at some point some species came along with Blue-and-Orange Morality who modified the code of the Crucible to make it act in that manner, and subsequent species either didn't change it or were too worried that changing the code would break something so it was left in. By the time we get the schematics in our timeline we don't know what a lot of its functions are, just that the Protheans knew it would work. Hackett himself says he has no idea what the Crucible will do when it is fired, and the Crucible project is just following the schematics they acquired from Mars in hopes it will work.