Hatikvah07 wrote...
This, pretty much, though if it were me I would have Anderson die regardless. As much as I love the guy, that final convo with Shepard is so damn perfect that I think his survival would cheapen it. That, and I wouldn't have the "proto-Reaper" race show up. Much more effective if it's just Harbinger.
My idea is that they're trying to make Shepard sympathize with them by making their hologram assume the form they had before becoming Reapers.
As for Anderson, I share your sentiment about his death really driving the last convo home, but I wanted him to survive in the Golden Ending to dispel the whole "Mentor always dies no matter what"-trope. Unlike ME2's Golden Ending, this imagined Golden Ending is ridiculously hard to get, and him surviving is supposed to be a cherry on the top for those who painstakingly went out of their way to orchestrate the perfect ending.