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[Brass_Buckles]

I've already expressed elsewhere that I'm completely dissatisfied by the ending, and having thought about it, I'm even more so.

Destroying the Relays would most likely have destroyed every star system containing a Relay.  Omega.  Thessia.  Sol.  Yes, the very solar system you fought so damn hard to save.

And Shepard knows this.

But Shepard does it anyway, just like my Shepard shot Anderson (I've heard there are endings in which she doesn't?)

There are obvious, terrible holes and gaps in the Catalyst's logic.  We all saw that.  We all know it.

But what if Bioware is not trying to insult our intelligence here?  What if Shepard were indoctrinated?  It makes sense.  There's that black mist on the Citadel--nanobots like the ones used to create Husks maybe?  Or maybe it has to do with the fact that Shepard is about as much machine as she is human by this point.  Maybe more so.  She's been exposed repeatedly to indoctrination devices, and yet, somehow, she miraculously escaped without being indoctrinated.  I always wondered about that.

If Shepard were indoctrinated, then going along with the Catalyst's choices made sense.  It also means that no matter what you do, the Reapers win.  They just win in a different way.  Moving the goalposts is simply Shepard's reward for making it all the way there to change things, but she doesn't really win.  The known galaxy is destroyed.  She more than likely never gets to see her crew again (except possibly if she survives the destruction ending; in that case, only if the Normandy is leaving the system because they have evacuated her or know what's about to happen, though we have no context for precisely why the Normandy is skipping through the Relay--but it is possible in that case that she survives, and this is why anyone even knows what happened to tell a story about it).

I've read somewhere that there may be a fourth, hidden ending if you do a new game+.  But since I haven't tried it, I don't know.  If that is the case, then we may all be missing the "canon" ending by refusing to replay.  Though why they'd hide the canon ending like that, I don't know--I've seen only one other game that treated its ending that way (having to replay it to get the real ending).

Yes, some people wanted a happy ending, and that's okay, because after all Mass Effect was never meant to be Dragon Age in space.  It was supposed to be a struggle, which could end well or poorly for Shepard.  It was a hero story, and most people like it when the hero wins, especially when they're playing the hero.  But to me, even a sad ending would have been okay if we'd gotten some closure for the squadmates, some dialogue about Shepard, a funeral, maybe some ending cards to see what happened based on all those decisions you made.  --But oh right.  They don't matter because you just blew up the homeworlds and infrastructures of everyone you wanted to save.  Because you were apparently indoctrinated.

You don't have to agree with me, but I don't think it's much of a stretch for me to say that Indoctrinated Shepard makes a lot of sense given the context of the endings, and the fact that the Illusive Man is able to exert some degree of control over Shepard.