Heh. You might want to edit the message. I think it messed up the post a little.
Funny how productive I get at 1 am. I came up with an ideal ending solution to their debacle. I think it would have been suitably epic. It's just really sad it probably won't happen.
The idea is this: The endgame is based on the Catalyst creating options because it's encountering outcomes it never planned for. These outcomes all suck, mind you, because it's thinking "inside the box." It can't actually think *outside* the box, and that's why its choices are all shades of awful.
Add option "D". Select Shepard. You start in on a movie sequence where Shepard points out that the whole reason for these options is because the Catalyst is faced with a situation it never predicted. Which by its own admission means the current cycle is progressing in a direction it can't understand. Rather than shoehorn that back into the box, it should let them turn off the Reapers and see where they go.
The Catalyst starts raising arguments about why this is a bad idea. The counterarguments Shepard uses are based on the decisions you made in the game, cuing up movie sequences based on whether you took the Paragon or Renegade path to each sequence. Did the Rachni queen live or die? Did you destroy or save the Collector base? Did you save or destroy the Geth? And so on.
Each one of these events is presented in a long, unbroken movie, which *feels* personalized for the viewer. As the events are referenced, the viewer will find themselves reliving the moments in the gameplay when they made those decisions, and it makes the whole movie sequence feel like it was tailor-made just for them.
At the end of the sequence, the Catalyst finally states that it truly doesn't understand any of this, which is when Shepard counters with that being *why* it has to happen the way Shepard sees it. Because the Catalyst's plan has been proven insufficient. Reality is simply too infinitely complex to plan every outcome for, and one of the outcomes the Catalyst could never have seen coming has in fact, happened.
Faced with the irrefutable facts of Shepard's arguments, the Catalyst allows the modification of the signal, so that it harmlessly shuts off Reapers. The energy wave does no damage to anything else.
You have a sequence similar to the end of the digital rebuild of Return of the Jedi, where you see a montage of events across the galaxy as the music plays. In the same vein, you see the Reapers fall over on Earth, then the Mass Relay spins up, locks, and fires (without exploding,) sending the signal to other relays across the galaxy.
The scene switches to Palaven briefly, showing Reapers losing momentum and drifting helplessly in the space battle above their world. It switches to Thessia, showing Reapers collapsing on the planet. It moves to Rannoch, showing the energy passing harmlessly across the planet. If you saved the Geth, the scene is a little bit longer, showing a couple of Geth stepping into the scene and looking up at the sky.
The final shot could be of Shepard and the Love Interest standing on the Normandy, looking at the Citadel in Earth orbit as the arms slowly ratchet back to their normal position, before you cut to credits.
Simple. Effective. Rewards the player. You don't even need to have any more conversational choices. Just a long movie sequence based on their decisions. THAT would not only be the epic way to end the game, it could be done without changing *anything else*. Just modify the last choice so that a new option is available, with a sequenced movie following it.
Like I said, it's simple and straightforward. Hell, if Bioware likes it, and will do it, they can use it. Just give me a mention in a credit line somewhere.