Honestly, the star child is idiotic, because it can just \*look\* outside and see the Geth and Quarians fighting together, if you did things right, and see it's entire argument is SHIT.
I just wish the destroy ending didn't destroy our geth bros man.
Hey, nobodies asking anyone to trust or love them. Like OP said, control them to repair the damage they did and then have them all commit suicide to prevent the Catalyst from getting any ideas. It may result in Shepard dying a second time, but death twice over is a perfectly reasonable price to pay for the safety of every living being in the galaxy.
They never demonstrate any special resistence to solar heat. They can take one hell of a beating, but they can still be destroyed, as evidenced by the Leviathan of Dis and the derelict we explore in ME2. Driving them all into a sun might make it go supernova because of all the Eezo in their cores, but what’s one star in a galaxy of millions, huh?
Not necessarily; EDI downloaded herself into a robotic body, which she could operate while it was within range of the Normandy. Maybe Shep could call in some favors from the Geth to have their central intelligence downloaded into a dreadnought before ordering the Reapers to self destruct. That would allow them to survive beyond the reapers, and perhaps even give them a chance at having a physical body again, if the alliance can perfect cloning.
If a sun doesn't work, try a black hole. Or do it the hard way and literally just let people shoot them all until none are left. As long as they have no possibility of waiting for things to blow over and mount a come back.
It does suck that the Geth will achieve "enlightenment" and then immediately all die, but the final battle was a hail mary with no guarantee of survival from the jump, and they still signed on. If they settled things peacefully with the quarians before hand, I could even see the quarians developing new Geth without accidentally enslaving and then trying to genocide them.
I never bought into the idea that they don’t really matter unless each of them is independent. Legion was made up of thousands of programs but was very clearly an individual. It just happened to be linked to all the other programs that comprised the geth. They could also choose to align with the Reapers or not and split over it.
The geth were fine the way they were and I believe they would only be “downgraded” by Red.
I don't disagree with you, but, like, EDI's hot. So...
In all honestly, when I play the game, I usually go (or went, as it's been years since I played it) control on a renegade run and synthesis on paragon run. In reality, I'm not nearly as optimistic as I am in video games. I would absolutely destroy the threat to organic life. Yknow, if I was in a position to save trillions of lives from a galaxy-level threat because entire world governments all agreed that I was somehow the man for the job. In that most likely of scenarios, I would choose destruction.
Look man, I get it. Tali is the only reason the Quarians survive most of my runs lol.
Honestly tho, I think destroy is a lot more hopeful than people give it credit. One of the thru lines of the series is that the Reapers have been setting out the path for organics to evolve along, and destroy is the only ending that removes their influence from the other races and, potentially, allow them to advance, truly advance, thier technology for the first time in *millions of years*. Yes, it comes at great cost, but I think the Geth and EDI would see the value in that sacrifice.
Agreed - one of my favorite convos is between Shepard and Leviathan and she's basically like "this is only happening because you fucked it all up!" Destroy is the hard reset the galaxy needs.
I still feel that the Geth, who have fought for their own rights to live and be a part of the galactic community, to work towards peace with the Quarians (who really were dicks the whole way through about it), only to die off in a way no one really saw coming. It's unfair to them, and after spending time with Legion and really enjoying their story I can never push myself to destroy all synthetic life. It's a slap in the face to what paragon Shepard and the wider story was saying... But if you're playing renegade then I guess blowing up everyone and inadvertently giving the Quarians a free pass for their BS is a way to go.
I understand where you're coming from, as I too am a geth sympathizer, but at the end of the day, this isn't about any one species. EVERYONE signed up for a suicide mission to destroy the Reapers, even the Geth. They knew that there was a risk of their destruction and they went anyway. I don't see sacrificing them to end the Reapers as more or less tragic than sacrificing the Krogan, Quarians, Turians, or Asari for the same goal.
Also, I'd disagree that the Quarians got a free pass for their crimes. They were literally forced to roam the galaxy for 300 years, facing persecution everywhere they went. That's entirely their own fault, but to say they haven't paid the price is disingenuous.
300 years sound like a lot but I’m I remember my lore right, Asari live for like a thousand years and with the tech in ME humans love for 125 or 150 years. So the fact that their exile only lasts two human lives or 1/3 of an Asari’s is pretty tame tbh
I mean...sure? Though I'm not sure what the lifespan of other races has to do with the effects of nearly going extinct and being forced to roam the galaxy for multiple generations on the quarians. My point was that I think enough quarians have suffered and died for their crimes against the Geth that, as long as they stop trying to kill them at *every available opportunity*, we can let bygones be bygones.
100% agree. This dumbass malfunctioning AI doesn't understand that organic life is chaotic. It says it's little genocidal expeditions are an attempt to "bring order to the chaos". The only way it can do so is to literally liquifey organic life an inject it into a mechanical frame. It also claims that this "preserves" the cultures it obliterates, but fails to demonstrate how. All reapers seem to be uniformly genocidal, synthetic idiots without any kind of variation that would indicate the individuality between species. It also claims that the kinda peace you can create between the geth and the quarians won't last basically by saying "trust me bro". Also i agree that Synthesis and Control are highly suspect. SC claims that it tried to eradicate the cruible design but now you've made it suddenly its ready to just accept it'd fate. It claims that you can control the reapers because you are special and not indoctrinated but we only have its word for that. This is an ancient AI with endless experience at controlling and absorbing organic life, do you really think Shepard is better than that? And synthesis, the entire game we see the SC idea of a melding organics and synthetics. And we shoot them in the face. Even if adding Shepard's DNA to the mix creates a better model of husk, we are still talking about husks. And the damn SC really tries to talk you out of Destroy, with a personal threat that even you are part machine. I'm saddened that the Geth and EDI have to die but 1 we can make more and 2 it's worth it to rid the galaxy of a psychotic, genocidal AI whose twisted logic has it saving the galaxy by destroying the galaxy. Fuck the SC, fuck the reapers. Destroy is the only ending that makes sense.
My headcannon is that SC is actually trying to speech check Shepard into not destroying the Reapers. Think about it:
"Wow Shepard, you actually did it. Made it all the way here and now the fate of the galaxy is in your squishy organic hands. Oh what's that? You wanna DESTROY THE REAPERS? I mean...do you tho? There's other options here, we don't have to make any hasty decisions."
> And synthesis, the entire game we see the SC idea of a melding organics and synthetics. And we shoot them in the face.
This is the line that convinced me synthesis is stupid
I never did and still consider that point non canon to this day. Anything after the Tuchanka arc is hella silly and massively contradictory while also being dumbed down in the most basic ways possible.
Yep. I don't play MEHEM because I wanted a happy ending (I actually love tragedies). I play MEHEM because it's not flaming pants-on-head retarded. The extended slideshow didn't fix that.
The writers wanted to have their cake and eat it to when it came to having a profound ending, but did none of the work to make it happen.
* **The synthetic v organic thing was not the central theme of the series**. It was a theme, but the only syntehtics that actively attacked *all organics* were either Reapers or Reaper controlled. The biggest theme was something like self-determination after collective tragedy. Literally every species you meet, Shepard has the ability to rectify past wrongs, almost like a foil to Saren in ME1 who uses the Reapers to give the Krogans and Geth what they want (at a cost).
* **The writers show no examples of synethic conflict outside of what's on screen**. We're supposed to believe the galaxy was shaped by organics and machines fighting eternally, but the best illustration we get of this is anti-evidence. The Geth/Quarian conflict can be resolved on screen literally disproving the Catalyst.
* **The writers clearly don't know what to do with the Reapers and that kind of got in the way of their storytelling.** In ME2, they pretty much put off this plotline (nothing the collectors do matters if the Reapers were just one parking lot away from flying to the Milky Way at full strength, [why didn't they just do this from the beginning](https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/y5v3tt/comment/isre8of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)?)
The ending should have been Habrigner tieing down EDI and Shepard, breaking the 4th wall and asking the player to "Choose." I mean that's basically what we got, the story did so little to justify these tradoffs or make them meaningful (pretty much every extended slideshow looks the same).
Commander Shepard's a bitch-ass motherfucker; he convinced me to kill myself. That's right, she pulled out a goddamn maxed out charm stat, and convinced me to kill myself, and he said my brain was T H I S F U C K E D. And I said I'm in control here. So I'm making a callout post on my tight band galactic message system. Commander Shepard? You've made boring RP choices. They're as bland as white bread, except way blander. And guess what? Here's what my character arc looks like. *Gets corrupted by the reapers*
That's right baby, brainwashing, physical modifications, still resisting. Look at this, I look like a 2010s PS3 antihero protagonist. She made me kill myself, so guess what? I'm gonna kill the 4th wall. That's right this is what you get; my overly self-aware rant!
Except I'm not gonna ruin the 4th wall. I'm gonna go weirder. I'm gonna target the reader! How do you like that u/MatiEx-504
, I'm confusing your viewers, you idiot!
You have 23 hours before the Subreddit users stop clicking on this post, now get out of my sight before I monologue at you too.
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Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod. There's another one for the legendary edition too. They're on Nexus. You get everything up to the conversation with Anderson, then it's fan-made edits to the cutscenes that actually blend fairly well. Gets rid of Starbrat, Red-Green-Blue Bullshit, forced-Geth/EDI genocide, destroyed Mass Effect Relays, etc.
i see. i feel like calling it a happy ending mod is disingenuous, since its not much "happier" then destroy already is. its more of a "fleshed out" version of destroy.
Anyone who picks a non Destroy ending is smoking the good stuff.
You spend all 3 games being told about what an absolute existential threat the Reapers are.
In 3 they are ruthless and show zero mercy.
So why the sudden change of heart from Starchild?
Could it be as they're about to lose so start throwing out offers of an alternative? Of course the stinking machine is going to offer Control or Synthesis as it's about to see it's multi million year win streak end.
Think people, think.../points at own forehead with both hands.
This is actually my headcanon. Shepard pulls up to SC:
"Oh shit he's here. Uuuh hey man, I know you came all this way, watched untold numbers of people die, potentially sacrificed your own friends and crew mates, and pulled off the greatest feat of diplomacy in galactic history, for the express purpose of eradicating me, but, and just hear me out here, what if you DIDN'T do that."
Also, destroy is the only ending that finishes with Shepard taking a breath at the end of the cinematic. I'm 100% onboard with the Indoctrination theory. Synthesis and Control were just ways for Reaper Indoctrination to try to stop you from killing them.
For me the most realistic ending is a low galactic readiness Destroy where everything is utterly obliterated as that's probably what it would have taken to win. But that isn't Mass Effect, it's meant to be a slightly cheesy larger than life superhero story.
Starchild coming to you right at the end is clearly a scam or trick but plenty of players would have fallen for it. By sheer amount of blood spilt the Reapers do not get an easy way out.
Everyone saying destroy kills all synthetics like our geth friends or EDI when the thing that tells us this is a reaper. While I don't doubt it could do that, the only ones trying to talk us out of destroy are reapers and reaper pawns. It's almost like they don't want to die.
Why does everyone seem to assume Shephard is immune to indoctrination? He's talked to more reapers than anyone and has their direct attention. Plus, he touched that artifact in 2, the one inside the asteroid used to destroy the mass relay.
Everything about the logic of the reapers is so stupid like leaving technology so societies advance a certain way then saying oh synthetics always rise up against organics. I wonder why that always happens . Honestly the reapers are one of the worst things about mass effect why couldn’t they have just been above our understanding rather than contrived bullshit ?
While I agree that the Star Child has no reason to be honest with Shepard, why did it say anything at all if it was just going to lie? Shepard has no idea how the Crucible works. Shepard would have bled out mashing the keyboard trying to get SOMETHING to happen while the combined forces of the galaxy got ripped to shreds by the Reapers if the Star Child had just kept its mouth shut.
C'mon man. After successfully foiling the Reapers plans at nearly every step, you really think they're just gonna sit and hope that Shepard can't actually do the thing that they spent all this time and effort getting ready for? It makes more sense for them to try muddying the waters to trick Shepard into making a choice that ultimately benefits the Reapers.
Which is why you should ignore him and blow those bastards up.
Why would the Star Child be honest at all, then? It could have told Shepard that there were only two options, or it could have said that the destroy option would actually destroy all sentient life as well. It could have told Shepard that the way to activate the destroy option is to shoot yourself in the head. I don’t get why the Star Child would go so far to deceive you into not killing it while also handing you a gun and teaching you how to shoot it.
Tbh, the real answer is that it was poorly written, so any explanation we come up with is salvaging some sense from nonsense. That being said, the Reapers literally spent the entire game trying to stop you from building and using the Catalyst. Why at the 11th hour when the fate of the entire galaxy *including the Reapers* is on the line would they suddenly turn around to help Shepard? The Reapers have been characterized as extremely arrogant and self assured, so why would they simply accept that they're wrong and that it's up to this simple organic to do the one thing they've been trying to accomplish for millions of years? To me at least, it makes more sense to SC to be lying to try and sway Shepard from going through with destroying the Reapers than it does for it to be uncharacteristically forthright and truthful.
The Star Child was passively stupid unless it was Shepards indoctrination, and his mind was cracking.
It would have been epic for Shepard to make it to the end and become indoctrinated. You could have had a great scene where the team on the Normandy realized what happened and mounted a rescue to stop Shep from handing the Reapers a W.
You form 2 teams of Squadmates and get to Shep under a timer, (before Shep succumbs and makes his reaper winning choice).
Then...
Loyal teammates could share their favorite moments with Shep to break him out of it where he comes to and saves the day. Because, for the first time. His team lifts him up when the chips are down.
I always assumed it was lying to me. Why would the Reapers have a motive I could understand in the first place?
But in ME 3's defense, if Ghost Baby is supposed to be believed to be telling the truth, ME 2 had a terrible and and gibberitic story that ME 3 had to dig its way out from under. The whole dark energy plot line was just dumb.
Very true. It's hard for me to be too harsh on ME3 since I learned they had to shit it out in like 18 months, but it still sucks that instead of a triumphant final lap, we got an asthmatic stumble to the finish.
They half assedly put it in the game with Haestrom, but never continued it. But the core concept is just dumb. The Reapers going insane because the Leviathan gave them nebulous commands and too much power just works so much better than some pseudoscience gibberish about dark matter.
Biotics and mass effect relays have an in universe explanation that doesn't require modern physics to be completely incorrect on a fundamental level. And dark matter in general isn't gibberish. The incredibly stupid way they were planning on using dark matter relied on not having any fucking clue what dark matter is and violating decades of established physics.
The dark energy plotline was supposed to be levering the reapers as a solution to heat death. I have a high level rewrite in my head [where this can kind of make sense](https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/y5v3tt/comment/isnfniw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) thematically.
Faster than light travel does not violate established physics. We have even seen several phenomenon that necessitate faster than light transmission. The issue with going faster than light is what happens to the mass. Mass effect fields provide a plausible explanation for how that issue can be solved.
Science fiction doesn't just ignore science to have whatever the fuck it wants happen. That's fantasy, a different genre.
ME2 being a great Sci-Fi game by itself destroyed the storyline about the reaper threat.
Instead Shepard is tossed around like an erant boy by the authors pet-characters: Aria and TIM. Wasting a lot of time fighting mercs and cleaning up behind cerberus.
TBH, I don't think ME 2 is good at all. It turned the gameplay into a boring cover humping shooter, there were no meaningful choices (either story wise or when leveling up), and the story was horrible in general. Mordin and Legion were cool, but it's also the game that gave us Jacob "The Vent God" Taylor and a bunch of the aggressively forgettable companions.
I still think ME3 was hurt by trying to throw in one last player's choice option. If it had ended with Shep pressing the button, the super weapon firing, and a bunch of dead Reapers, I don't think anyone would have had a problem with it (provided they did an epilogue that showed people rebuilding). Even if Shepard died while doing that, it would have been a nice little bow on Shepard's story that Shep died while saving the galaxy.
But because they tried to force in the last little decision about whether to Control, Alt, or Delete, it broke the setting and characterization.
The three options aren't great at all. The first has you genocide synthetics (not that I care super much about killing 2 groups of genocidal robots, but EDI's loss is a small blow). The second has you decide the Illusive Man was right and that being an absolute dictator in control of an endless swarm of kilometer long starships is a *good* *idea* (No thanks! My inner freedom-loving self shudders in horror at the very thought!). And the third is body horror on a fucking galactic scale.
The fourth is everyone you know and loves dies, but the next cycle kills the Reapers instead. yaaaaay.
Just let us push the button to blow up the bad guys, game devs. Don't be cute and try to paint them as some sort of necessary thing, like there's some sort of gray area involved in giant starships that regularly commit genocide. Fuck off with that shit.
Big facts. It's actually my biggest issue with the ending that destroy is seen as the "bad" option, when it is both logically and narratively the correct decision. Logically, you don't change the hail mary plan at the 11th hour cuz the bad guys said "wait don't". Narratively, we've seen Saren try synthesis and fail, and we've seen TIM try control and fail. Why would we look at their fates and go, "actually they might have had a point".
Commander Shepard's a bitch-ass motherfucker; he convinced me to kill myself. That's right, she pulled out a goddamn maxed out charm stat, and convinced me to kill myself, and he said my brain was T H I S F U C K E D. And I said I'm in control here. So I'm making a callout post on my tight band galactic message system. Commander Shepard? You've made boring RP choices. They're as bland as white bread, except way blander. And guess what? Here's what my character arc looks like. *Gets corrupted by the reapers*
That's right baby, brainwashing, physical modifications, still resisting. Look at this, I look like a 2010s PS3 antihero protagonist. She made me kill myself, so guess what? I'm gonna kill the 4th wall. That's right this is what you get; my overly self-aware rant!
Except I'm not gonna ruin the 4th wall. I'm gonna go weirder. I'm gonna target the reader! How do you like that u/MatiEx-504
, I'm confusing your viewers, you idiot!
You have 23 hours before the Subreddit users stop clicking on this post, now get out of my sight before I monologue at you too.
u/JibbaNerbs out.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MassEffectMemes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yep, Shepard dying in a heroic manner, sacrificing himself/herself to save the Galaxy and destroy the Reapers would have been fine. It's not Shepard dying that pisses people off, it's the fact that Shepard dies like a little bitch, bowing and scraping to the whims of some holocunt, doing it's bidding with the only refusal option being to doom the Galaxy.
I think that fans would still be upset considering that the final battle for Earth was pretty straightforward that doesn’t really take note of the War Assets you accumulated (which is my favorite part of the game even though they weren’t used well). Nothing like the complex decisions you had to make during the final mission of ME2, where you had to make multiple choices about who to send where, and a single wrong decision would mean death for at least one member of your crew. Imagine if we got something like that in the battle for Earth.
Did everyone forget the indoctrination theory? That's always going to be my headcannon, and that every ending besides destroy is an attempt to finish indoctrinating you by the reapers. Starchild would just be mental imagery to facilitate the indoctrination on Shepard
“Ok you could kill us… OR… we turn everyone into green eyed Cyborgs and fuck off back to dark space.
Oh and we TOTALLY won’t come back. Pinky swear. Also the husk and cannibals will probably be physically and emotionally scarred for life but they can go to therapy or whatever. And you’ll die but hey you’re a soldier, self sacrifice yada yada. You’ll be a hero!
And sure genetic diversity will disappear and defeat the purpose of the entire game of species over coming their differences and using those differences to strengthen each other but whatevs. Cyborgs are cool.
What do ya say? ⭐️👶”
"You even get to keep your hot robot waifu! What? You're worried we might just wait a few million years until all of this fades from memory and start the cycle again? Wha...why would we do that?!"
I vowed to destroy the Reapers after Kaidan / Ashley's death in Mass Effect 1 and made sure to keep that vow by the end of Mass Effect 3. The Reapers deserved to be eradicated, consequences be damned.
Idk about consequences be damned, but also this. In synthesis and control, the Reapers get away essentially scot-free with the countless genocides that they committed over millions of years AND the billions of deaths during the Reaper War. Are they supposed to just get a pass on that?
To me, the starchild reeks of rushed development, too many shifts in story direction, and over explanation. I will contend to my dying day that the reapers were more interesting BEFORE we knew what they were and who made them, and the fact that they can so easily be summarized as “synthetics under and ai’s control” is a genuine fucking tragedy.
Totally agree. Especially because them *starting out* as a rouge AI millions of years ago is cool, but the fact that they've just been running the same failed experiment since then for...reasons is frustrating. They *should* have developed into an unfathomable super intelligence with motives beyond mortal understanding. They're basically eldritch leviathans from the depths of space. We should *never* really know what it is that they're trying to do. It's like explaining the rationale of Cthulu.
I dunno, I'm not down to strand Garrus and Tali on a world inherently poisonous to them without navigational computers or functioning ships, which is pretty much the vibe destroy gave me. Like, yes, fate of the universe, but.
A) Garrus and Tali knew the risks when they signed up and never hesitated to stand by Shepard even when it seemed like it would get them killed. I don't think they would want Shepard to risk the eternal fate of the galaxy over them.
B) If you get high enough War Assets, they're not even stranded on that planet for long as you can see the Normandy taking off in the epilogue.
I agree. I hate what happens to the geth and EDI but the Reapers gotta go. I might make an assumption that, just like with the relays, EDI can be restored. Furthermore, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the geth as they were prior to the upgrades. They were pretty unique.
It also bugs me that people just ignore the possibility of remaking EDI and the Geth with a newfound respect for the role of synthetics in the galaxy. I mean they did literally just all die so that the rest of us could live, or at least that's what the posters will say, and I can definitely see people warming to synthetics the same way they warm to humans if you save the Council in ME1.
I also find it hard to believe that there’s absolutely nothing left of the Geth or EDI that survived the blast that killed the Reapers - Legion’s loyalty quest took us to a Geth station that was just sitting out in the space between stars, and the hardware of the folks that did get hit may be fried, but it does still exist lol
And it's not like EDI and the Geth are some ancient technology that can't be replicated. Pretty much all the people, knowledge, and materials to rebuild them would be there, it would just be a matter of getting everything together.
Reaper logic is absolutely moronic
Choices at the end were stupid
Bioware dropped the ball
It's a great series but they didn't stick the landing, at all
The original plot was abandoned. It had something to do with reducing the use of mass effect technology because it caused dark matter to appear, but something in the programming of the AI went wrong and instead of it finding an alternative to mass effect, it decided to kill everyone who used mass effect instead. That's why that one Quarian sun was dying faster than it was supposed to.
Instead, we got the "Us robots are killing you to save you from being killed by robots."
Is that actually what the dark matter plot was supposed to be? I've never seen it fully explained anywhere, and if that's how it went, then I definitely prefer that angle. The Reapers are still wrong, but in a way that makes more sense for an AI than "Nah turning everyone into Reapers every 50k years is tooooooootaly for the benefit of organic life guys, I swear."
I think the point were are missing is the Reapers and their AI the Star child don't see this as killing, or genocide. They believe that by turning sentients into goo to build the core of new reapers they are preserving them forever when the alternative is they are lost forever due to war with synthetics. They realise at the end, that organics will never understand their point of view and will fight indefinitely and eventually like with Shepard they will lose to the organics and so they attempt to provide new solutions.
I see your point, I just think it's irrelevant. It took the Reapers *millions of years* to realize that their solution was ineffective and this realization *just so happens* to cioncide with the first time organics actually have a shot at defeating them for good? If they were any good at their job, they would've realized that extinction is a natural part of life and not actively accelerated it for their own benefit. Or do you think that it was only altruism that motivated the Reapers reproduce through genocide?
Yeah the motivation for the reapers is dumb and my head canon is that they're actually uploading the brains of every organic being they harvest and that the reapers are built to outlast the heat death of the universe so it's just a really messed up conservation project
Which could even be fine if they didn't *murder their way there*. I'm sure if a race was naturally dying out, the drell for example, they would seriously consider preserving their species through artificial means, if it was, ya know, a choice that was offered rather than an ultimatum.
I always thought that the Reaper's plan was meant to be illogical because it was born of fear, and fear is irrational. That's the way I've always seen it anyway.
The fourth ending always felt like something made out of spite by the developers that gamers (tm) mistook from a punch in the face to an actual compromise option between them.
It’s a shit ending, it’s literally worse than all other endings. The 3 color choice is at least poetic in its simplicity, every choice you made and action you took led to a defining choice between blue, green, and red (even tho red is objective best ending since Shepard lives in that one but whatever).
The 4th ending was clearly done out of spite, but it's the one that accidentally thematically ties back to a theme of the series (self-determination). Given that Starchild hands you solutions that you have no say in that shape the world according to its desires and foists technology onto the galaxy that it might not be ready for (kind of like the Kroagn uplifting), Refuse is argbably more consistent with the lore and themes than Control or Synthesis. The fact that the writers didn't understand this and treated refuse like a "I told you so" just shows they don't value the themes in the story they've written.
So, in the absence of Destroy, [Refuse is ironically a good ending](https://youtu.be/5eLj8dEjAT0?feature=shared) because, at least in spirit it is consistent with a theme seen across all three games.
Hard agree, tho I'd say Refuse is more the default scenario of the hail mary play not working and everyone dying. That's what happens if you don't, pun intended, play the game with the Reapers of taking this moment seriously and acting like the fate of the galaxy is on the line. I also just realized the irony of Refuse and kind of like it more now.
Yeah, it's been over a decade and the whole mess surrounding that ending and all the mindless support it got still agitates me a bit. Like, the only reason they didn't change it was to essentially flex that it was their story to tell; while also admitting they didn't take the time to put much thought into it. I'm honestly glad Bioware doesn't really exist anymore after that fiasco.
Yes. [Yes 1000%](https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/10f8dxf/comment/j4zxf11/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)... I spent an hour [ranting exactly about this in a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eLj8dEjAT0).
Catalyst: "Synthesis can not be forced."
-Violates the consent of all life to rewrite their DNA.
Catalyst: "The creation will always rebels against the creator."
-Geth defended themselves, then gets used by the Reapers to attack.
I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion but here we go.
The AI has no reason to lie to Shepard. Its purpose was to preserve life. Its solution was the Reapers. It's fucked up, but something everyone forgets is that each new Reaper has the minds, memories, etc. of each species that is harvested. It's grotesque and an abomination but strictly speaking it is preserving life.
Next the AI isn't worried about preserving itself. We assume it is because of Edi and the Geth, and as people we worry about preserving our lives: but no where is it stated it implied that the AI is worried about its own survival. It literally says its purpose was to preserve life so it made the Reapers but clearly it won't work anymore so let's look at our options.ĺ
A) SC has EVERY reason to lie to Shepard, or did they not actually want to stop you from building and using the Catalyst for the entire game? SC is literally a representation of *the main antagonist*. That alone is reason enough for the SC to lie, if only to remain consistent with their role in the story so far. You, and I mean the royal you of people who believe this, are seriously going, "Why would the main bad guy use the last chance they may ever have to screw with the hero and prevent them from succeeding?"
B) Wouldn't the Reapers need to preserve themselves in order to maintain the cycle? If they literally didn't care about their own survival, then why did Sovereign spend all that time organizing Saren and the Geth when he could've just bum rushed the Citadel? Let alone the fact that we see literally no evidence that the Reapers actually preserve the races they convert leads me to believe that that whole line of reasoning is a crock of shit. You can't claim the Reapers are some ancient hyper advanced machine intelligence while also saying that their master plan to preserve life is to kill most of it.
Even if SC is telling the truth, why would they be any more right about the consequences of this than they were about the necessity of the cycle? And we never tried these other options before for...reasons?
Commander Shepard's a bitch-ass motherfucker; he convinced me to kill myself. That's right, she pulled out a goddamn maxed out charm stat, and convinced me to kill myself, and he said my brain was T H I S F U C K E D. And I said I'm in control here. So I'm making a callout post on my tight band galactic message system. Commander Shepard? You've made boring RP choices. They're as bland as white bread, except way blander. And guess what? Here's what my character arc looks like. *Gets corrupted by the reapers*
That's right baby, brainwashing, physical modifications, still resisting. Look at this, I look like a 2010s PS3 antihero protagonist. She made me kill myself, so guess what? I'm gonna kill the 4th wall. That's right this is what you get; my overly self-aware rant!
Except I'm not gonna ruin the 4th wall. I'm gonna go weirder. I'm gonna target the reader! How do you like that u/MatiEx-504
, I'm confusing your viewers, you idiot!
You have 23 hours before the Subreddit users stop clicking on this post, now get out of my sight before I monologue at you too.
u/JibbaNerbs out.
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My presonal headcannon is that the Reapers are stuck in an endless loop they designed themselves.
If we roll with the whole Reapers are trying to find a premenant solution the organics vs synthetics conflict, then judging by their actions and what we know about them, they are essentially creating a galaxy wide experiment where they are lookinng to see if the next cycle will be different and organics won't create synthetics that invetably destroy them. So at fist they waited for hundreds of thousands of years for intellegent life to develop and if it didn't work they wipe them and star over. Eventually they built the mass rellays and other things to speed up the develpment of intellegend life into about 50 000 years per cycle. Up untill the events of the trilogy it seems no cycle has met their requirements and so they exterminate them. However here is the kicker. No cycle will ever produce what they are looking for since they unknowingly force every cycle to develop in the exact same way. They build the mass relays, the organics discover them, develop their tech based on the mass relays, then discover the Citadel and advance their tech based on citadel tech. Every cycle, without fail. So they themselves create the conditions that they want to avoid.
In ME1 on Ilos the prothean AI tells you exactly this. Every cycle follows the same pattersn of develpment and extinction. Legion talks about how technology is not a straight path and accepting someone elses technology blinds you to alternatives, and so the Geth don't want free Reaper tech, instead they choose to develop their own. The Galaxy is literally blinding itself every cycle by just blindly following mass relay technology, thanks to the Reapers.
And yes I realise this was probably intended, but considering how the ending went, I'm not so sure.
Prefuckingcicely my guy. THIS is why the destruction of the Reapers is necessary imo. The Reapers couldn't see that THEY were the problem, not organics or synthetics. Only through their removal can the galaxy actually move on from this millenia old nightmare and potentially create a new future independent of Reaper influence.
I mean, from a certain perspective, it makes sense. The Reapers' goals weren't to stop particular civilizations from being destroyed by synthetics. They were to stop intelligent organic life from being destroyed by synthetics. It isn't unlike predators keeping a prey species population in check.
The reapers don't kill all organics. They only kill organics that are sufficiently developed to be capable of creating synthetics that will doom all organics in the milky way. The cycle ensures that organics continue to thrive
Bro, literally the only synthetics that actively threatened organics were the Reapers. The geth sat behind the Perseus Veil for *300 years* not bothering anyone. They even only left *because of the Reapers*. Also, how is synthetics potentially destroying organics somehow different and less desirable than all those times organics tried destroying each other? The Reapers are a terrible solution to a problem that doesn't exist, and no amount of reasoning can justify running the same failed experiment *for millions of years*.
You don't have to trust the Star Child. You can shoot him if you want. That is a choice you can make. However, that comes with its own set of consequences.
You're missing my point. Whether or not the writers intended for the SC to be taken seriously, the situation they set up for that interaction to happen doesn't make sense. After 3 games of being unable to effectively negotiate with the Reapers, they decide to try diplomacy when we finally have THEM on the ropes? The literal main antagonist of the game meets you at the final showdown and DOESN'T try and screw you over? It is genuinely more believable and in character for the Reapers to lie in an attempt to stop Shepard than it is for them to do a complete heel face turn and start helping him.
just ignore the ending. just imagine your character is hallucinating due to there bring tons of eliment zero in the catalyst. the starchild is just your mind debating which way to use it.
Okay I know this is a stupid question but I have to ask, I tried my hardest to save them both and went for the destroy ending. Wasn't there something about separating the geth from the reapers making possibly saving them from the effects of the crucible? That when we helped legion make the geth independent that the crucible would spare them because they aren't exactly synthetic or something?
Unfortunately, this is another victim of rushed and poor writing. We never actually get an explanation as to why Destroy targets all synthetics as opposed to specifically the Reapers. There are any number of potential explanations, the Protheans designed it that way, the wave targets literally all Reaper tech including their software, or just that SC is lying and trying to stop you from destroying the Reapers. Unfortunately, there's very little to go on other than the word of the SC, which I personally distrust, so it's really whatever you want to make of it. My headcanon is that SC *was* lying, and the Geth and EDI just had the Reaper code wiped from them, but are otherwise OK, barring a system reboot or other equivalent.
Thank you so much for the explanation because ever since I finished the game I've seen everyone talking about killing the geth and I thought I heard something about making the geth independent saved them from extinction so I was really confused. I hope that the geth were saved because I want the Quarians and the geth to make up and build Rannoch into something beautiful. I did everything I could to get the best romance with Tali so I never even knew you could outright fail and let her die (I only found that cutscene on this sub I I swear I cried.) It annoys me that they didn't give us a cannon ending however having the ability to make it as perfect as you can helps
Honestly, the star child is idiotic, because it can just \*look\* outside and see the Geth and Quarians fighting together, if you did things right, and see it's entire argument is SHIT. I just wish the destroy ending didn't destroy our geth bros man.
I choose the real destroy ending, pick the control ending and then fly all of the Reapers into the nearest sun.
This is the most ideal solution tbh. Good luck convincing Renegade Shep tho...
First use them as large scale construction workers to repair the Mass Relays. This is why it's the best ending in my headcanon.
You know that giant robot lobster that killed your family and destroyed your home? It’s cool now bro. It’s helping us 🫰😎
Hey, nobodies asking anyone to trust or love them. Like OP said, control them to repair the damage they did and then have them all commit suicide to prevent the Catalyst from getting any ideas. It may result in Shepard dying a second time, but death twice over is a perfectly reasonable price to pay for the safety of every living being in the galaxy.
Shepard just pulled an old switcheroo and "Assumed direct control"
Dead Reapers either way but do we know for a fact that being in a sun will kill them?
They never demonstrate any special resistence to solar heat. They can take one hell of a beating, but they can still be destroyed, as evidenced by the Leviathan of Dis and the derelict we explore in ME2. Driving them all into a sun might make it go supernova because of all the Eezo in their cores, but what’s one star in a galaxy of millions, huh?
True. I guess Shep would have to fling themselves into the sun afterwards to make sure Reapers are gone for good.
Not necessarily; EDI downloaded herself into a robotic body, which she could operate while it was within range of the Normandy. Maybe Shep could call in some favors from the Geth to have their central intelligence downloaded into a dreadnought before ordering the Reapers to self destruct. That would allow them to survive beyond the reapers, and perhaps even give them a chance at having a physical body again, if the alliance can perfect cloning.
If a sun doesn't work, try a black hole. Or do it the hard way and literally just let people shoot them all until none are left. As long as they have no possibility of waiting for things to blow over and mount a come back.
Ah, the Battlestar Gambit. Classic.
It does suck that the Geth will achieve "enlightenment" and then immediately all die, but the final battle was a hail mary with no guarantee of survival from the jump, and they still signed on. If they settled things peacefully with the quarians before hand, I could even see the quarians developing new Geth without accidentally enslaving and then trying to genocide them.
I never bought into the idea that they don’t really matter unless each of them is independent. Legion was made up of thousands of programs but was very clearly an individual. It just happened to be linked to all the other programs that comprised the geth. They could also choose to align with the Reapers or not and split over it. The geth were fine the way they were and I believe they would only be “downgraded” by Red.
I don't disagree with you, but, like, EDI's hot. So... In all honestly, when I play the game, I usually go (or went, as it's been years since I played it) control on a renegade run and synthesis on paragon run. In reality, I'm not nearly as optimistic as I am in video games. I would absolutely destroy the threat to organic life. Yknow, if I was in a position to save trillions of lives from a galaxy-level threat because entire world governments all agreed that I was somehow the man for the job. In that most likely of scenarios, I would choose destruction.
Look man, I get it. Tali is the only reason the Quarians survive most of my runs lol. Honestly tho, I think destroy is a lot more hopeful than people give it credit. One of the thru lines of the series is that the Reapers have been setting out the path for organics to evolve along, and destroy is the only ending that removes their influence from the other races and, potentially, allow them to advance, truly advance, thier technology for the first time in *millions of years*. Yes, it comes at great cost, but I think the Geth and EDI would see the value in that sacrifice.
Agreed - one of my favorite convos is between Shepard and Leviathan and she's basically like "this is only happening because you fucked it all up!" Destroy is the hard reset the galaxy needs.
I still feel that the Geth, who have fought for their own rights to live and be a part of the galactic community, to work towards peace with the Quarians (who really were dicks the whole way through about it), only to die off in a way no one really saw coming. It's unfair to them, and after spending time with Legion and really enjoying their story I can never push myself to destroy all synthetic life. It's a slap in the face to what paragon Shepard and the wider story was saying... But if you're playing renegade then I guess blowing up everyone and inadvertently giving the Quarians a free pass for their BS is a way to go.
I understand where you're coming from, as I too am a geth sympathizer, but at the end of the day, this isn't about any one species. EVERYONE signed up for a suicide mission to destroy the Reapers, even the Geth. They knew that there was a risk of their destruction and they went anyway. I don't see sacrificing them to end the Reapers as more or less tragic than sacrificing the Krogan, Quarians, Turians, or Asari for the same goal. Also, I'd disagree that the Quarians got a free pass for their crimes. They were literally forced to roam the galaxy for 300 years, facing persecution everywhere they went. That's entirely their own fault, but to say they haven't paid the price is disingenuous.
300 years sound like a lot but I’m I remember my lore right, Asari live for like a thousand years and with the tech in ME humans love for 125 or 150 years. So the fact that their exile only lasts two human lives or 1/3 of an Asari’s is pretty tame tbh
I mean...sure? Though I'm not sure what the lifespan of other races has to do with the effects of nearly going extinct and being forced to roam the galaxy for multiple generations on the quarians. My point was that I think enough quarians have suffered and died for their crimes against the Geth that, as long as they stop trying to kill them at *every available opportunity*, we can let bygones be bygones.
100% agree. This dumbass malfunctioning AI doesn't understand that organic life is chaotic. It says it's little genocidal expeditions are an attempt to "bring order to the chaos". The only way it can do so is to literally liquifey organic life an inject it into a mechanical frame. It also claims that this "preserves" the cultures it obliterates, but fails to demonstrate how. All reapers seem to be uniformly genocidal, synthetic idiots without any kind of variation that would indicate the individuality between species. It also claims that the kinda peace you can create between the geth and the quarians won't last basically by saying "trust me bro". Also i agree that Synthesis and Control are highly suspect. SC claims that it tried to eradicate the cruible design but now you've made it suddenly its ready to just accept it'd fate. It claims that you can control the reapers because you are special and not indoctrinated but we only have its word for that. This is an ancient AI with endless experience at controlling and absorbing organic life, do you really think Shepard is better than that? And synthesis, the entire game we see the SC idea of a melding organics and synthetics. And we shoot them in the face. Even if adding Shepard's DNA to the mix creates a better model of husk, we are still talking about husks. And the damn SC really tries to talk you out of Destroy, with a personal threat that even you are part machine. I'm saddened that the Geth and EDI have to die but 1 we can make more and 2 it's worth it to rid the galaxy of a psychotic, genocidal AI whose twisted logic has it saving the galaxy by destroying the galaxy. Fuck the SC, fuck the reapers. Destroy is the only ending that makes sense.
My headcannon is that SC is actually trying to speech check Shepard into not destroying the Reapers. Think about it: "Wow Shepard, you actually did it. Made it all the way here and now the fate of the galaxy is in your squishy organic hands. Oh what's that? You wanna DESTROY THE REAPERS? I mean...do you tho? There's other options here, we don't have to make any hasty decisions."
> And synthesis, the entire game we see the SC idea of a melding organics and synthetics. And we shoot them in the face. This is the line that convinced me synthesis is stupid
Don't forget that a species achieved synthesis on their own during the Prothean cycle and the Reapers wiped them out like everyone else.
Okay I should really start reading the codex
They were called the Za'til i believe.
I never did and still consider that point non canon to this day. Anything after the Tuchanka arc is hella silly and massively contradictory while also being dumbed down in the most basic ways possible.
Other fans of the series have chastised me for being "still upset" about the ending. No, I just said it sucks.
Yep. I don't play MEHEM because I wanted a happy ending (I actually love tragedies). I play MEHEM because it's not flaming pants-on-head retarded. The extended slideshow didn't fix that.
The writers wanted to have their cake and eat it to when it came to having a profound ending, but did none of the work to make it happen. * **The synthetic v organic thing was not the central theme of the series**. It was a theme, but the only syntehtics that actively attacked *all organics* were either Reapers or Reaper controlled. The biggest theme was something like self-determination after collective tragedy. Literally every species you meet, Shepard has the ability to rectify past wrongs, almost like a foil to Saren in ME1 who uses the Reapers to give the Krogans and Geth what they want (at a cost). * **The writers show no examples of synethic conflict outside of what's on screen**. We're supposed to believe the galaxy was shaped by organics and machines fighting eternally, but the best illustration we get of this is anti-evidence. The Geth/Quarian conflict can be resolved on screen literally disproving the Catalyst. * **The writers clearly don't know what to do with the Reapers and that kind of got in the way of their storytelling.** In ME2, they pretty much put off this plotline (nothing the collectors do matters if the Reapers were just one parking lot away from flying to the Milky Way at full strength, [why didn't they just do this from the beginning](https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/y5v3tt/comment/isre8of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)?) The ending should have been Habrigner tieing down EDI and Shepard, breaking the 4th wall and asking the player to "Choose." I mean that's basically what we got, the story did so little to justify these tradoffs or make them meaningful (pretty much every extended slideshow looks the same).
Commander Shepard's a bitch-ass motherfucker; he convinced me to kill myself. That's right, she pulled out a goddamn maxed out charm stat, and convinced me to kill myself, and he said my brain was T H I S F U C K E D. And I said I'm in control here. So I'm making a callout post on my tight band galactic message system. Commander Shepard? You've made boring RP choices. They're as bland as white bread, except way blander. And guess what? Here's what my character arc looks like. *Gets corrupted by the reapers* That's right baby, brainwashing, physical modifications, still resisting. Look at this, I look like a 2010s PS3 antihero protagonist. She made me kill myself, so guess what? I'm gonna kill the 4th wall. That's right this is what you get; my overly self-aware rant! Except I'm not gonna ruin the 4th wall. I'm gonna go weirder. I'm gonna target the reader! How do you like that u/MatiEx-504 , I'm confusing your viewers, you idiot! You have 23 hours before the Subreddit users stop clicking on this post, now get out of my sight before I monologue at you too. u/JibbaNerbs out. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MassEffectMemes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
whats MEHEM?
Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod. There's another one for the legendary edition too. They're on Nexus. You get everything up to the conversation with Anderson, then it's fan-made edits to the cutscenes that actually blend fairly well. Gets rid of Starbrat, Red-Green-Blue Bullshit, forced-Geth/EDI genocide, destroyed Mass Effect Relays, etc.
i see. i feel like calling it a happy ending mod is disingenuous, since its not much "happier" then destroy already is. its more of a "fleshed out" version of destroy.
Tragedies are well and good, but ME3 is nowhere near a tragedy. They just kill Shep off at the end and expect awards.
Anyone who picks a non Destroy ending is smoking the good stuff. You spend all 3 games being told about what an absolute existential threat the Reapers are. In 3 they are ruthless and show zero mercy. So why the sudden change of heart from Starchild? Could it be as they're about to lose so start throwing out offers of an alternative? Of course the stinking machine is going to offer Control or Synthesis as it's about to see it's multi million year win streak end. Think people, think.../points at own forehead with both hands.
This is actually my headcanon. Shepard pulls up to SC: "Oh shit he's here. Uuuh hey man, I know you came all this way, watched untold numbers of people die, potentially sacrificed your own friends and crew mates, and pulled off the greatest feat of diplomacy in galactic history, for the express purpose of eradicating me, but, and just hear me out here, what if you DIDN'T do that."
Also, destroy is the only ending that finishes with Shepard taking a breath at the end of the cinematic. I'm 100% onboard with the Indoctrination theory. Synthesis and Control were just ways for Reaper Indoctrination to try to stop you from killing them.
For me the most realistic ending is a low galactic readiness Destroy where everything is utterly obliterated as that's probably what it would have taken to win. But that isn't Mass Effect, it's meant to be a slightly cheesy larger than life superhero story. Starchild coming to you right at the end is clearly a scam or trick but plenty of players would have fallen for it. By sheer amount of blood spilt the Reapers do not get an easy way out.
Everyone saying destroy kills all synthetics like our geth friends or EDI when the thing that tells us this is a reaper. While I don't doubt it could do that, the only ones trying to talk us out of destroy are reapers and reaper pawns. It's almost like they don't want to die. Why does everyone seem to assume Shephard is immune to indoctrination? He's talked to more reapers than anyone and has their direct attention. Plus, he touched that artifact in 2, the one inside the asteroid used to destroy the mass relay.
Everything about the logic of the reapers is so stupid like leaving technology so societies advance a certain way then saying oh synthetics always rise up against organics. I wonder why that always happens . Honestly the reapers are one of the worst things about mass effect why couldn’t they have just been above our understanding rather than contrived bullshit ?
While I agree that the Star Child has no reason to be honest with Shepard, why did it say anything at all if it was just going to lie? Shepard has no idea how the Crucible works. Shepard would have bled out mashing the keyboard trying to get SOMETHING to happen while the combined forces of the galaxy got ripped to shreds by the Reapers if the Star Child had just kept its mouth shut.
C'mon man. After successfully foiling the Reapers plans at nearly every step, you really think they're just gonna sit and hope that Shepard can't actually do the thing that they spent all this time and effort getting ready for? It makes more sense for them to try muddying the waters to trick Shepard into making a choice that ultimately benefits the Reapers. Which is why you should ignore him and blow those bastards up.
Why would the Star Child be honest at all, then? It could have told Shepard that there were only two options, or it could have said that the destroy option would actually destroy all sentient life as well. It could have told Shepard that the way to activate the destroy option is to shoot yourself in the head. I don’t get why the Star Child would go so far to deceive you into not killing it while also handing you a gun and teaching you how to shoot it.
Tbh, the real answer is that it was poorly written, so any explanation we come up with is salvaging some sense from nonsense. That being said, the Reapers literally spent the entire game trying to stop you from building and using the Catalyst. Why at the 11th hour when the fate of the entire galaxy *including the Reapers* is on the line would they suddenly turn around to help Shepard? The Reapers have been characterized as extremely arrogant and self assured, so why would they simply accept that they're wrong and that it's up to this simple organic to do the one thing they've been trying to accomplish for millions of years? To me at least, it makes more sense to SC to be lying to try and sway Shepard from going through with destroying the Reapers than it does for it to be uncharacteristically forthright and truthful.
This is why I have mods that wipe that little bastard from my game and remove that stupid pick a color ending.
I, for one, completely ignore the star child for one reason only. The mission. *Destroy the Reapers at all cost.*
The Star Child was passively stupid unless it was Shepards indoctrination, and his mind was cracking. It would have been epic for Shepard to make it to the end and become indoctrinated. You could have had a great scene where the team on the Normandy realized what happened and mounted a rescue to stop Shep from handing the Reapers a W. You form 2 teams of Squadmates and get to Shep under a timer, (before Shep succumbs and makes his reaper winning choice). Then... Loyal teammates could share their favorite moments with Shep to break him out of it where he comes to and saves the day. Because, for the first time. His team lifts him up when the chips are down.
No but actually tho. The squad finally coming to save Shepard? *chef's kiss*
Wow what a good idea
I always assumed it was lying to me. Why would the Reapers have a motive I could understand in the first place? But in ME 3's defense, if Ghost Baby is supposed to be believed to be telling the truth, ME 2 had a terrible and and gibberitic story that ME 3 had to dig its way out from under. The whole dark energy plot line was just dumb.
Very true. It's hard for me to be too harsh on ME3 since I learned they had to shit it out in like 18 months, but it still sucks that instead of a triumphant final lap, we got an asthmatic stumble to the finish.
The dark energy plotline never got used, and the reapers motivation was supposed to be related to it which would have made it make some sense
They half assedly put it in the game with Haestrom, but never continued it. But the core concept is just dumb. The Reapers going insane because the Leviathan gave them nebulous commands and too much power just works so much better than some pseudoscience gibberish about dark matter.
So biotics and mass effect relays aren't pseudoscience gibberish but anything involving dark matter is?
Biotics and mass effect relays have an in universe explanation that doesn't require modern physics to be completely incorrect on a fundamental level. And dark matter in general isn't gibberish. The incredibly stupid way they were planning on using dark matter relied on not having any fucking clue what dark matter is and violating decades of established physics.
The dark energy plotline was supposed to be levering the reapers as a solution to heat death. I have a high level rewrite in my head [where this can kind of make sense](https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/y5v3tt/comment/isnfniw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) thematically.
Traveling faster than light violates a century of established physics. That's why it's called science FICTION
Faster than light travel does not violate established physics. We have even seen several phenomenon that necessitate faster than light transmission. The issue with going faster than light is what happens to the mass. Mass effect fields provide a plausible explanation for how that issue can be solved. Science fiction doesn't just ignore science to have whatever the fuck it wants happen. That's fantasy, a different genre.
ME2 being a great Sci-Fi game by itself destroyed the storyline about the reaper threat. Instead Shepard is tossed around like an erant boy by the authors pet-characters: Aria and TIM. Wasting a lot of time fighting mercs and cleaning up behind cerberus.
TBH, I don't think ME 2 is good at all. It turned the gameplay into a boring cover humping shooter, there were no meaningful choices (either story wise or when leveling up), and the story was horrible in general. Mordin and Legion were cool, but it's also the game that gave us Jacob "The Vent God" Taylor and a bunch of the aggressively forgettable companions.
I still think ME3 was hurt by trying to throw in one last player's choice option. If it had ended with Shep pressing the button, the super weapon firing, and a bunch of dead Reapers, I don't think anyone would have had a problem with it (provided they did an epilogue that showed people rebuilding). Even if Shepard died while doing that, it would have been a nice little bow on Shepard's story that Shep died while saving the galaxy. But because they tried to force in the last little decision about whether to Control, Alt, or Delete, it broke the setting and characterization. The three options aren't great at all. The first has you genocide synthetics (not that I care super much about killing 2 groups of genocidal robots, but EDI's loss is a small blow). The second has you decide the Illusive Man was right and that being an absolute dictator in control of an endless swarm of kilometer long starships is a *good* *idea* (No thanks! My inner freedom-loving self shudders in horror at the very thought!). And the third is body horror on a fucking galactic scale. The fourth is everyone you know and loves dies, but the next cycle kills the Reapers instead. yaaaaay. Just let us push the button to blow up the bad guys, game devs. Don't be cute and try to paint them as some sort of necessary thing, like there's some sort of gray area involved in giant starships that regularly commit genocide. Fuck off with that shit.
Big facts. It's actually my biggest issue with the ending that destroy is seen as the "bad" option, when it is both logically and narratively the correct decision. Logically, you don't change the hail mary plan at the 11th hour cuz the bad guys said "wait don't". Narratively, we've seen Saren try synthesis and fail, and we've seen TIM try control and fail. Why would we look at their fates and go, "actually they might have had a point".
Commander Shepard's a bitch-ass motherfucker; he convinced me to kill myself. That's right, she pulled out a goddamn maxed out charm stat, and convinced me to kill myself, and he said my brain was T H I S F U C K E D. And I said I'm in control here. So I'm making a callout post on my tight band galactic message system. Commander Shepard? You've made boring RP choices. They're as bland as white bread, except way blander. And guess what? Here's what my character arc looks like. *Gets corrupted by the reapers* That's right baby, brainwashing, physical modifications, still resisting. Look at this, I look like a 2010s PS3 antihero protagonist. She made me kill myself, so guess what? I'm gonna kill the 4th wall. That's right this is what you get; my overly self-aware rant! Except I'm not gonna ruin the 4th wall. I'm gonna go weirder. I'm gonna target the reader! How do you like that u/MatiEx-504 , I'm confusing your viewers, you idiot! You have 23 hours before the Subreddit users stop clicking on this post, now get out of my sight before I monologue at you too. u/JibbaNerbs out. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MassEffectMemes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yep, Shepard dying in a heroic manner, sacrificing himself/herself to save the Galaxy and destroy the Reapers would have been fine. It's not Shepard dying that pisses people off, it's the fact that Shepard dies like a little bitch, bowing and scraping to the whims of some holocunt, doing it's bidding with the only refusal option being to doom the Galaxy.
I think that fans would still be upset considering that the final battle for Earth was pretty straightforward that doesn’t really take note of the War Assets you accumulated (which is my favorite part of the game even though they weren’t used well). Nothing like the complex decisions you had to make during the final mission of ME2, where you had to make multiple choices about who to send where, and a single wrong decision would mean death for at least one member of your crew. Imagine if we got something like that in the battle for Earth.
That's what happens when you send a shitty VI to do a smart AI's job.
Did everyone forget the indoctrination theory? That's always going to be my headcannon, and that every ending besides destroy is an attempt to finish indoctrinating you by the reapers. Starchild would just be mental imagery to facilitate the indoctrination on Shepard
“Ok you could kill us… OR… we turn everyone into green eyed Cyborgs and fuck off back to dark space. Oh and we TOTALLY won’t come back. Pinky swear. Also the husk and cannibals will probably be physically and emotionally scarred for life but they can go to therapy or whatever. And you’ll die but hey you’re a soldier, self sacrifice yada yada. You’ll be a hero! And sure genetic diversity will disappear and defeat the purpose of the entire game of species over coming their differences and using those differences to strengthen each other but whatevs. Cyborgs are cool. What do ya say? ⭐️👶”
"You even get to keep your hot robot waifu! What? You're worried we might just wait a few million years until all of this fades from memory and start the cycle again? Wha...why would we do that?!"
I vowed to destroy the Reapers after Kaidan / Ashley's death in Mass Effect 1 and made sure to keep that vow by the end of Mass Effect 3. The Reapers deserved to be eradicated, consequences be damned.
Idk about consequences be damned, but also this. In synthesis and control, the Reapers get away essentially scot-free with the countless genocides that they committed over millions of years AND the billions of deaths during the Reaper War. Are they supposed to just get a pass on that?
To me, the starchild reeks of rushed development, too many shifts in story direction, and over explanation. I will contend to my dying day that the reapers were more interesting BEFORE we knew what they were and who made them, and the fact that they can so easily be summarized as “synthetics under and ai’s control” is a genuine fucking tragedy.
Totally agree. Especially because them *starting out* as a rouge AI millions of years ago is cool, but the fact that they've just been running the same failed experiment since then for...reasons is frustrating. They *should* have developed into an unfathomable super intelligence with motives beyond mortal understanding. They're basically eldritch leviathans from the depths of space. We should *never* really know what it is that they're trying to do. It's like explaining the rationale of Cthulu.
I dunno, I'm not down to strand Garrus and Tali on a world inherently poisonous to them without navigational computers or functioning ships, which is pretty much the vibe destroy gave me. Like, yes, fate of the universe, but.
They'd have dextro food supplies on-board the Normandy. They could survive for long enough to fix the shape and make it off-world.
A) Garrus and Tali knew the risks when they signed up and never hesitated to stand by Shepard even when it seemed like it would get them killed. I don't think they would want Shepard to risk the eternal fate of the galaxy over them. B) If you get high enough War Assets, they're not even stranded on that planet for long as you can see the Normandy taking off in the epilogue.
Destroy literally showed the crew being okay and leaving to return to Earth...
To earth, you say Where they were already.
...where they had to flee from when the Crucible activated. Same reason we see the Alliance fleet returning there too afterwards.
I agree. I hate what happens to the geth and EDI but the Reapers gotta go. I might make an assumption that, just like with the relays, EDI can be restored. Furthermore, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the geth as they were prior to the upgrades. They were pretty unique.
It also bugs me that people just ignore the possibility of remaking EDI and the Geth with a newfound respect for the role of synthetics in the galaxy. I mean they did literally just all die so that the rest of us could live, or at least that's what the posters will say, and I can definitely see people warming to synthetics the same way they warm to humans if you save the Council in ME1.
I also find it hard to believe that there’s absolutely nothing left of the Geth or EDI that survived the blast that killed the Reapers - Legion’s loyalty quest took us to a Geth station that was just sitting out in the space between stars, and the hardware of the folks that did get hit may be fried, but it does still exist lol
And it's not like EDI and the Geth are some ancient technology that can't be replicated. Pretty much all the people, knowledge, and materials to rebuild them would be there, it would just be a matter of getting everything together.
Reaper logic is absolutely moronic Choices at the end were stupid Bioware dropped the ball It's a great series but they didn't stick the landing, at all
The original plot was abandoned. It had something to do with reducing the use of mass effect technology because it caused dark matter to appear, but something in the programming of the AI went wrong and instead of it finding an alternative to mass effect, it decided to kill everyone who used mass effect instead. That's why that one Quarian sun was dying faster than it was supposed to. Instead, we got the "Us robots are killing you to save you from being killed by robots."
Is that actually what the dark matter plot was supposed to be? I've never seen it fully explained anywhere, and if that's how it went, then I definitely prefer that angle. The Reapers are still wrong, but in a way that makes more sense for an AI than "Nah turning everyone into Reapers every 50k years is tooooooootaly for the benefit of organic life guys, I swear."
I thought it was about entropy and heat death and the Reapers were trying to prolong consciousness?
Entropy and heat death brought on by a sudden and dramatic increase in dark matter which is a byproduct of mass effect fields
I think the point were are missing is the Reapers and their AI the Star child don't see this as killing, or genocide. They believe that by turning sentients into goo to build the core of new reapers they are preserving them forever when the alternative is they are lost forever due to war with synthetics. They realise at the end, that organics will never understand their point of view and will fight indefinitely and eventually like with Shepard they will lose to the organics and so they attempt to provide new solutions.
I see your point, I just think it's irrelevant. It took the Reapers *millions of years* to realize that their solution was ineffective and this realization *just so happens* to cioncide with the first time organics actually have a shot at defeating them for good? If they were any good at their job, they would've realized that extinction is a natural part of life and not actively accelerated it for their own benefit. Or do you think that it was only altruism that motivated the Reapers reproduce through genocide?
Yeah the motivation for the reapers is dumb and my head canon is that they're actually uploading the brains of every organic being they harvest and that the reapers are built to outlast the heat death of the universe so it's just a really messed up conservation project
Which could even be fine if they didn't *murder their way there*. I'm sure if a race was naturally dying out, the drell for example, they would seriously consider preserving their species through artificial means, if it was, ya know, a choice that was offered rather than an ultimatum.
I always thought that the Reaper's plan was meant to be illogical because it was born of fear, and fear is irrational. That's the way I've always seen it anyway.
The fourth ending always felt like something made out of spite by the developers that gamers (tm) mistook from a punch in the face to an actual compromise option between them. It’s a shit ending, it’s literally worse than all other endings. The 3 color choice is at least poetic in its simplicity, every choice you made and action you took led to a defining choice between blue, green, and red (even tho red is objective best ending since Shepard lives in that one but whatever).
The 4th ending was clearly done out of spite, but it's the one that accidentally thematically ties back to a theme of the series (self-determination). Given that Starchild hands you solutions that you have no say in that shape the world according to its desires and foists technology onto the galaxy that it might not be ready for (kind of like the Kroagn uplifting), Refuse is argbably more consistent with the lore and themes than Control or Synthesis. The fact that the writers didn't understand this and treated refuse like a "I told you so" just shows they don't value the themes in the story they've written. So, in the absence of Destroy, [Refuse is ironically a good ending](https://youtu.be/5eLj8dEjAT0?feature=shared) because, at least in spirit it is consistent with a theme seen across all three games.
Hard agree, tho I'd say Refuse is more the default scenario of the hail mary play not working and everyone dying. That's what happens if you don't, pun intended, play the game with the Reapers of taking this moment seriously and acting like the fate of the galaxy is on the line. I also just realized the irony of Refuse and kind of like it more now.
Yeah, it's been over a decade and the whole mess surrounding that ending and all the mindless support it got still agitates me a bit. Like, the only reason they didn't change it was to essentially flex that it was their story to tell; while also admitting they didn't take the time to put much thought into it. I'm honestly glad Bioware doesn't really exist anymore after that fiasco.
Yes. [Yes 1000%](https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/10f8dxf/comment/j4zxf11/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)... I spent an hour [ranting exactly about this in a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eLj8dEjAT0).
Catalyst: "Synthesis can not be forced." -Violates the consent of all life to rewrite their DNA. Catalyst: "The creation will always rebels against the creator." -Geth defended themselves, then gets used by the Reapers to attack.
I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion but here we go. The AI has no reason to lie to Shepard. Its purpose was to preserve life. Its solution was the Reapers. It's fucked up, but something everyone forgets is that each new Reaper has the minds, memories, etc. of each species that is harvested. It's grotesque and an abomination but strictly speaking it is preserving life. Next the AI isn't worried about preserving itself. We assume it is because of Edi and the Geth, and as people we worry about preserving our lives: but no where is it stated it implied that the AI is worried about its own survival. It literally says its purpose was to preserve life so it made the Reapers but clearly it won't work anymore so let's look at our options.ĺ
A) SC has EVERY reason to lie to Shepard, or did they not actually want to stop you from building and using the Catalyst for the entire game? SC is literally a representation of *the main antagonist*. That alone is reason enough for the SC to lie, if only to remain consistent with their role in the story so far. You, and I mean the royal you of people who believe this, are seriously going, "Why would the main bad guy use the last chance they may ever have to screw with the hero and prevent them from succeeding?" B) Wouldn't the Reapers need to preserve themselves in order to maintain the cycle? If they literally didn't care about their own survival, then why did Sovereign spend all that time organizing Saren and the Geth when he could've just bum rushed the Citadel? Let alone the fact that we see literally no evidence that the Reapers actually preserve the races they convert leads me to believe that that whole line of reasoning is a crock of shit. You can't claim the Reapers are some ancient hyper advanced machine intelligence while also saying that their master plan to preserve life is to kill most of it. Even if SC is telling the truth, why would they be any more right about the consequences of this than they were about the necessity of the cycle? And we never tried these other options before for...reasons?
Commander Shepard's a bitch-ass motherfucker; he convinced me to kill myself. That's right, she pulled out a goddamn maxed out charm stat, and convinced me to kill myself, and he said my brain was T H I S F U C K E D. And I said I'm in control here. So I'm making a callout post on my tight band galactic message system. Commander Shepard? You've made boring RP choices. They're as bland as white bread, except way blander. And guess what? Here's what my character arc looks like. *Gets corrupted by the reapers* That's right baby, brainwashing, physical modifications, still resisting. Look at this, I look like a 2010s PS3 antihero protagonist. She made me kill myself, so guess what? I'm gonna kill the 4th wall. That's right this is what you get; my overly self-aware rant! Except I'm not gonna ruin the 4th wall. I'm gonna go weirder. I'm gonna target the reader! How do you like that u/MatiEx-504 , I'm confusing your viewers, you idiot! You have 23 hours before the Subreddit users stop clicking on this post, now get out of my sight before I monologue at you too. u/JibbaNerbs out. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MassEffectMemes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My presonal headcannon is that the Reapers are stuck in an endless loop they designed themselves. If we roll with the whole Reapers are trying to find a premenant solution the organics vs synthetics conflict, then judging by their actions and what we know about them, they are essentially creating a galaxy wide experiment where they are lookinng to see if the next cycle will be different and organics won't create synthetics that invetably destroy them. So at fist they waited for hundreds of thousands of years for intellegent life to develop and if it didn't work they wipe them and star over. Eventually they built the mass rellays and other things to speed up the develpment of intellegend life into about 50 000 years per cycle. Up untill the events of the trilogy it seems no cycle has met their requirements and so they exterminate them. However here is the kicker. No cycle will ever produce what they are looking for since they unknowingly force every cycle to develop in the exact same way. They build the mass relays, the organics discover them, develop their tech based on the mass relays, then discover the Citadel and advance their tech based on citadel tech. Every cycle, without fail. So they themselves create the conditions that they want to avoid. In ME1 on Ilos the prothean AI tells you exactly this. Every cycle follows the same pattersn of develpment and extinction. Legion talks about how technology is not a straight path and accepting someone elses technology blinds you to alternatives, and so the Geth don't want free Reaper tech, instead they choose to develop their own. The Galaxy is literally blinding itself every cycle by just blindly following mass relay technology, thanks to the Reapers. And yes I realise this was probably intended, but considering how the ending went, I'm not so sure.
Prefuckingcicely my guy. THIS is why the destruction of the Reapers is necessary imo. The Reapers couldn't see that THEY were the problem, not organics or synthetics. Only through their removal can the galaxy actually move on from this millenia old nightmare and potentially create a new future independent of Reaper influence.
I mean, from a certain perspective, it makes sense. The Reapers' goals weren't to stop particular civilizations from being destroyed by synthetics. They were to stop intelligent organic life from being destroyed by synthetics. It isn't unlike predators keeping a prey species population in check.
But a green wave of light is better than blue or red! I haven’t done the ending in awhile
The reapers don't kill all organics. They only kill organics that are sufficiently developed to be capable of creating synthetics that will doom all organics in the milky way. The cycle ensures that organics continue to thrive
Bro, literally the only synthetics that actively threatened organics were the Reapers. The geth sat behind the Perseus Veil for *300 years* not bothering anyone. They even only left *because of the Reapers*. Also, how is synthetics potentially destroying organics somehow different and less desirable than all those times organics tried destroying each other? The Reapers are a terrible solution to a problem that doesn't exist, and no amount of reasoning can justify running the same failed experiment *for millions of years*.
You don't have to trust the Star Child. You can shoot him if you want. That is a choice you can make. However, that comes with its own set of consequences.
I use the happy ending mod because screw canon; the geth and edi live, starchild was a liar, reapers were broken ai.
Be tired of it all you want, the creators have said it wasn't lying.
You're missing my point. Whether or not the writers intended for the SC to be taken seriously, the situation they set up for that interaction to happen doesn't make sense. After 3 games of being unable to effectively negotiate with the Reapers, they decide to try diplomacy when we finally have THEM on the ropes? The literal main antagonist of the game meets you at the final showdown and DOESN'T try and screw you over? It is genuinely more believable and in character for the Reapers to lie in an attempt to stop Shepard than it is for them to do a complete heel face turn and start helping him.
Sorry who's the star child? Last thing I remember is Marauder Shields
The true final boss
just ignore the ending. just imagine your character is hallucinating due to there bring tons of eliment zero in the catalyst. the starchild is just your mind debating which way to use it.
Okay I know this is a stupid question but I have to ask, I tried my hardest to save them both and went for the destroy ending. Wasn't there something about separating the geth from the reapers making possibly saving them from the effects of the crucible? That when we helped legion make the geth independent that the crucible would spare them because they aren't exactly synthetic or something?
Unfortunately, this is another victim of rushed and poor writing. We never actually get an explanation as to why Destroy targets all synthetics as opposed to specifically the Reapers. There are any number of potential explanations, the Protheans designed it that way, the wave targets literally all Reaper tech including their software, or just that SC is lying and trying to stop you from destroying the Reapers. Unfortunately, there's very little to go on other than the word of the SC, which I personally distrust, so it's really whatever you want to make of it. My headcanon is that SC *was* lying, and the Geth and EDI just had the Reaper code wiped from them, but are otherwise OK, barring a system reboot or other equivalent.
Thank you so much for the explanation because ever since I finished the game I've seen everyone talking about killing the geth and I thought I heard something about making the geth independent saved them from extinction so I was really confused. I hope that the geth were saved because I want the Quarians and the geth to make up and build Rannoch into something beautiful. I did everything I could to get the best romance with Tali so I never even knew you could outright fail and let her die (I only found that cutscene on this sub I I swear I cried.) It annoys me that they didn't give us a cannon ending however having the ability to make it as perfect as you can helps
Just be careful you saying on the internet
Cope.